Read It Later Reviews #41 – Hypothetical, Good Ponies Don’t… Do They?, All Our Villains Are Horny, A Wind in the Petunias, A Puzzle Unsolved · 12:01am Feb 7th, 2016
I always feel a little bit guilty doing non-writeoff reviews during the writeoffs, but given how frequently the writeoffs happen these days, if I didn’t, I’d hardly do any at all.
This week’s set of stories are a fairly mixed set. Two of them are human-tagged stories from the Royal Guard queue; one is a story which got an enormous number of views and was featured for ages but which I never bothered to read. One is a story by Bookplayer from before I started doing reviews, and another is a very highly rated piece I stumbled across while doing some tag analysis (that I still need to publish).
Today’s stories:
Hypothetical by Exuno
Good Ponies Don’t… Do They? by Bookplayer
All Our Villains Are Horny by Billymorph
A Wind in the Petunias by Super Trampoline
A Puzzle Unsolved by Present Perfect
Hypothetical
by Exuno
Slice of Life
1,126 wordsLyra and Bon Bon have an ordinary conversation.
Why I added it: It was highly rated (in fact, it was the bottom of the top 1% of stories by rating for either Lyra or Bon Bon – I forget which).
Review
A minimalistic conversation piece with no content other than the dialogue between Lyra and Bon Bon, not even emotes or descriptions of the surroundings.
Such minimalistic pieces aren’t actually a bad thing – they can work well if the conversation is interesting enough.
This piece, unfortunately, sort of borders on the edge of that – it is a mildly amusing, meandering conversation between two people which acts to reveal the characters’, well, character and relationship. The problem is that it never really goes above and beyond, and it was just kind of a thing I read. It wasn’t bad, but while it was mildly amusing, it was never really laugh out loud funny. While the ending got a bit of a snort, this didn’t quite clear the threshold of disappointment.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Good Ponies Don’t… Do They?
by bookplayer
Sex, Romance, Slice of Life
8,400 wordsApplejack and Twilight are good ponies. They've been dating for three months, and they both agree that some things are worth waiting for. But when Rainbow Dash brags about what she and Rarity did on their second date, it kicks off a day of questions for both couples. What do good ponies do when, and why?
Why I wanted to talk about it: It is character piece about ponies talking about when it is right to have sex.
Review
This is a story with a ton of ups and downs in it. It is simultaneously a story I want to like more than I do, and a story I’d like to like less than I did.
The story kicks off with Rainbow Dash bragging to Applejack about just how gooooood things were going with Rarity, given that they’d had sex the previous night. Applejack, who has been going out with Twilight for months, is both shocked and embarrassed – and it only gets worse as Rainbow Dash teases Applejack about all the things Applejack would LIKE to do with Twilight, but doesn’t, because she’s a good pony.
And good ponies don’t do that… do they?
This story has a very strong premise, and some of the scenes are quite good – the introduction, with Rainbow Dash teasing Applejack is pretty great.
Unfortunately, other scenes are very wooden and expository. In particular, Applejack and Twilight discussing waiting feels very artificial, and the conversation does not flow naturally, with lines that really just don’t feel like things people would say:
Twilight broke the kiss and whispered, “Applejack, were you jealous of Rainbow Dash?”
Blinking at the sudden conversation, Applejack pulled away. “Twilight, you know I ain’t interested in Rarity.”
“Not that! I mean, did you wish that we could just… hop into bed like they did?” Twilight blushed at the idea, and mostly at how much she wasn’t opposed to it.
Applejack blushed to match Twilight and glanced away. “I’d be lyin’ if I said I wasn’t, a little. I know I wanna wait, Twi. I knew it before I even went out with you. But… now that I’m goin’ out with you, I think about you, and you’re a beautiful pony. Sometimes, I look at you, and it feels like a second is too long to wait to do the things I think of.” She took a deep breath and dared to look back at Twilight. “But we both know what’s right. And I know it’s gonna be worth every second.”
"What do you think will make it worth it?"
"Well... for one thing, it's the right thing to do. It's part of bein' a good pony." Applejack looked in Twilight's eyes. "And... for another, well... I love a lot of ponies, Twilight. My friends, my family, ponies in town here. There's always room for more love in a heart. But, I always thought there's one pony out there who's gonna be special to me. My special somepony, for good and bad, and I'll stand by 'em forever. And I want 'em to have somethin' so they know how special they are to me, somethin' that I'd never share with another pony. I always thought that was makin' love, and that if I hold off 'till then, my special somepony will get that from me."
"That does sound worth it," Twilight whispered, thinking of the magic Princess Celestia had promised would be there with just the right pony. That was what she was waiting for, and right now she hoped with all her heart that would be with Applejack. She was almost sure it was, and almost sure that she could be that special somepony Applejack was waiting for. But almost wasn't one hundred percent. They'd only been dating a few months, and logically Twilight knew that wasn't enough time to know something like that. She also knew that the emotions she felt looking in Applejack's eyes and the way her body reacted to Applejack's body were influencing her judgement.
Twilight shook her head. "I think that maybe I should talk to Rarity. I'd love to know why she doesn't think it's important to wait... is there something I haven't been considering?"
“Maybe it just feels good, and that’s all they want," Applejack said with a shrug.
“I have no problem waiting for that. But if there’s more to think about, I want to think about it.”
"Well, that does sound like somethin' you'd want." Applejack's face clouded with worry. "You think ya' might change your mind?"
"Well, not entirely." Twilight smiled and laid a forehoof on top of Applejack's. "I'm confused about some things right now, but I do know that I want my first time to be with somepony I really love, and I want it to be special. That won't change."
"Okay. I trust ya', Twilight." Applejack offered a nuzzle as proof, which Twilight happily returned.
"Thank you."
Rarity glanced away and used her magic to straighten some already-straight dresses on a rack. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I never expected you to be concerned about waiting. It’s rather impractical.”
“What do you mean?”
“Twilight, darling, sex isn’t something that works the same way between any two ponies,” Rarity said, shaking her head. “Different ponies enjoy different things. It seems like a bit of a gamble to fall in love with a pony and plan to spend your life with them, and only then find out if you’re compatible in bed.”
Twilight considered that for a moment, then looked at Rarity curiously. “So, for you it’s part of deciding if you love a pony?”
“Of course.” Rarity shrugged. “If we weren’t compatible, it would be very important to know.”
“I see…” Twilight nodded, then raised her eyebrows. “Wow, I hadn’t considered that. I mean, in books it always seems to work out… I hadn’t thought about how romanticized that might be.”
“You might want to think about it.” Rarity said casually, though she was fighting to keep a tiny smirk off her face. There was something satisfying about offering Twilight the apple, as it were. Not that she’d lied in her suggestion in any way; she’d seen Twilight try out literally every quill in the shop before deciding on one, so why it never occurred to her to try out her lover before committing was beyond Rarity. But, there was something innocent about it, and Rarity’s better nature came through. She added, “Not that you or Applejack should feel pressured to do anything you aren’t ready for, of course.”
“Oh, we won’t.” Twilight said, seeming deep in thought. “I’m still not sure if that’s enough of a reason… it is logical, but…”
“Why is waiting so important to you? It must be more than simply being ladylike, if Twilight Sparkle is willing to overlook logic for it,” Rarity teased with a gentle smile.
Twilight broke her train of thought and smiled at Rarity. “When Princess Celestia told me about sex, she told me that when it’s between ponies who are in love, it’s special. Love is magic, just like friendship, and connecting like that, sharing the parts of yourself that you’ve never shared before, with a pony you love, it’s a unique experience. Since that day, well, I never wanted to miss an experience like that.”
Rarity wasn’t sure how to respond. She nodded and half heartedly straightened her dresses again, watching Twilight out of the corner of her eye.
“Did it feel like that for you and Rainbow? Was it magical?” Twilight asked, without a hint of smugness.
Rarity just stared in the distance, blinking. Foalhood fantasies and romantic stories nudged hopefully at her mind, only to fade in the light of the facts. “No. It was not… special, the way that you mean it.”
“I see. I have a lot to think about,” Twilight said, frowning to herself.
“...So do I,” Rarity answered quietly.
The combination of exposition and very clunky lines really makes some scenes almost painful to read, as the story is trying so hard to talk about a serious subject, but ends up wandering off into feeling like it is presenting pros and cons rather than actually representing a real conversation between people.
But not every scene is like this, and other bits are actually quite good character pieces:
Rarity looked down and examined her hooficure for a long time. She glanced up, and Rainbow thought she might just get up and leave, but she finally turned to Rainbow and took a deep breath. “Was last night… special for you?”
Rainbow smiled and let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. “It was awesome!”
“That is not what I asked.” Rarity frowned, prompting another confused look from Rainbow. “Let me put it another way: Do you feel that we have a special connection, Rainbow? That there could be something more between us than just… fun?”
Suddenly the knot on the bench was really neat to poke with her forehoof. And the leaves of a tree nearby were interesting, they were really green. And Rainbow found that she could wrap and unwrap her tail around the leg of the bench. But Rarity was still looking at her expectantly. Finally, she realized that she was going to have to say something.
“Rare, you’re one of my best friends. You know that’s important to me. But, isn’t it a little soon to be talking about lo-- connections?”
“I see.” Rarity’s ears drooped and she sighed.
“Rarity, come on!” Rainbow protested. “What’s got into you? You know I like you, and we had a great time the other night.”
Rarity shook her head. “I was speaking to Twilight, if you must know--”
“Did she call you a hussy?” Rainbow interrupted. “Because you’re totally not a hussy, no matter what AJ and Twilight say!”
“No, she did not,” Rarity said, then she raised an eyebrow at Rainbow. “And while I resent that particular implication from your conversation with Applejack, I will also point out that Applejack and Twilight are not prudes, they simply expect something different from the experience than you or I do.”
“Fine,” Rainbow said, more worried about the change in Rarity than in what her other friends thought. “So, if you’re not going all goody-four-shoes on me, what’s wrong?”
“During our talk, Twilight asked me if what you and I did was… special. Outside of physical sensations. And it wasn’t, was it?” Rarity looked at Rainbow, then away. “I don’t know if there’s anything special between us.”
“Does there need to be?” Rainbow asked with a crack in her voice. She was starting to feel like The Wonderbolts had suddenly added a bunch of egghead requirements and wanted her to prove she knew them right now.
I will also note that final bit is, in retrospect, very funny, given Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 came out after this story did. But here the conversation feels more natural, and Rainbow Dash’s thoughts come through well and do a good job of expressing her personality as well as going through the thoughts of the story, without feeling super expository. And the final few scenes feel like they do a better, more natural job of covering the ground the story is promising to cover.
So where does this story stand overall?
Honestly, I’m fairly lukewarm on it. There are bits of it I really like, but there are other bits of it which clunk louder than a pegleg on a pirate ship. How much you like it is likely to be dependent on how tolerant you are of the clunky bits for the payoff.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
All Our Villains Are Horny
by billymorph
Comedy
1,361 wordsAfter the defeat of Starlight Glimmer, Rainbow Dash comes to a startling conclusion about the villains they fight.
Why I added it: Billymorph is a good writer, it was featured, and it got 1,500 upvotes and 12,400 views.
Review
Rainbow Dash realizes that all the villains the group has faced are horny.
Er, have horns. Or rather, at least one horn.
Or had horns, in the case of Sombra. 
Really, this story is a funny idea, but while Twilight freaking out a bit over it was mildly amusing, the story really never went very far beyond its initial punchline. While the final couple jokes were okay, really I never got the sort of rising sense of hilarity that I get out of a really good comedy fic. This was mildly amusing, but no more.
Recommendation: Not Recommended, though apparently I’m the only one who thinks so.
A Wind in the Petuniuas
by Super Trampoline
Human, Historical Fiction
1,934 wordsThe wind rustles these newly-planted petunias.
I was tending to them today, when the most peculiar creature popped into my garden. We were both quite shocked.
Why I added it: The Royal Guard queue.
Review
This is a kind of cutesy story about Applejack ending up in the US in 1948 due to a magical mishap, and spending a brief time with a woman who lost her husband in the war before vanishing back to her own world.
This story is frankly quite strange. It has historical in-jokes about water fluoridation, DDT, Dewey vs Truman, and a bunch of other little bits and pieces of strangeness thrown in. It is kind of sweet, but simultaneously has a slightly demented feel to it, sort of how Fallout sometimes takes the 1950s to 11 to highlight how weird that decade was in some ways.
At under 2,000 words, it is very short, but I’m not really sure if I can really recommend it; I was mostly just left feeling like “that was a thing that happened” at the end of the story, and while the little touches were cute, the whole thing had a rather arbitrary feel to it.
Supposedly, it is part of a series of stories, but not all the stories in the series are out yet, and so I’m not really sure how it all slots together – and this is, apparently, the final story in the series.
Recommendation: Not Recommended unless you like strangeness, though I do wonder if it would make more sense of the whole of the story was out.
A Puzzle Unsolved
by PresentPerfect
Crossover, Human, Romance, Sad
3,791 words"...Time was, you just had to figure them out. Solving the puzzle was half the fun."
"You solve a lot of puzzles in your day?"
"A few. Some more worth it that others. One was... especially rewarding."
"Know where she is now?"
"Of course I do."
"...I'm sorry, sir."
Have you ever seen a beautiful woman play the cello? It's really something else.
Why I added it: The Royal Guard queue.
Review
Octavia has been going through the mirror to play in an orchestra.
But more importantly, she has been going through the mirror to see someone – not somepony, but some man. A mysterious man, who seems deeply interested in her. He’s shrouded in mystery, cloaks himself in secrecy. A man with powerful hands. A secret agent, so he says. She likes the mystery.
Agent Colson (of the Marvel Universe) has been seeing a cellist in Portland. He goes to her shows, claps loudly for her, then takes her out to hot chocolate afterwards. She’s a mystery; she doesn’t know who Captain America is, nor other important things from the Marvel Universe. She’s beautiful and talented, but who is she? And how does she know so little?
This is an odd and somewhat melancholic story; we, as the audience, know who these two people are, but to them, they’re two ships passing in the fog. The scene focuses on their feelings both about themselves, and about each other, and why the mystery and suspense of not knowing about each other and keeping things hidden attracts them to one another, as well as a sad story, of loss when some of Agent Coulson’s coworkers show up after a concert and tell Octavia that he’s dead, and a bit of the friendship between Vinyl Scratch and Octavia.
The story has what might be described as the quality of goodness to it – reading it, it feels like something quite serious, and weighty. However, this is contrasted with the subject matter; it is very hard for me to take the Marvel Universe super seriously, and a crossover between MLP and the Marvel Universe is a pretty hard thing to swallow, even if the world we see here isn’t all that outrageous.
All in all, I was left with mixed feelings about this piece. I’m not sure that knowledge of the Marvel Universe is necessary beyond a passing level, and I suppose I only have a bit more than that. The piece is nicely written, but if you struggle to put stuff like the Marvel Universe in a serious context, this might be a real stretch for you, as the story very much wants to be taken seriously. I have to wonder if I might have bought into it more easily if it hadn’t been a dual universe crossover.
But if you can take such a crossover in a serious, emotional way, you might well enjoy it.
After the concert, they will have drinking chocolate at a small specialty shop around the corner. She'll say that she wishes they had this sort of thing back home. He can place her Scouse accent, but she still hasn't told him where "home" is. As he looks at the burlap bags filled with cocoa beans, his suit will start to itch. They will talk about nothing, as she dodges personal questions hurled one by one like stones across a pond. She will laugh at his jokes. She always laughs at his jokes.
For now, Phil Coulson focuses on the adagio, lets the long notes roll over him like the hands of a masseuse. He imagines they're her hands, and holds the image for a moment. He adjusts his tie and glances to the side to ensure that he's still alone. From this box in the upper story of the Schnitz (she never calls it that), where he's caught more than half of her performances this year, he can hear the full symphony with more fidelity than any recording could ever hope to provide. He cannot hear her alone, as each part blends into a harmonious whole. But he watches her, the rise and fall of her bow, the shift of a page between movements, and pretends that he can. Watching a beautiful woman play the cello makes him feel the peace denied to him by his line of work.
He will be reminded of this as they drink the warm chocolate, spicy and honey-like. He'll tell her that she makes him feel content, and her music brings tranquility, and that these things are so very precious to him and he wouldn't trade them for the world. She'll smile and clasp his hand, and their cheeks will color when the twenty-two-year-old behind the counter with the barely hidden sleeve tattoo leans forward and, head held in her hands, coos at them.
After they bid one another farewell, he'll realize that once again, he has given out a piece of himself and gotten nothing in return. Yet, as he paces to his red '62 Corvette, not so much looking at his shoes as watching the rain run through the cracks in the pavement, he will think back to her smile, her movements, the way she has touched him that night. She is no less enraptured by his presence than he is by hers. Anything beyond that is simply a puzzle, and always has been. She keeps her pieces, the really intriguing ones, close to her chest, letting him have a few edges and perhaps a corner, none of which connect.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if the crossover doesn’t bother you.
Summary
Hypothetical by Exuno
Not Recommended
Good Ponies Don’t… Do They? by Bookplayer
Worth Reading
All Our Villains Are Horny by Billymorph
Not Recommended
A Wind in the Petunias by Super Trampoline
Not Recommended
A Puzzle Unsolved by Present Perfect
Worth Reading
And there we go.
With The Wishing Pool out, I need to figure out what my next story will be. I noticed that I haven’t released anything all that long since I finished up Mistletrapped, so I think I’ll try and focus on getting something longer done. I was planning on releasing Ice Cream Sale next, but I feel like I should get something more serious done next, as my last two stories were both pretty light-hearted. On the other hand, I do need get a bunch of Writeoff reviews done this weekend, and that is due by Valentine's Day, so...
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 111
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 417
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1815
Oh joys. Finding an original idea in original fiction is hard enough, but doing so in a world where thousands of other authors are writing in the same universe puts it up a few notches. Best of luck, mate.
3737505
My problem is not finding an idea, but figuring out which idea I want to finish next. I have... 32 unfinished pony fics which I've started writing, plus nine original fics in the same boat.
3737522 I feel your pain, TD. There comes a point where you have to consolidate a lot of the ideas before they overrun what you've actually written.
I don't typically read crossovers, but in this odd case I might have to give it a shot.
I feel your pain regarding writing indecision. It usually hits me when I've just wrapped up a big project, and in this case I just wrapped up two. I've got at least three longish projects in my head, and right now all I really want to write is something short.
Oh, God. Agents of Shield/MLP crossover? And it fits, too.
Whoo! >:V
I wrote that story without attempting to make it accessible; you really need to have seen the episodes of SHIELD I mention in the description to get the full weight of the emotions I was attempting to draw on. :B At least, that's what I think. I'm glad you got something out of it without pre-knowledge. I only submitted that to the queue on a whim.
Colson's Portland cellist is Octavia.
Now there's one I didn't see coming. I'll have to take a look.
Don't worry, I trust your opinion.
3737522
That's it? I think I have around 200.