• Member Since 25th Feb, 2013
  • offline last seen 5 hours ago

Titanium Dragon


TD writes and reviews pony fanfiction, and has a serious RariJack addiction. Send help and/or ponies.

More Blog Posts593

Sep
21st
2016

Read It Later Reviews #57 – Passing the Torch, Ponies Are Squishy, Magical Pony Ultrasounds, The Immortal’s Burden, Born That Way · 9:36pm Sep 21st, 2016

I was going to devote this post to stories about Dragon Lord Torch, in honor of me writing a story about him, as well as an excuse to populate my new group with stories about him.

I then learned that there are four stories on FIMFiction which appear to be about Dragon Lord Torch, or at least feature him heavily.

One is incomplete, a second is cancelled, the third is mine, and the fourth is the first story in this blog post.

Seriously. I know everyone wanted to write about their new waifu, but Dragon Lord Torch was wonderfully hammy and had a great voice. Did no one else want to write about him? Or am I just inept at finding stories about him?

So, that didn’t happen. Oh, well.

Today’s stories:

Passing the Torch by DashEight
Ponies Are Squishy by Erised the Ink Moth
Magical Pony Ultrasounds by AbsoluteAnonymous
The Immortal’s Burden by Shinygiratinaz
Born That Way by Dafaddah


Passing the Torch
by DashEight

Comedy, Random
1,996 words

Princess Ember is not the biggest, strongest, or meanest dragon out there. In fact, she ranks pretty low in all three categories. Despite these disadvantages, she managed to pass her father's trials and become the Dragon Lord. Only one question remains: Now what?

While Friendship helped her win the day, it failed to give her a run-down of the intricacies of draconic politics, or lack thereof. Lucky for her, her father Torch is here to guide her down the path of a true leader. Soon, dragons across the world will be spreading the magic of friendship the best way they know how.

With fire.

Why I added it: It appears to be literally the only other complete story about Dragon Lord Torch.

Review
Princess Ember is introduced by her father to the Council of Fire, Dragon Lord Torch’s advisory council that now belongs to his daughter.

They’re neither bright nor helpful.

While this story is mildly amusing in a couple places ("You can bounce ideas off them, if you phrase it so they don't automatically agree with what they think you want to hear. I mostly get frustrated and bounce rocks off them instead."), on the whole this story feels rather directionless, and a bit like it is trying too hard. It contains a Mass Effect reference for no apparent reason, and while the dragons are somewhat amusing goobers, in the end I didn’t really feel like this did anything particularly interesting – it just sort of tried to be funny, had a few little jokes, and then kind of ended.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.


Ponies Are Squishy
by Erised the ink-moth

Comedy, Random, Slice of Life
2,508 words

With how much ponies stumble, fall, crash, take hits, and get things dropped on them, you'd think they would... you know... actually get hurt.

Well it turns out there's a reason for that!

The reason: Ponies are squishy.

Why I added it: It is highly rated and was featured.

Review
A changeling accidentally drops a pony off a building and runs off to hide, whereupon his fellow changelings explain to him that he is fine – because ponies are squishy.

Unfortunately, this mostly just seemed to be an attempt to justify why slapstick comedy doesn’t hurt ponies, even when they fall off of tall objects or have heavy things fall on them accidentally. It was meant to be silly, but I have to admit it didn’t make me laugh or even smile; the changelings’ group spit-take felt very forced and unfortunately, wasn’t any funnier than when Pinkie Pie did the same gag in Magical Mystery Cure. I can’t really remember any other jokes in the story, and the slapstick humor in it didn’t really do anything for me because slapstick humor is a very visual thing – it doesn’t tend to translate very well to prose.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.


Magical Pony Ultrasounds
by AbsoluteAnonymous

Comedy, Romance
5,456 words

This is the story of a certain pink pony who's decided that she wants to have babies like the Cakes, and of the much-enduring pegasus who must explain to her why that might not exactly be plausible for them. Will either of them succeed in their mostly-noble endeavours? Probably not. Dedicated to device heretic, who gave me the idea. Please don't take this too seriously.

Why I added it: It was one of the first stories I read on FIMFiction.

Review
Magical Pony Ultrasounds is a silly PinkieDash piece. About a month after Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash start dating, Pinkie Pie shows up at Rainbow Dash’s house one morning completely out of the blue talking about how she wants to have babies.

Rainbow Dash, understandably, panics. And so begins a madcap day of Pinkie Pie dragging Rainbow Dash to see Twilight to find out about the options while Rainbow Dash is completely horrified at the whole subject and does not want to have the babies talk at all. She’s way too young to have kids right now!

This story is pretty whimsical. Pinkie Pie is at her most erratic here, being very silly and seemingly bouncing from one subject to another, blurting stuff out that embarrasses Rainbow Dash while simultaneously horrifying Rainbow Dash with the idea that things are about to get super duper serious in their relationship and she’ll have to be a Responsible Adult (which she isn’t yet! At all!) and everything else.

The real attraction of this story is both Pinkie Pie driving Rainbow Dash crazy, and some of the funny dialogue and mental images poor Rainbow Dash gets over the course of the story. Rainbow Dash’s mental image of Twilight in this story is deeply amusing to me, and there’s a lot of little quips here and there which are quite amusing.

When I first entered the fandom, I was pretty in love with this story. But now, more than three years later, I can see some of its flaws. The largest problem is this story is that it is kind of meandering and not very tightly written – the scene with AJ in this story, for instance, seems to serve no discernible purpose, and is only mildly funny. The story is somehow over 5,000 words long, but it doesn’t really feel like it has 5,000 words of content. As such, the humorous bits are more spread out than they should be, and its funny feels less concentrated than it really should.

That being said, it is still amusing and is a cute thing. PinkieDash shippers will definitely enjoy it. For the rest of the audience, if the premise of Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash being in a fairly new relationship as part of the premise doesn’t bother you, you’ll likely find this amusing.

Recommendation: Worth Reading.


The Immortal’s Burden
by Shinygiratinaz

Comedy
5,710 words

After a particularly nasty run in with a monster during a mission from the map, Twilight discovers that she has apparently gained immortality due to her ascension as an alicorn. Due to this realization, Twilight and Spike go to visit the Royal Sisters to study immortality and get some advice.

Instead, Twilight finds herself flung into a whirlwind of confusion.

Why I added it: It was featured and it concerns immortality.

Review
Twilight gets cut in half.

But she gets better.

This provokes a reaction not only from Luna and Celestia, but from pretty much the entirety of Equestria.

Sadly, this didn’t go where I was expecting. I was thinking, from Celestia’s initial reaction, that Twilight being cut in half and “getting better” was not how immortality was supposed to work at all, and that the thing would be about them badly hiding this from Twilight while the public was just confused.

But instead it went with a very straightforward and frankly standard story about everyone in Equestria wanting to talk to Twilight for some reason, as if becoming a magical alicorn princess wasn’t enough to make everyone go crazy and want to talk to her, but somehow being cut in half and proving her immortality did.

This made the premise feel kind of labored, and Celestia and Luna didn’t feel particularly in character here; their voices didn’t feel right, and frankly, they felt like a vehicle for the comedy rather than people thrust into a silly situation. The whole thing felt kind of like it was trying too hard to be funny, and consequently, didn’t actually end up being very amusing in the end. And the story itself felt kind of generic; the show itself has already played with Twilight gaining unwanted popularity, but this didn’t feel like the show’s rendition of it, but instead like something from some other show, where a character inadvertently gains absolutely fanatical followers and immense popularity for no good reason.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.


Born That Way
by Dafaddah

Drama, Slice of Life
2,698 words

Luna and Celestia call an emergency meeting with Twilight, and admit that there's more to tell about the birth of Flurry Heart than they've let on.

Why I added it: It was in the Also Liked stories for Orbiting Kettle’s The Wrong Side of History, and I have an interest in Flurry Heart origin stories.

Review
Twilight is told about the curse that supposedly afflicts all alicorns and drives them mad.

That’s it.

I have talked before about things which are prose fiction but which aren’t stories, and this falls into that category. Ultimately this is a slice of life piece; there’s a revelation here, but it comes fairly early on, and the story doesn’t go much of anywhere with it. The idea of alicorns being cursed to go mad is not a bad idea, but the story sort of introduces it and doesn’t do a great job of justifying it – why didn’t Celestia go mad? Are they even right about the curse? It just sort of introduces the idea and while caution is warranted, it just seems like it is trying to be epic without quite capturing such. Who killed the dragon who gave them the warning? What was the point of all that?

It all just felt terribly arbitrary, like it was trying to justify something being serious business, but it didn’t all feel like it quite hung together as a coherent whole. There was a germ of a good idea in this story – an idea I’ve seen elsewhere as well – but it didn’t end up feeling like it paid off very strongly.

Recommendation: Not Recommended.


Summary
Passing the Torch by DashEight
Not Recommended

Ponies Are Squishy by Erised the Ink-Moth
Not Recommended

Magical Pony Ultrasounds by AbsoluteAnonymous
Worth Reading

The Immortal’s Burden by Shinygiratinaz
Not Recommended

Born That Way by Dafaddah
Not Recommended

Sorry about my relative silence of late; I need to climb back on the horse. I’ve been working on a TwiDash shipfic, A Thousand Bouquets, as well as poking at a Celestia story, Eating Alone at a Table for Eight, and outlining some stuff.

Today I’m going to try and sit down and write and get some stuff done so I can ship it out to be edited.

Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 157

Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 542

Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 1997

Comments ( 14 )
PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

I can't tell you the number of times I've done something similar. Then I camp out the browse for a week to see if anyone else writes one. c.c

4220697
I have a few random groups I need to do a better job of populating. I still need to write a RaraRarara story. :trixieshiftright:

Some characters are much more flash in the pan than others, though; Torch seemed like a fun character to think and write about, but he didn't really end up with much at all.

4220706

Thanks for the review and the feedback. This is a piece I wrote for a contest in a very short span of time and it shows. I got an idea that I just had to get out of my head, and it very obviously doesn't stand alone and should have been the first chapter of a much longer narrative. However I had already put it out for the contest I decided to publish it as is. I do hope to get back to it and tie up some of those loose ends in the future, as I have a lot more of this story already plotted out in my head, (if I ever get time to finish some of my other ongoing fics first.)

"Twilight is not getting you pregnant!"

Thanks a million for the review, I really enjoy getting feedback that I can try to improve from! :twilightsmile:

4220766
That whole bit is pure gold.

BIn her head, Rainbow Dash suddenly envisioned Twilight Sparkle leaning over a Pinkie Pie that was stretched on her back, horn glowing softly as she prodded Pinkie’s stomach. “There,” imaginary Twilight said with great satisfaction, wearing a triumphant smile. “That’s all there is to it. Creating life is easy when you’ve read the right manuals!”

4220756
Ah, I see. Well, that's unfortunate. Good luck with your future work, regardless of whether it is expanding this or doing something else!

Hey, thanks for the review! I haven't really written much of anything since high school so it's always nice to get feedback.

I still am annoyed at your reviewing standards.

4230802
You boil it down to if you like it, based on if the story forced you into liking it through specific emotional hooks you personally prefer, then declare if it's fit for other's consumption on that alone.

Login or register to comment