Read It Now Reviews #101 – You Can Always Come Home, Best Friends, The Sounds of Lunacy, Important News from the Future, Funny… · 3:06am Jan 21st, 2017
Been a while since I did a set of recent story reviews. I really need to get back on the horse, so to speak; I spend far too much time doing things that are far less enjoyable than reading pony fiction.
Today’s stories:
You Can Always Come Home by Entity Relationship
Best Friends by BronyWriter
The Sounds of Lunacy by The Engineer Pony
Important News from the Future by NaturalBornDerpy
Funny… by shortskirtsandexplosions
You Can Always Come Home
by EntityRelationship
Drama, Equestria Girls, Slice of Life
3,335 wordsLosing a child is the most terrifying thing that can happen to a parent.
Sunset Shimmer had been gone for years. Celestia had never really given up hope that she would see her again, but the doubt had always been in the back of her mind: what if she never returns? The echoes of their last fight followed her all those years.
And now that Sunset Shimmer has returned, Celestia wants to see her again. She has an offer to make, to a filly she raised as a daughter.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
This is the story of Sunset Shimmer returning to Equestria and offering to allow her to stay in Equestria, back in her old room.
Unfortunately, while the idea of Momlestia has some potential, in the end, this story felt like a very basic execution of the idea – we are told that Celestia cares about Sunset Shimmer, but it feels exactly like that to me – that we are being told. It feels kind of bare bones, and in the end I’m not left feeling the sort of emotion that the story is aiming for – that of Celestia’s longing for her child to be back.
Why? I think there’s a few issues here.
First off, the story feels kind of disjointed – we actually get two visits from Sunset Shimmer, rather than just one. The first scene just sort of ends without much of a real exchange, just us seeing Sunset Shimmer being upset. Then we get a second scene, where Celestia invites Sunset Shimmer back with a (frankly) rather bland letter that shows little emotion. Indeed, Celestia tries to hide that she feels like she’s Sunset Shimmer’s mom, and while this could be effective, instead I’m left feeling as though this distances me from the intended emotion.
The other problem is the lack of any real sense of conflict – there is no interpersonal conflict between Celestia and Sunset Shimmer in the story, which makes me think that Celestia’s inner conflict – over how to act towards Sunset Shimmer – is the real conflict here. But it simply isn’t very well-developed; we don’t really get a very strong sense of that conflict, or of why she doesn’t show more emotion in private. Nor do we get a really strong resolution out of it.
In the end, I didn’t feel this story the way it seemed to be hoping I would.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Best Friends
by BronyWriter
Comedy, Dark
9,026 wordsA good friend will help you move, but a true friend will help you move a body.
Rarity desperately hopes that the latter is true.
Why I added it:
Review
Twilight and her friends discover the magic of friendship through disposing of the corpse of a mare that Rarity accidentally killed during an argument.
It could have happened to anyone, really. Who wouldn’t react that way to someone who hit their little sister?
Besides, she pushed Rarity first. True, not into a brick wall, and not so hard, but really, this isn’t Rarity’s fault if you think about it, right?
Of course not. 
So Rarity takes the completely logical step of asking Twilight for help in disposing of the body. Awkward cringe comedy ensues.
And awkward, dark cringe comedy is indeed the entire purpose of this piece.
This story is played remarkably straight, which is what lends it its cringey quality – everything is just a bit understated, as Rarity and Twilight (and the rest of their group of friends) really aren’t quite sure how to react, so end up going through the motions and awkwardly trying to figure out what to do and how to go about doing it. Everyone contributes in their own special, terrible little way, and while no one completely freaks out (visibly, at least, though one could argue that all their awkward actions and standing around while trying to figure out what to do, as if that is going to help anything, is them quietly freaking out) everyone is at least a little disturbed by the whole thing.
The comedy in this arises from the constant awkwardness – Rarity trying to come up with some way out of it, and all of her friends being put on the spot in terribly awkward ways. The fact that they don’t really have proper supplies for doing what they’re doing results in them wearing cheerful kitchen aprons while dismembering a corpse to dispose of it, and throughout the whole piece their somewhat understated reactions are just a little bit funny.
That being said, it is never really laugh out loud funny – while the piece as a whole is darkly comedic, there’s no real highs and lows. There’s no real laugh lines, just sort of wry awkward observational humor about the situation.
This also has the odd result of the story lacking any sort of proper climax – the story, by its nature, fails to really build up much tension – it is about equal throughout the piece, with the situation never really getting better or worse. As a result, the series of reveals – first to Twilight, then to the rest of her friends – don’t really have much payoff, and the story gives itself no real sense of resolution or relief at the end of the story.
There’s an audience for the story as-is, but I feel like this could have pushed a bit further, with some build-up and release of tension, and been very funny, but instead ended up being flatter than it should have been.
Recommendation: This was a borderline piece for me. I can’t say that I didn’t find it amusing on some level, but it never really wowed me.
Sounds of Lunacy
by The Engineer Pony
Comedy, Random, Slice of Life
1,315 wordsBefore she became Nightmare Moon, Luna fought many adversaries who threatened Equestria. And since her return, new and old enemies have appeared with alarming frequency. But the land had peace for a thousand years while Luna was on the moon, and now the princess questions how such a thing could be possible.
Celestia offers her a completely logical and reasonable explanation.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
This is a short and silly story. You might guess from the description and tags that Celestia’s perfectly logical and reasonable explanation is anything but, and you’d be right. Of course, she doesn’t have just one explanation, and to this story’s credit, rather than just being wacky for no reason, there’s actually something reasonable underlying it all at the end.
So on that front, I sort of liked it, as a lot of these stories simply go off into wackyland for no reason.
On the other hand, there isn’t really a whole lot to this story, and it spends its first several paragraphs on, effectively, nothing; for a short story, spending that much time on so little feels a bit strange. If you’re looking for something which has some greater, deeper meaning, you’re apt to be disappointed.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you’re in the market for a quick popcorn fic, but don’t expect much more than a couple bites.
]
Important News from the Future
by naturalbornderpy
Comedy, Random, Slice of Life
3,963 wordsTwilight Sparkle and friends spend a peaceful evening together playing cards.
That is until their future selves decide to show up to stop them all from ruining their lives.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
The Mane Six are playing poker with Luna and Discord when one by one, their future selves rush in to give VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGES to their past selves… which, naturally, get increasingly ridiculous as the story goes on.
A story labelled random is often unpredictable, but there’s actually a certain sort of predictability to stories where arbitrary events happen, and this is an example thereof – despite the fact that the revelations get increasingly dumb, they are still somehow not really terribly surprising, which makes it hard to actually laugh at them.
Humor is often hit or miss, and this is really not my kind of humor – arbitrary events really seldom get my fires going, and the humor in this piece is heavily dependent on their future selves arbitrarily showing up with some problem that their past selves had that they want to undo. None of them ultimately was all that funny (the best being Applejack’s problem, which was the very first one), and I had to admit, I think the thing that made me chuckle the most was one of the comments.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Funny…
by ShortSkirtsAndExplosions
Slice of Life
4,726 wordsTwilight Sparkle finds something while searching her old bedroom closet.
Why I added it: SS&E is a good writer.
Review
While going through her closet at her parent’s house, Twilight finds an ancient essay she wrote about comets and meteors all the way back in magic kindergarten.
She got a B- on it.
And it changed her life.
This is really a butterfly effect story – a story about how one little thing (getting a mediocre grade on a single paper) caused the entire course of her life to change. Because if she’d done better on the paper, she could have gone on an astronomy field trip – on the same week as the Summer Sun Celebration. And she spent years regretting it as a child, despite the fact that she now recognizes that if she had, her life would have been completely different.
While the core of this story is decent enough, this story’s pacing feels off – we don’t get to find out what Twilight actually found until about halfway through, and I have to admit I had gotten a bit bored by that point, as the story didn’t really seem to have much point for the first two thousand words or so. Once it gets rolling, we get more of an idea of what was going on, and we see the significance of it all…
But I have to admit, I didn’t end up really feeling that invested in it emotionally. While I really liked the idea of it – and have often contemplated such things as regards myself – I have to say that the story lacked the emotional punch I was hoping for. Instead it was very low-key, and I ended up feeling distant from it throughout the piece. I’m not sure if that’s because the second half didn’t touch me, or if it was because I just couldn’t get myself back into the story after the first half, but in the end, I wanted to like it more than I actually enjoyed it.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Summary
You Can Always Come Home by EntityRelationship
Not Recommended
Best Friends by BronyWriter
Not Recommended
The Sounds of Lunacy by The Engineer Pony
Worth Reading
Important News from the Future by NaturalBornDerpy
Not Recommended
Funny… by shortskirtsandexplosions
Not Recommended
Now, to get back to reading!
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 162
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 573
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2097
>tfw TD
yay :D
I suppose I'll take borderline recommended instead of not recommended because it's uninteresting or poorly written? I guess? Still not sure how I could have done it differently, unless I wanted to use a different member of the Mane Six. But it was never supposed to be laugh-out-loud funny, so... did I do a good job?
4390137 I would also be curious to get your take on it.
4390137
I live again!
I've actually got two stories mostly finished, too. I need to concentrate on getting them done, and get some reading done this evening. Been wasting way too much time of late on who-knows-what.
4390161
I have to admit this is a case where I see an issue with a story but I'm not really sure how to fix it for the reasons I noted in my last comment on the story - that the tone seems to want the story to be understated, but the understatement ends up making the story feel kind of flat.
4390173
I hear you, I hear you, me too :B
an SS&E story that gets "Not Recommended"!?!?
Yes, let the hate flow through you!