Paul's Thursday Reviews XXIII · 5:38pm Jan 14th, 2016
Ever get that feeling like you're not working hard enough? I've got that feeling now. And I also know that when you find out why, you'll laugh at me. I've been doing the late night thing, trying to get more writing in per day. I'm pulling off something along the lines of 1,500-2,000 words daily.
I'm beating myself up because I remember a time when I could write 3,000-4,000 easily.
Am I out of my mind?
Oh, and I'm going to lose a day or two of writing entirely because I have to go to Houston tomorrow to gather some things and do a few errands. The torture, the mind-numbing torture!
Sometimes I think I care too much. Sometimes I think others don't care enough. Nowadays I'm not sure which outlook is right. At least I'm writing in the first place, but I was really hoping to have the next No Heroes chapter out by this weekend, and that's looking highly unlikely.
Oh well, let's have some reviews.
Stories for This Week:
Sleepy Time by Twi-Fi
The Last Curtain Call by The Princess Rarity
The Dragon's Riddle by horizon
Just Like Her by Bad_Seed_72 (Re-Read)
An Affliction of the Heart: Volume Four by Anonymous Pegasus (Sequel to An Affliction of the Heart Volume Three: Hybrid)
Total Word Count: 64,955
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 0
Pretty Good: 3
Worth It: 1
Not Bad: 1
None: 0
Come on. Don’t tell me that cover art doesn’t draw you in like a mosquito to the bug zapper. Sadly, the end result is not different.
Written entirely based on the image, Sleepy Time puts Sweetie Belle in the unfortunate position of being a child in need of a special blanket to sleep. Fearing Scootaloo and Apple Bloom will tease her over it, she tends to avoid sleepovers like the plague as a result. But when she decides to forego her blanket in this latest sleepover at Apple Bloom’s house, she ends up unintentionally using Scootaloo as a substitute. Her crush on said pegasus doesn’t help matters.
This story is, at best, undeveloped. The characters’ personalities are captured quite well, but beyond that? The emotions were forced, Sweetie’s and Scootaloo’s relationship especially. The narrative was continuously telly and comma splices litter the entire story. The confession scene looked like two actors reading from a script with the cheesiest, most unconvincing lines imaginable, and this is made all the worse by Apple Bloom insisting amidst her tears that it was “the most romantic thing she’d ever seen.”
Aside from the grammar issues, I think the primary thing that would improve this story is dialogue and presence. Dialogue is a bit harder to place – everyone looks at it differently – but with the mood, I think my issue is that I didn’t see much of a change in the atmosphere from scene to scene. This has a lot to do with the telly narrative and the directness of the descriptions. I just couldn’t feel Sweetie’s anxiety.
Sorry, Twi-Fi. Maybe the next one.
Bookshelf: Not Bad
This was a little different from the usual fare, and it left me with mixed emotions. In The Last Curtain Call, we find that Rarity has been neglecting Sweetie Belle’s love of musicals, and as a result forgot that she promised to attend Sweetie’s auction for the school play Eclipse. (Is this from the comics or something? It’s the second story to mention this musical in recent memory.) Sweetie comes by in a righteous fury after Rarity’s mistake, leading to the two of them having a little heart-to-heart.
The curious thing about this story is that it is very real, for lack of a better word. It’s not a slow showcasing of emotions or a carefully laid setup of drama. It’s just a pair of sisters having a brief talk, without all the back and forth soul searching that typical stories offer. This move is something of a double-edged sword; for one, it feels extremely anticlimactic and lacking in drama, but on the other its down-to-earth realism is immediately recognizable. How many of us have been through similar conversations, in which a lot was said in few words and a short span of time?
All in all, I approve of this approach. It’s fresh, unexpected and brief. Not as sweet or charming as it could have been with a more ‘constructed’ piece, but practical and familiar with how these talks normally go in the real world. The only serious caveat that exists here is that those looking for real drama – or perhaps I should say, melodrama – won’t get what they’re looking for.
An aside: There’s also this continued idea that Sweetie lives with Rarity. This is a topic that annoys me to no end, because it’s reached the point where there’s no direct answer to the problem. It’s been made absolutely clear early in the series that Sweetie lives with their parents, not Rarity, but at the same time there are many episodes that do show Sweetie having her own room and staying the night at the boutique, so it can be argued that she stays wherever she feels like at any given time. I find myself wishing that the show’s creators would clarify things so I can know whether my offense to this continuous “mistake” is legitimate or not.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
This is another unusual story for my collection, and not at all what I anticipated. The Dragon’s Riddle is written almost like a fable, or perhaps a legend, and conjures its intentions in just over a thousand words. It tells of how the dragons once ruled the world, but ultimately fell to war and greed. As the dragons retreated from power, the greatest of their number challenges the races they once dominated to answer his riddle. The first to answer correctly will rule the world in the dragons’ stead.
This story is brief and direct, using the events as a tool to tell us a lot about the world in very few words. It’s practical in its creativity, direct in its intention, and yet manages to be interesting and just a little introspective. While I do feel the story is lacking in a few ways, I think that’s entirely due to its brief length, which is both due to its fable-like style and its origins as a WriteOff entry. I am more than happy to forgive the shortness of the story in light of what the author intended.
I’d like to offer something longer in this review, but when a story is so short and direct, it is hard to find much more to criticize or praise. I suppose a simple “I liked it” will have to suffice in this instance.
…
And this is why I prefer longer stories.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Just Like Her
By Bad_Seed_72
Re-Read
I swear, all these Sweetie Belle fics coming up at once is pure scheduling coincidence. Honest!
In Just Like Her, famous author Bad_Seed_72 tackles a common topic amongst siblings; the role model. With her crusader activities on hold for the foreseeable future due to the grounding of her cohorts, Sweetie tries to spend some quality time with Rarity. While visiting, she gets into Rarity’s expensive makeup collection, which in turn sparks a little heart-to-heart about the nature of beauty, with undertones of Sweetie looking up to her sister for her confidence and success.
One thing bothered me early on, which was Sweetie’s reaction to Rarity scolding her over her tone. She promptly appears to be on the verge of crying… which, with her overall manner in the rest of the story and what we know from the show, doesn’t fit. Then again, she could have been faking it, but that still feels decidedly un-Sweetie under the circumstances.
Despite this one hiccup, the story is a solid one. It’s a great representation of Rarity, covering both her frustration and love of her sister in equal measure. It’s also a nice showing of Sweetie as a child approaching adolescence, just hitting that stage of wanting to be pretty for the colts, but not quite there enough to be willing to admit it in the open. Rarity’s interpretation of beauty, her sage advice and comfort are all strong.
I can’t think of anything else to solidly criticize in this story. Really, I opened with that one nitpick because it was the only thing I could think of. This story is short and sweet, with plenty of d’awww to go around. Another successful story from Bad.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
An Affliction of the Heart: Volume Four
By Anonymous Pegasus
Sequel to An Affliction of the Heart Volume Three: Hybrid
At long last, I return to Anonymous Pegasus’s series about a changeling and a royal reserve guard falling in love. The stories have alternated between ‘good’ and ‘meh’ so far, but I have that fortunate affliction in which I grow attached to characters and want to know what happens to them next. My endless curiosity keeps me going.
Continuing roughly five years after its predecessor, the fourth book tells of what happens when Chrysalis – imprisoned beneath Canterlot this entire time due to Kuno and the princesses tricking her – at last manages to cast a seduction spell on Shining Armor. Right away, red flags appeared, because it was made abundantly clear in the previous book that she shouldn’t be able to do that since he was getting checked for such things every time he came within her general proximity. But five years is a long time, and even Cadance later acknowledges that she has no idea how the changeling queen pulled it off. I’m okay with keeping readers in the dark sometimes, and this is one of those times.
Like all of the stories in this series, this one meanders around broaching several topics, from the schooling of their hybrid child Swarm to a meeting with Warden’s old flame from previous volumes. Yet there are improvements here; everything feels more ‘connected’ and somewhat relevant to the whole. Anonymous Pegasus is moving along with a ‘real life’ outlook, which is to say that things aren’t happening in an order planned for maximum drama. Life is throwing things at Warden, Kuno and Swarm in a way that feels ‘real,’ and this time I approve. At long last, the author has managed to capture this style without making entire segments of the story feel pointless.
There are still some curiosities, Chrysalis’s behavior being chief among them. I recall that she was ousted as queen in the previous book, but that doesn’t explain why it took her four long months to finally come after Kuno. Granted, keeping the perspective limited strictly to the family is a good and understandable move, but surely someone out there has an idea of what she’s been up to. Even Shining might have been able to give us something.
Still, this story shows a marked improvement in Anonymous Pegasus’s storytelling.
That’s not all that’s improved. At long last, the vast amounts of needless exposition have been removed in favor of informative dialogue and hints slipped into the narrative. Amusingly, the author even manages to poke fun at the old habit early in the story. There are still a number of issues with the overall writing style: comma splices, misspellings, and apparent typos being the most common. But the writing is much cleaner overall, especially compared to how it was in the first story.
This has always been one of my chief hopes, and I am most pleased. Anonymous Pegasus is improving with every story, and for once my hesitation for moving into the next tale are nonexistent. I look forward to part five.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Stories for Next Week:
Consoles vs. PC (Princess Edition) by SpitFlame
Fallout: Equestria by Kkat
So Her Legacy Will Endure by PresentPerfect (Requested by PresentPerfect)
Miss Sparkle, Psychopath by Adda le Blue (Re-Read)
Schadenfreude 2: Schadenfreude Harder by Daemon McRae (Sequel to Schadenfreude)
Liked these reviews? Check out some others:
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Paul's Thursday Reviews XV
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Paul's Thursday Reviews XVII
Paul's Thursday Reviews XVIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews XIX
Paul's Thursday Reviews XX
Paul's Thursday Reviews XXI
Jeremy's New Years Reviews!
Paul's Thursday Reviews XXII
Want me to review your story? Send me a request! Check my profile page for rules.
Oh, wow. Fallout Equestria next week? If I take a shot at reading it, it'll knock my Read Later list down by a quarter or so (word count wise).
As an addendum, I do recall reading "Just Like Her" quite some time ago, near the start of my Fandom Adventures, and I recall quite enjoying it as well.
It got a Not Bad rating? I think Burn it With Fire is a more accurate rating.
>tfw sharing billing with FoE D:
3685678
I scheduled it out over 10 weeks of reading. That is one long story.
3686306
Sorry, I stopped using that rating. The insurance on it was killer.
3687184
I know, intimidating. I thought about posting a single massive review for FO:E alone, but figured I'd better stick to my methods.
Sorry, bro. Luck of the draw.
BRB adding Sweetie Belle to The Dragon's Riddle
(Thank you for the review! Would have more to say but I'm at a convention.)
3685678
I just met you and this crazy, but that avatar is gorgeous, baby.
Like, where did you get it?
5390761
Honestly? I have no idea. I found it about... gosh. Was it a year ago? Less? What even is time in 2020. I can't even reverse image search it. Nothing comes up.
5390761
Kingdom Faun - Cicre
Whoops. I lied. Here it is... I had to dive into the Pinterest black hole to find it.
Sweetie Belle is Rarity's secret daughter. At first, Rarity could hardly stand her as she reminded her of the lover who so callously seduced her, but with more time, Rarity grew very fond of her and even grew to love her so she encourages her to stay the night often.
5390791
Thanks.