Read It Now Reviews #67 – The Personal Ponderings of a Post-Time Displaced Princess, Market Day, Flapjacks, Anyone You Want Me To Be, Pinkie Pie’s Perfect Plan · 7:31pm Jan 3rd, 2016
After a week of having a badly distorted sleeping schedule that made me too tired to be productive half the time, I have finally righted the ship of sleep to the point where I am actually awake during daylight hours and asleep at night (for at least a few hours). In celebration, I thought I’d start attacking all the new stories I missed reading while I was dazed and confused for the holidays.
Today’s stories:
The Personal Ponderings of a Post-Time Displaced Princess by BuckingPonderous
Market Day by Majin Syeekoh
Flapjacks by Baal Bunny
Anyone You Want Me To Be by naturalbornderpy
Pinkie Pie’s Perfect Plan by Tumbleweed
The Personal Ponderings of a Post-Time Displaced Princess
by BuckingPonderous
Drama, Slice of Life
2,382 wordsA few nights after returning home from her ordeal with Starlight Glimmer, Twilight takes some time to consider events and gather her thoughts on things.
Why I added it: I randomly picked it off the recent stories list.
Review
Twilight Sparkle contemplates recent events, her lack of trust for Starlight, and her concerns about the greater implications of the things she has seen, and the threat that they represent – not only in their own timelines, but in hers as well, as some of them are still at large.
This wasn’t really a story, it was more of a bunch of ideas. At its core, this story is a monologue by Twilight about potential threats and her distrust of Starlight Glimmer, and how she can move forward from there. While there were ideas in here which were interesting – in particular, the idea of Twilight trying to prepare to fight back against the various disasters she saw in the other timelines, and in particular the one where everything was gone – this story doesn’t really go anywhere with it other than Twilight deciding to discuss it with Luna. As such, it ends up feeling a little flat, as nothing really happens, and nothing really changed.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Market Day
by Majin Syeekoh
Slice of Life
1,896 wordsStarlight Glimmer goes to the market to buy things and make new friends.
Both of those things are made incredibly difficult by the ponies at the market.
Why I added it: It was in the writeoff and I was curious what would be done with it.
Review
Starlight Glimmer gets massively overcharged by everypony in the Ponyville market for food because of her previous shenanigans.
Applejack helps her get her bits back.
This… is a very simplistic and straightforward story, but I really had trouble getting into it. It is what it is, but what it is isn’t very much. While the core idea was alright, I just… never really got into the pathos of the situation the way I would have liked, and didn’t connect with Starlight Glimmer.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Flapjacks
by Baal Bunny
Romance, Slice of Life
1,746 wordsApplejack realizes one morning that Rainbow Dash has apparently moved in with her. This discovery surprises Dash more than a little, too.
Why I added it: I liked it in the writeoff, and I approve of the use of breakfast food as cover art.
Review
While eating breakfast together, Applejack realizes that Rainbow Dash has become her marefriend in all but name without either of them ever saying anything about it. Rainbow Dash does the same.
I know I say this about half of Baal Bunny’s writeoff entries, but I feel like I liked the original better. But here, I can actually articulate why from experience. When I originally wrote Temptation, I planned with the ending I ended up using. But I wrote other, alternate endings because I wasn’t sure if I was ending it correctly. One of them was an entire, full scene of Applejack in the morning, paralleling Rarity’s scene.
And as I – and my editors – realized, it was a bad idea. The problem is, retelling the first half of the story in the second half of the story is a mistake unless you’re going to put some major twist on it – but here, the second half of the story is the same as the first, with Rainbow Dash going through the exact same thing that Applejack did. The story, as it originally was, was understated, but very cute, but in the new form, it feels kind of repetitive.
I suspect that the change here was due to someone in the writeoff mentioning that they didn’t know how Rainbow Dash was feeling about the whole thing. But I think that, if you wanted to resolve that, it could have done a very brief perspective flip and just presented Rainbow Dash’s thoughts on the breakfast being very simple rather than super complicated. Could have just been a simple as Rainbow Dash thinking about passing the near-empty syrup jar across the table to her marefriend, then suddenly realizing, when did Applejack become her marefriend? After contemplating that for a moment, AJ would ask for the syrup again, and Rainbow Dash would shrug and hoof it over, noting she’d ask Applejack later (possibly ending with something along the lines of “she keeps track of stuff like that.”). Or really, any brief thing which made it clear how Rainbow Dash felt - could even be her treating it matter-of-factly, as if she had no doubt in her mind and it never even occurred to her to doubt it. It would have accomplished the same thing, I think, without repeating the first section so much.
That said, the whole thing is very short, so it isn’t like it is an onerous read. Still, cute as it is, I feel like it lost something in repeating itself in its second half.
Recommendation: You’ll like this if you like cuteness and don’t mind repetition.
Anyone You Want Me To Be
by naturalbornderpy
Sad, Slice of Life
4,885 wordsA changeling sets up a secret shop inside of Ponyville. He can be anyone you want him to be. The crush you wished felt the same way about you. The boss you want to just scream at. The parent you hoped would return someday. The friend that's now your enemy.
He can be anyone you want him to be. Just don't ask him to be himself.
Why I added it: It was featured and sounded interesting.
Review
A changeling in Ponyville makes his way through life by offering to be somepony else – anypony else – for a while in the evening. Want to see your sister who moved away? A long-lost lover? A mother? A son? He can do it for you. What emotion do you want him to express? Anger? Remorse? Jealousy? Fear? Sadness? He’ll do that, too, and feed off of your emotions as you interact with him.
But in silence, always in silence. He doesn’t do voices. Indeed, he avoids speaking altogether. And he spends all of his time as somepony else.
He doesn’t want to be himself.
This is a sad story, both for the ponies who come to the changeling in order to deal with a facsimile of a loved one (or a boss to yell at or get kind words from), as well as for the nameless changeling himself, who is using his job as an escape from dealing with his own personal situation.
At least, until his last client comes in. I wasn’t super fond of that scene because it was kept too vague – it didn’t feel like a real conversation, as I can’t understand why the changeling wouldn’t say what it was that ended up making things go bad in the first place, and it felt like it was dancing around the point, and I didn’t really believe his client.
Still, the rest of the story was solid enough, and it ended on the note I was hoping for, even if it didn’t quite get there the way I was hoping.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Pinkie Pie’s Perfect Plan
by Tumbleweed
Comedy, Random, Romance, Slice of Life
4,379 wordsPinkie Pie has come to a realization.
Since she and Applejack are (kind of, probably) related, the only thing better than that would be to make sure ALL of her friends are related! Good thing she has come up with a plan. And a chart.
Now she just has to convince her friends of the best way to link them all together...
Things may get a little silly.
Why I added it: Tumbleweed is a good writer.
Review
Pinkie Pie wants all of her friends to be related.
Twilight thinks it is unlikely that they’re all already related, not unless you go way back to the pre-diarchical period, but that would take a lot of time and resources they don’t have…
Which is why Pinkie Pie has a far simpler solution: they all get married to each other! Or their relatives.
Obviously this starts with Rarity and Applejack getting married, an idea the two of them aren’t too sure about, even if they are consenting adults who may or may not be in the early to middle stages of a romantic relationship. Maybe. But it all goes straight downhill from there.
Or, if you like funny stuff, uphill.
This story is funny, and it made me laugh out loud repeatedly as I read through it. Pinkie’s plot gets ever more convoluted as Twilight shoots down the most obvious approach, dragging in ancient Cloudsdale rituals and hypothetical magical lesbian spawn as it goes further and further down the line.
If you like escalating silliness, you’ll enjoy this. The only real complaint I had was some odd paragraph formatting.
“Phase whatnow?” Applejack said, wary.
“Relax, darling,” said Rarity, “Pinkie Pie's only getting a little more organized, that's all. I dare say Twilight's been a good influence on her.”
“Does anything good come in phases?” Rainbow Dash said, “I mean, like, the only times where I've heard the word 'phase' used before either have to do with boring weather factory business, or it's like supervillains telling you how they're going to take over the world.”
“Now now, Rainbow,” Twilight tilted her chin up to a properly pontificating angle, “there are phases to the moon too, you know.”
Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes “Like I said. Supervillain.”
“Princess Luna is not a supervillain!” Twilight stamped a hoof on the floor.
“Not anymore.” Rainbow Dash said, smug.
“Oh, come on, just because she returned to Equestria after a thousand year banishment and tried to cloak the entire world in darkness doesn't mean she's a supervillain. You've seen her since then. She's gotten better.”
Recommendation: Worth Reading
Summary
The Personal Ponderings of a Post-Time Displaced Princess by BuckingPonderous
Not Recommended
Market Day by Majin Syeekoh
Not Recommended
Flapjacks by Baal Bunny
Not Recommended
Anyone You Want Me To Be by naturalbornderpy
Worth Reading
Pinkie Pie’s Perfect Plan by Tumbleweed
Worth Reading
And there we go! Five new stories to read. And now, to catch up on all the quality writing time I missed.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 103
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 394
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1774
I've had worse reviews.
3661673
As have I, my friend.
As have I.
As fair a review as I could have asked for. Thanks for taking the time to do so.
3661675
You're welcome! I don't often randomly read stories off the new stories list, but it caught my eye. I thought the core idea was interesting, and still think so after reading it; I just didn't feel like the story did as much with it as I would have liked.
Incidentally, if you're interested, there is a group called Weekly One-Shots which is devoted to the aspiration of getting at least one thing done and published a week. I noticed your blog post about your aspirations to be more consistently productive, and that group might be up your alley (even if I'm pretty much the only person who adds stories to it anymore).
Really, one thing I've done myself is set up a spreadsheet that shows me how much I've gotten done, so I have some sort of sense of having gotten things done and being able to fill in boxes. Might be more my own personal OCDness that makes that work for me in terms of feeling good about productivity, though.
Another thing you might consider is joining the writeoffs, though it may not be your speed. We do flash writing competitions (1-3 days to write a story) every 3 weeks or so. It has at least gotten me off my duff and gotten me to get a lot of first drafts done, at least.
3661687 I will definitely take a look at them.
I'm glad that last one's on my RIL, it sounds great. :D Maybe I'll bump it up!
That changeling story sounds interesting.
Alas:
A cold and practical calculus lay behind the expansion of "Flapjacks"--how to get the original up to 1,000 words so I could post it. Even after tweaking the original Applejack section, I still needed at least 300 words in the Rainbow section, so short-n-sweet wasn't an option. Instead, then, I decided to go full-on with a parallel structure while hoping that it wouldn't fall into the trap of seeming repetitive.
As I said at the top: alas.
Mike
3661769
You should; Tumbleweed is a fun writer.
Thanks for the review!
One more thing off the fimfiction bucket list...
And, yes, the final scene didn't work as well as it could've. My least favorite part of it.
Oh, well! Next time.
3661922
Damn right I am!
(Also thanks for the review and follows and stuff)