Fic recs, January 24th: Just Reply edition!

This is gonna be weird. First, a PSA: Don't use angle brackets in your fics, because text-to-speech will ignore a sentence starting with <. :B Just learned that.

Anyway, in reading Flutterpriest's Just Reply, I discovered that a number of people had replied via their own stories, linked in the second chapter. I got the feeling that was actually meant to be part of the experience. Some of those replies are actually just blog posts, though? So I'm reviewing blog posts now as if they were stories. This is not my fault, I just want to see what's going on and there were enough for a blog. :|

So after rereading the original, I'm going to get into these five six stories and see what they have to say. I'll be treating them all as sequels, so pretend they all say that. Been a while since I posted back-to-back reviews like this, but I wanted this out while the original review is still fresh. :)

H: 0 R: 2 C: 0 V: 3 N: 1

Tuning the Melody by Alexshy
Genre: Epistolary
I'm already having second thoughts about this. <.< This starts off as a reasonable letter from an OC named Dawn, but diverges into illegibility toward the end. There's word misuse, sentences that have no relationship to each other, thoughts that start and end at random, and nothing suggesting this is intentional. And while it does sound like a person's thoughts (when I could understand it), it's extremely rambly. And not coherently rambly like the original. Plus, this Equestria is more like our world for no particular reason. Not an auspicious start.
Not Recommended

Somepony's Reply by X4v13R009
Genre: Epistolary
This is a bit more like what I expected. Rambly with purpose, crossing-out utilized but not quite as well as the original, just an OC responding to the original letter point by point. (I find it odd that ponies living in Equestria would find the painting "eerily beautiful".) Plus, there's a bit more going on than just the reply. Though I take some umbrage at "A large ink stain", this can probably be taken as a baseline response.
Vaguely Recommended

Just a Reply by PhycoKrusk
Genre: Epistolary
PhycoKrusk made a character named Ishkabibble. I just can't at that. This kid's a riot, though. There's a carefully crafted backstory here that isn't just dumped on the reader, plus the circumstances of the letter are unusual. So yeah, plenty to latch onto here despite being a short letterfic. :)
Recommended

A Reply Given by anonpencil
Sequel to I'm not telling
Genre: Epistolary (Do I even need to mark this anymore?)
I don't know how I didn't see it coming, but this one's all about the reveal. The character work is really strong, and for a while I thought it was being written by Luna until a brother was mentioned. If you haven't read the story this is related to, you might not get it, but I can't tell you because it will ruin everything. Just trust me, you can figure it out.
Recommended

Dear Melody Breeze by Griseus
Genre: Epistolary
This is… weird. I'm not sure how I feel about it. There's a strong focus on character, but the writing is… random? There's an attempt to make the character sound 'crazy', but the whole effect just makes the story unfocused. I'm not quite sure this works, though it's a bit better than the first couple.
Vaguely Recommended

A Reply to Melody by ponybird21
Genre: Epistolary
This one didn't work for me because of the character. A batpony journalist who 'has more colors' than other batponies and also sleeps during the night? Come on. The scratching-out feels unsuccessfully cribbed, though I will say the author captured the same sort of unhinged mindset as the original, so there's something going for it at least.
Vaguely Recommended

Comments

[DrakeyC]

So I'm reviewing blog posts now as if they were stories.

I didnt know you did that!

https://www.fimfiction.net/search/blog-posts?q=%23COPS%20Equestria

[PhycoKrusk]

I’m glad you liked that thing I threw together in like, an hour. (As far as I know, it was actually the very first reply, at least of the ones that weren’t PMs)

[anonpencil]

Haha, well, I am glad you did catch what I was doing there. :P I warned Priest before I posted it, to ask permission. I didn't really want to respond as myself and, well... I'm definitely up to my old tricks in that post. Links and all.

[Flutterpriest]

I never thought that someone would do this. PresentPerfect, you are a god and a genius.

I never thought this would be unlocked.

[PresentPerfect]

5001867
It's a one-time thing. :|

5001881
wait really shit

5001894
ARGH GODDAMMIT

[DrakeyC]

5001902
Aw :(

I'd do these as a story if only script format was allowed.

[PresentPerfect]

5001907
Don't you have a minific collection or something? :B

[DrakeyC]

5001912
Yeah but these blog posts were all done in script format, as I found it the best way for the humor to work. Script stories aren't allowed.

[PresentPerfect]

5001914
That's not script, that's just all-dialogue. :B I don't see why you're not posting these in a collection or something!

[DrakeyC]

5001993
Well lemme ask a mod if it's ok and we'll see

[OleGrayMane]

PhycoKrusk made a character named Ishkabibble. I just can't at that.

Ish Kabibble because I’m old.

[PresentPerfect]

5002034
Interestingly, I was unaware of the cultural reference before looking it up, but had always heard that word when I was younger, as "old people talk". :B

[Alexshy]

Perhaps reading Bitersweet (linked in the description) could help understand Dawn's mindset better. And I'm not the one to start making "Equestria more like our world for no reason" (the original authors of the show are prone to that on occasional basis). Just saying... not that I was against just another reader's opinion.

[horizon]

text-to-speech will ignore a sentence starting with <

Wait, what? That's behavior bordering on broken. Double angle brackets are used as quotes in a large number of non-English languages, and even in English I see them often used to indicate dialogue spoken in a language that's not the default one of the story.

[PresentPerfect]

5002078
The story I'm listening to right now puts changeling hive mind talk inside angle brackets, and TTS skips it entirely unless there's a sentence break in between them.

[OleGrayMane]

5002078
It likely thinks it has entered an HTML tag and will ignore all text until a greater than.
Guillemets should be a single character not a pair of less than/greater than characters, just as ellipses shouldn’t be three periods in Unicode.

And then there is reality...

[OleGrayMane]

5002078
5002083

ChapterTextToSpeech.prototype.getSentences = function() {
    if (null == this.sentences) {
        this.sentences = [];
        for (var c = this.getParagraphs(), d = 0; d < c.length; d++) {
            var e = c[d],
                f = ChapterTextToSpeech.text(e);
            f = f.replace(/["]/g, "");
            f = f.replace(/mr\./ig, "mister");
            f = f.replace(/mrs\./ig, "misses");
            f = f.split(/[\?!\.]/);
            f = $jscomp.makeIterator(f);
            for (var g = f.next(); !g.done; g = f.next())
                g = g.value, 0 < g.replace(/["'\u201C\u201D ]/g, "").length && this.sentences.push({
                    paragraph: e,
                    text: g
                })
        }
    }
    return this.sentences
};

So there’s the debigulator circuit that takes the text and tries to make it into something listenable. All the f.replace(regex,string) are the clean ups, and they ain’t many, and this can be complex and lengthy and very error prone. The naive approach would be to just strip those characters like it is done with the quote marks on the first replace line.

Since the powers that be never respond to my emails or GIT issues, perhaps you two will have better luck. If you do, have ‘em throw in a phonetic replacement for Ponyville please.

CSB: My first exposure of text to speech was on an Amiga 1000. The Q&D editor the system shipped with had the Translator/Narrator libraries glued in. But there was no pause once it started speaking a line. We made the mistake of having it read some ‘C’ code which started with a “break” comment line: “Slash, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk, asterisk...” for about seventy-eight asterisks.

[PresentPerfect]

5002265
While we're at it, see if they can't get it to say 'biped' instead of 'bipped'. :|

[OleGrayMane]

5002269
f.replace(/biped/g, “bye ped”)

[horizon]

5002265
I don't see anything in that code which would strip out the text inside angle brackets. It might be something in the speech library itself — which would be plausible if it's designed specifically for website TTS, since it wouldn't want to read out HTML formatting commands. If it's just a drag and drop library, I'm not certain that that's something knighty can fix.

Other micro-patches for common pony TTS malapropisms might be useful, though, although that would have to lead to someone maintaining the list …

I'm afraid I personally don't have any real contact with knighty, though PP might. I've submitted a few issues to the Github myself, which I'm not even sure knighty sees given that no tickets have been closed or commented on by the site team since early 2018.

[PresentPerfect]

5002399
Also get it to say "min-you-et" instead of "min-oot"! D: Why doesn't it know a common word like "minuette"? ffs

I can always bring this up on the Discord server's site development channel, but it's not likely to be a high priority fix.

[Griseus]

I wrote a story? Weird.