Read It Later Reviews #87 – Bangception, Now Hiring, Princess Day, Broken Record, Pear and Back Again · 8:17pm Apr 27th, 2020
While I was working on some new reviews, I went through my old files and realized I’d started a bunch of review sets that I’d never finished. These were all destined for various different review sets, but I never ended up publishing any of them because they were all in sets of 1-3 stories. I wrote some of these as far back as 2018.
But hey, better late than never, right?
Today’s stories:
Bangception by Estee
Now Hiring by Miss-Cyan
Princess Day by Trick Question
Broken Record by Somber
Pear and Back Again by Twinkletail
Bangception
by Estee
Sex, Comedy
7,267 wordsEverypony knows that if you want your first child to be a colt, the bed has to be aligned towards sunrise. A filly? Eat this kind of hay two hours before sex. Earth pony, pegasus, unicorn... there's a myriad of superstitions which promise the guarantee of a chosen birth, along with ponies gullible enough to believe all of them.
Barnum and Bayleaf, mere hours removed from their wedding, are kind, gentle, and loving ponies. They want to raise a large family, they'll probably be great parents -- and for reasons known only to Sun and Moon, they've just decided to go for the trifecta: a mixed triplet birth. Something which will be achieved by following every necessary superstition, all at the same time.
...well, maybe they'll live.
Why I added it: The premise is something that deeply amuses me.
Review
The idea that performing some particular act during coitus might lead to a child with certain attributes is an ancient bit of folklore. So naturally, in a world full of ponies, there would be certain legends about how pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns come about. Of course, boring books would suggest it is just about ancestry, but why trust those when clearly, a pegasus is conceived by having sex on a cloud?
This is a story of serial escalation, starring two nice but rather dim-witted protagonists and an overprotective dam-in-law. Rather than being pornographic in nature, the story primarily relies on implication to get a laugh out of the audience – all of the implied details of how this can be done, including an ever more convoluted set of circumstances necessary to achieve the desired result.
And I have to say, even if it very much colored within the lines that it presented from the outset, the schadendfreude of watching the protagonists suffer their way through all the nonsense of their own making still made me smile, and it got a laugh out of me at the end.
It is a bit lowbrow, but I think that the audience who is interested in the silly for this story – someone who wants a non-pornographic comedy about some (nice but dim-witted) ponies trying to conceive a mixed-race triplet set – will likely appreciate it.
Recommendation: Worth Reading if the genre appeals to you.
Now Hiring
by Miss-Cyan
Sad
3,602 wordsPear Butter and Bright McIntosh have recently passed. What remains of the Apple Family find themselves in the care of their newest family member. But they can't do everything to provide for the new foal on their own.
An ad is placed.
A position is filled.
But loss is a thing that affects each individual differently. And new faces can be both a curse and a blessing.
Why I added it: Present Perfect recommended it.
Review
The Apple family hires a wet nurse to help take care of Apple Bloom – they can take care of her physically, but she needs a mother’s milk, and her own mother’s milk is sadly forever unavailable. But of course, what kind of pony would be lactating and not have a child of their own to take care of?
This is a poignant little piece, and while I didn’t have the same intensity of emotional reaction to it as Present Perfect did, I still liked it. The wet nurse’s mixture of emotions, and the way she reacts to the situation she is in and to the child she is now taking care of, is very textured – there’s not just one emotional reaction, but a number of them, and we come to see many different emotional angles for her to work through.
That being said, this is not a story which is exactly full of surprises, so it is all sort of a foregone conclusion once you understand what is going on, which is very heavily hinted at. As such, the emotionality of the piece needs to carry it – and while I think it does, the ending of the piece actually feels like it went on a bit too long, as the pentultimate scene feels like it is the emotional climax and conclusion, while the actual conclusion feels a bit weaker.
Recommendation: Worth Reading
Princess Day
by Trick Question
Dark, Horror, Sad
2,173 wordsIt's Princess Day! A happy day when little five year-old fillies and colts get to meet the Princess of Friendship and find out if they'll get their cutie mark extra-early.
Daylily can't wait to find out what happens to him.
Why I added it: Trick Question is a good writer.
Review
Any story with a description that cheerful with tags that horrible isn’t going to end well for anyone.
This is one of those stories that really only has one thing going on in it, and the rest is misdirection. It does a fairly good job of it, but I have to say I’m not exactly enamored with the story otherwise; I liked the idea of the reveal, but a lot of the story is ultimately irrelevant filler, and honestly, the middle 1,400 or so words of the story didn’t do a whole lot for me.
I liked the ending well enough, but while it is punchy, it doesn’t really give us much opportunity to explore it before the story is over, and much of the rest of the piece is fairly extraneous to it. Honestly, I have to wonder if it might have been better as an even shorter piece, or if it had done more to explore the central idea in indirect ways, like stories like Bad Horse’s Trust or Softy8088’s The Cost of Life.
While I was initially lukewarm about this story when I first read it, it has stuck with me, and I immediately recognized it when I saw the name on the list, even years later.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Broken Record
by Somber
Drama, Slice of Life
7,970 wordsThere has never been an athlete like Rainbow Dash. The sprints. The marathons. The land speed record. She held them all.
Until she didn't.
Until she had only one left... and met the pony that might take it from her...
Why I added it: Somber is a good writer
Review
Rainbow Dash was the best. But time marches on. Training methods improve. Times go down.
And cheaters get better at not getting caught, while improvements in technology try to catch up and stop them.
Cold in Gardez likes to say that stories about ponies are stories about people. And this is a good example of such.
The core of this story could be about anyone. But it is about Rainbow Dash. And while the particulars are different from what we see in real life, the emotions – pride at the achievements of others, while simultaneously feeling like being surpassed means you’ve been rendered obsolete, as well as suspicion about whether or not those who surpassed you at some event truly did so fairly or were cheating – are very real, and Rainbow Dash’s moral quandary in verifying times and mixed feelings about the new records are very interesting.
This is also a story full of ambiguity – are some of these ponies cheaters? Are the new methods being used fair? Is the next generation of athletes only beating records because they’re destroying themselves in the process of doing so? Are the perceptions of Rainbow Dash being bitter fair, or was she right to call foul, and did her actions improve the sport by encouraging testing and sussing out cheaters? And is Rainbow Dash correct in her feeling that no one remembers anyone but the record holder, or is her own ignorance of revoked records by others resulting in her not recognizing the truth?
Rainbow Dash’s mixed emotions combined with the ambiguity of events in this story do a good job of reinforcing each other – we understand why Rainbow Dash feels the way she does about the events that are unfolding because we, as the audience, don’t know how to feel about the events that are taking place around Rainbow Dash, and whether or not Rainbow Dash really even made the right choice at the end.
All of this combines to create a solid and subtle emotional piece.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Pear and Back Again
by Twinkletail
Comedy, Slice of Life
3,411 wordsTwilight is in a bad mood, and Pinkie needs Rainbow to deliver a pear pie to her. What could go wrong?
Why I added it: Twinkletail is a good writer.
Review
I expected this to be about Rainbow Dash having a hard time delivering a pie, ALA Cake Dance.
But instead, this is a story about a very picky Twilight and blatant misuse of time travel magic in search of a piping-hot pie, delivered pronto by Rainbow Dash. And I have to admit, I am a sucker for time loops.
As far as the writing goes, this story is one of those comedies which mostly operates with fairly plain prose. Rather, the humor of it hinges rather heavily on the punchline, with the rest of the story setting you up for it. But the circumstances of the story are interesting enough that I was willing to go along for the ride, as I wanted to see how the central conflict would be resolved, so even though this wasn’t one of those laugh-a-line comedy stories, the premise of Twilight sending Rainbow Dash back in time repeatedly to deliver her a nice, hot pie was interesting enough to keep me hooked until the punchline, at which point I laughed.
And in the end, that’s what a comedy like this must do, so well done.
Recommendation: Worth Reading.
Summary
Bangception by Estee
Worth Reading
Now Hiring by Miss-Cyan
Worth Reading
Princess Day by Trick Question
Worth Reading
Broken Record by Somber
Worth Reading
Pear and Back Again by Twinkletail
Worth Reading
Time to get to work.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Sooner: 241
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later: 688
Number of stories listed as Read It Eventually: 2305
A full slate of Worth its! :O Welcome back.
5251409
When I was being lazy about not reviewing stuff, I only wrote reviews about stories that I liked, as they made me want to talk about them more than "This was kind of bland and was a waste of time to read so why would I waste more time on this dumb story?" did.
Of course, this means that I didn't give anyone feedback on why things that didn't work didn't work...
I like how you have no "Read It Now" listed at the bottom.
5251543
I do have a slightly threateningly entitled shelf called "You're Next", but I try to keep it to exactly 10 stories at a time.
It is presently at 28 stories.
Oops.
5251556
Sounds like you need to do four "Read It Now" reviews to get it back under eleven then. ^_^
Thanks for the review! Good to see you back at it
5251596
Thanks!
I've been spending this afternoon reading Sharing the Night, though I'm starting to wonder if that might not have been a mistake as it is like, 230k words long.
Oh, well. In for a penny, in for a pound.
You know, I can't remember how I first came across these reviews circa five years ago. But as far as I can remember, your reviews have always been a handy source of reading material. I've probably found more eligible stories here than any other place and, more importantly, they got me to read some amazing stories with which I otherwise might not have even bothered.
I know it's been a long time coming, but thank you for taking the time and effort to write these. It is greatly appreciated.
5252627
I'm always glad to hear this. A big part of why these exist is to help people find stuff to read, so hearing that they are helpful to you in that regard is very nice.