Read It Now Reviews #103 – My Little Nyx With Cupcakes At The Rainbow Factory, Where Do Babies Come From?, Stepping Off, Gravity’s Rainbow, Hang · 8:11pm Mar 13th, 2017
Been a while since I did a set of Read It Now reviews; been gleaning a lot of stories off of my high priority read later list. But there were some interesting-sounding recent stories, so I’d take a peek at them.
Today’s stories:
My Little Nyx With Cupcakes At The Rainbow Factory by Estee
Where Do Babies Come From? by Chillbook1
Stepping Off by SPark
Gravity’s Rainbow by Queen Crimson
Hang by AShadowOfCygnus
My Little Nyx With Cupcakes At The Rainbow Factory
by Estee
Slice of Life
3,678 words...what? It's a school bake sale.
Seriously. Just a perfectly innocent little filly trying to raise some money for her class by selling baked goods in one of Cloudsdale's better-known establishments. A completely normal event in every possible way. Absolutely nothing bad is going to happen.
No.Thing.
...well, nothing bad is going to happen to her.
Why I added it: David Sirlin would be proud.
Review
Nyx goes to the rainbow factory in Cloudsdale to sell cupcakes.
What? It’s a school bake sale.
This is a trollfic, but not in the sense that you might expect it to be. It is full of references, both to various famous fandom stories as well as to some outside media, and it thrives off of subverting the audiences’ expectations about what exactly is going to happen.
This story relies very heavily on reference and meta-humor for its humor, though there are some (mostly weak, though a few reasonably strong) jokes in the story – I will admit that the final punchline did make me smile.
If metahumor is your thing, this might be up your alley, but know that the story, without the metahumor, is really pretty bland and basic – it is all about the metahumor.
I have to admit it made me smile, but I suspect that this is a very hit-and-miss piece as a result of it leaning so heavily on subverting audience expectation.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you enjoy metahumor and at least know what the infamous Rainbow Factory is, what Nyx is, what Cupcakes is.
Where Do Babies Come From?
by chillbook1
Sex, Comedy, Random, Slice of Life
2,516 wordsSweetie Belle is getting to be that age. She's thinking thoughts she never thought before. One such thought is about babies; Where exactly do they come from?
And why is it so difficult to find the answer to that question?
Why I added it: For some reason, stories about the Birds and the Bees amuse me, and it was featured.
Review
This was not what I was expecting.
Sweetie Belle comes to Rarity to ask her where babies come from. Rarity feels tremendously awkward – after all, her own parents never had The Talk with her, and, well, telling her innocent little sister…
There’s just one problem… she can’t tell Sweetie Belle.
So she accompanies her little sister to Twilight, so that Twilight might tell her.
This is very much a subversion of the usual way stories like this go – and not even the usual subversion, where a child knows more than an adult. No, this is an entirely different sort of subversion, and it manages to earn all but one of its tags.
This story is quite silly and employs serial escalation to make itself even sillier, and I have to admit it made me chuckle and shake my head at the end of it. If you’re looking for a comedy grounded in realism, this isn’t for you, but if you’re willing to roll with some absurdity, this might be up your alley.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if you enjoy silliness.
Stepping Off
by SPark
Comedy, Romance, Slice of Life
1,956 wordsTwilight Sparkle isn't sure she likes the way ponies tend to put her on a pedestal now that she's a princess. Celestia has some unexpected words of wisdom on the subject.
Why I added it: It was featured.
Review
Twilight, after having a 20 foot tall statue of herself unveiled in Canterlot, is feeling like ponies are putting her on a pedestal – both figuratively and literally. She doesn’t like that people think she’s perfect, and so shares her concerns with Celestia.
Celestia then explains how she herself blows off steam and lets herself step off the pedestal from time to time, by playing little pranks.
Twilight is a quick study.
The end.
Sadly, this is one of those stories where I am left at the end feeling like it was a bit too simple; while the structure is there, it just feels kind of superficial. The story lacks real impact – we’re told how the characters are feeling, but the story never really puts us in their shoes, and the “punchline” in the story, as it were, is a piece of visual comedy which isn’t really all that funny to describe verbally, and doesn’t even really come at the end of the piece.
It is also a shipfic, but it does little to make that resonate – Twilight and Celestia kiss a few times and cuddle at the end, but the actions don’t really make me feel very convinced of it. In the first half, I was wondering why it was included at all; the second half did show why, but it didn’t really feel like it paid off very much.
All in all, this never really grabbed me in any significant way, on any of its axes – not Twilight’s worries about being on a pedestal, not on the comedy, and not on the shipping.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Gravity’s Rainbow
by Queen Crimson
Romance, Sad, Slice of Life
3,787 wordsRainbow Dash has had a long day of work, but now she can't go to sleep. No matter how hard she tries, she just can't do it. Not without the help of somepony she trusts, but who can help her?
Why I added it: I just randomly noticed it in my feed.
Review
Rainbow Dash can’t sleep. She doesn’t need help sleeping; she just needs… advice, that’s it! But Twilight is right out – she’d probably give her a lecture about insomnia and a reading list. Pinkie Pie would be too eager to help. And everyone else is probably asleep.
So, clearly the solution is to knock on Fluttershy’s cottage, because Fluttershy is always there for her, right?
This is a FlutterDash shipfic, specifically a getting together one – Rainbow Dash flies off to Fluttershy’s place, they have a brief conversation, Fluttershy tries to help, the conversation starts to shift, and Fluttershy eventually confesses that the reason why she wants to help Rainbow Dash sleep by snuggling up with her is that she loves her.
I had never read anything by Queen Crimson before, so was worried I was going to run into a lot of rough writing; I was, thus, mostly glad to see that while there was a touch of roughness here and there, it was actually generally fairly decent in terms of the prose. It was a little telly in places, and a couple of the descriptions were a bit less evocative than they might have been if properly worded, but it wasn’t really a major issue, which was nice to see.
The largest issue with this story from a technical standpoint is the wavering point of view – the story is almost entirely told from Rainbow Dash’s point of view, but in the scene with Fluttershy, there’s some wavering; the scene starts out following Fluttershy waking up and talking to Rainbow Dash, but then wavers between the two for a page before settling back on Rainbow Dash for the rest of the story. This feels kind of weird, and also robs the story of a bit of emotional or dramatic tension. While it is okay for a story to use multiple points of view, having it waver back and forth within a single scene can feel weird, and also lend it a slightly telly feel, as well as give the audience some information that perhaps is best shown rather than fed to us from inside every character’s mind.
This really feeds into the larger issue, which is that while this story has a potentially interesting axis of conflict – Fluttershy likes Rainbow Dash, but is unable to express it verbally, but is trying to subtly express it non-verbally, or at least get to experience some physical closeness with her crush, while Rainbow Dash is hard-headed, independent, and doesn’t really want to admit she needs help or has any desire for emotional intimacy – the story itself doesn’t ultimately manage to do much with it. While the conflict is slightly hinted at when we see Fluttershy look at Rainbow Dash and a little bit vice-versa, it only really picks up steam around the halfway point, and then it is resolved pretty quickly and relatively painlessly. Yes, there are tears, but we end up with a happy ending which ultimately doesn’t feel like the characters went through enough to get there. We get Rainbow Dash quickly overcoming something which is largely an informed barrier to her having a relationship, which makes it feel arbitrary rather than something substantial. Likewise, Fluttershy’s own reluctance doesn’t have much space to pick up a head of steam before she just out and admits to her crush.
This makes the barriers to them coming together feel artificial rather than natural – a contrived conflict, so to speak. The thing is, these are eminently believable character traits, but for us to really feel like a character has triumphed over adversity, we first need them to face some significant adversity. And here, the story just doesn’t feel like it did enough to develop the emotional dam before it burst.
The sort of “good sad” that stories like this have – the cathartic feeling of success that the reader gets by proxy – works best if we actually feel bad for the character before the resolution comes. And here, it just didn’t do enough to build that emotional load up before the characters start crying and the dams start breaking.
Stories like this can hurt so good, but this one didn’t quite get there.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Hang
by AShadowOfCygnus
Dark, Drama, Tragedy
1,224 wordsRecent archaeological expeditions to far-flung corners of the Old Kingdoms have revealed a wealth of pre-Celestian artefacts, dating as far back as the Hearthfire Wars. These artefacts shed a light on an era we of contemporary Equestria really know very little about, and the stories they share range from the highest court intrigues to the humblest backwater folktales.
This account, found engraved in the wall of an old Pegasi garrison known as the Eastmarch, relates the final night of a condemned mare, in one of the last wars of the pre-Celestian era. It has been translated for the benefit of the modern reader.
Why I added it: Blame Admiral Biscuit.
Review
Set in the early days of the Diarchy, this is an account of a pegasus being sentenced to die amongst the pegasi for killing another pegasus warrior.
A world-building piece, this story unfolds and gives us some sense of the mentality not only of the writer, but of the world around him. The old warrior ways of the pegasi are dying, and in their death throes, they’re getting stronger. The diarchs are gradually taking over Equestria, and not every pony is happy with that – but they all fear it for different reasons, some fearing it will erase their identities, while others resent the idea that the other tribes are equal in the first place, and want to break off entirely.
If you’re a fan of worldbuilding, and don’t mind the darkness of some fairly nasty people, this is an interesting piece; if you don’t like darkness, though, the events described in the story aren’t very pleasant.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Summary
My Little Nyx With Cupcakes At The Rainbow Factory by Estee
Worth Reading
Where Do Babies Come From? by Chillbook1
Worth Reading
Stepping Off by SPark
Not Recommended
Gravity’s Rainbow by Queen Crimson
Not Recommended
Hang by AShadowOfCygnus
Worth Reading
Hooray for productivity, at least of a sort.
Now, if only I can get to work on my own stories…
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 175
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 604
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2100
That's pretty much what I thought when I read Hang.
I'll be honest, this one has been my weakest effort so far. I had a deadline to meet—a few hours to put something out, actually—and I struggled to get past a couple paragraphs on any of my fics in the queue, so this was more or less a fight to get something done. And I can't say it felt good.
An extra thousand words would've smoothed the whole thing out, probably, and I'll keep the POV problem in mind. Thanks for the review.
Now these are good reviews!
The (objective/subjective) judgements of the story traits as-presented were paired with plenty of modifiers dedicated to communicating the author-intended traits of each story, so that the reviewees can take note if a story they might (like/dislike) to read independantly of your own final (positive/negative) review score!
Woo!
Another intriguing collection and it's fun to see your takes on things.
Yeah, I had the same feeling when reading Stepping Off. It just didn't seem to have much content.
It's good to know that my work here doesn't go unnoticed.
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You're welcome!
What would you say is your strongest story?
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4454983 Probably My Night With Starlight, which is kinda like My Dinner With Andre but with homoerotic tension.
Was also a lot more more fun to write, which is really the important thing.
4454902 Not by a long shot.
And many thank-you's to you, TD. I'm glad the story caught your interest, and I'm glad the final product lived up to expectations.