Read It Later Reviews #65 – Oh My… Did I Misread the Signs?, That Awkward Moment When…, The Game the Princesses Play, On the Inaccuracy of Proverbs, The Nature of War, Gotta Get Down on Friday, The Nightmare’s Night · 12:25am Jan 29th, 2017
Happy Saturday, everyone!
If you haven’t heard, Obselescence is stepping down as a FIMFiction moderator, so feel free to go over there and thank him for his time spent here.
Then, perhaps, do some reading?
Today’s stories:
Oh My… Did I Misread the Signs? by Blue Dragon
That Awkward Moment When… by Hyzaku
Obiter Dicta by Ghost of Heraclitus
- The Game the Princesses Play
- On the Inaccuracy of Proverbs
- The Nature of War
Gotta Get Down on Friday by Tumbleweed
The Nightmare’s Night by Soundslikeponies
Oh My… Did I Misread the Signs?
by Blue Dragon
Comedy, Random, Romance
5,427 wordsFluttershy has always been a fan of romance. She reads books about it all the time, and her dream stallion's always on her mind. However, her whole world starts to crash down around her when she recognizes those unmistakable signs in her friends... Could they be hitting on her?
Why I added it: I read it a long time ago and liked it.
Review
Fluttershy, after awakening from a dream about her dream stallion, heads off into town for her spa date with Rarity. On her way to the spa, she runs into Applejack, and notices that Applejack seems to be acting a bit nervous for some reason – and gives her an apple for free, with nothing more than a wink. Fluttershy can’t help but wonder… does Applejack like her?
But at the spa, Fluttershy can’t help but notice how happy Rarity is to see her, and how disappointed she is at the idea that she might have to cancel a future spa date with her. Rarity likes stallions, doesn’t she? She couldn’t possibly be interested too, right?
Maybe Twilight will be able to sort her out…
This is a silly story about Fluttershy hanging out with her friends and interpreting totally normal behavior as them flirting with her. Fluttershy is, naturally, deeply embarrassed by this prospect, but also excited on some level – after all, she’s been dreaming of romance, and her friends really are wonderful ponies…
This story really works because Fluttershy is adorable. With anyone else, it might come off as a bit vain, but with Fluttershy, she just ends up seeming rather hapless, as her embarrassed reactions combined with her imagination getting the better of her leads her to flying from one awkward situation into the next.
If I had a complaint, it would be that the writing does feel a little bit bland– while Fluttershy’s ability to misinterpret every situation is fun, there isn’t much in the way of oomph to the prose. That being said, it is a cutesy little piece, and while it wasn’t quite as amusing as I had recalled it being back when I first read it, it still amused me.
Recommendation: Worth Reading
That Awkward Moment When…
by Hyzaku
Comedy
1,452 wordsHow hard can it be to borrow a book?
Why I added it: While looking at Friends With Discounts, I was trying to remember what other stories I’d read by Hazaku. I’d read this one before, but had absolutely no memory of it whatsoever.
Review
Applejack has to get up early on a Saturday morning to go to the library to pick up a book for Pinkie Pie.
I couldn’t remember this story very well, and as I was reading through it, I was wondering why I’d liked it in the first place. It contains some slightly awkward prose, as Applejack effectively talks (or rather, thinks) to herself, and I was sort of wondering what I had liked about it.
Then I got to the end and chortled.
While there are a few jokes in this story (including one which, in retrospect, might have stuck in my mind and became a story itself), the real payoff here is at the end, and I have to admit, it made me laugh. And for a story this short, that’s enough.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you like jokefics.
Obiter Dicta
by Ghost of Heraclitus
Short Story CollectionObiter dicta -- things said in passing.
A collection of short stories, vignettes, and delete scenes, mostly based in the Civil Serviceverse and tending to be either slice of life or comedy.
Why I added it: I read these stories previously.
Review
The Game The Princesses Play
Comedy
2,115 wordsA strange game played by princesses and what it means for Equestria.
A game which is, by all appearances, a combination of Calvinball and Mornington Crescent, is played by Celestia and Luna once a week. There is a great deal of debate over the meaning of the game and the assorted game pieces used in it, and we catch glimpses of the game as Dotted Line thinks about the various theories. In the end, he goes to ask Celestia what the game was about, something that no one else did for fear of seeming foolish (or, perhaps, simply because it is more fun to wonder), at which point it is explained to him.
It is a simple story, and it isn’t particularly novel, but if you’re in the mood for reading something rather light and silly in Ghost of Heraclitus’s gloriously British writing style, this is likely to be up your alley.
Recommendation: Worth Reading
On the Inaccuracy of Proverbs
Slice of Life, Sad, Comedy
549 wordsFilly Twilight expresses her concerns about the low standard of scientific accuracy in the proverbs dispensed by adults. Her foalsitter tries to neither laugh nor cry. This proves difficult.
This is a very short piece about Twilight as a filly commenting on the inaccuracy of the sticks and stones proverb. It is a cute little bit of bittersweet tragedy, and Twilight is a cute if snarky little kid that you can’t help but like.
Recommendation: Worth Reading
The Nature of War
History, Comedy
2,215 wordsAn edifying account of a celebrated war between the Greater Griffonstan Empire and the Principality of Equestria.
We hear a nice little historical epic told in the classic style of the griffons about the forging of the greatest weapon ever made. From the griffon point of view, war is a glorious thing, and as the war between the ponies and the griffons became inglorious as the ponies refused to fight gloriously and instead sat in fortresses and generally weren’t very sporting about it, the gryphons decided to make the best magical sword ever to make things more interesting.
This seems like a shaggy dog story at first, but in fact, the story has a real purpose, and it is a fun little piece. Seeing this sort of faux history is quite fun, doubly so when it is poking a bit of fun at the epic fantastic nature of itself, and the lesson in the end is, I think, quite a fun meeting of fantasy with reality – perhaps ironic, given that we are predisposed to see the ponies as the fantastic ones, but who by griffonic standards are quite boring.
Recommendation: Highly Recommended.
Gotta Get Down on Friday
by Tumbleweed
Comedy, Random, Slice of Life
4,960 words8:13 on a Friday night, and Rainbow Dash doesn't have anything to do. This means she must FIND something to do, or face the most terrible of fates: boredom.
Why I added it: Tumbleweed is a good writer.
Review
Rainbow Dash, after a nice, full day, lies down in bed.
At which point she realizes she’s about to go to bed just after 8 PM on a Friday.
She’s become boring!
There’s only one solution to that – prove she isn’t boring by going out and doing something with her friends!
Too bad her friends are all boring, too.
This is a silly little piece, but unfortunately feels a bit one-note – Rainbow Dash runs around to each of her friends in turn (except Fluttershy, because clearly she’s too boring to even visit) but they’re all being boring too. A minor mishap happens with Twilight, but in the end, the story as a whole feels not only very low-stakes, but simply feels rather by-the-numbers. The entire course of the story feels very telegraphed, as do many of the jokes. It isn’t that Rainbow Dash freaking out about being boring isn’t theoretically funny, and it isn’t that none of the jokes are theoretically funny, it is just that it feels like I’ve seen them all before.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
The Nightmare’s Night
by Soundslikeponies
Romance
5,893 wordsIt's Nightmare Night, and Luna is visiting Ponyville again. The mayor tasks Twilight with guiding and helping Luna around Ponyville and making sure the Princess has a good stay. Though Luna comes to Ponyville with a proposition for Twilight.
Why I added it: Soundslikeponies is a good writer.
Review
A year after Luna Eclipsed, Luna shows back up in Ponyville for another Nightmare Night and Twilight offers to accompany her around town. The carnival games go well enough, but then Luna takes Twilight out to a dark field and opens up the night sky overhead, just so she can ask Twilight if she can court her.
Twilight then spends the rest of the night – as they fail to bob for apples, then go through a haunted house and then head out to a pumpkin patch – figuring it out.
This story takes about half of its length – almost 3,000 words – before we get to Luna going out into that field and suggesting to Twilight that they date. This leaves the story with only 3,000 words to actually have Twilight make up her mind, and I have to say, I’m not sure that I felt like it had much weight. Twilight considers it, but there’s not a whole lot else that ends up happening in the story – they don’t actually end up bobbing for apples, leaving the haunted house as the only thing that really happens between Luna’s question and Twilight’s answer. And unfortunately, this felt like it just wasn’t enough.
The interesting thing about it is that I think the story undermined itself; we have Twilight having to take her time coming up with an answer, but then it doesn’t feel like a whole lot happens between that point and the end. There’s not a lot of character development there, and unfortunately, that’s exactly what Twilight having to take her time to think about her answer to Luna seems to suggest should be happening. If the story had hinted at it throughout, as it did with the carnival game bit, and then had Luna ask at the end and Twilight accept, I think it might have worked – after all, people make decisions like that based on feeling good about it in the moment. But because it delayed her answer, it seemed to lend a lot of weight to Twilight’s decision, and then didn’t actually do a whole lot to tell me why Twilight and Luna should be dating in the intervening time. As a result, it feels like not a lot actually happened in the story – the bits with Luna are the important parts, but Luna doesn’t interact with Twilight for the first third of the story, and then the scene where Luna shows the most affection for Twilight – the carnival game she intentionally ties with Twilight – comes before Twilight even starts thinking about it.
With all that in mind, it just didn’t make me really buy into the ship, so Twilight’s answer at the end felt a bit arbitrary. I certainly am not opposed to the idea of Twilight and Luna dating, but the story here didn’t make me want to root for it to happen.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Summary
Oh My… Did I Misread the Signs? by Blue Dragon
Worth Reading
That Awkward Moment When… by Hyzaku
Worth Reading
Obiter Dicta by Ghost of Heraclitus
The Game the Princesses Play
Worth Reading
On the Inaccuracy of Proverbs
Worth Reading
The Nature of War
Highly Recommended
Gotta Get Down on Friday by Tumbleweed
Not Recommended
The Nightmare’s Night by Soundslikeponies
Not Recommended
And there we go!
It’s almost like I’m being productive again. Now if only I could get a story finished…
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 166
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 578
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2107
Good set of reviews, but oh my so many 'worth readings', Who are you and where is TD?
4400566
Three of those are Ghost. No one is immune to the power of Ghost.
A few stories I've actually read, and it's funny how I agree 100% on things like the one big joke in that Applejack fic being totally worth it.
4400566
Well, I'd previously read and upvoted most of them (all but the last two, actually), so... I was kind of cheating there a bit.
I reserve my Recommended Story Reviews for things I favorited before I started doing reviews, which puts stuff that I just upvoted back in the day into an awkward place. Sometimes I'll glance at one such story or another because I forgot what it was about or simply wanted to remind myself of something about it, and then I'll write a review about it. Other times I'm doing recommended story reviews and end up realizing that I don't like a story as much as I used to (generally because I perceive flaws in it that I didn't back in 2013) and it ends up getting bumped down to WR (or even NR in some cases). As such, they end up rolled up into these Read It Later review posts at times.
The Nature of War probably should have ended up in a Recommended Story Reviews post, but oh well.
4400806
Yeah. It is actually kind of funny, because I think Through Glass might have inspired by another joke in that story, but I'd completely forgotten that Hyzaku's story even existed.
The end is a good joke, though. And makes me kind of want to write a story about Pinkie Pie throwing a "Congradulations on losing your virginity!" party for some hapless pony who hasn't.
4400644
Indeed!
I think I've reviewed everything he's written save An Afternoon for Dotted Line and On Forensic Accounting & Choral Singing, though I've read those.
Strangely, I actually had put off reading Ghost's stuff for ages and ages initially; I actually only read them in November 2014 (other than his Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea story, which I'd read quite a bit earlier on Bad Horse's recommendation).
And I remain completely in awe of the positive response to that story. Not sure if I'll ever get over how well the single decent joke has carried that fic.
From Obiter Dicta
Does this mean that review is an end in itself, or reviewing Ghost requires no justification?
4401183
Of course not.
Fixed, though.