Paul's Thursday Reviews – Bingo Edition · 9:04pm Apr 28th, 2022
So way way back in September Shrink Laureate threw together a Bingo contest.
Way back in March, the winners of that contest were announced.
And today, over a month later, I’m here with the promised reviews of said winners! My apologies to everyone involved for taking so long to get to these, but I wasn’t about to throw another 65,000 words on top of one of my usual ~210,000 - 280,000 words-per-week readings. Had to divide it up, take it gradually and all.
On top of the actual winners, Shrink Laureate brought up three stories that were highly rated by the judges but just barely failed to make the cut. He told me to do with them what I will, and what I will do is declare them “honorable mentions” and give them reviews as well.
My congratulations once again to the winners. Let’s see what they created for us, shall we?
The reviews:
Honorable Mentions
This of Earth and That of Air
4,501 Words
By Wolfsong6913
A punishment for his crimes, Sprout has been sentenced to community service. Specifically, he’s been tasked with going to a swamp to find something called a Swamp Lily, whatever that is. While there he runs into a terribly lost Pipp Petals. Seeing no other alternatives, they stick together in hopes of solving both their problems. Things take a turn for the weird, however, when they meet a certain zebra…
This is a direct story. Depending on your perspective, that could play for or against it. Sprout and Pipp meet, they bump into Zecora, they go on a seemingly random, death-defying quest at her behest, badda-bing badda-boom, Friendship is Magic! There’s no explanation for why the Swamp Lily is needed, or why Pipp decided to visit a swamp of all things, so you’ll just have to run with it. On the other hand, I appreciate that there’s an excuse for why Zecora’s still around, and I like that Wolfsong6913 decided to keep it as a subtle hint rather than stating it directly. If you know the specific episode being referenced, you’ll almost certainly get it.
I think my only real problem with this story is that it doesn’t do much with its premise. They had >5,000 more words available to them. Why not explore Zecora’s situation a bit more? Or maybe give Sprout and Pipp some time to actually connect with one another, explore their backstories in ways the movie never did? Or heck, just better explain the circumstances of why they’re in the swamp? There was so much more that could have been done.
Still, this one’s a passable little tale of adventure in which Pipp and Sprout work together for a common goal at the behest of a familiar face. If that sounds appealing to you, I see no reason not to give it a go.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Finding Honesty
9,942 Words
By Trick Question
Sunny Starscout has learned of a special ritual that can only be performed by the Elements of Harmony in a lost city called Griffonstone. It’s a ritual to contact the alicorn of legend, Twilight Sparkle. She’s confident that she and her friends are the new Element Bearers, but there’s one problem: they don’t have Honesty. Sunny and her companions have two days to find the Bearer of Honesty, locate and reach the lost city of Griffonstone, and perform the ritual.
Come on, we all know who Honesty is in G5. It’s pretty clear. The only way it wouldn’t be who we all know it will be is if Hasbro decides to defy their own canon (see also: Sunset Shimmer is an Alicorn). That said, TQ’s interpretation of how this is finally recognized by the team is a nice read. The story focuses more on lore than anything else; don’t come here expecting an adventure, despite what Sunny and her friends are calling it.
Not that there’s anything wrong with lore. Lore is great! And TQ provides all sorts of things, from the limited tech of the unicorns to a little bit about the Young Six in this timeline. We also get a nice moment between Sunny and her dad, learn about Sprout’s sexual preferences (although this depiction leads me to think he’s more asexual than anything), and have a few minor side characters to keep things amusing.
There’s really only one problem: there doesn’t seem to be a central character. Trick Question spends the episode jumping from character to character constantly. Sure, they’re all going on a quest, and yes, the final scene is all about Sunny. But the majority of the story fails to identify any one character as the protagonist, which leaves the whole thing feeling… unfocused. I understand the issue at the face of it; how do you write a story in under 10,000 words featuring up to eight characters without most of them seeming superfluous? TQ made an attempt to give them all equal attention, and I think that’s where the story flounders.
Still, TQ does okay with what they had to work with. As long as you don’t mind a story that’s less dramatic and task oriented and more about playing with the various characters’ mannerisms and quirks, you should be fine.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
The Knight and the Knave — WHYRTY?
Broken Symmetry — WHYRTY?
Familiar — WHYRTY?
Ashes — Pretty Good
Dead and Loving It — Pretty Good
What Do Pegasi Even Like?
6,671 Words
By ArDee
Pipp Petals and Sunny Starscout have decided to hold a cross-racial meet-n’-greet at Zephyr Heights. Sweets, hobbyist confectioner, thinks it would be a nice opportunity to share her candies. Dazzle Feather’s a reporter, so of course she’s going to be there.
This is a story with a solid foundation but a struggling delivery. It opens with Pipp and Sunny planning the event, then we spend half the story alternating between Sweets and Dazzle preparing for it and having their meeting/discussion. Had the story stuck to that, it would have been fine, but the author was obligated to enter more material in order to satisfy the prompt, and that’s (at least one part of) where things went off the rails.
A lot of little things compounded together to pull me out of this one. For example, why is Sweets claiming she only had one day to prepare for this event? She had a week, and you can’t tell me Maretime Bay doesn’t have the technology necessary to keep her candies in storage for that long.
Why did Dazzle decide to spend time with Sweets? I understand when she was actively reporting, but then the camera turns off and she decides to invite Sweets to a coffee shop because… I have no idea. I could understand if she was doing it in the spirit of the event, but there’s zero indication that’s the case, so I was caught off guard.
Those are just two small examples in a plethora of strange quirks within the story. The big one is at the end, when the story is suddenly about Sunny Starscout giving a Twilight Sparkle-esque speech that makes no sense at all given the context. I’m sorry, I thought the entire premise of the Gen5 movie was that everypony had completely forgotten their world’s history and the pony races are divided into antagonistic tribes. So why is Sunny name-dropping Twilight Sparkle (who nopony remembers) and reminding them of the threat of wendigos (which haven’t shown up in all the centuries of antagonism, so why should we expect them to be a threat now?), and why are the citizens responding like it was some amazing speech and they know exactly what she’s talking about and all the animosity and bitterness of the last untold time period is behind them?
Yeah. That speech bugs me.
I come away from this thinking that ArDee approached this one from the wrong angle. The idea of a cultural exchange between Dazzle and Sweets is good and they should have stuck to that as the primary element of the story. How do you get wendigos and alicorns in there?
Sweets makes candy. Shaped candies are a thing. Wanting to know why a confectioner designed her candies into specific shapes is a pretty good conversation starter.
Then there’s my pet peeve:
"You can say that again! I haven't seen a group of ponies act like that since the last big sale at Zeph-Mart! Haha!" The business owner replied, laughing heartily.
So we not only get told exactly how many ’ha’s were in that laugh, we also get told the character laughed. Because that’s not redundant at all.
I know, I know, it sounds like I’m being harsh. To a certain degree, that’s true. It’s just that I feel like ArDee stumbled upon a good idea, something that could have made for a great slice-of-life. I’ll go so far as to say ArDee could have nailed this competition if they’d just stuck the landing. Aside from a few niggles, things were going well, and I really liked the story. But I think it would have been better served had the author focused on the meeting and conversation that the entire story is purportedly about. They had a few thousands more words to work it, and even more if they didn’t have the whole Sunny Starscout speech at the end. They could have used that space to develop the conversation between Sweet and Dazzle and really give this story some meaning and the characters some gravitas.
Oh, well. There’s still potential here. I’m interested in reading something else by this author, something not restrained by the rules of a contest. Perhaps if ArDee is allowed to maintain focus on the given subject matter of a story we could have something great.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
Third Place
The Once and Future Nuisance
4,872 Words
By FanOfMostEverything
Scientist and product model Sugar Moonlight has been recruited by Sunny Starscout to assist her on an exploratory mission. Sugar is not happy about this.
This is one of those stories that feels like it could be the start of something much bigger if only the author could drum up the ambition to try. Not that I blame FOME for stopping where they did, mind you, but I agree with Celefin that the ending could have stood to be a bit longer.
The story has Sunny and Sugar visit a distant, unmapped island in search of answers to the past. Why did Sunny want Sugar to come along? Alas, that’s spoilers, but I will say that it involves Sunny leaping to outrageous conclusions that, miraculously, end up being spot on. Almost.
There are two highlights to the story. The first, which takes up the majority of the story, is Sunny and Sugar playing off one another’s personalities while reviewing their limited history together. I love Sugar’s dry manner that is at times practical and at others haughty, and she gets bonus points for owning up to her past mistakes. The second part is right at the end, when FOME puts forth an unexpected explanation for everything Gen 5 in as concise a manner as possible.
The only problem is that much of the story feels… unfocused. From the moment Sugar and Sunny arrive at the island, we have no motivation, no purpose, no “why”. It’s just them in a long, rambling conversation, with the occasional snippet in relation to the island. Why would Sunny bring another pony on this mission without telling that pony what they’re looking for? Sure, the dialogue is interesting, but the story’s more than halfway over before we start zeroing in on the entire point of all this. Even then, a lot of the conversation doesn’t have much to do with said point.
A curious story with great potential ramifications and a strong representation of a minor character, but with a delivery that may leave readers wondering for a while.
Bookshelf: Worth It
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Fruit of the Problem — Pretty Good
Mandatory Fun — Pretty Good
Wizards, Fools, and Foals — Pretty Good
Shoeshine and the Khaki Maniac — Pretty Good
Hitch Trailblazer, still furious at Sprout and out on one of his regular patrols, runs into something he always thought to be extinct: a chimera. She’s too ancient and wounded to be a threat, and she’s rambling. But the things she’s rambling about...
I’m not 100% on this, but from the sound of it the chimera Hitch finds in this story is the daughter of the chimera we know from the show. After all, the one in the show knew ponies other than “the yellow one” and “the blue one”.
The story is basically a long conversation between Hitch and the (presumably dying) chimera’s three heads, during which time the creature remarks on how similar he is to Fluttershy and reminisces about the life lessons it learned from Princess Luna. It’s a quirky, meandering chat, driven along in such a way that suggests the chimera is suffering a mental episode due to its injury, its age, or possibly both. Alas, the chimera never bothers to give us any details, so if you’re hoping for some worldbuilding and history lessons, this won’t be the place to get it.
At this point I have only one real question: Why did nopony know there was a chimera living near Maretime Bay? The thing outright admits to eating ponies and claims to have watched the town grow from nothing to the city it is today. What, did nopony notice the missing ponies? Did it sustain itself on other creatures and only ate ponies once a century or something, y’know, as a treat? If its smell is so blatantly obvious all the time, shouldn’t someone have detected it by that at the very least?
A curious story, and nothing at all like what I would have expected. I rather liked it, quirks and all. The ending might leave people unsatisfied, though…
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Golden/Silver Shine — Pretty Good
Ice Paved Trees — Worth It
The Last Petals Of Our Lives — Worth It
Time — Needs Work
A Parent's Love
9,605 Words
By Yukito
Argyle Starshine is dead. Everyone knows that. But it’s hard to argue when the stallion himself shows up at the lighthouse, ready to resume life as if nothing happened. Sunny is through the roof and her friends are supportive. Izzy wants to be happy for her marefriend, but…
There’s something very off about Argyle Starshine.
This is a very good idea that is tragically held back by ever-necessary and ever-insufferable wordcount limitations. Yukito demonstrates in the earliest scenes that they have a strong grasp of pacing, emotion, and drama. Then we get to what should be the climax and it’s all rushed via exposition. I have no choice but to assume the author wrote these critical moments in the least dramatic way possible purely because they were slamming against the 10,000-word mark that would disqualify them.
Were there ways to alleviate this problem? I think that, yes, there absolutely was. I won’t hold it against Yukito for not thinking of anything (or, if I were to give them the benefit of the doubt, not having time to make the necessary changes). It’s a pity, though. When the story began I was really getting into things, what with the good characterizations and the gradually worsening situation.
I’m not going to spoil the ending, but I will note that I saw it coming from a mile away. That’s not a bad thing. I don’t think Yukito was trying to hide it. Rather, I think they were intentionally making use of a well-known Gen4 plot to drive things forward in a way the readers could recognize and then subvert their expectations. Had the wordspace been available to give the ending the gravitas it deserved, I imagine it would have been a powerful conclusion. Assuming I’ve got the intention right, I respect the plan.
But having the plan’s only one part of the process.
Definitely a good story, and I can see why it did so well in the contest. I’d like to see what this author can do without the limitations of time and wordcount.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
New Author!
2nd Place
Lämp
7,247 Words
By ChibiRenamon
It’s been a little while since Sprout tried the whole “become emperor and start a race war” thing. Nowadays he’s working for his mother, having left the police force in shame. But things are about to get weird for him, because a pair of Crystal Ponies just showed up looking for the son of Clovah Leif with plans to destroy all magic (again). A pity it’s up to Sprout to do something about it.
Oh, but this was amusing. Acting as a sort of redemption tale for Sprout, it reveals that these two crystal ponies were servants of Sombra who intentionally destroyed magic ages ago as an act of revenge. Their history is all sorts of crazy off though, which suggests that while these two predate G5 by centuries, G4 probably predates them by a few as well.
I was giggling for a good five minutes at the Daki Makura joke.
I can see why this one did so well in the contest. It’s got good humor similar to that of the movie. It postulates some details about the past. It has a solid arc for Sprout while retaining his character from the movie. Really, what’s not to enjoy?
If you’re interested in a self-confessed idiot outsmarting a pair of even greater idiots, this will do it for you. But seriously, Sprout is the highlight and selling point of this one. Absolutely give this a go if you’d like an example of how to write him well.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good!
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
Even Emvoweling — Pretty Good
Conquering is Easy, Being Conquered is Hard — Pretty Good
1st Place
Magic and Memory
9,990 Words
By Summer Knight
Waxing Gibbous, unpopular batpony of Enyo Island, is shocked to stumble upon Grogar, a ram who has no memory of who he is or how he got there. The taciturn ram is determined to figure out his past, and Waxing has a thirst to explore the world. Together, they’ll forge something that Grogar might, when under duress, begrudgingly refer to as friendship.
This was interesting. We’ve got returned villain Grogar who is every bit as grouchy as you’d expect making friends with a batpony mare, if only because she somehow never gets mad enough to actually leave his sour butt. They explore the world in search of clues to Grogar’s past, which mostly involves traversing the Griffish Isles and arriving at Maretime Bay, where Grogar and newly minted alicorn Sunny have a rough first meeting.
Adventure, mystery, lore building, worldbuilding, ominous moments, humorous moments, and all rounded out with the inevitable conclusion that Friendship is Magic. There’s a lot going on within just 10,000 words, yet the pacing is handled magnificently. I can see why it did so well in the contest.
However, I find it hard to buy the friendship between Grogar and Waxing, and I pin that entirely on the wordcount limitations. If you want to sell that relationship, you need to have moments where Grogar and Waxing bond. They traveled together for two weeks, so you’d expect there to be something in that time, but Summer Knight just didn’t have the wordspace available to show it to us. Thus the climactic moment when their friendship is the only thing standing between the world and destruction felt… rushed.
Still, it’s only a minor hiccup, and a forgivable one considering the limitations the author was under. Everything else is good, and together more than make up for the issue. If you feel like seeing the ever-cantankerous Grogar facing the ultimate weakness of all Equestria’s enemies, well, here you go.
Bookshelf: Pretty Good
Previous stories reviewed for this author:
At the End of a Tough Day — Pretty Good
Silver Dawn — Pretty Good
At the Start of a Good Day — Pretty Good
The Shortsighted Princess — Worth It
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Yeah, I have an unfortunate tendency to produce those.
Fair criticism all around. In my defense, I had one heck of a prompt to work with/around, but I do say how I could've addressed these issues. Thanks for doing all of these!
Oddly enough, I'm going to be increasing the word limit for the next bingo contest. 10k was just too low, and a lot of the stories suffered for it.
Despite my G5 interest and in fics of it, I didn’t Duff up for this. Probably because I found the G4 connection easily it’s weakest element and did not fancy working with a contest where that was a prerequisite. Also I doubted my skills working with randomly dispensed bingo prompts. Lastly, that word count limit seemed alarming right from the start, and lo and behold, I was right. But we’ll get back to that.
I actually read quite a few of these entries, and four of the eight discussed here. This was mere weeks before I started doing review blogs myself, so I had a prototype to that in my comments on some of them. A rudimentary prototype, frankly.
I agree with the common criticism of many, that the word count limit of 10K for stories with that many elements was murder (even though the author could ignore some of them, most chose to try their hand at all five).
Not really much to add; I think I found the main middle content of What Do Pegasi Even Like? satisfying enough that I enjoyed it as an intimate little cute n’ fluffy character piece, though I’m in full agreement that the story would have been majorly improved without the ending segment existing purely for putting in two of the prompts. I’ll concede your other points on it being arbitrary-focused in places. The Once and Future Nuisance was an odd one, and I did enjoy the chemistry between the two leads while finding the actual present-day plot and sci-fi elements just weird and not all that appealing, on top of it cutting off before it can even really do something interesting with it. And on reflection, I think it was the lack of a focal lead alongside a plain-stated prose style with no subtext that left me somewhat cold by Finding Honesty. And Memento was… pretty much just what you said, though I’m somewhat cooler on it.
Fair is fair, the restrictions of these stories are a handicap and a half to work with. But I think it just attests how I prefer contest entries where one doesn’t have to make excuses for them, and where they have a reasonable shelf life (and I say this as someghost who’s only published Ponyfic is Jinglemas gifts and an Imposing Sovereign entry; thus, I’ve ONLY written for contests). But I did get enjoyment out of some of these, and others. So I appreciate it’s existence, even if it’s not really my speed.
Oh, of the ones here I haven’t read, Lämp interests me by far the most. I’ll be sure to give that a look sometime.
I'm sitting here going, "Huh, I read this one already, and that one, and that one too..."
...There is a reason for this.
5654109
I agree and highly approve of this move :)
5654109
5654146
Yeah. The problem isn't so much making a story in 10k words, it's making a good story that fits in five entirely different random prompts within that limit—especially when many judges seem to need the prompt use to be made as obvious as a name drop for it to register (from experience in the Writeoffs, this was a common issue). This is why my first chapter title was a name drop: I wasn't sure the judges would see using Sunny as a princess as a valid "A New Princess" reference.
I think it was particularly hard in this instance because many of the prompts needed extra development. I had to include two background ponies from the movie with no established character in canon or fanon, and a G4 location that has no clear G5 tie-ins or analogue (the species 'griffon' isn't even mentioned in G5). The reason we're used to fanfiction being short is because characters and places are usually preestablished so you don't need to introduce them and flesh them out. Contrariwise, if you don't link new characters to established characters and themes from the show then it's not really fanfiction (an affliction I am tempted to call Gardez's Bane, with nothing but love behind it).
5654116
The contest stated that there would be added "weight" to stories that fit more prompts in, which given the competition on this site kind of suggests you have to use all five prompts if you want to be a finalist. I enjoyed the challenge (and learned from it), but my characters and events were too non-sequitur in the space I had to work in so it didn't end up with good pacing or focus.
But I still love my baby.
5654181
I think this is an important point. The new G5 ponies needed extra development, purely because there's so little G5 out there so we have to make it up for ourselves; and the G4 elements needed extra development to explain how they're still relevant untold centuries later.
The G4 runtime, particularly in the early seasons, saw a lot of fanon. That background pony doesn't have a name? They do now. Do they have a job? Is there something unique about them? Let's make it up. And a decade later many people still refer to Derpy rather than Ditzy Doo or Muffins. Part of my hope for this contest is that the authors would create some of that fanon for G5, but again, that would have been a lot easier without the strict word limit.
I've always believed that limitations make for more inventive work, but I suppose imposing constraints while still allowing ideas to properly flourish is is a difficult balance to strike.
.
Plus, y'know, it's G5. I think a lot of authors are waiting to see what the full series gives us before throwing the whole weight of their writing abilities into some (hopefully) less bare-bones concepts. I suppose that's why I'm a little disappointed with what's popped thus far. My favourite is probably one of NavelColt's newest works, but that might just be because I'm a sucker for SoL
I have read Once and Future Nuisance as well though, and found it a neat read. Mainly because I was super happy to see some really interesting speculation and characterization given to a pony we know pretty much nothing about, which is a phenomenon that drove a lot of the early G4 fandom and I hope to see more of for this gen. I can certainly understand your misgivings though.
Also, holy shit dude, did someone just submit a request for a 1.3 mil story?
Jeez, I know this ain't your first rodeo, but you haven't even finished Starlight yet, and at least that one you picked out of your own volition (I think?)
Still though, your reading chops have never failed to impress before, and I wish you luck.
(really need a dashie salute emoji. Dangit.)
Honest and fair criticisms all around. Thanks for reviewing my fic! I feel honored to make my debut in your review series, even though it wasn't my strongest writing.
The inclusion of the last two elements felt rushed because, well, it was, if I'm being as honest as your review. Straying from the focus of the fic was silly in hindsight, and do now feel that I missed the forest for the trees because of this bit right here:
Damn! Now I'm wishing I had come up with that!
It somehow never occurred to me to incorporate those elements in even more indirect ways. I think I settled too quickly on the first idea that came to mind (which, clearly, wasn't really best for the flow of the story) rather than exploring alternatives.
Ah, well. Can't be helped now. All I can do is take notes on where to improve and go from there.
Again, thanks for doing what you do, Paul.
I totally did NOT expect for my story to be liked highly enough to even be noticed, much less get an honorable mention!! What a lovely thing to come back to after restoring all my accounts after my laptop repairs! Thank you so much for the review! I understand a lot of the critiques mentioned, I kind of left a lot of the key scenes to be written at the last minute, plus got distracted by falling headfirst into writing over 25k words of Encanto fanfiction when I planned to work on this instead. I'm quite pleased that even my slapdash work was good enough to get as far as it did, and I am now highly incentivized to put a little more time and effort into the next one!
(Aside: I don't care much about pronouns, but I'm a chick so I can be 'she'd' if you prefer it.)
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[I thought so, but wasn't 100% sure. I don't care about pronouns either, but I don't want to call a 'she' a 'he', so as general rule I resort to 'they' when I don't know. Now I know. So. 'She' it is!]