Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXV · 6:11pm Aug 31st, 2017
Well, that was an interesting week. It's amazing how I was able to sweat out Hurricane Harvey with the water never even reaching my apartment's parking lot, but only a couple miles away homes were being flooded and people were evacuating. Guess I picked the right place to stay. My path to work remains blocked off, and it's possible I won't be able to go visit my parents in Louisiana this weekend, but at least I came out of this physically and financially unscathed.
In the meantime, I'm in the middle of a Bibliophile week (60k words/day of reading), yet still managed to publish a new short story for Oroboro's contest (I don't expect it to do well, but new story makes it worth it). I did some editing for a friend, managed to release a chapter of Order of Shadows, went three days without writing anything and am still 800 words ahead of my daily wordcount schedule. Heck, I even started playing Alien: Isolation because I had a little extra time on my hands.
And to top it all off, my interview with The Barcast went swimmingly. So swimmingly, in fact, that it netted me the additional followers I needed to finally break 1,000 follower milestone! My thanks to the fine *cough* folks there for the shilling. If you missed the interview, you can watch it on YouTube here. Careful, it's most certainly NSFW.
So, Harvey excepted, this has been a pretty fruitful week for me. Now if I can just get to work on editing/reworking Derp like I've been meaning to for over a week now, life would be groovy. Maybe if I'd not waste time getting chased around Sevastopol Station by a xenomorph, but hey, guy can't pone all the time, right?
Right. Time for some reviews. Short set today, and a mixed batch to boot.
Stories for This Week:
The Poetry of Politics by Pascoite
The Second Coming of Fluttershy by Akumokagetsu
Fly Before You Run by Lucky Dreams
No Recipe For Perfection by Cloudy Skies
The Donutier by Hap
Total Word Count: 46,276
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 1
Pretty Good: 2
Worth It: 1
Needs Work: 1
None: 0
The Poetry of Politics
3,423 Words
By Pascoite
In this story by Pascoite, we learn a few things about cutie marks, albeit in a vague sort of fashion. Twilight is hosting a poetry reading and offers Mayor Mare the chance to go, but the Mayor’s response is… confusing. When Twilight presses her, we learn that the Mayor’s cutie mark may have more than one purpose. But if your destiny could let you do two things, does that mean you have to pick only one?
The story gives us some fresh insight into the past of Mayor Mare, which is always something I approve of. And while it does explore the nature of cutie marks somewhat, the story is much more about being able to do the things we love along with the things required of us. And there’s probably some deep, meaningful extra message in there that I’m too shallow to recognize.
One the one hand, the story is structurally and technically fine. It has a point to make, and it does it well. At the same time, it doesn’t really catch my attention. That’s not that there’s anything wrong with it or that it lacks a hook or… well, anything to do with the content of the story. It’s simply that the topic of discussion didn’t interest me.
But let that not keep you guys from reading it. Again, it’s certainly a good story, and I’m sure others will get a lot out of it. It’s just not my cup of tea, I’m sorry to say.
Bookshelf: Worth It
The Second Coming of Fluttershy
3,171 Words
By Akumokagetsu
Feels like an eternity since I read one of Akumokagetsu’s stories. I came into it hoping it wouldn’t be ‘stupid’ silly.
...yeah, who here knows where this is going?
The Second Coming of Fluttershy has the titular mare wake up one morning to find an army of griffons at her front door. Apparently, they believe she’s some Goddess of Kindness and are determined to establish her as Equestria’s proper ruler. She has no idea why, but they’re pointing crossbows ballistae pointy-shooty things at her, so she might as well go along with it for the sake of not being shoot-ified.
The story is designed with absurdity in mind, and I guess I’m okay with that. It’s not my kind of humor, I’m sorry to say, largely because it has no basis in anything we know about MLP except that Fluttershy is kind and cute. Although I was wondering why the army consists of only griffons. Wouldn’t it make more sense if it was multiracial?
...right. Stupid silly. Silly me.
I’m sure there are those who will find the nonsense hilarious. Me, I’ll pass.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
PS: This rating doesn’t work. Maybe I need a new one to differentiate between stories that legitimately need work to improve and those that just aren’t in my preferred taste?
Fly Before You Run
4,429 Words
By Lucky Dreams
Recommended by Pascoite
Rainbow Dash left home at only 11 years of age, moving to Ponyville to prove to everypony that she’s a responsible, grownup, awesome mare. She lives with the Cakes and tries to make rent through a combination of an allowance from her father in Cloudsdale and off jobs. On this, a stormy and gloomy night, she’s agreed to foalsit a newborn Scootaloo while her parents go out for the first time in months. But Rainbow is just a filly, and the burdens of trying to be a grownup are starting to weigh her down…
This was a delightful little story about a filly finding a reason to be brave. While I feel that the very concept of a filly leaving home at the age of 11 is stupid – not to mention leading to a lot of suspicion aimed towards her father for letting her do so – one can’t argue with the results here. It’s a short but sweet story about how Rainbow came to meet and grew to love Scootaloo. It’s got a slightly disturbing scent of sisterly love at first sight, but I’m willing to forgive this for how well the story is handled on the whole.
Not an amazing tale, and it does stretch my sense of disbelief a bit, but still a good one. Read it if you feel like d’awwing over a filly Rainbow.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
No Recipe For Perfection
22,156 Words
By Cloudy Skies
Requested by SleepIsforTheWeak
Have to admit, if SleepIsforTheWeak hadn’t requested this I’d have never given it a second glance. While I am a firm believer in the idea that any ship can be made to work if handled correctly, the RariPie ship is a bit of a stretch even in the best hands.
We begin with Rarity suffering from a severe case of the doldrums. Her work is no longer inspired, and while her business is still doing fine she can find no joy in her work. One weekend she finds herself without her usual list of models and, with nopony else to turn to, asks Pinkie to help. During the (surprisingly smooth) modeling session, Pinkie makes a few idle suggestions. Rarity tries them, and they prove a hit with the locals. Miffed, mildly annoyed, Rarity begins to wonder how Pinkie came up with such an unusual but successful design.
Dare I say it? Yes, I think I do: this has got to be the single most natural way to get Rarity and Pinkie together that I’ve ever seen. I don’t mean the opening premise, I mean in the way the story plays out. It’s not a matter of suddenly falling in love, but neither is it a matter of slow courtship. Rather, the story revolves largely around Rarity paying closer attention to and gradually coming to understand Pinkie as an individual. From the perspective of Rarity herself, it’s just about perfect. No rush, no frustrated lingerings and questions of how she feels. Just a steady study until, practically at the end, it just clicks and the characters are in a state of “oh”.
I loved this approach and find it perfectly suitable for our two protagonists. It may not be the most romantic way to go about it, but it makes up for it with a warm, natural feel.
There’s only one catch in all of this: what does Pinkie see in Rarity? It’s not exactly clear. This isn’t helped by how Pinkie is depicted with some pretty show-accurate mannerisms, which in turn makes her view of things harder to grasp at times. I would have loved to have seen a little something pointing out what exactly draws Pinkie to Rarity.
Other than that? This was nice, and I am glad to have read it. I haven’t read many stories with this pairing, but you can bet in the future this one will be worth comparing against.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
The Donutier
13,097 Words
By Hap
Completed Story
Everyone knows how the same background ponies tend to live in every single town and city in Equestria. What if that wasn’t just the show creators using pre-existing characters to fill up space? What if there really are a bunch of ponies across Equestria that happen to share the exact same coloration, shape, manestyle, even cutie marks?
This is exactly the problem Canterlotian and donut entrepreneur Twilight Sprinkle has. She looks like Twilight Sparkle. Sounds like Twilight Sparkle. Has the same mane, same eyes, same hometown as Twilight Sparkle. The only thing she lacks is Twilight's cutie mark. And apparently ponies across Equestria are incapable of looking in a directory and differentiating between Sparkle and Sprinkle, because suitors, villains, usurpers and fans come into the shop almost daily in search of Twilight Celestia-be-damned Sparkle. When the latest ‘villain,’ one Ravenwing Bloodmane (yeah, ouch), shows up to deal with the ‘vile usurper,’ Twilight Sprinkle decides enough is enough.
This was a wonderful little story about coincidences, finding one’s place and (to Sprinkle's consternation) friendship. It has a pair of highly endearing protagonists with wonderfully identifiable traits that give them lots of character. Sparkle’s penchant for on-the-spot donut-related puns was particularly endearing. The story is whimsical and ever-entertaining, from Copper’s ‘dramatic’ arrival to the meeting with the PTS herself.
This is one of those stories that treads the sweet path (no pun intended) of not having a huge message or lesson but having all its own charm and joy. Be it the witty writing style, the incessant snark of the narrator (oh, so that’s where it went!), the endearing characters or the feel-good ending, there’s nothing at all to complain about here.
Read it and be entertained.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXI
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXIV
New Groups, The Barcast, and Hurricanes (Oh, and Reviews)
You Are Here
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXVI
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXVII
Paul's, uh, Friday Reviews?
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXVIII
Paul's Thursday Reviews LXXXIX
Altitude privilege, obviously.
Back when we lived in a mobile home park here, we could not get flood insurance. Thought it was odd. After all, mobile homes are like cars. If the water gets high, hitch 'em up and move them. Then 1993 happened. The mobile home park had ten feet of elevation distance between the lowest point and the highest point in the park. The high point, by coincidence, was about two trailers over. The *low* point was down by Little Kitten Creek, which got awful wet, but never flooded that year (It was a slow, steady rain). Turns out when I looked at a flood map, that low point was still ten feet or so higher than downtown, which flooded like heck back in 1953 with six feet of water, so even then, the mobile home park area (only grass at that point) was still dry.
Smug in my knowledge, life continued. Then around 2005 or so, we had some *fast* rain over several days in the drainage area of Little Kitten Creek. They managed to get a half-dozen of the mobile homes dragged out before the water got too deep, but the rest of them...got mobile. Thankfully, only about thirty feet or so, at worst. Downtown stayed dry. Lightbulb went off. Explained the lack of flood insurers quite well. Remember, people. An insurance agent is a bookie. If they take your bet against a sure thing, you can be sure some federal agency is writing the inevitable check.
(FYI: I agree with all of your reviews, particularly The Donutier. Dunking good.)
A bunch of scattered responses:
- Very glad you're safe and dry.
- Grats on 1K!
- In my Writeoff reviews (and HORSE ratings), I distinguish between "Needs Work" and "Misaimed". The latter means "I, Horizon, am fundamentally incapable of appreciating this story as written". Sometimes that's due to writing choices I violently disagree with and sometimes it's due to crossover/character/genre/kink/etc that bounces off of me, but in both cases it acknowledges that this is not necessarily a problem the author can edit the story to address — and may not even want to, if I'm not the target audience.
- The Donutier's RCL feature is crossposting to FIMFiction tomorrow, so you're not the only one who enjoyed it!
Glad to hear you stayed high and dry!
Glad you're not feeling the need to transform into seapony form, and congrats on teh mad followz.
I'm going to have to go check out The Donutier now... I wasn't sure what to expect just based on the surface viewable parts.
(Plus I keep reading the image as Twilight Sparkle and I cannot not read it that way even though it's been pointed out to me now.)
Glad you're all right.
For ratings, you could always go with "Not for Me"?
On that note, I've always thought that "Pretty Good" sounded very... not great. <.< Like, it's your standard "this story is good, you should read it" level of recommendation, but the 'pretty' kind of deflates that. Even an exclamation point at the end would make it seem more like the endorsement it's supposed to be.
Its great to hear you're okay!
I'm glad you survived Harvey too. My subdivision was an island that was cut off on all sides. Gotta hand it to thr folks who designed the drainage system as we made it out unscathed while keeping power. Unfortunately the neighborhood where I grew up was submerged for the most part as well as my community college.
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"Misaimed" and "Not for Me", eh? In terms of my own appreciation, I like "Misaimed" more, but it's also misleading. I mean, it's not like the writer was specifically intending for me to be the audience, right? So yeah, I'd probably go with "Not for Me". Thanks for the suggestions, guys!
As for the "Pretty Good" note, the subdued nature is kinda-sorta intentional. It falls under a broad spectrum that serves to limit the number of ratings I can give. It also serves a certain function: it's not that hard to get into the "Pretty Good" bookshelf, not really, but it's much harder to get into the WHYRTY? bookshelf, so there's meant to be a large gap there. I suppose I could use the exclamation mark for stories that are well above the acceptance threshold, but not quite at the top. They'd get the same score and all, but at least it would be a more visual indication of my general approval.
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I like how your big shelf abbreviates to essentially "Why, Rarity?" XD
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Must have been my subconscious trying to remind me that Rarity is Best M6 Pone, even before I believed it.
I'm relieved to hear you're okay. Harvey's been a wreck. Every picture and video has floored me.
On a happier note...Woohooooo one thousand watchers! Congrats dude!
I second both PP and Horizon's suggestions here, and it looks like you're already going with one of them ^.^
It's something that's super important to acknowledge, in my book. There's few things as irritating as browsing reviews for, say, a niche movie you and everyone else in the genre love, only to see some reviewers trash the film because, truthfully, it isn't their cup of tea (though of course this isn't what they say, but a fan of the genre can usually tell, given the bald ignorance of many criticisms which tend to be the hallmarks of such reviews). Whereas a reviewer who expresses an honest, highly critical opinion of the film but ends with "Clearly I'm not in the target audience here" removes the sting and, I think, increases the likelihood readers will actually listen to and digest their criticism. Because sometimes genres do need outside criticism. Usually, probably. They should seek it unendingly.
Besides, the implication (by never saying a story is "not for me") that your reaction to every story bears the same critical authority is just super arrogant, and who likes that?
Ha! I know what you're referencing here! It's JawJoe's videos on Twilight's Kingdom, right--"Where da snark at?" I just watched those! Never have I been so depressed to be in total agreement with someone.
First off, the review is fair. I'm not mad, but I don't always do a good job of accurately expressing what I mean, especially when it's this late and I've been up far too long. So if I end up coming across as angry in any of this, I'm not.
Yeah, this story's not some epic high-stakes thing, just one character's hobby, so I recommended it to you when you said you'd like to see more stories about the mayor, and it turned out you already had it on your RIL. And if it just didn't click with you, that's fine, too. But this is the second time I've gotten dinged for a story you couldn't actually say there was anything wrong with, and it's a bit frustrating.
People can make their review scores anything they like them to be, but it can be confusing to someone looking for story recommendations when a 1-point rating from you can either mean "decent but flawed" or "I'm just not the audience for this." Those are very different things, and it's hard to tell between the two without reading the full review. Particularly if the reader doesn't want to be spoiled on what happens in it, he might just scroll to the bottom, see you gave it a low-ish rating, and decide to pass on it because he didn't know it can mean more than one thing.
That's why I think it's a good idea to have a separate rating for stories like this that better differentiates that's what you mean and doesn't get included in the author's total score. Well, that last one's up to you. If an author consistently writes stuff you think is fine but just don't enjoy, then a low score is a good indicator to you that you probably won't like further things by him, but so would a high total of non-rated stories. But if you want those scores to be illustrative to other people, then I think it's misleading to include this type of story.
And yeah if you do that, it'll help my score. A lot. I'll be up front in admitting that. But when you make a big deal about how getting to a 1.9 average is such a special thing and have gradated levels of "coolness" above that, then it kind of sucks for me to be hamstrung by low ratings on stories that you can't even say have real problems. I mean, I got 1 point on "My Domestic Equestria," which isn't really even a story, but I published it, so fair game. But you don't say there's anything wrong with it. There's no rationale at all as to why it got that rating, and "a delight to read" doesn't sound like something that produced a lukewarm reaction. If it's just a subjective scale of how much you enjoyed reading something, fair enough, but it's a lot harder for readers to take recommendations from something that has personal taste as that big a piece of it. It may not always be the case, but it certainly seems to me that if you give a story 0 or 1 points, you do discuss what shortcomings you think it had. I'd have no idea what kind of revisions to make to get this up to 2 points, if I even could. It'd be different if you'd pointed out poor grammar, plot holes, characterization problems, etc., but I've got nothing to go on.
2 points for "Duet in the Folk Style." 2 for "Where the Heart Is."
0 points for "Friendly Correspondence" when the ultimate rationale was "when it all comes down to it, that I’m not the right audience for this story." This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.
4 points for "Ambergris." 2 points for "Method Acting."
Then 1 point on this story, with: "At the same time, it doesn’t really catch my attention. That’s not that there’s anything wrong with it or that it lacks a hook or… well, anything to do with the content of the story. It’s simply that the topic of discussion didn’t interest me." And: "But let that not keep you guys from reading it. Again, it’s certainly a good story, and I’m sure others will get a lot out of it. It’s just not my cup of tea, I’m sorry to say." I don't know what I could do improve this story in your eyes short of making very subjective tweaks, and I wouldn't even know what kinds. I'd basically have to have you co-write it so it suited your reading preferences better.
So my average score is way down at 1.7, and I've shot myself in the foot by comparison, since I've recommended a ton of stuff to you where I hand-picked some of the authors' best work, and now all those guys have been getting 2s and 4s and are sitting well above me. Kinda funny, actually. But, eh, I'm in good company. Bookplayer and Present Perfect and Bad Horse and Lucky Dreams are all down there with me, and I have no idea whether they have any of those "it just wasn't my taste" results. (I notice your spreadsheet is out of date, btw, as it doesn't include my last 2 reviews). If I take out the two where you explicitly said it was a taste issue, I'd have a 2.2, and without the third one where you didn't actually say there was anything wrong with it, I'd have a 2.5. It makes a big difference.
I'd definitely say it's a good idea to at least introduce some different terminology so someone can tell between the two kinds of 1-point verdicts, and you might consider not including the benign type in author scoring.
I notice you have RIL titles in the spreadsheet, too, and one of mine that used to be in there disappeared months ago. Someone else (I don't remember who) requested that you read "Curse, Bless, Me Now" in one of your recommendation threads, but I don't know what happened to it, since it's been gone a long time but hasn't been sorted into one of your folders, so I don't think you read it yet. It's decent enough, and you might like it, but I was surprised to see Pres give it an HR.
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I always found your "misaimed" tag to be misleading, if your explanation is what you meant by it. Whenever perusing write-off threads, I took it to mean that you felt there was some fundamental disconnect in how the story should have been written, like a death story carrying only the sad tag that was nevertheless sprinkled thoroughly with jokes. I think it could use a more self-explanatory name, as what it says seems to assign blame to the author. It's a pretty blanket term, and the author's not writing it specifically for you, though "misaimed" seems to imply that must have been his goal. Though I see Paul has already said as much.
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You put down a number of decent points, and I will definitely need to take a closer look at my scoring system to account for such things. I don't want to exclude any stories that are read, but at the same time, if I have a separate rating for crackfics that doesn't add to the score, why not a separate rating for those stories that just don't appeal to me? I'll be keeping an eye on that and maybe make some changes in the near future.
Curse, Bless Me Now is currently sitting in cell 46 of the Recommendations list. You may have lost it when I elected to rearrange the list to more evenly spread out your vast number of recommendations among the others.
As for the one of yours in the RiL list, you don't tell me which story it is, so I can't give any answer as to why it is missing (assuming I'd even remember). I do know that there have been occasions where I've found duplicate entries in multiple lists, and thus removed an entry from one of the lists to avoid confusion later. It's entirely possible that I made a 'clerical error' and accidentally removed your story. These things happen.
As to the Author Scoring spreadsheet being out of date, believe me I am aware. There was a period of a few months where I got less-than-enthusiastic about my work here on FIMFiction, and as a result I got lazy. Don't worry, it was just a rough patch of real life that's all behind me now. I'm currently in the process of auditing the list and my reviews, updating the scoring sheet as I go, but it's a slow process since I've decided to start said audit from waaaaay back when I was still doing these things on Mondays.