Read it Later story count: 91 (+1)
Words read this week: 11,840
Story Time With Equestria or How Twilight Turned Every Pony Bald by Mister E
Daring Do & The Rookie Editor by Naughty_Ranko
Sisterly Lies by Emerald Ray
Teaching the Values by Just A Random Pegasus
Scientific Progress Goes Crash by Drax
★: 0 | ★★: 4 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.
Story Time With Equestria or How Twilight Turned Every Pony Bald by Mister E
Zecora, CMCs, Mane Six, Celestia and Luna
G4; Comedy/Random; 3k words; Jan 2015; Everyone
With Foal sitting the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Zecora tells them the story of how Twilight accidently put every barber in Equestria out of business.
I often like to see stories with Zecora speaking in extended rhyme, and indeed I generally like to see poetry in this mode. I find some of the more intellectually demanding poetry on the site a bit much for me to handle, but a fun story in rhyme? Yes please. This is quite an amusing story, too, with Twilight being pretty Twilight in accidentally creating a crisis. It's a pity the poetry is very rough in places, with the usual issue that a poem that rhymes but doesn't scan is – unless you're doing it deliberately for effect – pretty clunky. There are also some basic typos in here. This could have been a three with a bit more work, but as things stand I can't go above a middling two. ★★
Daring Do & The Rookie Editor by Naughty_Ranko
Daring Do and Twilight Velvet
G4; Adventure/Comedy; 3k words; Mar 2015; Everyone
A short tale of friendship and adventure, highlighting how Twilight Velvet and Daring Do first met.
It feels nicely nostalgic to be sitting here with a story reminiscent of the old-fandom idea of Twilight Velvet being the writer of the Daring Do books. This is a cute little tale, even if it's fairly light on substance to get your teeth into. Here, Velvet becomes Daring's editor, not that she knows that at the time (as the Mane Six hadn't back in S4) and after a fight at Daring's cottage the two become friends. It would have been nice to have a bit more detail and some bonding time, but as a shortfic it does a decent job. ★★★
Sisterly Lies by Emerald Ray
Celestia, Luna, Nightmare Moon and OC
G4; Sad/Slice of Life/Tragedy; 2k words; Jan 2014; Everyone
Queen Celestia has become corrupted, abusing her subjects with strict laws and unethical practices - why this sudden change of heart?
Yes, Queen Celestia, which is what drew my attention. I'll be honest, I was almost put off again by the longdesc, which verbatim is: "In the First Era of our land Equestria, there forged a feud to which nopony would remember likely. This is the embodiment of that Era told throw the mind of a earnest farm pony, who might no longer be known as such." But at this length I gave the story a chance. It's in diary format, and it covers the time leading up to Nightmare Moon's first outing. There are some fairly interesting notes about what that era was like, but the writing is really awkward (see longdesc) and that gets too much in the way for this to be above a middling two. ★★
Teaching the Values by Just A Random Pegasus
Rainbow Dash, Diamond Tiara and Scootaloo
G4; Sad/Slice of Life; 2k words; Jul 2015; Everyone
Rainbow Dash has a talk with Diamond Tiara about bullying others.
A slightly unfortunately timed story now, as it was rendered pretty moot by the events of "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" just three months later. Still, it has Scootaloo in it, and that's usually good. Scoots shows up miserable at Rainbow's house because Diamond Tiara has been bullying her. Dash goes over to Filthy Rich's place to talk to Diamond and everything is sorted out. Yeah, that quickly – which is exactly the problem. It took multiple things happening in concert for DT's canon reformation to happen in a day. That crucial part of the story is too rushed and, again, it means a lowish two is the best I can do for it. ★★
Scientific Progress Goes Crash by Drax
Twilight and Rainbow Dash
G4; Comedy/Slice of Life; 3k words; Aug 2015; Everyone
There are many great mysteries in Ponyville, 65% of wich involve Pinkie Pie in some form or other. But of all the mysteries, the one that plagues Twilight Sparkle the most (besides Pinkie) is why does Rainbow Dash keep crashing into her home?
This was written for a "cute one-shot" competition. Despite the publication date, it's clearly a Season 4 fic, in that Twilight is an alicorn but still in the library. There are some funny moments here, such as Twi packing Spike off somewhere so he doesn't start griping at Twilight for using a tracking spell on Rainbow. The first half of the fic is stronger than the second, which is a pity as the ending is a bit predictable and could have done with more humour and, especially, a punchline at the end. Another story this week which had potential to be a three-star fic but doesn't quite manage it. ★★
Next time, I'll be looking at some of the Thousand Words Contest IV medallists! I think it's unlikely that I'll be quite as comprehensive in reviewing these as I have been in previous years, but since I want to read fics that are both short and good, this seems an excellent place to find some! So next time, it will be the five Gold medallists. A very low word count next time, obviously, but hopefully a very high standard. We shall see! Stories:
Rinse Cycle by HearthsEveThe Middlemare's Market by hawthornbunny
No Bones About It by Pascoite
Butterfly Stains by Kintsugi Sunset
The Development of a Lexicon of Epithets for a Diarchal Equestria by gloamish
that last one is the only one I've read, and for what it's worth, I can at least say I liked it :)
ReplyDeleteI've read the first two and had pretty much the same reaction.
ReplyDeleteThe Zecora one was an amusing enough concept, but the writing itself was just okay, with lots of editing problems and poetry that didn't scan well.
The Daring Do one was better but felt underwhelming. As a no-plot slice of life it could be fine, but there's not much meat to it, as there's never a conflict, so it never developed any tension, and there are no potentially bad consequences.
I appreciate the vote of confidence for next week's slate, but my story was a pewter medal. You're missing the experimental gold, "Dollhouse."