Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #65 · 7:00pm Jun 5th, 2023
Today’s blurb is prepped in advance, as I’m taking advantage of a bank holiday weekend here to catch Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse (film will be over by the time this goes up, ssh 
). Really hoping its masterful precursor and all the hype/word-of-mouth prove true, and that my mild worry on the more standard superhero plot and dialogue in the trailers is unwarranted.
You might have guessed, but as a ghost who lives floats and breathes glows for good animation, and especially good animated movies, I really need a film like this, in a world where theatrical American animation, except for the studios following Spider-Verse’s mantle in stylistic unrealism, is going more and more to the diamond dogs. Disney Animation has been more or less dead quality-wise post-Moana. Pixar isn’t much better despite backing off on sequels for a while. Blue Sky is shuttered, Laika’s financial woes seem to have curtailed or at least slowed their output, and Illumination is, well, Illumination. Only DreamWorks and Sony are excelling, and both of them still alternate between sturdy and rickety screenplays even as the films visually wow. Mayhaps next week, I’ll say some more on Across the Spider-Verse or this trend (or in the comments off anyone who has, should such a discussion start, though I may just as easily postpone).
Side note for nerd trivia: this film is 140 minutes. I am only aware of one other mainstream theatrical American animated feature over two hours long, that being Ralph Bakski’s 1978 The Lord of the Rings at 133 minutes (I’ve read that six other anime features still have this beat worldwide, but that’s all I could find). A part of me wonders if it’s actually longer once the lengths of the credits are compared, but that’s besides the point. Animation is so expensive that it’s almost never longer than it has to be (that, and the younger target audience); for a mainstream animated film, even one really for teens and adults, to not only inch past the 2 hours mark but by twenty whole minutes? And bring with it the extra $10 million-odd it must have cost Sony? And for a film that is technically the first part of a conclusion next Spring (but more elegantly then when a Young Adult novel adaption does it, of course)? You know there has to be a darn good reason for it.
Don’t want to drag out the non-Ponyfic part of the blurb, especially when there’s stuff to say on the Ponyfic front there. Time for an author spotlight! And the second-last one on the schedule. This time it’s a user whom I used to read nearly everything from in my pre-review days, Casketbase77. As another mid-2019 joiner whom, debut fic excepted, only wrote after the show had ended, I found my religiously captivated by his Snippet Series, where he and his friend Str8aura wrote an anthology of one-shots based around interesting MLP fanart pictures they found. In essence, they were writing exploration pieces, be that of character, theme, or a situation, and while that and their short length (average of 3K from their first year of these fics) did often put something of a ceiling on them, just as often they brought quirky and unique ideas to the table. Sometimes the technical style was simple, sometimes complex, but always easily digestible.
Moreover, the pieces were always entertaining and fun. I’m rather sad that my review policy over the past year has left me unable to easily dip into his newer works when I feel like it (though not reviewing one till now is fully on me), but the upshot if I’ve got plenty to go back through, and to come to still. And, as I understand it, while he does still write Snippet stories more recently, his output consists of other stuff two, and it broadens his scope beyond being “a writer of really good stories of the nice and cute variety”.
Today’s stories are mostly from the Snippets, the three I’ve read being from his first season, and another more recent, with one longer non-snippet story rounding out the lot and getting us over the 20K minimum I always set. Yep, no need for inflation between five stories this week! Though there was some temptation there. Best save the temptation for you lot and these stories, I think.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Pipp of Theseus by Casketbase77
Be Yourself by Casketbase77
The Tale of Maredusa by Casketbase77
Stop Number Twelve by Casketbase77
Cover to Cover by Casketbase77
Weekly Word Count: 22,406 Words
Pipp of Theseus by Casketbase77
Genre: Slice of Life (Alternate Universe)
Pipp, Zipp
2,438 Words
April 2022Listened to via StraightToThePointStudio's reading
In the midst of yet another livestream for her viewers, an incident involving a particularly annoying fly causes Pipp to slip for a moment. When her viewers notice her pupils being a different colour, she is quick to cover it up with a believable reason, yet the slip cannot help but make her reflect on her past. And that the lie about royals being able to fly isn’t the only lie she’s been living…
As far as merging several concepts together that make for a good conceptual fit, this one has a lot going for it. Taking the myriad of pupil palettes Pipp has had had in G5 media off of slipshod coordination and Q&A (seriously, if they were all different media, that’d be one thing, but the two on the right above are both for Make Your Mark), and reviving the old “x is a changeling” fandom trope is bold enough; that it also gives justifications for Pipp’s different wings and small body size in a malnourished changeling guessing at what a pony is like and having to stick with is another. And what creature would have a better justification for leeching others’ adoration for an influencer? And it’s not just the concepts; from a name connection, to turns of phrase, to how the flashbacks Pipp has of being found and barely being alive, the execution is there.
That doesn’t extend to everything – the reasoning for how Pipp became a member of the royal family doesn’t even come close to flying. The story’s concept still forces a lot of putrid sludge modernity on us (there’s an Among Us reference, for crying out loud), and while a lot of this is done in part for irony reasons in the setup, there were better ways to reach it then this. Moreso, the fic alludes to many events far more interesting then the main narrative, and between that and the fragmented approach to the flashbacks and backstory, the momentum and tone are left in ribbons by the end, with little beyond a vague, driftless melancholy feeling as a takeaway.
So, a toss-up. The more one is open to feeling sympathetic for Pipp (this is a good concept for that, but still needs a willing reader), and for a different take on “x is a changeling”, the more they’ll vibe with this. That said, amazing that only a year on, pre-TYT/MYM fics like this feel all the fresher, born from a time when the lack of post-movie media left at least some interesting avenues open (it’s telling that nearly all post-movie fics I read before those shows arrived had the Mane 5 continuing to live separately; logic and avenues for gradual, interesting growth just come naturally for fanfic writers as a collective sometimes). So this did get me weirdly nostalgic, in its own small way.
Rating: Passable
Be Yourself by Casketbase77
Genre: Slice of Life
Rainbow Dash, Spike
2,554 Words
September 2020Reread
Painting anonymously by mail ain’t much of a living, but it’s perfect for a pony desperate to make sure no one recognises her very-recognisable face from the famous saviour of Equestria. For she’s an exact match, save the lack of wings. And this system has worked so well for two years running, that even the order of a painting of Rainbow Dash herself from one of her friends, though causing much introspection, doesn’t change things. That is, until the end result is collected in person…
For all that stories of a mirror pool clone who escaped Twilight’s purge in “Too Many Pinkie Pies” are more common than flies sometimes, I don’t believe I’ve read one of another Mane 6 copy grappling with sharing the appearance and base personality of their source. And that’s only one difference: perhaps wisely, the actual details of how Rainbow here came to be are mostly left to implication and only briefly summarised in a confession towards the end that is far more of a character moment and thus distorted as fits the perspective. Any longer would have dragged it down; if anything, the form in which it is presented is brief and tragic. As it should be; the explanation makes sense, but Casket knows that you can’t make that interesting without making the pony interesting.
And interesting she is, a deft blend of Dash’s speed and brashness with no real confidence outside of her painting ability and a constant fear of being found out, showing again mostly through implication how her reacting to memories not hers would have shaped her. As for the meat of the story, it concerns Spike finding her out but being both understanding yet also knowing enough about Dash to correctly pin how to comfort her, while correcting his mistakes as he goes. Curiosity gives way to easing her discomfort. His characterisation is very nearly as sublime, nailing a Season Eight-era level of assurance about him while keeping the nuance he’s shown at his best, making a dynamic with the Mane 6 he shared the least interactions with onscreen fit with this similar-yet-quite-different mare.
Being a Snippet exploration wrapping up at 2.5K, there’s not much else to this content wise, but between a tone that keeps this quite investable while not pushing this into Drama with a capital D territory, complete with deft and tight handling of the perspective viewpoints, this has a lot going for it, and is one of Casket’s more satisfying one shots that would seem too short to really make much of its subject matter. Not notably so with this one!
Rating: Pretty Good
The Tale of Maredusa by Casketbase77
Genre: Thriller
Shining Armor, Flurry Heart
4,719 Words
May 2020Reread
Shining Armor is well used to reading bedtime stories to his daughter Fluffy Heart. So used to it that he doesn’t bat an eyelid at her wanting to read a different book from the usual tonight, nor at the cover of a gorgon-like unicorn on the cover. No, it takes the actual contents of the book, a thriller a mite too intense for a filly her age, to raise his alarm bells. But he also knows better than to think he can get away with stopping the reading cold, and thus presses on, praying the chapter break is just around the next page.
Pretty standard hook, no doubt, but one thing that makes the wraparound material work is the depictions of Flurry Heart. She’s neither in that precarious innocence when she’s rather young nor the warped cynicism or snark usually shown when she’s older. Yet all while still being absolutely the kind of filly who’d want bedtime stories, and can’t quite parse the confusing feelings and questions this one leaves her with, and needs an adult to work through it with her. Oh, and she’s able to stand her ground and butt heads with said adult.
Then there’s the actual story within, which earns points just for feeling like one chapter of a larger work without the resolute incompleteness that often accompanies such depictions. Largely this is for being framed as the intro chapter of such a novel, introducing the characters and internal plight if not the actual plot (though it would also make a stellar intro chapter for an actual fanfic about the character too). But it’s because of how its true purpose, the character Maredusa’s purported arc, ends up being a reflection of what Flurry goes through in the present with Shining. A story-within-a-story where both are equally interesting and reinforce each other without being aggressive in how they do it – that’s a rare sight indeed (plus, they both have mysteries as to how this came to be – Flurry getting the book, and Maredusa becoming her true form), which make the words zip by and the cross-cutting keep a marvellous pace going, important for one of Casket’s longer snippets. Being nearly two stories in one, it certainly doesn’t feel that way.
Helps that, even purely on its own, the Maredusa story-teaser is plenty captivating, a great take on incorporating the gorgon from Greek Mythology into MLP’s more character-centric approach (it’s the furthest thing from a straight adaption), to the point the longer work would probably read as a tragedy. It’s certainly what I remembered the most about this particular fic, coming back to it. For being a great darker-and-therefore-better-for-them children’s story, and making the story we’re reading that contains it much the same, this is a very strong outing.
And those wanting to know how the novel actually ends? Well, Casket wraps it and several other of his Snippet series fics that felt deserving of continuations up in a finale fic (not reviewed this week, alas), if you want more after taking this one in.
Rating: Pretty Good
Stop Number Twelve by Casketbase77
Genre: Drama/Slice of Life
Maud, DJ P0N-3
8,435 Words
May 2022
To say Maud Pie is a mare of mystery would be an understatement. She keeps just about all her burdens under wraps, to a degree even those close to her and who truly know her can’t fathom. Thus it is that even as the inside of her mind is screaming to not respond in her dull monotone with plain responses or tangents about rocks, that is all that comes out as she boards a bus bound for the family home. Yet when a face she vaguely recognises boards, the foundation veers on the precipice of cracking. Will anything come of it before the commute is over?
It’s testimony to how brilliant the characterisation of Maud here is that the long description can quote all five judges of the May 2022 Pairings contest, which this tied for third in, saying variations on “the best Maud/one of the best Mauds I’ve ever read”, and live up to the hype. The ingredients seem simple enough: cutting between inner thoughts of what she wants to say/doesn’t want to say with what she actually says (kept sporadic enough to land effectively when used on one hand, a self-loathing of how badly she wants to be open and extroverted yet simply can’t on the other, all at the margins of her observing, and occasionally conversing to ill-effect with, the other passengers of varying quirks on this journey home. Plus interspersed with reflections on herself, some brief and others long yet never feeling like tangents or cross-cutting with past events to crudely inject pacing into the proceedings.
What brings these all together is how moody the fic is in its atmosphere. There isn’t a moment that Maud’s headspace ceases to feel lived-in in a manner I’ve hardly ever seen, and instead of complicating the simple heart of the characters feel and emotions, it all serves to make it feel more real. This makes the unusual ideas resonate all the stronger, and the offbeat passengers who we only get a vague feel of, being from Maud’s perspective, feel all the more unique, ranging from a fashion zebra to an excited donkey and her charge, among others. The effect is so strong that even the expected turn at the very end feels organic and natural, as does Vinyl moving from a peripheral figure and this story’s take on her vocal demeanour.
I haven’t even gotten to the true masterstroke, which is the use of public transport as a framing device with a set destination number. Six stops to the story gives it a structure that could be obtrusive and inelegant, yet you barely notice it. This in spite of the effect it has, from the gap between each stop priming us for some shakeup such that a slow-burn fic feels like it’s never lets up, to the longest flashback giving way to a rest stop doing the polar opposite for Maud, to the particular ways things. The sustainability and structure form a perfect backbone here.
I have exactly one problem with this story, and “problem” isn’t even the right word. Nearly every purpose the bus serves for this story could have been fulfilled by the train with only minimal word changes, and nearly all the few bits that would require a little more work still conjured ready-made solutions as I read. I know, nothing’s as dour as reading about someghost annoyed at modern Earth technology intruding on his ideal fantasy Equestria, but you gotta own your biases. The kick is, the story gains undeniable power from being on such a smaller rickety vehicle and forcing a closer-knit space for the passengers, so being on a train may well have robbed it of some effect. No clear winner, but the effect is stellar enough for me to shrug off the itch having a bus gives me.
Small pickings, that; the end result is marvellous, and shows excellent restraint both in keeping the pairing not just platonic but also a side-dish to Maud’s dilemma herself. Thus letting the counterpoint of how Maud sees Vinyl relative to when they last met, and the reality of her assumption, all against someone else with personal expression issues, feel like the perfect reinforcement to the main story rather than struggling to be the main element and diluting the rest, as often is the case with these pairing stories. It’s a small but irreplaceable element, in other words. For such a powerfully-realised and intimate eternal struggle that is never difficult to read, fully realised, and still ends on an upbeat note preceding naturally from the main content, this was truly wonderful. Evidently I need to read more of Casket’s newer works, if this is what he’s producing lately!
Rating: Excellent
Cover to Cover by Casketbase77
Genre: Slice of Life
Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Lightning Dust
4,260 Words
June 2020Reread
Letting Rainbow Dash convince Twilight for a temporary fusion spell to speed-clean the Wonderbolts’ files wasn’t the worst idea. In fact, it may have worked a little too well: even after everything is said and done, the resulting Speed Reader has a half-hour to mooch about before separating back to her two other halves. Good thing she’s in charge, and not the personalities of either of her halves. Because when she finds an intruder ransacking the barracks for something, Speed Reader lives up to her name, and pegs what’s going on with the desperate former Wonderbolt cadet right away.
I didn’t remember until towards the end of the story that this is technically a sequel to Casket’s prior Three Bolded Words in its portrayal of Lightning Dust. But it is correctly not marked as such, for not only are the necessary details all present here, they come across mostly in such a way as to not feel like they’re summarising a pre-existing story. Even though said aspects are told in an exposition dump, it still feels a natural part of this.
Though that is also the one big issue with the story: it has a rather ungainly POV drift when the two meet. One that would be graceful enough, except it ends up just dumping info in a manner counterpoint to much of the rest of the story, robbing the intrigue and mystique present from the portrayal of Speed Reader. Doing a fused pony that is deliberately not “two people wrestling with the controls, but one personality with aspects of both” and being acknowledged as such in-universe isn’t that original an idea, but it works really well both before and after that moment. Casket states this was done to really get us into Lightning’s headspace for the moment, and it does work to a degree, but so does the later parts when we’re back with Speed, so the compromise doesn’t feel unavoidable.
That said, the story’s bigger gamble, of diverting a fun fusion hijinks story (which never stops providing jokes and amusing asides) to a tragedy-adjacent comfort of somepony scarred by a problem they don’t know how to fix, and who is desperate for anything that might help their case… that very much pays off. Speed’s characterisation never forgets her origins, revelling in the absurd superpowers of a super-fast reader with perfect memory, and even plays into how she might sympathise with another who has an unfixable problem stuck with since birth.
The POV drift does plague this one more than I remembered, but otherwise, it’s another effective and fast-paced story equal parts amusing and probing. Easy to see why it’s Casket’s second-most viewed story!
Rating: Pretty Good
NOTE: Casket, you might want to know: in Cover to Cover, an embedded picture in the middle of the chapter has expired. Consider this your friendly update that you might want to refresh it! 
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 1
Really Good: 0
Pretty Good: 3
Decent: 0
Passable: 1
Weak: 0
Bad: 0
well! You got that Maredusa (love the name!) story onto my RIL, and the Maud one onto my RIN! :D This stuff sounds good!
An author I'm definitely interested in reading more from, so nice timing on the author spotlight, Mike! Obviously one fic here stands out particularly, and it's one I don't think I've even glanced at before. As far as buses go, does the fic specifically mention it's a motorised bus? Because if not, I can accept it given there's a kind-of-a bus in "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" -- the one that AJ as "Mare Do Well" stops from going over a cliff.
5731901
You know the fics have sold well when Present “my backlog is so large and I’m so busy I almost never add stories that aren’t listenable via an audio reader I listen to” Perfect adds two of them! I did lead with me being a regular reader of his stuff a few years ago for a reason!
And the Maredusa story was one of those “THIS close to being a Really Good to the point I’m still weighing if I made the right call” kind of stories. It certainly was the pick of the litter here after the excellent Maud one, though really, outside of the opening Pipp one (only one I didn’t pick specifically with this week in mind, if you couldn’t tell
), everything here was well above the “worth the read” threshold. Author knows how to write short stories. 
Whether they are ambitious or more carefree, Casket’s one-shots just hit a very satisfying and snugly sweet spot, and I’m confident to say you largely can’t go wrong picking one out at random. For a 2019 author with barely 400 followers, he has 4 stories in the top 1000, and 2 with no dislikes, which largely doesn’t happen without being broadly pleasing and consistent. Now that I’ve checked off a decent chunk of the rereads, I’m hoping to have a fic of his semi-frequently just to work my way back through them, and get to some of his newer stuff (I’ve read 28 of his 48 stories, so that might take a while…).
5731919
…
I am pretty certain there was no mention of how the bus operated (though contextual clues do rule out it being horse-pulled a lá the Season 1 trains, at least), so this is a very valid point that has thoroughly put me in my place.
It’s still not a full solve for it not being on a train (Rockville only being six bus stops form Ponyville, even of the “coach bus” variety, when it needs a train in the show, and thus why they normally take a train there, that’s a thing), but it is more than enough for me to handwave the rest, given the story and structural effect the use of a bus provided, and withdraw my prior objection to the matter.
Thankfully I was already filing it under personal preference to begin with, and the story hit the top rating anyway. So it’s all good!
Sometimes it all works out, doesn’t it? As I noted to Present Perfect below/above, this is an author you (very nearly) can’t really go wrong with picking out a story at random, I find. I believe he is what official call a “flashfic expert”.
They even wrote one of the very first G5 stories I read that rather impressed me, way back in October 2017. Another accolade to their résumé!
Wow. At the very least, this is a colossal confidence boost. At the very most, its a fire lit under my butt to get back to my regular frequent uploads. I do aim to please.
Yeah, I agree that the premise for Pipp Of Theseus has more holes in it than a changeling leg. I banged that story out two days after a friend dared me to tackle the absurd premise. To my eternal embarrassment, the result got tons of attention. Stop Number Twelve meanwhile is a labor of love that I was super sad to see flop upon release. I'm overjoyed to know it resonated with those like you who spared time to read it.
The choice of a bus was my attempt to make the fic feel more blue collar and Earth Pony-ish. Between your critique here and another commenter harrumphing over the driver's puffing cigarettes, it sounds like I did indeed go too far with the working class trappings. Oh well. At least the risky reinterpretation of Maud worked well. That's more important.
Okay, I'll stop reveling in the attention of this post and head off to bed. I did correct the embedded image in Cover To Cover. Dumb old Imgur just isn't a reliable site. Thanks a million for your kind words of praise. Creativity willing, I'll have a fresh upload this coming Thursday. one that is actually a direct sequel to a story reviewed here. Stay tuned!
Wow! A few to add to my list, and an author I didn't know. Nice!
5731957
And please you do – I’ve been a regular reader of yours since near the end of Season One of your Snippets. Though you’ll forgive me for not having commented before – in my pre-review days, I was terrible for lurking. Still kinda am outside of this space.
Being frank, I almost certainly wouldn’t have read it were it not from an author I know for delivering on quirky explorations of oddities in pictures, be they from canon or not. That and having a reading to listen it to.
I mean, I won’t lie, the primary reason I picked it was because I needed a longer fic to have the total word count over 20K, and it appealed the most of your longer one-shots (I needed one at least 6K). Though the endorsements from all the judges of the 2022 Original Pairings contest certainly helped my decision. And the gamble paid off! So while I do understand why it’s not the easy sell to folks many of your works are, I’m honoured to recommend it… to all of the 10-20 extra views my blog will net it.
On the contrary, I quite liked the working-class feel, down to the cigarettes used by the driver, and appreciated what it did for the piece. Watching a steady diet of British sitcoms, the epitome of the working class, will do that.
And as I replied to Logan above, the quasi-canon use of a bus does dilute my original objection somewhat as it is.
Not even slightly reliable, I find! And the resulting image caught me off guard; I know the story had described Speed Reader as a giant, but even then I mentally defaulted to “the size of Celestia”. Not somepony as bigger than Celestia as she is to Luna!
Though that might fit if this is far enough in the future where Dash is Wonderbolts captain and Twilight has alicorn-grown (
can you tell I don’t care for the last few years and end result of the show?) to about Luna’s size. Cause then it’s 1.5 + 1 ponies in size. Sort of.
…I may have given this too much thought.
You don’t say…
I may have to bear that in mind – I never publish a review of a story within a month of its publication or having last looked at the author, to avoid monopolizing the variety here, but there’s nothing stopping me reading it right away and stockpiling the review for later. We’ll see how that goes… 