Reviewer Two Must be Stopped
It wasn’t really normal for a small legion of ponies to crowd around Cafe Hay in Ponyville, but then again, it wasn’t really a normal occasion. Instead, it was an extra super special occasion! It only happened once every year, so of course ponies had to gather from all around town.
The leaves were piling yellow on the ground, and the last warm summer breezes were being chased out of town by pegasi hungover from too much apple cider. Well, them and the colder autumn breezes, who needed space to stretch their eddies. Foals had been back at school for a couple of months, and parents were just getting relaxed.
Today was the Cafe Hay Colossal Cookie Clash! Bakers from all around Equestria had come to the Cafe today to test their mettle in the three cookielicious categories: chocolate chip, chewy chewy bars, and the extra surprise wildcard cookie. Their cookies would meet on the noble field of combat, chip against chip, filling against filling, and surprise against SURPRIIIISE. Well, actually, they’d be meeting on the noble field of peer review as ponies dropped by and handed out the little paper vote tickets showing which baker they’d liked the best out of aaaaaall the cookies they’d sampled, but that was still a pretty noble field, honestly.
This didn’t really explain why there was a figure lined up to enter the Cafe in a big scary hooded cloak. You might have guessed, if you’d hung around Ponyville for a while, that it was Princess Luna back in for a visit and trying out more fun things, or that it was the Great and Powerful Trixie back to mess with Twilight Sparkle again with the FATE OF ALL PONYVILLE at stake.
Nope. It was a big scary hooded pink cloak. With a big yellow number ‘2’ on it in a balloon-font, to show who was wearing it. For today, on this day of unlimited super sampling of chewy, crunchy, and crumbly cookies all alike, she was the most important mare in town. The one pony everypony feared, and for whose favor they dared not hope.
Twilight had explained to her about Peer Review.
“You see,” said Twilight yesterday afternoon, “First a scientist submits their article for the consideration of the journal’s Editorial Board. Then the first reviewer hands the actual work of reviewing off to their postdoctoral associate, who then hands it off to some graduate student, who then hands it off to some newbie graduate student like I used to be, who then spends a week having panic attacks because she has no idea if it’s any good or not. Then the third reviewer writes a helpful review that adequately addresses the content of the paper.”
“And then comes Reviewer Two.”
Twilight’s instructions had been quite clear from there, and her invitation to the Cookie Clash had been just as explicit. She was Reviewer Two, and she had a duty to do.
So the figure in a big pink hooded cloak with a balloon number on it reached the head of the line and paid two bits for her ticket. Oooh, two bits for Reviewer Two! As an official Reviewer, she didn’t just get a voting ticket like everypony else, she got a clipboard. It was just like Twilight had said.
She marched right up to the line for cookie sampling. Two big tables had been laid out at right-angles, on which the bakers of the day had spread their cookiest cookie creations. For as far as a pony could see over the next ten hands or so, plates were stacked high. The bars looked chewy. The chocolate chip standards were stuffed with chocolately chippy stuffs. The wild cards hadn’t started running wild around the cafe yet, but she just knew that would happen when Discord dropped by.
It was everything a party pony could ask for in a truly Colossal Cookie Clash.
Reviewer Two stepped up to the first table, where Derpy and Dinky Hooves had laid out chocolate chip muffin-top totally-a-cookies, alongside double blueberry muffin bars and a cinnamon carrot celery flower explosion cookie for their Wildcard that bore a suspicious resemblance to a muffin. It would be good to start with a Chocolate Chip Standard, so she took out her clipboard in one hoof, took a napkin in another hoof, took a muffin-top in another hoof, and gulped it right down.
She then took a pencil from the recesses of her hood and wrote her review. “The proposed cookie was obviously supposed to be a muffin; over-abundance of baking soda left a bitter taste and a fizzy mouth-feel. Baker should consider consulting a decently-written recipe book.”
That was just like how Twilight said to write a Reviewer Two review. Reviewer Two nodded her head and carefully placed the note in the basket taped to the front of the table. A job well done!
Next in line was Apple Bloom’s table! She’d gone with Traditional Chocolate Chip Cookies, a Babs Seed Black-and-White for her wildcard, and oooooh, Zap Apple Crisp Bars! Reviewer Two just had to try one of those! She raised it up off the plate in her hoof, looked at it from eeeeevery angle to observe its incipient deliciousness, aaaaaand shoved it straight in her mouth. Mmm...
Mmm? Where was the mmm? WHY WASN’T THERE ANY MMM!?
“The supportive tone of this review,” read the note dropped in Apple Bloom’s basket, “took some effort. I was forced to recover from the prematurely harvested Zap Apple in the Bars by eating a whole Babs Seed Black-and-White. That was good at least, though it could have used more Manehattan ‘Tude extract.”
Being Reviewer Two was turning out to be hard work.
Next up was Lucky Clover, who had made Halva Buttercream Sandwich cookies for his wildcard. Or at least, that was what he called them. It actually took two whole cups of milk to wash down the taste.
“I started to review this, but could not get much past the gratuitous salt upon the outsides. In addition, whatever traces of halva were used in the filling are undetectable. Strong reject,” read the note Lucky Clover later opened from his review basket.
Ok. She could do this. It was just cookies, and while Reviewer Two was the premier baker in town, everypony had turned out to bake for everypony. She couldn’t disappoint by not reviewing.
Caramel had come out with a caramel bar, topped with chocolate. Reviewer Two could finally smile as she bit into one and found its pale appearance to hide a perfectly good, sticky-sweet bar of sweet chocolateyness.
Now, about his review. She’d have to anonymize and use Reviewer Words, just like Twilight had taught her.
“The chocolate is standard milk-chocolate, and while the filling could perhaps do with butterscotch, the baker is nonetheless in the top 50% of the Bar Cookie field.”
Sands ticked down through the hourglass as the Clash continued, and Reviewer Two trickled through the lines, eating cookies and making notes.
Diamond Tiara was exhibiting lemon meringues for her wildcard, and a chocolate-chip cookie. Her father had obviously helped her get the expansion and cracking of the meringues just right.
“The bakers, undoubtedly plural, avoided making mistakes in the proportioning of the lemon by not proportioning any. The chocolate chip was relievingly acceptable.”
Dashie’s “Chocolate Chip Buckers” were deliciously crunchy, but really could have used more rainbow sauce if she’d actually intended them to be piquant enough to call them buckers.
In the end, she had to give her award-ticket to somepony, and thankfully, somepony had actually managed to earn it. Ponyville really did have another great cookie baker.
“Munching on these Pumpkin Snickerdoodles,” she told Cranky Doodle Donkey, “I am struck by the elegance of the pumpkin custard filling, and the clarity of the cinnamon upon the cookie shell around it.”
“Uh, thanks Pin-” He suddenly had a pink-cloaked hoof in his mouth.
“It’s Reviewer Two today!” hissed Reviewer Two.
“Err, do go on, Reviewer Two,” he drawled, frowning slightly but glad for the praise.
“I find myself thinking, it’s such a simple and obvious idea! You take Snickerdoodles, which are already all cinnamony on the outside and deliciously chewy on the inside, and you put pumpkin in them and fill them with custard! Why didn’t I ever think of it?” She was gorging herself on the delicious treasures and giggling with each bite.
“Well, ma’am, when you’ve seen as many snickerdoodles as I have, you just start thinking of how you can spruce ‘em up.”
As suddenly as she’d arrived at his table, Reviewer Two turned away and stuck her nose up.
“Then your award is denied for being too obvious!”
“REVIEWER! COOKIE-THIEVING! TWO!” Cranky fumed. He had jumped stock-stiff onto the top of his table. If Reviewer Two had dared to turn around, she’d have seen in his bloodshot eyes how close his hoof was to ripping off her Reviewer cloak entirely, in complete defiance of academic norms.
“Just kidding!” said Reviewer Two, and pinned a blue ribbon to his toupee for Best Clashingest Cookie of the Clash.
Author's Note
This story inspired by both the experience of peer review, and the experience of going to a cookie contest where most of the cookies were... Reviewer Two-worthy. All reviews here are entirely real.
