Paul's Thursday Reviews CCXLVI · 8:41pm Apr 15th, 2021
Wanna play a game? Be forewarned, this ain’t a short one. But it is easy! Shrink Laureate, who deserves credit for helping keep this blog looking as good as it does, has started a new Bingo game involving Gen 5. It’s all in good fun, but if it inspires you to make a story out of it all the better, right?
While reading one of the stories for this blog, I was reminded of something that always bugged me: the HuMane 7 having summer jobs in Equestria Girls. Well, I suppose that’s incorrect; only a few of them bother me. I get Fluttershy’s work with animals is probably volunteer, while Rainbow, Sunset, and Twilight make perfect sense, and I’d be willing to accept Pinkie working somewhere other than Sugarcube Corner. It’s Applejack and Rarity that annoy me. I’m going into headcanon territory now, and I fully acknowledge that there’s plenty of arguments against what I’m about to say, but I figure there’s no reason not to share how I always viewed things.
First, I was always under the impression that Rarity lived and worked in that boutique we saw in the first movie. Given her apparent age, she probably can’t own it outright (or can she? I have no idea if there’s a legal age limit to this kind of thing), but her family might. And since I think we can all agree that Rarity’s family isn’t hurting for cash (all those fancy clothes and limousines had to be paid for by somebody!) I don’t think Daddy buying his Little Princess her own boutique is out of the question, particularly if she’s proven to have a knack for the job. And let’s face it, Rarity has that in spades.
Then there’s Applejack. Honestly, do I even need to explain why she should have no need or desire for a job? Sweet Apple Acres is still a thing, we’ve seen zero sign that they employ anyone outside the immediate family, and there was even a whole short dedicated to the fact that AJ happily devotes her life to keeping the place going. I suppose I can see her having more time to herself with school out, but I can’t help but think that AJ would use that opportunity to get more done at the farm.
Let’s not forget that Rarity very specifically points out that she and AJ pay taxes. Granted, she didn’t specify what kind of taxes, but the fact she left out everyone else at that party she was arguing on behalf of, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t talking about the sales tax. I would argue this is proof-positive that they already have jobs and thus don’t need summer ones.
All this leads me to believe that the only reason they even gave the girls summer jobs in the first place was so that they could wow the audience with new clothing for the girls. Which, to be blunt, Rarity and Applejack suffered the worst for, because their summer job outfits are just ick.
Again, I know there are plenty of arguments and excuses to why these two have summer jobs. One or two of them might even make sense, such as Rarity trying to build a network for her career (she’s absolutely business-savvy enough for that). Yet I think it would have made for better character-based storytelling if these two had been depicted without summer jobs. Yes, it would have left them out of the whole “look at them doing traditional stuff for high school kids and being relatable!” thing, but that could have made for a nice arc on how not doing all the same things isn’t a problem for friendship.
And at this point I’m just rambling. Let’s get to the reviews, which we all know is what you really wanna see.
Stories for This Week:
Regret by I Am The Night
Informed Delivery by Gay For Gadot
In which Rarity has a Strange Mood by Sirvanilla
Numb Lava by the parasprite
The Six Deeds of Harmony by Defoloce
Royalty Forgotten by TheEveryDaySparkle
Got a Minute? by Rose Quill
The Virgin Princess by GaPJaxie
The Two of Us by taterforlife
Total Word Count: 157,954
Rating System
Why Haven't You Read These Yet?: 2
Pretty Good: 3
Worth It: 3
Needs Work: 1
None: 0
Regret
88,645 Words
By I Am The Night
You’ve always been in love with Rainbow Dash. With her birthday coming up, you’ve got the opportunity to really impress her! It… doesn’t go as well as you hoped.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, this is written in second person, and therefore stars Not You. Not You is an all around nice guy, but clumsy. I’m also not sure that Not You has a job, as there’s never any mention of one and Not You goes for literal weeks without doing any work, yet money never appears to be a problem. Maybe Not You inherited a lot of money? Or is on government support?
Anyway, the meat n’ potatoes of this story is that Rainbow Dash loathes Not You’s very existence, and when Not You causes a major accident involving burning down a house on her birthday, she makes sure Not You knows it. Not You then spends the entire story either being depressed and self-loathing, trying to earn Rainbow’s forgiveness, or – wait for it – getting caught on a rebound with Applejack, who has apparently been crushing on Not You for years.
I Am The Night acknowledges in the story description that this story is blatant wish fulfillment, albeit not in so many words. That being said, it’s a curious variant of that, starting with the main character not getting the mare of his dreams and instead ending up with another mare entirely. Heck, the story even ends poorly for the protagonist – very poorly. So much so that the author felt obligated to switch to a superior writing format (read: not second person) for the last few chapters because the Not You character isn’t aware enough of the world to serve as a proper narrator. Yet there is a sequel, so I’m assuming everything turns out alright in the end. Heck, Not You might even end up with two waifus. This is a wish fulfillment story, after all.
I’m not sure what to think in regards to the plot. Honestly, it’s not as bad as I feared. There are parts that are predictable, but I didn’t expect the author to go so far with certain things, and the whole Applejack triangle was a pleasant surprise. I mean, the author heavily hinted at it early on, but again, took it further than I thought they would.
There are two problems and, unfortunately, they’re significant enough to destroy my enjoyment of this story entirely. The first is I Am The Night’s inability to focus on what’s important. We go four, arguably five whole chapters before getting to what the story is supposed to be about. There are seemingly endless periods where the author discusses pointless topics. Seriously, there’s a scene where we’re told what Not You had for dinner, why it’s good and their feelings towards it and other meals and their own cooking ability, then told about how they plan to take a shower, then how he loves taking showers and why, and then about what he decided to bring for his upcoming vacation and why, and then going to bed, and would you just shut up and get on with it, already?
This isn’t something confined to just one or two scenes, no, this is the writing style of the whole thing, from start to finish. I swear, at least three-fourths of this story is rambling on about either things completely unrelated to the plot/subplot or the author stretching out a scene into something that takes melodrama to new extremes. It got to the point where I started skipping whole paragraphs and mostly focusing on the dialogue because it was about the only part of the story where the plot evolved.
Then there’s the images. Thank goodness, I Am The Night stopped using them towards the end, but there’s no making up for the egregious, regular use of them throughout most of the story. Most of them appear to be photoshopped from screenshots. I can at least give some credit in this regard: the images are all the same in style and at least seem to convey what the author was after. That’s far better than most showings I’ve seen. But none of the pictures serve any purpose that couldn’t have been done with text alone, so they universally come off as annoying rather than helpful. At worst,they’re jarring.
Oh, and the author apparently changes AUs halfway through the story. In the beginning, Twilight is a princess, but still a unicorn. Then she suddenly has wings out of nowhere. Nopony thinks this is odd. There are other plot holes, but that was the most obvious one.
Last but not least are the Author’s Notes, which tell the audience way too much. “Hey, I’m not going to write this in Second Person anymore and the main character’s not going to have anymore dialogue from here on out. You’ll soon know why.” WTF? Why are you giving away such huge spoilers for your story, author? There was zero reason to tell us this. It doesn’t benefit us or you. We don’t need to hear how much you love your story. There’s no need to state, before we’ve even read the chapter, that it is the “main reason for this story’s existence”, or that this chapter is leading to some big climactic event later. Let the story do these things! Use the Author’s Notes to convey things the story can’t tell us, and stop trying to hype us up.
I came away from this story more annoyed than anything. While I can see the ideas as having some potential for a romantic drama, the glacial pacing, indescribably pointless tangents, and steady stream of unnecessary images kills it dead within the first chapter or two. This is one of the extremely few times I don’t feel inclined to read a sequel. Still, I may read something much more recent by I Am The Night, just to see if they’ve fixed any of these problems.
Bookshelf: Needs Work
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Informed Delivery
9,100 Words
By Gay For Gadot
The other day, Applejack admitted to her friends that she was thinking about entering the dating scene at last. This morning she wakes to find her mailbox has exploded.
Oh, but I am entertained. I’ve made no secret that “Big Mac gets all the Mares” is a favorite theme of mine. In the last couple years however, I’ve come to realize that “Applejack gets all the Ponies” is equally entertaining, if not more so. So when I saw that cover art and read the story description, I knew I just had to take a look.
I was hoping perhaps we’d see some of the letters in question. Alas, that was not to be. The story is still fun though, beginning with Applejack recognizing her embarrassing situation and going to confront the friends she is pretty sure are responsible for it. I love that Rarity got her into a magazine article about Equestrian bachelors and bachelorettes. It sounds so Rarity.
The shipper in me is a little disappointed that AJ didn’t end up with somepony by the end of this story, but then shipping Applejack was never the point. The story’s lesson is about not pushing others into romances and letting these things happen on their own. Which isn’t a bad lesson to offer.
…
I love that AJ considers the worst offenders to be the ones that want to wear her hat.
A humorous story with a surprisingly direct and non-shippy message. It may not have gone where I had hoped, but it makes up for it.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
In which Rarity has a Strange Mood
2,966 Words
By Sirvanilla
Rarity has some interesting demands, and is now hard at work on her latest masterpiece. Her behavior, as identified by Twilight, is clinically known as a Strange Mood, and only Rarity’s friends can help her get through it.
This is supposedly a Dwarf Fortress crossover. I’ve never played Dwarf Fortress. Luckily, I know enough about gaming in general that I was able to roll right along. When you’ve been obsessed with gaming as long as I have, you recognize certain mechanics when they are referenced.
Silly story is silly. It’s mostly Rarity’s friends trying to get her desired crafting ingredients while Rarity herself goes a little nutso. If that sounds like your kind of thing, by all means have at it. I was entertained myself, but I’m not sure how much value it will have for those not in the gaming community.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Numb Lava
4,093 Words
By the parasprite
She doesn’t complain when he slips into her room at night. She’ll do what he says. Silently. Obediently. Like all the times before. It still hurts, but… It’s better this way. She’ll take it, because she wants to be a good filly. Even if she knows that there’s nothing about this that is good.
The parasprite, purveyor of the grimdark and horrifying, came out of retirement briefly to write this piece, and I felt obligated to give it a look. You already know what it’s about, so I won’t beat around the bush: prior to Twilight becoming Celestia’s student, Shining would slip into her room some nights and rape her. This is a depiction, in detail, of one such visit mere days before her entrance exam.
I’ve read a lot of distressing and terrible material in my time, and as such I am somewhat numb (no pun intended) to what is happening here. That doesn’t make it any less unpleasant. The story, told entirely from filly Twilight’s perspective, is a horror show of confusion, guilt, and uncertainty in the face of a wickedness she doesn’t understand despite all her studies. Perhaps the worst element in all of this is Twilight’s regular fretting that if she speaks up to her parents about this, they could take away her library card. This simple worry, repeated a half-dozen times to great effect, truly emphasizes the mindset and age of our unfortunate protagonist.
This is a hard one, folks. Twilight’s constant stream of thought, her struggling desire to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and justify herself not telling anyone about it is heartbreaking. This is absolutely not for the average reader. But it is extremely well written; it’s clear that the parasprite took extra care with this one, wanting to make sure that every painful moment was at its best (so to speak).
If you can stomach it, then I recommend it.
If you can stomach it.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good!
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Solitary Locust — WHYRTY?
Thus Dwell in Joy — WHYRTY?
Listen and Learn — Worth It
Självdestruktivitetens Emissarie — Worth It
Luna’s Communistastical Adventure With the 1959 Soviet Space Probe Luna-2 — Crackfic
The Six Deeds of Harmony
26,731 Words
By Defoloce
Requested by Ice Star
A great knight, besotten by love for a mare he cannot possess, goes to Celestia and Luna in ancient times and asks their help. In turn, they task him with a quest to set aside his weapon and seek Harmony through six great deeds, and assign freshly minted alicorn Cadance to travel with him.
When Ice Star first asked me to review this one, I was annoyed at best. It was more than 10k words, which meant it got shuffled into my Medium-Length list, which meant it would get in the way of me reading stories I actually wanted to read. Worse, it was almost entirely written in iambic pentameter. I have made no small deal of how low quality a judge I am of poetry and, to be frank, I’ve become disillusioned with the entire practice. I didn’t want to read stories in poetry form, much less a 26k beast! Yet I had no real, honest reason to refuse, so I resigned myself to the task and hoped it wouldn’t be too much a struggle trying to understand whatever the hell this Defoloce person managed to slap together in some ill-fated attempt to sound sophisticated.
I say all of this to emphasize what I say next: Ice Star, I formally and vehemently apologize for my doubt, and also to Defoloce for coming into this story with such cynicism.
The very first thing that I noticed was that, for what may be the very first time, I was reading an epic poem-style story that I could readily understand. In only a few rare occasions did I ever get confused and have to stop to reread a passage. Defoloce’s word choice, which has all the feel of being carefully and painstakingly chosen, creates a story in poetic form that is easy to take in and digest. Even in the Fealty chapter, where many characters spoke in thick Scottish accents, I had almost no problem recognizing the intentions and meanings set before me. This fact alone swiftly changed my annoyance to surprise and delight.
But then there’s the meat of the story: Cadance and this unnamed knight’s journey to lands beyond Equestria, meeting many races and helping resolve their problems using the tenets of Harmony. We’ve got a conflict of succession, slumbering sea serpents, slightly familiar foes, and at least one instance of Cadance being awesome. All along, there’s the ever-watching Moon which, strangely, seemed to have a lot of prominence throughout this story – both in theme and the attention of the characters. Their quest is long, complex, but ceaselessly interesting.
And then there’s the worldbuilding! Griffons in massive tree-roosts, a wicked spirit in the Everfree before it was known as such, and sea ponies embracing joy. I was especially pleased with the chapters for Charity and Magick, both of which provide unexpected but very welcome origin stories from some modern enemies. I was even able to determine their identities long before the Big Reveals, and that kind of thing is usually because of an author’s care in characterization and foreshadowing.
Then we get to the conclusion, which is both unexpected and, to state my firm opinion on the matter, reveals our protagonist to be a colossal imbecile. At the same time, I can at least take some measure of comfort that Defoloce has effectively renounced the obligatory Happily Ever After ending. Which, come to think of it, is quite fitting when I observe this story from a distance. As frustratingly dumb as the knights’ decision feels, it also feels appropriate for the story as a whole.
That Defoloce is able to do all of this without a single word of prose is humbling. I’ve never read an epic poetry-form story of this sort, and I question if I ever will gain. It has more than earned its rating.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Royalty Forgotten
3,121 Words
By TheEveryDaySparkle
Sequel to Hidden Goddess
In this series, TheEveryDaySparkle claims that certain beloved characters have extreme secrets from one another and the world at large. Rainbow Dash is a princess of all pegasi and the Wonderbolts are a secret order created for her protection, and Fluttershy is a literal nature goddess (and wife of Discord). The great problem I had with these, particularly the first one, was this suggestion that everything else in Equestria was exactly how we always have known it. There were some significant contradictions there, and no reasonable explanation even attempted for them.
With Royalty Forgotten, we finally have our answer to this conundrum: this isn’t that Equestria at all. Forget everything you know from the show, none of it applies here except perhaps that the Mane 6 are still friends. How do we know this?
Chrysalis establishes that she became a changeling ten years ago, and that King Sombra still ruled the Crystal Empire at the time. With this one declaration, everything we thought we knew about Equestria is thrown away. We can no longer assume long-running facts of Equestrian history and culture. The Wonderbolts can have an entirely new function that doesn’t make sense with how they appear in the show because this isn’t that world at all, just for example.
With this alone, TheEveryDaySparkle has cleared away much of the problems I had with the series as a whole, inviting me to enjoy the overarching concept far more. One could ask “didn’t the prior stories already do that?” I would answer no. Previous stories threw in contradictions of character, of purpose, of culture, but never of pure, canonical history. Claiming the Wonderbolts have a secret purpose or that Fluttershy is a goddess doesn’t reshape Equestria as we know it. Directly redefining when Sombra existed and ruled the Crystal Empire does.
TheEveryDaySparkle has also thrown out another rule of this series, this one unspoken in-story but admitted by the author. They once told me that the series was based on the idea of some wanderer, nameless and faceless, meeting with these characters who go on to explain their deepest darkest secrets. Which made no sense, as they were somehow willing to fess up to this mysterious and unknown stranger yet, somehow, couldn’t trust their best friends with the same information. Here again, the author shifts gears by adding a scene – the first of its kind in this series – in which another character appears in-story to talk to the protagonist, in this case a changeling speaking to Chrysalis. At no point does this changeling make note of a stranger talking to the Queen, and yet as soon as she leaves Chrysalis begins explaining her story to literally nobody.
Granted, it could just be that Chrysalis is insane and thus talking to herself. Which would be fine and perfectly understandable given the circumstances revealed in this story. It thereby doesn’t really negate TheEveryDaySparkle’s strange claims of deep, dark secrets being revealed to strangers the revealers have zero reason to trust. But this does feel like a turning point in the series, like the author may be seeking more reasonable explanations for why the characters with these secrets are so willing to open up about things they clearly don’t want publicized.
Or it could be that TheEveryDaySparkle lacks an awareness of world/plot consistency. I suppose I won’t know until the next story, but I’m really hope that’s not the case.
Still, I think this is my favorite one yet, if only because of a better approach to the overall concept and finally clearing up some things about the AU in general. There are still some quirks that make me raise my eyebrows, but they are less shocking and more “huh, that’s curious” now that we all know exactly how different this world is going to be. I’m far more curious about where the author is going with this than I was two stories ago.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Hidden Goddess — Worth It
The Order of The Rainbow — Needs Work
Got a Minute?
1,202 Words
By Rose Quill
Sequel to Homecoming
Applejack asks to meet Sunset at the mall’s food court for an important discussion about her relationship with Twilight.
In the previous story, Sunset and SciTwi went to Equestria to address the death of the former’s mother. By the time they returned, they were a couple. Applejack fears this is too sudden and suspects Sunset may be projecting Princess Twilight onto SciTwi. The story is, at the base level, Sunset explaining why that isn’t the case.
I have mixed feelings towards this one. Like its predecessor, it seems to lack any sort of hook to keep the readers interested. It’s just AJ and Sunset talking. No drama, no conflict, just talking. That alone isn’t a problem; I’ve seen plenty of stories centered entirely around a conversation that were really good. But this one has nothing to facilitate an interest in the topics. There’s no witty narrative, no personal struggles, no tricky wordplay in the dialogue. It’s… plain.
I can see this scene playing out exactly as Rose Quill writes it in the real world. I suppose it’s fine from that standpoint. There was a goal, the story achieves the goal, and we all move on. It’s just not written in a way that can interest me. I suppose fans of the SciSet ship will get something out of it, if only for the sake of seeing their ship defended within the context of this AU, but that’s about it.
Still, I want to keep reading these. I want to see if Rose Quill is going somewhere with them. And there’s nothing particularly wrong with the writing or the plot of the story, so I have no reason to give it a lower rating. So...
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Tactics — Worth It
Walk in the Darkness — Worth It
Homecoming — Needs Work
The Virgin Princess
10,597 Words
By GaPJaxie
Sequel to A Foreign Education
In A Foreign Education, one of the side-lessons of the story was that Princess Cadance can’t learn from her political mistakes, as being an alicorn robs her of mental growth. That’s troublesome, no doubt, but at least she is an adult. What about Twilight, who became an alicorn at the tender age of sixteen?
This is a hard-hitting story about the perils of eternal youth. It sounds nice, but what if your mind can’t develop as well? For Twilight, this means existing in an eternal limbo of raging teenage hormones and a struggle to focus on the things she’s supposed to have already learned. She’s in her thirties, but can’t connect with all her old friends who have matured and moved on with their lives. All her current friends are teenagers, which might be weird if she wasn’t physically and mentally a teenager herself. And let’s not forget that being a teenager forever means being perpetually interested in cute colts.
An endless wave of insecurities. A constant inability to remember your mistakes and why they are important. A frustrating struggle to focus on anything that isn’t right in front of you. The world turns. It changes. It evolves, sometimes for the worst. But Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of Friendship, will always be the same dorky, panicky, scared teenager she’s always been.
GaPJaxie’s story makes sure you understand how nightmarish this really is.
I feel for Twilight’s little sister, who has to constantly watch her elder-in-age-only sibling constantly relapse into teenage hormones, insecurities, and immaturity. The story is painful to watch, but in a good way. Jaxie does an excellent job Showing us Twilight’s ceaseless struggles. Most interesting is how they used tangents to show the terrible events happening throughout the world while Twilight continues on as if everything is still fine and beautiful, an extremely effective trick.
Then the ending comes, and we learn just why this is allowed to continue. It’s a conclusion that is bittersweet, showing how Twilight suffers for what she hopes will be the greater good of all. It’s even harder when you realize there’s no guarantee her eternal sacrifice will achieve what she wants.
If there’s anything I would add as a warning, it’s that I really wish I hadn’t read this story three months after A Foreign Education. Names started getting thrown around that left me asking “who?”, and I had to go back and recall what names went to what characters and why they were important. This is the downside to writing as a series completely different stories that are only peripherally related to one another with completely different themes using completely different protagonists in completely different settings. I loved all the prior stories, but I’ve also read dozens of stories since then and some things can get jumbled up. My suggestion: read the stories back-to-back if you don’t want to find yourself briefly confused.
Even so, GaPJaxie yet again produced a great piece of sadfic literature, emotional and compelling in equal measure. Every story in this series has been delightful, and this one is no exception. I’m really looking forward to the next, last story of this series.
Bookshelf: Why Haven’t You Read These Yet?
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Third Wheel — WHYRTY?
Courtesans — WHYRTY?
A Foreign Education — WHYRTY?
Intern — Pretty Good
Love Letters for a Girl I Hate — Pretty Good
The Two of Us
11,499 Words
By taterforlife
Sequel to The Two with Good Taste
In The Two with Good Taste, Fluttershy defends Discord when others refer to him as ugly. Turns out she thinks he’s quite handsome! What she didn’t get at the time was that Discord was in love with her at that point. For the two months since then, he’s been trying to show her this, and it’s making her nervous. Not because she doesn’t like his advances, but because she does and has no idea what to think of that.
This one was interesting for a variety of reasons. Discord felt strangely non-chaotic, almost like he was toning himself down. This may have been intentional on the author’s part, as a major point of the story is Discord trying to hold back his advances for fear of making Fluttershy uncomfortable, but at the same time I doubt that applies to his magical shenanigans. Or maybe it does. Hard to say. None of this means taterforlife wrote Discord incorrectly. Far from it. They just wrote him less… consistently wild, I suppose is the term I’ll go for.
Still, it all works well for this story. At its core, this is a romance in which Fluttershy finally understands that there’s been a ship between them for a while now. I especially like how “vanilla” the whole romance bit is, reading very much like two individuals new to this whole love thing and trying to figure out how it’s supposed to go. It fit both of them, Discord for being a thousand years clueless and trying to appear otherwise and Fluttershy for being… well, you know. Fluttershy.
There are other traits in the writing that I really enjoyed. Like how the two of them each talk to certain animals in the story that creates a kind of correlation between the beginning and the conclusion, Discord with his pet eagle encouraging him to ease up and Fluttershy with her latest rodentia housemate who encourages her to totally go for it. But then there’s also the way Discord gets annoyed with his eagle for regularly implying that he is the eagle’s pet, but later when Fluttershy subtly suggests he belongs to her (in a totally innocent way, of course) he’s nothing short of excited by the prospect.
And then there’s the ‘danger’ Fluttershy was in at the beginning of the story. This danger involves being trapped at a seedy bar with a pushy stallion who doesn’t think she has the right to say ‘no’. The thing that interests me here is that the stallion’s goal was… a kiss. Don’t get me wrong, what the stallion was doing was totally inappropriate and he deserved exactly what happened to him. But when I think of a scene like that, a kiss is not the threat I anticipate out of it. The fact that this knucklehead didn’t seem to want anything more gave me the feeling that we were very much in Equestria, and I really liked that angle.
Ultimately, this was a straightforward and endearing romance. I’m ambivalent regarding the Fluttercord ship, but I certainly don’t mind seeing it done well. I enjoyed this much more than the prior story!
Bookshelf: Pretty Good!
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Two with Good Taste — Pretty Good
Stories for Next Week:
Stories in Stone, Luna's Royal Guard. by TDR
Life in Phoenix Roost by Boldish42
Clusterbuck to City Hall by Caddy Finz
Wawindaji by The Albinocorn
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Jaxie really does have this odd ability to look at a concept and then push it to the most extreme, yet logical edges of itself. Then go a little bit further, because why not?
Some stories I'm definitely gonna look into in this batch. And yeah, The Virgin Princess is probably my favorite story in that series. GaPJaxie knows how to tug at emotional strings like nobody's business.
The Two of Us was one I enjoyed for being true to itself, it and its prequel The Two With Good Taste was also a great read.
5498469
Well, the why not? would be because it keeps ending up in illogical places. In the stories from him I can remember, including The Virgin Princess and its whole series, the worlds and characters he sets up aren't internally consistent, to the point of outright contradicting themselves, let alone being "extreme logical edges". Individual scenes and minor arcs can have a good impact and emotional response, but when viewed as part of a whole those inconsistencies become so distracting that they derail the story itself (which makes reading them back-to-back to avoid confusion, as Paul suggested, a self-defeating measure). An easy example would be this series' idea of alicorns becoming essentially locked into who they were on the day they ascended, but then they all act significantly different from one story to the next.
I'm curious; which concept did you feel was pushed to the most extreme, yet logical edge of itself?
clearly, someone needs to read more Defoloce :V
Sounds like you're saying you should review The Last Changeling next, eh?
Seriously, thank you. This was a very flattering review. I loved your last set of reviews, so I've been refreshing your blog and checking your schedule to see when this one would come out. Can't wait for you to complete the series.
5498546
I didn't write that one, actually!
5498694
You're right, and I had actually just corrected my post a moment before you posted. My mistake!
derpicdn.net/img/2016/1/5/1060042/large.jpeg
I am rather late to this, but your apology is very much accepted. And delicious.
I am... unaware of any other game that has anything really equivalent to Dwarf Fortress's 'strange mood' mechanic... I mean it is sorta a randomized fetch quest (except not in an RPG), except that you might easily have the materials on hand to start with (okay, so not really unique there), and that I am pretty sure the subject goes on a murderous rampage if the quest fails.
5760585
Maybe not, but the concept of seemingly random fetch quests and equally random rewards for completing said quests is pretty universal in gaming as far as I can tell, so there's no reason for any gamer to not recognize those mechanics at play in the story.
5760591
I just felt that some of the nuance might have perhaps improved the experience.
One more facet, then I will hush: you don't have any obvious (or any at all?) way of controlling when and to whom they happen.