Read It Now Reviews #87 – What Went Wrong?, A Curious Case of Immortality, Rainbow Dash Comes Out To Her Friends, The Challenge, Proverbial Roses · 10:06pm Jul 14th, 2016

Howdy folks!

With BronyCon in the rearview mirror, I’ve been feeling productive of late. While waiting on Thursday night for my roommates to arrive at the hotel, I started editing an old writeoff story of mine, and managed to finish it off and post it yesterday afternoon:

May Those Who Step Through This Door Know What it Means to Rule

Drama
2,669 words
Long ago, the founders of Equestria built a magical portal on sacred ground, hiding their greatest secret on the other side. Generations of leaders stepped through the portal so that they might emerge as the equal of their forebears.
Celestia and Luna were the last to enter. For a thousand years, the portal lay forgotten, its purpose lost.
Luna thinks it is time that Twilight learn what it means to rule.

But that’s not all! I’ve also been working to catch up on my reading, and have another set of recently-published stories to review today. Almost all of them were featured recently, so let’s take a look-see, shall we?

Today’s stories:

What Went Wrong? by Palm Palette
A Curious Case of Immortality by billymorph
Rainbow Dash Comes Out To Her Friends by Sporktacles
The Challenge by ZOMG
Proverbial Roses by Ice Star

What Went Wrong?
by Palm Palette

Slice of Life
2,493 words
After Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash announce their engagement, Twilight's parents have a chat behind closed doors.

Why I added it: It was featured.

Review
Twilight Velvet is uncomfortable with Twilight being gay, but doesn’t want to say anything about it to Twilight Sparkle because it would deeply upset her daughter.

Night Light does his best to mollify his wife and understand where she’s coming from.

While this is a reasonably realistic look at someone who loves their daughter but struggles to accept their sexuality, by the end of this story I was left feeling like I wanted something more. It isn’t that the core of the story is a bad thing, it is that the core of the story is something I’ve seen many times before, and this story ultimately didn’t do anything new with it. I’m not sure that accepting gay people is even remotely controversial on FIMFiction, so I’m not sure what the point of this story quite was, as neither the message nor the content felt particularly fresh, nor is it was reaching a new audience who hadn’t been exposed to the idea.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.

A Curious Case of Immortality
by billymorph

Comedy, Slice of Life
1,563 words
Worried about her friends' mortality, Twilight hatches a daring plan. She probably should have told them about it first.

Why I added it: Billymorph is a good writer.

Review
Rarity finds out she has been made immortal and is not entirely pleased.

This story is very silly. It has an actual emotional core – Twilight worrying about her friends dying, and feeling guilty if something was to happen to one of them – but it takes it off in a very silly direction, of which I wholly approve. This story is both funny and sweet, and Rarity’s anger at Twilight’s erratic behavior while Twilight tries to find an acceptable solution is fun to watch. Twilight’s various attempted methods, the foreshadowing of what was really going on, and the punchline at the end all combine to make me giggle at this piece from almost the beginning all the way through to the end.

If you liked Dying to Get There’s lampooning of fatal teleportation, you’ll probably enjoy the way this story played with immortality angst.

Recommendation: Recommended.

Rainbow Dash Comes Out to Her Friends
by Sporktacles

Sex, Comedy, Random, Romance, Slice of Life
4,165 words
Rainbow Dash finally decides to tell her friends that she is gay.
This news comes as a surprise to absolutely no one.

Why I added it: It was featured.

Review
This story kind of telegraphs the central joke in the title, but it is more the premise than the ending point – Rainbow Dash comes out at the start of the story, then spends the rest of it complaining and being wonderfully oblivious.

On the one hand, this story telegraphs its humor – the story basically takes the central joke and runs with it throughout the story.

On the other hand, this story took an idea that always amuses me (that Ponyville is full of fillyfoolers and someone is oblivious to this fact) and ran with it, which meant that I was smiling throughout the story.

Stories like this usually kind of bore me, but I think the various silly little situations in this story were just amusing enough that it never became tiresome. That said, it does sort of teeter on the edge of such stories, as it really is pretty telegraphed.

But I can’t pretend it didn’t make me smile. It may not have a whole lot of variety in its comedy, but it still managed to make it across the finish line without losing my interest.

Recommendation: Worth Reading.

The Challenge
by ZOMG

Romance
6,196 words
It's no secret that pegasi have a long, proud history as the warrior tribe. Their race boasts some of ponykind's greatest military minds, fearless legions that struck fear into the hearts of any who dared oppose them with their mighty lightning lancers and thunderhead squads.
Honor, duty, and protecting their own kind were the very foundation of the old legions, a notion that holds true to this very day. The strong protect the weak, and the weak stay safe under wing, grateful for their care.
But just how do they make such a big decision? Who determines the stronger pony out of two so closely bonded?
For all those questions, there is but one answer:
The Challenge.

Why I added it: This story is a sequel to Hurricane’s Way.

Review
Hurricane’s Way was a story I reviewed back in Read It Later #70. The story was about Rainbow Dash bringing Twilight up to Cloudsdale to participate in a pegasus tradition, meeting Rainbow Dash’s childhood family friends and being told the story of Commander Hurricane and Clover the Clever’s romance, all leading up to a proposal at the end. As I noted about that story, it was a story written for TwiDash shippers, and it sort of started out slow, but it had a decent enough conclusion and some fun worldbuilding.

This picks up a few months later. Rainbow Dash, as Twilight’s fiancée, challenges Twilight to a formal courtship challenge – the winner becomes the “over wing”, the protector of the “under wing” (and the one who gets to walk around with their wing over their partner’s back in public). Rainbow Dash is intent on winning, but Twilight can’t shake the idea of how cute Rainbow Dash would look under her wing…

Unfortunately, this piece is very much a fluff piece, and like the first story, ends up with a kind of slow pace to it; we spend several thousand words at the start back and forthing between Starlight and Twilight before we actually get to the explanation of the challenge itself, and then a ways more before we get to the challenge actually beginning. The challenge itself is mostly physical action, and unfortunately by the end the story still hadn’t quite managed to do it for me.

I think the largest issue here lies in the fact that the author takes for granted the idea that Twilight and Rainbow Dash being cuddly is a thing. But a lot of their physical exchanges didn’t feel very character specific, and ultimately, I wasn’t left with the feeling that this story strongly made use of either Twilight or Rainbow Dash as characters.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.

Proverbial Roses
by Ice Star

Alternate Universe, Drama, Slice of Life
1,128 words
Celestia has many titles and duties and there are always things that remind her of this. They could be ponies or objects, perhaps even something more abstract and symbolic. Today is one such reminder of one of the lesser known roles, which she was never acknowledged for. She's even afraid to acknowledge it herself no matter how often the date repeats.

Why I added it: They asked me to not recommend one of their stories at BronyCon. Yes, really.

Review
Luna and Celestia enjoy a relaxing day together, Luna regaling Celestia with fanciful stories. During their conversation, Luna brings up an old playwright’s quote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Celestia thinks about how this applies to her own relationship with Luna.

Unfortunately, this story doesn’t really go much of anywhere, and I never really bought into Celestia’s central conflict. One of the keys to building up to people questioning their relationship with other ponies is to show us how that relationship is actually different from what we had previously imagined, but this story delves into Celestia’s mindset without showing us enough of Celestia’s different relationship with her sister. Without this critical buy-in, I just couldn’t get sufficiently invested in Celestia’s inner conflict to really feel for her. And as that was the core of the story, it didn’t end up doing it for me.

I will admit I liked the title’s tie-in to the story, though.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.

Summary
What Went Wrong? by Palm Palette
Not Recommended

A Curious Case of Immortality by billymorph
Recommended

Rainbow Dash Comes Out To Her Friends by Sporktacles
Worth Reading

The Challenge by ZOMG
Not Recommended

Proverbial Roses by Ice Star
Not Recommended

Huzzah! I’m still surprised I ended up enjoying Rainbow Dash Comes Out To Her Friends; it really seems like the sort of comedy story that I’m not really enthusiastic about, but it managed to pull through. And of course, billymorph’s A Curious Case of Immortality was wonderful.

Alas, this evening will be spent assembling my new computer – my replacement motherboard finally arrived yesterday, and it is high time I moved back into the world of having a computer that isn’t a tiny 2008-era laptop. Hopefully it will take less time to assemble this time than it did the last.

Still, I hope I left you all with at least some fun things to read.

Incidentally, if I met you at BronyCon, and said I’d read one of your stories, feel free to send me a PM as a reminder and I’ll try to get around to it Soon™.

Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 137

Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 510

Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1950