R4 (Reactions, Reviews, Reference, Redirection) #0203 · 2:01am Feb 26th, 2016
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Here are five old reviews:
Right Here by kilala
Carousel by Vanner
That Nagging Feeling by GeodesicDragon
Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo by A Hoof-ful of Dust
Five Score, Divided by Four by TwistedSpectrum
My reviews have more personal bias than most you might read. These are not meant for either writing advice or reader recommendation, though I do try to keep both in mind when writing these up. Each of my reviews are written right after finishing the story and are meant for my personal use as I try to figure out why I liked (or didn't like) the story. Trying to understand the 'why' of whatever reaction I had to the story.
Right Here by kilala
[story link] [my original review]
Lots of beginning author mistakes, but a sweet story. Lots and lots of telling instead of showing. A slice of life where pretty much the whole thing is ‘and then they had a sweet time doing things together all day’. That is almost a direct quote by the way. Still, sincere stuff. Plus the joke at the end had me chuckling a bit. A good setup and execution.
Carousel by Vanner
[story link] [my original review]
Good backstory for Rarity. Also a pretty good story told via flashbacks. The photo album as framing device worked quite well. I could almost see the scene transitions. I’m not sure it’d make a good episode of MLP, it was a bit generic (I may have unreasonably high standards for what I’d like to see in the show thematically) but it would make a good television episode in general.
That Nagging Feeling by GeodesicDragon
[story link] [my original review]
I was expecting a much more comedic story for some reason. This turned out to be fairly bland. If you want decent (but not good) bland, go ahead and give this a try. Probably safe to not, though.
Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo by A Hoof-ful of Dust
[story link] [my original review]
This amused me. Nice Lyra & Bon Bon comedy. Did like this version of Lyra. Seen some similar variations that I have also enjoyed. A little excitable and doesn’t stop to think things through to any degree. Just a pony whose brain works a bit askew compared to other ponies.
Five Score, Divided by Four by TwistedSpectrum
[story link] [my original review]
I almost didn’t finish this one. The writing quality in the first couple of chapters was bad enough that I almost gave up several times. Glad I didn’t. It gets better as the story goes. Never gets really good, but enough that I could ignore it and just focus on the story. The only technical problem I continued to have is the story was told in first-person perspective, but the perspective character changed around. The problem being that the author never really got good enough to give each character their own voice. So I had trouble telling who we were seeing the story from in places.
Aside from that, I enjoyed up enjoying this story. Even when the writing was hitting me in the head with a baseball bat I wanted to know how it all ended up. So the author gets points for taking a interesting concept and doing interesting things with it. I prefer the humans-are-ponies in More Than A Dream by nanashi_jones. Mostly because that story was a lot more… speedy? It had a good excited keep things going energy from what I can remember. This story wanders about a lot. It’s really more focused on the characters becoming ponies and everything that entails than the plot.
Apparently this story was big/popular/whatever at one point. Or still is? I only ran across it from a single comment on this here blog by someone. I can see how it would be really popular though. Quality wise… doesn’t really deserve it, but as we all know quality isn’t the reason things become popular. This has enough good virtues that I don’t get mad that it’s popular. If people like it, cool. It’s got some cool ideas and even if it’s a bit wobbly in execution it does keep to a lot of the themes of the show, friendship and persevering against dangerous obsticles. All that fun cliche stuff. Still, even though I ended up moderately enjoying this I enjoyed More Than A Dream a lot more. Though neither one is going into my all time favorites.
As always, The Big Master Review List is here: { THE MASTER LIST }
If you know of a text-format reviewer I'm not keeping track of, please let me know and I'll see if they meet the criteria to be assimilated into the list.
If you are an author who wants a more detailed review of a story I've covered feel free to message me. My reviews tend to be fairly light, mostly just reactions to a story right after reading it. I am happy to give a more careful read and reply to anyone who wants more precision and/or feedback.
