Read It Now Reviews #90 – Aubade; Discord Forms a Cult; Goodnight, Knuckleheads; Pas de Deux; Space, Intentionally Left Blank · 10:54pm Jul 30th, 2016
This is a pretty eclectic set of stories. Two from the featured story box, two from Present Perfect’s recommendation, and one, a crossover written by an author I follow. And no less than two stories with the Random tag.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
Today’s stories:
Aubade by TheJediMasterEd
Discord Forms a Cult by naturalbornderpy
Goodnight, Knuckleheads by Summer Dancer
Pas de Deux by Dafaddah
Space, Intentionally Left Blank by GroaningGreyAgony
Aubade
by TheJediMasterEd
Alternate Universe, Comedy, Drama, Romance, Slice of Life
3,781 wordsMiss Cheerilee has always looked out for her former pupil, Pinkamena Diane Pie ("Pinkie" to her friends).
Hooves must always (always) look after his current employer, Roland Bertram Aethelnoth Whickers the Third, Viscount Astley ("Bertie" to his friends).
But when Bertie met Pinkie, something happened that neither the schoolteacher nor the butler had looked for.
Why I added it: TheJediMasterEd is a good writer.
Review
The story itself is a story about one of the characters from the crossover work, Hooves/Jeeves, and his relationship with Miss Cheerilee, as well as each of their respective relationships towards Bertie (from the crossover work) and Pinkie, and how they balance their lives.
I have to admit to having never read/watched Jeeves and Wooster, the book/show this was a crossover with, and consequently, I didn’t get much out of this story. Neither of the crossover characters felt very, well, fleshy to me, but I have no grounding in either, and while they were vaguely amusing, there wasn’t anything here that sold me on it.
This story may be reliant on you being familiar with the source material to appreciate it properly, as several other people appreciated it and I got… well, pretty much nothing out of it.
Recommendation: Not Recommended unless you’re familiar with the crossover source material.
Discord Forms a Cult
by naturalbornderpy
Comedy, Random, Slice of Life
4,083 wordsHaving grown tired of seeing ponies worship the very ground that the Princesses walk on, Discord decides that it's high time ponies started worshiping him instead.
In his very own Cult of Chaos, no less.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Discord, after observing Princess Celestia get a free fruit basket, decides that he, too, deserves one, and starts a cult of chaos to achieve his goal.
Or tries to, at least. Turns out it is harder than it looks.
This story didn’t really do much for me. Discord flipping out over something totally minor and trying to start a cult is theoretically amusing, but it didn’t really end up doing anything for me, and the scenes just didn’t include enough actual jokes. There was a fair bit of what might be called “cartoony humor”, based in humorous visual effects which lost something in translation to text – literally zipping someone’s mouth shut is funnier to see than to read about.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Goodnight, Knuckleheads
by Summer Dancer
Slice of Life, Fluff
1,937 wordsTwilight and Spike are up late once again. Starlight, however, isn’t having it tonight.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Twilight is keeping Spike up late as the two work, even though they both have colds.
Starlight Glimmer puts them to bed to show the same kindness they have shown her.
That’s it.
This is a pure fluff piece. Some folks will like it and find it sweet, but honestly, it didn’t quite do it for me. I think the main problem is that while the actions were sweet, there was nothing here that couldn’t have been done by literally any other character in the show – Starlight’s role is, thusly, rather generic, and while there is the one flashback, nothing else in the story really defines it as hers.
If you don’t mind pure fluff pieces, this might be up your alley, but if you want something more specifically heartwarming…
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Pas de Deux
by Dafaddah
Drama, Romance, Slice of Life
3,755 wordsFancy Pants and Fleur Dis Lee were made for each-other: the perpetual playcolt and the sultry supermodel. Now, they've been going out for over a month. Has she fallen for this stallion? Is he finally ready to settle down? Can true love blossom in the high-pressure world of Canterlot's social elite?
Why I added it: Present Perfect highly recommended it.
Review
A brief little shipfic about Fleur dis Lys (whose name I still hate – what is wrong with de? D< ) and Fancy Pants, this story starts out with each of the two contemplating themselves and their relationship, and contemplating whether it is worth taking the plunge and getting serious about each other at the end.
This story’s greatest strength is the characters’ deliberate dual layers – their understanding of Canterlot high society, combined with their underlying distain for it, and how their wry sense of sophistication and sophistry draws them together. It does a fairly good job of establishing characters with more than one layer in a very small space, and consequently, their decision at the end feels like it actually has some weight.
That being said, it is less than 4,000 words long, so there is only so much you can invest in these two characters in that space, and only so much convolution which is possible. The characters are reasonably well-formed for the word count, but if you’re looking for a soaring romance, this isn’t it.
On the other hand, if you like the idea of a story which gives Fancy Pants and Fleur’s relationship a bit more weight, as well as commentary on Canterlot’s nobility, this might be up your alley.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Space, Intentionally Left Blank
by GroaningGreyAgony
Sex, Random
1,523 wordsShe had an appointment in a distant place, but there was time for a little fun along the way…
Why I added it: Present Perfect’s description of it intrigued me.
Review
Present Perfect described this as Luna flies east.
This is a surprisingly apt and yet imprecise description of this.
Here, we see a Luna who is very capricious, almost fey-like; not the serious creature we see in the show, but actually more like a fey, a whimsical creature which changes its nature and acts on impulse. As such, I’m not sure it really has much of a connection – if any at all – with the show. Ultimately, it felt like something of an excuse for word porn.
There’s a certain thing I’ve seen in some stories, a sort of spirit of wildness, that this story possesses. And I think there’s a crowd which enjoys this spirit of wildness, of caprice.
But I’m not a part of it. I can appreciate the journey to some extent, but it doesn’t touch me, or particularly interest me.
Recommendation: Not Recommended unless you enjoy caprice.
Summary
Aubade by TheJediMasterEd
Not Recommended
Discord Forms a Cult by naturalbornderpy
Not Recommended
Goodnight, Knuckleheads by Summer Dancer
Not Recommended
Pas de Deux by Dafaddah
Worth Reading
Space, Intentionally Left Blank by GroaningGreyAgony
Not Recommended
Now, time to go watch today’s episode.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 140
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 522
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1955
You're pretty active!
How often do those end up being worth reading?
Who doesn't like caprice?
static1.squarespace.com/static/5463a2a4e4b0b157260007fd/t/54aea14ae4b0c0577b18e23c/1420730699488/
And you should definitely find yourself some Jeeves & Wooster, or the PG Wodehouse stories it's based on. Classic, fantastic British humor.
Thoughts on the episode? I can't wait for the changeling one but I think this was pretty entertaining both as a show and as metacommentary on the fandom.
4123025
I haven't watched it yet. I'll probably see it when it comes out on iTunes tomorrow (I don't have Netflix).
4123101
Pfft, it's like you're supporting the show or something. Join us impatient freebie-loving online fans and grab a Youtube link from Equestria Daily.
4123015
Of the 110 stories I've reviewed whose sole reason for being reviewed was "It was featured":
88 were Not Recommended
18 were Worth Reading
3 were Recommended
0 were Highly Recommended
1 was Read It Later
So, uh, uncommonly (hit rate of 21/110 = 19%).
The problem is that discounts all the stories which were featured but which were written by people I follow. If I find your story, and recommend it, chances are I'm going to follow you... at which point your stories switch over from "because it was featured" to "because I follow them/because they're a good writer" (I list this as "Good Author" in my tracking spreadsheet, unless it was a writeoff story, in which case it gets listed as Writeoff).
This results in a bias against the featured story box, as if your story gets featured and it is good enough to make me follow you, you stop being "because it was featured". So basically, "it was featured" is basically "Authors who can get featured but who haven't impressed me enough to follow them yet", which naturally is going to fall below "Authors who can get featured who have impressed me enough to follow them."
Of the 190 "good author" stories from Read It Now reviews:
93 Not Recommended
79 Worth Reading
18 Recommended
1 Highly Recommended
0 Read It Later
Which is a hit rate of just north of 50%, which is quite good.
The best category is Writeoff stories, of which there are 61 Read It Now reviews:
20 Not Recommended
21 Worth Reading
14 Recommended
5 Highly Recommended
1 Read It later
So... 1/3rd NRs, 1/3rd WRs, and 1/3rd Recommended/Highly Recommended.
So basically, if a new story comes out, if it is from a writeoff, it has a 2/3rd chance of being good (and a 1 in 3 chance of being top-shelf quality). If it is from a good writer, it has about a 50-50 shot of being worthwhile, and about a 10% chance of being top-shelf quality. If it is just featured and I don't follow the person, it has about an 80% chance of being bad.
This suggests I probably shouldn't read random stories out of the featured story box, but reading stories from people I follow is a good idea, especially if the story is from a writeoff.
I probably won't stop, though, in part because I decided at some point all of my review sets would contain 5 stories, and random stories out of the featured story box with eye-catching titles/premises are likely to be used as filler in such sets, unless people I follow have put out 5 stories recently I haven't reviewed.
4123130
Well, another reason is that I like watching episodes in HD, and my internet connection is a bit crap.
I really should get to work on writing stuff, too. I need to finish my changeling stories before they get uncanoned.
That was an elaborate response. Thanks.
4123139
Yeah, this is what I was suspecting, too. I think the feature box is inherently problematic because it often includes stories that are written to have a lot of clicks, and that may not be the same as being written to be good.
(Out of curiosity, how do you estimate the correlation between upvote/downvote ratio and chance of you liking it? And what about popularity? (This is in no way meant to be a request for you to do data digging)).
Another issue with the feature box... I'll assume that the primary purpose of reviewing something is of course to recommend it, but it probably also has the side-effect of feeling nice to the author, which is mitigated if the story is already featured. this would extent to all popular stories, though.
Anyways. The next time I get around to actually reading stuff, I'll probably check out some of your higher recommendations. I think it's possible that we have similar taste.
Oh and another question (also curiosity): how often do you drop stories early?
4123210
I've actually done this digging before. There's a strong correlation between rating and whether or not I'll like it, and a somewhat weaker one between views and whether or not I'll like it.
Recommended/Highly Recommended stories have a significantly higher average rating than WR stories, which have a significantly higher average rating than no vote stories, which have a significantly higher average rating than Not Recommended stories.
The problem is that while there is a strong correlation, it is also fairly poor - the false negative rate is extremely high. For example, right now, of the ten highest rated stories on the site, one is highly recommended, two are worth reading, one has a no vote, and one has a downvote from me - so 1 HR, 2 WR, 2 NR. That's not statistically significantly better than me just reading stories from people I follow (though it is a pretty good rate, to be fair).
The rating system is about as good as you can actually hope for a computer system to do given the inputs it is given, and spitting up about 50% WR+ stories is not bad.
But there are better ways to find really good stories (mostly, involving human recommendations. Or dragon ones as the case may be
).
It actually works pretty well. Good writers get featured pretty consistently. The main problem with the featured story box is mostly that good writers simply don't write that many stories. If we imagine that the featured story box gets two new stories per day (which is actually probably an underestimate - it is likely closer to 3), that'd require the best writers on the site to write two stories a day - assuming that good writers write 100% good stories, which they don't (it varies from writer to writer - some folks have a 90%+ hit rate), and assuming good writers get 100% of their good stories featured, which they don't (I personally manage about 70%).
Given my own "good author" metric is that a bit over half of stories written by good authors are good, and 70% of them get featured, that's suggest to me that you'd need good authors to write 2/.5/.7 = ~6 stories per day to have the featured story box full of good stories at all times.
In the last week, the people I follow have produced only 10 stories. You'd need 42 stories in that time span to actually get the featured story box full of nothing but good stories from them.
Five of those ten stories got featured.
You could crank it up to 6 of 11 if you count my own story in that list, and 8 of 13 if you count two updated stories that got featured as well (it is output, though it doesn't really count towards those top seven slots, so is kind of cheating as well to count them; 6/11 is probably a better estimate).
So not that shabby, but still less than half of the overall box for the week. And remember, those 6 are just stories produced by consistently good writers, not even necessarily all good stories themselves (I haven't reviewed one of them, one was mine, three were WR, and one was NR).
There have been times when the featured story box basically was full of stuff written by good authors, and it completely shut everyone else out for days at a time. But that's a rare occurrence.
The point is that the featured story box is intended to constantly throw up new, fresh stories. If we assume the replacement of two stories per day, every day, which may be a bit lower than the true churn rate, you're looking at stories by good writers likely making up less than half of stories in the featured story box. So the rest are going to be random stuff. Some of it will be decent (from relatively unknown writers, or from people who randomly wrote something better than their usual fare), but a lot of it won't be, it will just be the most clickbaity/best thing amongst what's left/be about some popular subject matter/ect.
The featured story box actually works pretty well. The problem is that unless you have lots of good writers consistently writing lots of good stories, it just isn't going to end up full of good stories from good writers very often. A lot of good writers don't even write one good story per month on average.
So ultimately, the failure of the FB simply represents a general failure of good writers to write large volumes of good stories on a regular basis.
If it is obviously pretty poorly written, I generally will drop it early and not review it at all. Usually, such stories come from writers with very low follower counts, so there's not much point in beating up on them.
If it is a multi-chapter story, I'll usually stop after the first or second chapter if it is bad. This often also doesn't result in a review.
Most FB stories are short stories, so usually I'll read them all the way through. I'll usually make a note of it in the review if I failed to read the whole thing.
If you're interested, my highly recommended shelf is probably a good place to start.
4123371
Now I'm kinda curious whether you've cross-referenced Royal Canterlot Library features against your personal ratings, and whether we do better as a recommendation system for you than the Featurebox (which I suspect we do), your follow list (which I'm not sure), or the Writeoffs (which would be cool but seems unlikely).
4125729
Good question. I'd have to look up a complete list of RCL features and cross-check.
Good Lord I'm late.
But! Thank you for reviewing my story! 
4125761
You're welcome! Good luck with your future stuff!
4125764 Thank you
4125729
So, that took about half an hour.
ROYAL CANTERLOT LIBRARY:
16 Highly Recommended
9 Recommended
15 Upvote
16 No Vote
12 Downvote
So... 59% get at least an upvote, and 36% get a Recommended or Highly Recommended.
So overall about what I get from the Writeoff stories (the differences are probably not statistically significant).
There's a fairly significant overlap between Writeoff writers and RCL inductees, though, so it really shouldn't be surprising.