Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #39 · 6:01pm Nov 28th, 2022
Hope none of you are feeling the post-Thanksgiving blues too hard. Me, well, it’s an odd holiday to observe from outside America. I’m well aware and tuned in to its commercial reach and importance (when you work in mobile app development you can’t avoid the importance of holiday season targets, plus you kind of notice any American-based companies you’re in collaboration with largely vanishing for a week), but the actual familial reunions and bonding? Doesn’t tend to penetrate my mind too much. I suppose over here the extended family reunions just get lumped into the Christmas holidays. Which is fine, y’know. A turkey even shows up there too, though probably not as big.
You know what’s not a turkey, though, are these Ancestral Tribute entries. Especially off spending time with family and being thankful for what they provide, feels extra appropriate to look at more instances of the parents of our favourite ponies in other lights. It’s especially insightful to see different author’s different approaches to inferring how the Mane 6 (and others) turned out as they did, and developed the personalities they did, with these ponies as parents and role models. Not a direct point of the contest, but an attribute both the writer and the reader can’t help but be drawn to.
And, with the surplus of bite-sized entries common in a contest’s early submission period gotten through last week, we have some longer entries this week. Still only a warm up for the influx of wordcount limit-pushing stories next week, of course. Stay tuned for that! 
For now, though, let’s see what these fics have cooked up. Like last week, a fic that placed and an Honourable Mention are here, so there’s some guaranteed interest even for the sceptical.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
The Trail of Your Failures Will Lead You to Memory by Jarvy Jared
Velvet's Mini Adventure by Zubric
Dancing Through Rocks and Memories by Snow Quill
Bring Your Friend's Parent to Work Day by Flutterflyer
A Clap of Thunder by KorenCZ11
The Discovery of Ponies (How I Met Your Mother, and Less Than Twenty-Four Hours Later She Dumped Me Forever) by Mockingbirb
Rock Beats by Aragon
Spoiled Secrets by Shadow Hound
Weekly Word Count: 49,100 Words
The Trail of Your Failures Will Lead You to Memory by Jarvy Jared
Genre: Slice of Life
Other (Stormy Flare)/Scootaloo
4,775 Words
October 20222nd Place Winner
Far, far away from home, Stormy Flare has all the time in the world to reflect on why she’s here, how she failed, and how said failure will affect her legacy and that of others too. Yet in this doom and gloom, a chance encounter with an unexpected guest will remind her that her efforts weren’t a total failure.
Rare in fiction is the kind of story that can have the viewer largely clueless where it is going, keep them reading anyway, and have it all work in hindsight, all without that mystery being the dominant “point” of the piece. Doubly true for Ponyfic, and yet it’s something this story manages perfectly. The early goings of Stormy reflecting on how much this place has changed since she was last here set a subtle melancholy tone, one lost past masking another, doing a good job of reinforcing theme via locale, and indeed much of the fic’s energy is devoted to capturing this quasi-Latin American city of harsh, unfamiliar weather, with the various locales across its unhurried 4.8K words resonating differently. This is still a story ultimately about characters and a past, but Jarvy Jared’s hero-worship of influential Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez (among other achievements, the author who popularised magical realism), and a technique of sentences that roll into one another and feel like features of a landscape, is an effective example of form both reinforcing content and being enjoyable for itself.
The actual content is pretty great too. Not derived from the show much, naturally, given Spitfire’s mother was the smallest of roles. But the way her barbed personality gets sanded down as the story progresses, with her and Scootaloo’s interactions gradually peeling away layers for both ponies involved, makes it more delectable as it goes on. As does intricate and reflective depiction of Scootaloo keeps the piece from ever mugging in its dourness. Add in an internal third-person perspective that can make moments of no internal thought work as well as moments dominated by them, and this is a very strong piece, one where the work into crafting it is evident (eight drafts, says Jarvy, and I believe him) without weakening its accessibility.
Oh, and it’s a post-FiM fic – twenty years or so, it seems – bereft of annoying late-show elements (though I don’t personally care for the choice of Scootaloo’s partner). So, you know, props for that too.
Rating: Really Good
Velvet's Mini Adventure by Zubric
[No cover image]
Genre: Adventure/Slice of Life
Twilight Velvet, Daring Do
2,992 Words
October 2022
An ordinary day for Twilight Velvet turns hectic fast when Daring Do, the mare-cum-adventurer for whom Velvet edits her escapades for publication, shows up looking for an item Velvet came into possession of. Soon enough, Velvet, off her own insisting, has tagged along for a trip to Manehattan.
The broad strokes of this fic are sound enough, Velvet joining Daring Do for an adventure, and I don’t even mind how it’s acknowledged in-universe as being a smaller adventure. But boy, it is ever clumsily-executed and undernourished. Setting aside that Velvet’s presence doesn’t aid Daring Do at all, the logic of an underground temple in Manehattan as presented here makes no sense even by the leeway of pulp serial adventures, nor do we get a bearing on what’s going on beyond the surface details. It’s all just flash.
More than anything else, the urge to get through the story as quickly as possible leaves scars all over the points that are supposed to land with the reader. Daring’s opposition to Velvet joining exists for one line of dialogue, is dropped, and her resistance isn’t present again. A random observation about alicorns is raised on the trip, then is tangibly connected to the main obstacle around the prize MacGuffin, but not in anything resembling a natural evolution, just an idea chucked in without getting fleshed out. A few meta nods to how these adventures usually go are tossed out indifferently. Velvet’s desire for thrills and loving this not only fails to come across as more than a token inclusion, but doesn’t connect to the adventure or Daring.
There are fun aspects throughout, but that’s all they are, aspects. Without being worn into a cohesive, integrated whole, or given more than the token, outline-esque moments of prose they get, this just skates on by.
Rating: Weak
Dancing Through Rocks and Memories by Snow Quill
Genre: Romance/Slice of Life (Alternate Universe)
Cloudy Quartz, Igneous Rock
1,913 Words
October 2022
On a quiet night when all the work was done and their two remaining daughters had been sent off to enjoy themselves elsewhere, Igneous Rock and Cloud Quartz reminisce, to an old record and a tender dance, on the arranged marriage that brought them together, and the true love that was farmed from that arrangement, birthing a bond that is no less strong after all these years.
On top of actually having the right amount of content for its length – not something all fics for this contest have nailed, by any means – this a nice showcase of a mature couple well aged who nonetheless still love each other as much as when they first met. Appropriately, in the recollections of the wedding day, and the wistful words both ponies offer through their dance and afterwards, no mention of the unfairness of an arranged marriage is made. Both because they would have been conditioned to accept it from youth, and because they fell in honest love. In showing how infatuation can spring from such a rigid tradition, and remain burning as a gentle, undying care years later, this has an awfully tender side. Doesn’t hurt the more ecstatic moments on both ponies’ parts, while still fully their stoic Amish selves, has enough of Pinkie’s unbridled joy present to establish a link offhand.
Not much to it, just a fluffy shipfic, but one that’s quiet and maturely expressed, a neat blend of nostalgic whimsy and deep bonds. Can’t go wrong for a nice portrayal of undying love.
Rating: Decent
Bring Your Friend's Parent to Work Day by Flutterflyer
Genre: Adventure/Comedy
Twilight Velvet, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity (+ Pinkie Pie & Fluttershy), Grogar
10,101 Words
October 2022
One year after Twilight took over Equestria, a night out with her friends leads to what history books claim is the most drunk pony in history. Pity this happened on the night Grogar and his army returned from the underworld. Short of someone to wield the Element of Magic, the Mane 5 fret what to do, until Rainbow Dash hits on the idea that perhaps one of Twilight’s family can act as a substitute. As for which family member is available…
Like camp and pulp, completely absurd and meta-breaking fics with the characters constantly lampshading their situation, especially with an outsider ramped well past the point of parody, have to be handled delicately and carefully. Alas, this is not, and the lack of any filter in any decisions here, as well as some massive technical malnourishment and dragging it well past its expiry length, make it a slog.
There’s nothing wrong with Twilight having a low liquor hold and being out of commission, nor Velvet being ecstatic to go on an adventure, forming a close bond with the equally-enthusiastic Rainbow Dash and exuberant Pinkie Pie, while Fluttershy is timid and Applejack and Rarity are just fed up with everything. But I have just described like 90% of the plot and jokes here, and they tire fast, which is the big difference between this and, say, an old Aragon fic in making the random mile-a-minute humour work.
What feels like endless scenes of the group making their way to Grogar’s lair with absurd challenges that even the characters acknowledge should kill them, followed by no one taking Grogar seriously… in a more serious fic, or at least one with one measured comedy, this could suffice, but it just drags. And it drags far more than 10K should, because the overwhelmingly majority of lines lack dialogue tags, without the prose being constructed to make it clear who’s speaking. Sometimes it is clear, but a hefty chunk of the time, it’s not, and this mangling of sentence flow breaks whatever immersion the fic had.
I see and respect what was attempted here, but even with a random and absurd fic like this, a filter and discipline, in both the content and the actual writing of it, are needed. Otherwise, we’re left with only an air horn on repeat, and one too loud to get even the smallest amount of pleasure from the end result.
Rating: Bad
A Clap of Thunder* by KorenCZ11
Genre: Romance/Dark/Slice of Life (w/Violence, Sex & Profanity)
OC, Granny Smith
17,979 Words
October 2022* Fic has been delisted, link points to Fimfetch instead
A criminal on the run to lie low while the heat dies down stows away on a train. To say things don’t go to plan would be an understatement. Soon enough, he’s being slowly nursed back to health on an Apple farm, with inexplicable compassion from the patriarch from the family, all while he can’t help eyeballing one of his daughters.
Obviously, being this close to the word count cap, this was simplified big time (by the author’s admission, it was looking to be a short novel otherwise). Not the worst hampering, given the fic still spends much of its energy on the stallion’s gritty criminal backstory and how it’s shaped his character, and thus made him not quite able to perceive how the Apple family operates. Along the way, we get a few farm rituals, extrapolation of what living in a frontier town like this is like and the family expectations placed on one, and a Zap Apple harvest that manages to treat such a silly bit of lore with the utmost reverence.
If the story has a weak point that actively hinders it, it’s Granny Smith; despite some expected sass to her words here and there, she simply rings as far too introspective and philosophical. And while the story has the good sense to end with them getting hooked up, after a fashion, it’s rarely more than a subplot to the greater character drama between her father and our protagonist. In principle, scenes of her showing him how to run the farm to build something between them should be a great tactic; in practice the abbreviation to the arc hamstrings it.
Regardless, the concept is fascinating, and I haven’t even mentioned how well this gets us inside the stallion’s headspace (helps that we never see or hear anything of Granny Smith’s husband in the show!), making this landscape fresh via an outsider’s POV. Deft blend of tone and worldviews too. Doesn’t entirely survive some of the brittle and harsh holdovers of the story’s mafia start, but them’s the kicks, and ultimately not too sore a kick.
Rating: Decent
The Discovery of Ponies (How I Met Your Mother, and Less Than Twenty-Four Hours Later She Dumped Me Forever) by Mockingbirb
Genre: Sci-Fi (Alternate Universe)
Twilight Velvet, Other (Hondo Flanks), Twilight
2,578 Words
October 2022
Sure, Hondo Flanks only took this night security job to afford what food and other necessities his sports scholarship didn’t cover. But that’s no excuse for constantly sleeping on the job. One of the lab’s most frequent users has had enough of this, and shows him just what he’s guarding, and why it’s important to take it seriously. And, in the process, the ponies might light how much they have in common.
It’s a pity the specifics of the concept are all tangled up in spoilers, because this is quite the fascinating concept. Suffice to say some readers will get shades of Friendship Is Optimal, but there’s enough unique shades for this to stand out. And while it certainly is more of a tease for that concept than anything, it’s not incomplete as a reading experience.
The rest of the fic is on somewhat shakier grounds – the main setup, of convincing Hondo to not be a lazy pony, is de-emphasised as the fic progresses and abandoned altogether by the ending (ironically, as part of the joke, granted, but still clumsily). And that ending, while linking to the concept of the fic, doesn’t really link to its characters. That leaves only this characterisation of Velvet as a nerdy scientist determined for things to be taken seriously, yet who nonetheless desires a break from reality every now and then, in light of all that’s bleak and wrong with the world. It’s another effective job of showing where some of her foals’ traits come from, and doesn’t repeat the usual ways this happens either. Plus, in its own way, it fits with her depiction in the show.
Bit of a frothy fic, then (certainly, it has many holes ready to be picked apart), but an enjoyable enough one. And hey, those who don’t like Sci-Fi in their pony fiction might find this short take more agreeable. I generally did.
Rating: Decent
NOTE: A coda epilogue was added after I'd already read and reviewed the fic. I don't agree with it, and find it's a weak joke and weakens the prior ending, but it's not enough to change the rating.
Rock Beats by Aragon
Genre: Romance/Comedy
Cloudy Quartz, Igneous Rock
3,964 Words
October 2022MarvelandPonder's Honourable Mention
A normal day of rock farming becomes less normal when Cloudy Quartz discovers, right in the middle of their digging trenches, a beating heart of stone. The heart of the land of Equestria, no less. In contemplating on this discovery, and deciding what to do, Cloudy and her husband Igneous reflect on their marriage and family.
Only Aragon could take a lore concept like the land being alive and having a voice, use it simply as a springboard for some cute flirty interactions between a stoic yet impassioned farmer couple, and make it work. Okay, I lie, others could do it, but it’s unlikely it would come out like this. That’s probably a bit presumptuous of me – this is the first of Aragon’s newer fics I’ve read (as in, since he started doing his popular comics), and is quite far removed from the joke-a-word riots I’m more familiar with. Yet it is still, above all, a very uniquely delivered fic, and unmistakably his.
Primarily, this is a story about ponies who do express themselves, but in a far different way. Cloud and Igneous just know each other, and the fic has many lines expressing how Cloudy’s expression hadn’t changed and yet everyone present knows what it means. Writing technique, in particular, is a cornerstone of why this works. From short, clipped statements, to modulations between the present and their relationship, to numerous offhand observations that speak volumes about these two ponies, and so on. There are many ways to go about capturing the perspective of a rock farmer, ever a surreal concept. And this, using the land being alive and it being a compassionate communicator to these two ponies, making for much appreciation of both ends, makes for quite the deep and felt result. It’s a story that can have one pony apologise for a brief moment where they didn’t know exactly what the other was thinking, as though that represents a massive failing in their relationship, and make it work.
I’ve probably done a very poor job of selling this fic. Even for an Aragon piece, it’s tough to describe. Yet it’s pretty phenomenal, and also excels at being rather subtly funny in its own way. it may be a tough one to explain, but it is not a tough read by any means. If it is not a knock-your-socks-off fics, it’s a darned impressive one all the same. Read it and love it. Plus, it’s still plenty funny, if you like dry, understated humour. Which, when it’s done this well, I unreservedly do.
Rating: Really Good
Spoiled Secrets by Shadow Hound
Genre: Slice of Life/Dark/Comedy
Spoiled Rich/Chrysalis
4,798 Words
October 2022
There was nothing Spoiled Rich wanted that she didn’t already have. And if there wasn’t, money could get it. But a day where money can’t get what she wants, and where her past as Spoiled Milk catches up with her, serves to challenge that old belief.
This fic doesn’t really know what it wants to be (well, except for one thing: it is not a Comedy – the genre tag, she lies). It starts with Spoiled failing to convince two Crystal Prep seniors to support her husband’s latest cause, then moves to her travelling to a relative’s place while reminiscing with her butler Randolph on her past, then has a completely pointless diversion in the middle with another person, introducing threads that are never resolved, then picks up on the point of the visit again. And the connection between these threads, of her love for money battling with things she can’t buy, and things she won’t sell, never flies. It’s a chain of events with no cohesion, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.
That wouldn’t be a fic-killing issue if the individual scenes landed, but mostly they plod along with rote dialogue, slack prose, and minimal control of tone or atmosphere. In many instances, things are said in dialogue rather than implied or given in thoughts, where it would make more sense. Reads like a reformatted script more than anything (and not one written technically well to begin with). Also, just enough grammatical errors abound to stick in one’s impression of the fic.
Without a follow-up to reconcile the different threads here, or resolve the unresolved ones, this feels doubly incomplete due to being undernourished. A fine concept, but too scattershot and lax to produce any reaction.
Rating: Bad
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 2
Pretty Good: 0
Decent: 3
Passable: 0
Weak: 1
Bad: 2
a shame that comedy didn't work out
but Clap of Thunder sounds worth checking out sometime :)
Rock Beats was wonderful, although you don't have to work too hard to sell me on Cloudy Quartz fics.
Thanks for the review, Mike! Always a pleasure to hear your thoughts, especially now that the contest has ended and I can
pester you endlesslyenjoy them in greater detail.Much like a lot of my work, "The Trail of Your Failures Will Lead You to Memory" is set in melancholy. At this point I wonder if perhaps that is simply my default state when it comes to ideas--or if it is, instead, a kind of emotive "mode" I enter with even stories that have happier endings than some others. It makes me wonder if, perhaps, I play that hand either too well or too often. I certainly would not say I can write something funny, but darkness, its cousins, its fringes--these somewhat obscured, tremendously trepidations feelings--seem to easily graft themselves into my writing, in a way that makes sense, yet which leaves me to wonder what that may say about me.
To the latter point--I wonder if that largely has to do with the fact that the majority of ponyfics are happy and cheerful, and if that reflects really upon the source material than on anything else. It makes sense to engage with ponyfics and to write them in the "spirit" of the show (though I find that idea itself problematic for many reasons), so, like a kind of resonance, or feedback loop, more of the same "spirit" enters common publication. Obviously my work largely deviates from this commonality, and this piece is no different.
But to the former point--I don't know if it really is that rare. Or perhaps it has to do with varying interpretations of "clueless reader." In my experience, many short stories are all about that cluelessness--they draw the reader in by making them ask questions, and often times by leaving out answers. Minimalists especially (like Hemingway, Carver, Chekhov) rely on something else to keep their stories engaging, in spite of largely keeping secrets to their own. In some ways, I wonder if the art of the short story is, in effect and in essence, the art of mystery--not by the genre's conventions but by that mode's ability to intrigue, to draw in the reader in the first place.
Even before Coltoba emerged as the setting, that was definitely something I was aiming for. I like the idea of using every bit of craft in a surprising way. Plot, for example, might be re-contextualized as a form of structure, and setting as a form of theme or character. Strangely, I've never considered my literary hero Marquez to be the best at atmospheric writing--in my view, Lovecraft is pretty high up there actually--but other Spanish writers, like Borges and Fuentes, have explored setting as something more than the environment. Perhaps I picked up on them by complete accident.
Oh, yes, I definitely tipped my entire bucket of style with this story. I love the long sentence. I love the rhythm one gets with the proper cadence. I especially love the long translated sentences of Marquez and Tolstoy. This was definitely a story where I wanted to show off my appreciation for syntactical longevity, and I think I did a bit of a stronger job with it than in The Parable of the Toymaker or my other stylistically observant pieces. But I also reflect that some of the length led to some telly moments, and had I had the patience and fortitude to attempt a ninth draft, I would have gone over the sentences again to make sure they were not overt.
That's another thing, I will admit, I took from Marquez. He doesn't write dialogue all that much, relying mostly on straightforward narration. But he's good at it, really good, in a way that makes you forget that the story tends to be all reported and narrated from a limited third-person POV. I tried to emulate that a bit, though not too consciously, preferring to let an unseen narrator talk through Stormy. Essentially I sought a trail of non-free indirect discourse--because obviously the narrator is not quite Stormy Flare--that would lead a reader to "witnessing," rather than simply reading, the story.
Once again, I'm surprised by the story's reception. Despite how much effort I do put into my contest stories (the few that I have written, I mean), I tend not to think that they will last much beyond the contest itself. Perhaps that's part of why I don't enter a whole lot of contests in the first place--I am more interested in trying to see if a story can last beyond its own context.
"The Trail of Your Failures Will Lead You To Memory" was a fun experiment for me, and I am glad that you found it worthy of a Really Good rating. It makes me happy when another person is able to pick up on my little stylistic techniques and appreciate them, for I know that my kind of writing is quite different from most other ponyfic authors.
Thank you for the insight. It is better than the last persons.
I also removed the Comedy tag.
I do wonder if I did a rewrite should I delete the original or just delete my account. People have told me that writing is not my thing.
Thank you for not downvoting it more than it has already been hit.
Have a great day!
I kinda hate that you reviewed this because I'd planned on taking it down and reuploading it as a complete story, mostly because I wanted to get deeper into the family dynamic (e.g. Empire was supposed to become Taker's buddy, Grandpear was supposed to show up and have his own scene with Taker and Granny before she gives her speech, Jazz and Tango were meant to have like, any character at all.) and this is all before the second half of the story which was maybe vaguely hinted at.
Either way, thanks for the review. I am going to go back and fill in and finish this, so I'll let you know when that actually happens.
If you want to read any of my other stories, this is meant to fit in with all of my Bright Future stuff which features the Mane 6 all grown up and as parents.
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This referring to Bring Your Friend's Parent to Work Day, yeah? I grant others may have a higher tolerance for its brand of humour with no discipline or filter (and given its views and a Scouted EqD feature, they evidently do), but even they would find the total absence of dialogue tags where they're needed immersion breaking, to far too great a degree. That's pretty objective, least as written.
This contest had a lot of fics that were Rating StallsTM, as it were, with this one being this close to a Pretty Good. I suspect most folk, and especially yourself, will like it more than I did.
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Shrug, I had to read all entries off judging them, it took up a lot of reading time, my review backlog would have been on life support if I didn't turn them into reviews, and I wasn't going to only feature "some" fics. So, they're all here. What can I tell ya?
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We truly are like peas in a pod, Jarvy, you and I.
Truth be told, I wish this review had been longer; I had to read most of these fics and write up on them quick enough (I didn't anticipate a slower pace for most of the other judges, heh), so they generally came out short. For instance, this blog and last week's are only a couple percent longer than my usual ones, despite having three more stories. Even as I was polishing this for submission earlier, I was thinking "yeah, there was definitely more I could and should have said". But, you know, that time had passed, and I figured your lengthy reply would provide plenty more ammo anyway. And, I was right!
Well, on the one
handmitt, there's nothing inherently wrong having preferences and strengths and playing to them. On the other, you of course have greater writing aspirations than myself. And sure, writing reflects the writer, though I think this is more reflecting the kind of fiction you've studied and absorbed as opposed to your personality. I think.I mean, it might be a higher percentage that many fandoms, but I don't know if this holds water, looking around. Not unless one's threshold for "happy and cheerful" are much lower than most folks.
Heh, that probably just says more about you than anything else. Or that most people writing and reading Ponyfic are not well-read in classic fiction like yourself.
It's a curious quirk for sure, and not the easiest to judge, given one-shots traffic is invariably front-loaded in any case. But, I mean, you had your Maud poetry fic, that held well for itself. Also, I've read many stories that were technically contest entries over the years (not just this one!). I grant your fic hasn't gotten noticed much (an abstract cover, title, description and lack of a character tag for Stormy Flare will do that), but I think as far as doing a story that can stand strong no matter when the reader reads it, you done good, buddy.
I mean, I may not have picked up on the Marquez thing if you hadn't foregrounded that aspects and said as such in the long description/comments.
Well, that and reading Cammie as we iterated on it got me even more familiar with your writing quirks and stylistic preferences than I already was.
I haven't been able to comment on the results blog yet cause I wanna say something more than just "eyo congrats to the winners" but my absolute lack of time and comical lack of scheduling ability has prevented me from that up till now. Still! I keep saying that I will read at least the winners and I'll try to leave comments on them, since they seem to be horribly unappreciated, and I had a lot of fun with this contest. Genuinely extremely happy to see you're giving full reviews to all entrants; the participants deserve that and more.
(Also, shoutout to Lo, about the only other entry in the contest I could read before the results, which I loved endlessly. Looking forward to your review of that; it was absolutely spectacular and I am to this day a bit miffed it didn't place. Competition was harsh!)
As per my review, woo, good review. Glad you liked it! I had a lot of fun but I couldn't go whole hog on the story as I would have liked; I noticed pretty early that I didn't have the time nor the energy to make a Big Story so I made a point of keeping it as small-scale as possible so it wouldn't balloon out of my hands. I am genuinely glad I managed to keep it so laser-focused. Big win for me!
Also, I repeat what I once said in one of Loganberry's reviews -- I keep finding it funny how whenever they review me more than once, most reviewers eventually move from talking about the story per se to talking about me in particular. There's an innate aragon-ness to my stories; i suppose my voice is strong enough that, if you've read enough of me, "It's an Aragón story" sums it up pretty well. The fact that so far "it's an Aragón story" is used as a positive is a testament to how lucky I am. One of these days a reviewer will show up who genuinely cannot stand me, and our battle will shake the heavens.
Anyway back to writing comics. Woo. Keep on reviewing, this is great so far.