Fresh Off the Presses! #2: Now Featuring an Exclamation Point! · 5:45am Oct 18th, 2017
Howdy, y’all.
Right, so picking up from where we left off, let’s—
What’s that? You don’t remember the time I set about reviewing some of the stories from the New Stories box nearly three years ago? Or did you just assume that my first foray into such an endeavor left me broken and I fell off the face of the earth as a result? Given the nature of the beast, that’s a fair assumption.
Regardless, I did have a pretty fun time writing those reviews all that time ago, and it’s honestly just a good way to flex my writing muscles. Plus, you don’t get to be a good writer without doing your fair share of reading, and this is as good of an excuse as any to do so. Plus plus, I need another excuse to procrastinate on the third chapter of Cosmic, so bleh.
Time will tell whether I can actually commit to doing more of these posts this time or whether it’s just another one-off review post. But for now, I hope you enjoy some more of my unorthodox reviews!
Oh, and for those who don’t remember this and aren’t inclined to check the first review post linked above, here’s the skinny: I go read and review some of the newest stories on the site (barring mature stories) at an arbitrary time. The exact amount I’ll review depends on how long they are and how much time I have, but it’ll generally be three to five. Hopefully that’s all you need to understand this. Enjoy!
Making A Friend Laugh by Evictus
Celestia tickles Rainbow Dash while Rainbow Dash is laying on a cloud
By its blurb: Doesn’t really give me all that much to go on. The only thing I can really say is that I expect this to be a very fluffy story. Because cloud.
In the aftermath: The best thing I can say about this story is that it made me laugh quite a few times. Which you might think would be a good sign, given that this is labeled as a comedy, but… well…
Mainly I just couldn’t get over the sheer ludicrousness of this story—calling it a story is being generous, by the way, as the ‘plot’ was clearly an afterthought. The gist of it is that Rainbow’s friends have told Celestia that they think Rainbow has been depressed lately, and they ask her to cheer Rainbow up. Celestia resolves to do this by tickling Rainbow Dash for an entire day.
Which she does. Literally. All day. Ad nauseum. Two thousand words of the same thing being repeated until it just ends.
Setting aside the wholly insane premise, though, there are a lot of problems with this story on a mechanical level. There are two big ones that I want to touch on real quick that this author (hopefully you’re reading this!) should work on, the first being perspective shifts. I’m willing to forgive some minor switching in perspectives for the sake of a narrative, but the amount in this story makes it feel like Rainbow and Celestia are playing an enthralling game of tennis with the perspective as the ball. I lost count of how many times it changed from Rainbow to Celestia to the onlookers and back. Frequently it even changed within the same paragraph or sentence! Not that there’s a huge distinction between those two in this story.
That leads me into my second big criticism: run-on sentences, because this author essentially uses commas as periods, it might even be possible for me to count on one hand the number of multi-sentence paragraphs, the only exception being dialogue, and it can become extremely exhausting to read after a point since it feels like no thought ever finishes before a new one starts, which is the point of periods, and paragraphs are just groups of sentences that relate to the same topic, so feel free to start a new paragraph when there’s a change of focus, but don’t get ahead of yourself, start by knowing when it’s okay to end a sentence please, because doesn’t this get annoying?
There are a lot of other little things that any editor worth their salt could probably clean up—verb tenses, word repetition, spelling errors, etc. And there’s definitely a lot of work to be done in the show vs. tell department, but I think having a better grasp of writing fundamentals like grammar would be a good start.
All that said, I can’t justify the like to dislike ratio on this story. While it’s far from perfect, it’s not offensive or entirely unpleasant, and there are even parts where I can see some good potential! Setting aside the fact that this plot would never happen with these characters, Rainbow is actually voiced decently well. And Celestia…
Um, I think I’ll leave it there.
Verdict: Not worth reading in its present state, even as fluff (the cloud never even came into it!), unless you’re really into tickling. It has all the markings of a newbie author who just needs the guidance of an editor or two to begin improving.
…Although now I see that this author has 240 published stories, so maybe I’m missing something here.
Favourite line: Celestia shook her head no as they didn't say that as they said something else.
Bright Winter Nights by InlustriusGhost
Winter time brings about the frigid cold and, in Ponyville, this may be the coldest winter in a long time. Bright Sight is Ponyville's newest resident and he aims to settle down in the small town while concealing his biggest secret. Big Mac finds himself with a lot of downtime after the harvest season had just ended. Both stallions find friendship in each other and, perhaps, in time, it may grow into something even stronger, something that makes even the most freezing winter warm.
By its blurb: The quality of writing in the description alone makes me hopeful, even if this isn’t a story premise I would typically read. Building OCs into Ponyville in a believable and likeable way is difficult, as is pairing such an OC with a canon character. Still, I’m a little optimistic.
In the aftermath: Oh, man, this one took me back to my days as a fledgling author—I mean, I’m very much still a fledgling author, but I’m talking the days of Obligations and the like. Yup, this has all the makings of a beginning author who has a good amount of skill that’s clouded behind layers and layers of needless adjectives.
That’s the one big thing I took away from this story—the prose is extremely, unequivocally, unabashedly, and probably accidentally purple. There’s a nice story being told here, but it’s bogged down by every other word being another adjective or adverb that doesn’t need to be there. I have a lot of other little problems written in my notes—Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, very languid pacing, and show vs. tell issues among them—but I think a lot of that would disappear or made much less apparent by learning to use descriptors sparingly. It’s a hurdle that every author faces, and one that can only be overcome with time and practice.
Beyond that, I enjoyed this quite a bit! It’s only the first chapter, so hopefully the pace will pick up as more chapters are added, but it’s not bad for what it is. That said, it does fail to be all that original. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: OC moves to Ponyville, OC has a welcoming party thrown by Pinkie Pie wherein they acquire their excuse to know the Mane 6, OC gets some task or job to keep them busy and give them a reason to exist in Ponyville, OC bumps (in this case, literally) into their soon-to-be best friend and possible romantic interest in the middle of the street, end of chapter.
Now that’s not to say such a premise can’t be done well. You can certainly throw things in here and there to catch people off-guard—like this story does with Bright Sight having a fucking ghost named Ivory for a roommate like what the hell that’s awesome and she’s the best character in the story by far—but it’s trite and cliché at this point, so you really have to impress if that’s the opening you go with. Otherwise, get more creative! There are so many other more interesting ways to start a story like this.
My last gripe with this story so far is that the plot seems conveniently built to let us know as much about Bright Sight as possible in very little space. Things like him just talking about his cutie mark and special talent with little prompting. Character traits like that should be integrated as seamlessly as possible into the plot and dialogue, only being brought up when they become relevant. And it doesn’t all have to be frontloaded, especially in a long form story like this one. Spread the love.
Let me touch briefly on a couple things I really enjoyed about this story, since it certainly wasn’t all criticism in my notes. The introduction of Ivory was awesome and appropriately mysterious—take care that she doesn’t outshine your main character, though, because she’s a very good character in her own right. The character voices are also strong, albeit the OCs are far stronger than the canon characters. The ending of the chapter was also really cute, which I appreciated given the tone the story is going for.
I do have a couple of other gripes about the specifics, like why Twilight doesn’t ask Starlight Glimmer to be her librarian before considering a total newcomer, and why Bright doesn’t seem to recognize Spike from the welcome party, but I’ve rambled long enough on this one.
Verdict: Unfortunately too generic of an opening to be recommendable, but there’s promise here. Might be worth tracking if the description sounded appealing, or if you’re itching for a M/M ship, since those can be scarce. The author is looking for a prereader on this one, so hit them up if this sounds like your bag. Keep on keeping on, author!
Favourite line: Turning his head back to the fireplace, the unicorn was met with the sight of, not the calm flames of the fire, but the face of a monstrous inferno of a creature glaring right back at him. It’s body was hot with a form composed entirely of flames, taking the likeness of a dragon head.
Heart by Rollo_Lindwood
During a girls' night out, a catastrophe strikes, and Applejack is forced to rethink how she had been acting over the past month.
WARNING: Shameless Rarijack 
PS: i am really bad at writing descriptions but it is really mediocrely okay, i promise.
By its blurb: Protip: Don’t ever point out how bad you are at writing (descriptions or otherwise) in your description. Even if you do suck at it, pointing it out will only make it worse.
Beyond that, I’m not a shipper, so we’ll see how this goes. A word like “catastrophe” holds a lot of weight. I’m a little scared to see how that’s handled.
In the aftermath: Stories like this are why I don’t usually like shipping.
Hopefully I didn’t hurt any of you with that blunt edge. And really, this is not that bad of a story on a fundamental level. But it definitely falls into a trap that seems to be all too common in shipping stories: the author wants to ship two ponies but can’t think of a good concept to get the two of them together, so they write an unrelated story and shoehorn the romance into it. And, y’know, if that’s what you want to write and it makes you happy, go for it. It does not make for a satisfying story, though.
This story, for instance, had a lot of promise. I was pretty well hooked on it for the first half, just wondering what in the world had happened to get things to this point. There’s a decent amount of nuance and tension to keep the ball rolling, and I never felt like it was wasting my time. It actually felt more like this was setting up to ship Rainbow Dash with Applejack, and it probably would’ve been a better payoff.
But in the end it just devolves into three or four huge walls of text that tell us, “Oh, no, this is very clearly a Rarijack story, not an Appledash one! Shame on you. Here’s a lot of exposition that appears nowhere in the story and solidifies this relationship. Now watch AJ and Rarity be cute together.” So, in that way, it fails to set up a good narrative for Rarijack and also fails to deliver a satisfying conclusion to the mystery and tension that the first half built up so well.
On a mechanical level—to completely pivot—the story suffers quite a bit too. The most prominent issues were show vs. tell and perspective shifting, and there were a lot of little things like improper punctuation, verb tense confusion, and formatting issues that wore me down by the end of it. A good editor could definitely sand off the edges and make the story flow more smoothly, but it would be kind of like dressing up a broken leg. Sure it looks pretty, but it still can’t walk.
All that said, I found the story enjoyable in individual chunks. The character voices were all spot on, and all the character interactions felt believable. There were a few sticking points, like how Applejack’s apparently the only one in her family who mourns her parents, and the issue of what actually caused her heart attack not being fully resolved (I think), but on the whole, you could easily do worse than this. And the ending was appropriately cute.
Verdict: I can’t really recommend this to any particular group. Rarijack shippers will find it mediocre at best, or may lose interest before it even gets into Rarijack territory, and anyone else probably won’t be satisfied by the plot. But if you struggle with voicing canon characters, this is a good reference.
Favourite line: Applejack's right hoof pounded at her bosom, like she was desperately trying to break her own rib; or, perhaps more accurate, as if the pony was a bloodthirsty cannibal trying to dig through flesh.
That’ll have to do for now, since I work in the morning and would like to write a bit of my own story before bed. Not a bad return to form though—got a bit of everything this time, and nothing too extreme or standout. Hopefully we’ll do this again soon!
Keep on keeping on,
—Argon
Thanks for doing this! I found it helpful.
You definitely are.
4701288
Glad to hear it! If nothing else, I strive to be helpful.
4701308
Yeah, a brief look at the comments on that story tells me there's a meta context to this author that I'm not privy to.
I have a lot of problems with writing so I'm sorry it's not that good but I appreciate the review
4701331
Hey, no worries! Everyone learns at their own pace and in their own way. And the main thing that matters is that you have fun with what you right, so keep on keeping on.
4701335 Thanks!
I always appreciate it when some people make their reviews stand out instead of passing them off as generic story reviews. I liked your "favorite line" segments, haven't seen that before.
4701392
Knowing that you wrote the story on a phone actually explains a lot. There was a certain… carelessness, I suppose, about the writing that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Like, it seemed like you had a good grasp of the fundamentals but just weren't willing to put the effort in to exert your full skill. At any rate, it's good to know that you have a firm idea of how to write well, and I'm glad that you're gonna try to be more diligent about error-checking now. It's definitely my least favourite part about writing, but it's a necessary evil.
As for the Rarijack bit, I understand where you're coming from. I also struggle to tow the line on what seems appropriate to the characters and what would best suit the story—they don't always line up, since this is fan fiction and we're at the whims of the show canon. That said, you don't necessarily need to drop super over hints like them blushing or whatever. Even having them interact in a strictly platonic, friendly way can work as a build up, just to show their chemistry and how they bounce off of one another. No, Applejack probably wouldn't act all that different since she's used to the crush, but the way she spoke to Rarity would be inexorably different than how she would speak to anyone else. I guess that was what really got me in your story: Rarity and Applejack didn't interact much at all prior to the ending, so there wasn't even a chance to see that subtle chemistry at work. Hopefully that makes some sort of sense—I feel like I worded it poorly.
Anyway, glad you enjoyed the review! Best of luck in your future endeavors.
4701674
Thanks! Glad I'm able to stand out from the pack.