Posh's Story Reviews: Folio the Second · 10:42pm Mar 24th, 2022
I just returned from a place called Seven Elevenths, which serves a chilled beverage known as a Slappie. I wished to purchase one, but my Madness Meter exceeded one hundred percent when I tried to reduce the fraction in the store’s name. Both seven and eleven are prime numbers, and such reduction was impossible. madness. madness. inescapable.
To center myself, I plopped myself down on my very large bean bag that I found on the side of the highway (what a steal!) during my routine afternoon picking-up-of-trash, part of the two hundred hours of community service that I was given for causing a scene at Mervyn’s (the mannequin eyelessly gave me bedroom eyes, what was I supposed to do, not make out with it?). I scrolled through the front page, sank my eyeballs deep into the words on the pages, and emerged with a single thought in my brain-cage.
What if I reviewed some of these? Again?
So that’s just what I’m here to do, to distract me from the encroaching insanity brought on by Seven Elevenths. As before, I will grade each story along five extremely rigid and clearly defined criteria. However, I’ve refined my methodology since last time, and I think this will greatly improve the quality of my feedback. The new set of criteria are:
-Clasp
-Old Growth
-Creeping Feels
-Sloughing Flesh
-Creaminess
Ultimately, as before, the story’s final grade will hinge on a single question:
Is There A Line In this Story Capable of Reducing a Man of Stoic Temperament to Tears?
And with that said, we begin our deep exploration of the word-caverns (that’s what I call stories!).
A Cloaked Heart by Michael Morbius
A Cloaked Heart is the story of one Jethro “Death Row” Bethridge, a lonely investment banker trying to find love and fulfillment. After his coworker, Grant from Accounting, a slovenly fellow who smells of cheese smothered with Axe Body Spray, introduces him to MLP via the work of Pen Stork (specifically, Past Sins), he tries to watch the series on Netflix, only to find that it was removed from the streaming service in January of 2022. Instead, he turns to YouTube, and spends six hours binging the work of brony musicians such as The Living Tombstone. Inspired by the song “Discord,” he spends the evening writing what could be the greatest slap-down, drag-out diss track in the history of mankind.
The next day, he wanders into his boss’s office, spits directly in his right eye socket, and says “You want two weeks? Here’s two weeks’ worth of saliva, face-fucker!” He then proceeds to deliver his rap, his epic verbal beat-down. The force of his phat beats reduces his boss to a substance with the consistency of gelatin, and he seizes control of the office. Their new mission? Promote brony musicians as part of their new record label, Jeth Row Records.
The remainder of the story recaps the litigation between Jethro and Dr. Dre, and is difficult to follow without a legal background, specifically in copyright law. I’m not sure I’d recommend reading beyond chapter 57, in which Jethro orchestrates the assassination of the Notorious B.I.G., which serves as the climax of the story’s time travel arc.
-Clasp: 10/10
-Old Growth: Balmy, and Dessiduous
-Creeping Feels: I felt them. I feel them even now.
-Sloughing Flesh: The aforementioned gelatin.
-Creaminess: Sadly lacking. There is little room for cream with so much gelatin.
Is There A Line In this Story Capable of Reducing a Man of Stoic Temperament to Tears? Yes. Jethro’s oft-repeated catchphrase, “I Am Shitting And Farting In My Pants,” has me shedding a solitary tear of solidarity even as I type those holy and hallowed words. I would recommend that the author, Michael Morbius, copyright the phrase and sell hats, shirts, and booty shorts emblazoned with that legendary phrase.
Final Score: This is a difficult story to grade, because while it does provide a deep look into the stated and unstated value systems embedded in the rap industry, it doesn’t have too much to do with MLP. It’s not even apparent that the author is familiar with the source material. Morbius mistakenly refers to Twilight Sparkle as Tilden Katz fifteen times in the story, and implies that The Living Tombstone should be tried at the Hague. That level of overt political grandstanding just doesn’t sit well with me.
However, I don’t want to leave it unscored, so I’m going to give this a rating of 
/👨 (that is supposed to be Ted Lasso) for its folksy charm, wit, and the amount of Shitting And Farting that Jethro does.
Product of Friendship by AzurasWraths
This is the story of Queen Chrysalis’s eighteen hour labor to give birth. However, it would be more accurate to describe this story as a powerful work of speculative fiction.
Like all works of speculative fiction, this story pursues a central, overriding question: “How would Queen Chrysalis give birth?”
Author AzurasWrath answers this question with aplomb. Each and every moment of Chrysalis’s childbirth is described in painstaking detail; the author was clearly quite invested in accurately and effectively illustrating how a chitinous horse-woman could plausibly expel an equally alien foal from her womb. The story’s description links to multiple illustrations of chitin-horse anatomy, with hyperlinks embedded in the story to specific images. When author Azura’s Wrath wants you to know what Chrysalis’s Colyptic Bicron (a fleshy portion of the lower back roughly analogous to the primordial pouch found in cats) looks like, they link to a very detailed cross-section of that particular piece of anatomy. The author has spoken earnestly with publications such as Axios and Al-Jazeera about their plans to develop an entire literary canon around the concept of MLP charaters giving birth. I don’t know what the broader plans for the Childbirth Literary Universe entail, but I can only wish AzurasWrath the best of luck.
-Clasp: 2/10. Sadly, the purpose of the childbirth is to reduce the amount of clasping performed on the child by the womb and vagina (or, in Chrysalis’s case, the Pribnow Box and Manheim’s Oubliette, respectively).
-Old Growth: Chrysalis is covered in bizarre, alien moss of indeterminate age and origin.
-Creeping Feels: Shudder. Shudder.
-Sloughing Flesh: Technically? When Chyrsalis’s foal, Wozniak, emerges from its mother’s Manheim’s Oubliette, it has yet to grow the chitinous exoskeleton for which its mother is known. This is necessary for the narrative, however, as Chrysalis uses her proboscis to pierce Wozniak and suck its flesh back into herself, which, by the story’s logic, would not be possible with a layer of chitin in the way.
-Creaminess: Indeed. Wozniak is reduced to a creamy consistency as Chrysalis devours her offspring.
Is There A Line In this Story Capable of Reducing a Man of Stoic Temperament to Tears? “Keep your pussy-ass epidural away from my Ridge of Sin!” (Note: “Ridge of Sin” is the story’s term for Chrysalis’s spinal cord)
Final Score: Eleven ounces of afterbirth out of a possible seventeen. A true cliterary masturpiece.
“What If...” by TheMangerTechie
Those of you who read my previous review blog might recall that I do not care for stories which raise questions in their titles. This story is an example of an even more vile trope: Making the title an incomplete thought. As outrageous as question-based titles are, at least the punctuation in them gives a clear indication of the author’s meaning; “what if...” is so brazenly byzantine and open-ended that I just. What if what? What if what? Fucking finish your thought.
Let that be a lesson to all aspiring writers: Never, ever expect your readers to read your stories, and think
Did Not Read/10. Maybe if you change the title to something more complete, like “What If Celestia Ate So Much Cake She Fell Over And Died?” I will come back and give it a try.
This concludes my second story blog for the time being. I will return with a new set of stories as soon as my parole officer and his armed escort leave my home. I must sign off now; the floorboards I’m hiding beneath provide very poor signal.
excellent i have been noticed now i will crawl back into my lays potato chip bag
5646030 Remember what I’ve told you.
The fount of madness offers refreshing Slappies, and I am grateful.
5646031
perhaps i will when i make eclectic scootaloo
I…
I…
5646186 media.discordapp.net/attachments/789630078425235457/956998084364210186/unknown.png
I miss seven elevenths. They have good snaks.
5646031
The chapter titles all (mostly) finish the thought in the main title
5649011 NOT good enough. MangerTexas must pay for crimes against God and Country.
5649067
honestly he's just using he Didnotread/10 as marketing
5685995 you replied to my comment, you cheesewheel
5685995 or wait. maybe you meant to reply to me, and not TheMargaretTurkey.
In any case, I apologize for calling you a cheesewheel.
Ehehe I do not think it would be practical to finish the title of #3
5718557 Practicality is a shield. Throw it aside and two-hand absurdity.
5718558
practicality aside, it would be quite difficult to come up with a suitable title to wrap up all, um, 895ish chapters