Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #69 · 5:00pm Jul 3rd, 2023
*Sigh*… You ever just have one of those weeks? I literally haven’t read any Ponyfic since last week’s Monday Musings, and while I have enough stockpiled that I’m not nearly scrambling yet, in general, my prepared reviews and word count of fics therein has shrunk gradually but consistently this year. Today puts it below 200K and across less than 30 stories. I might not be getting the novel-length fics here as soon as I’d hoped.
Sometimes, you just have days where outside events or your own internal mood conspire to keep you off reading any fiction writing, is all. It’s just rare to happen on this many consecutive days. And my week and weekend wasn’t too busy for it, though I had enough going on that, depending on which hobbies one considers purposeful and which one considers wasteful, I didn’t waste time away. Just the way things went.
…Why yes, this is also a week where I’m very parched for interesting intros. Parched like the stuffy summer air lingering about. Why do you ask?
I’m determined not to compromise the resulting output you all see, not yet. Nothing to do for it but to redouble my efforts, and get the backlog back up. In the meantime, to stave off this pleasant/stuffy summer weather, let’s lighten the mood and the air with some normal Ponyfics and my take therein.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Princess Celestia's Private Library by Shrink Laureate
This Lonesome Cattle Call by Loganberry
The Next Iron Pony by Vis-a-Viscera
The Courtship Catastrophe by Dianwei32
Airshipping Is Magic by Blueshift
Weekly Word Count: 39,249 Words
Princess Celestia's Private Library by Shrink Laureate
Genre: Slice of Life (w/Sex)
Celestia, OC
6,158 Words
February 2017Listened to via Illya Leonov's reading
To say Princess Celestia has inspired ponies of all shapes and sizes would be a vast understatement. Over the centuries, untold writers, poets, musicians and artists have made all sorts of depictions and tributes to her. And she has collected a hefty chunk of it in her personal, private library. Now, she has summoned a Canterlot book publisher to transcribe, print and preserve it all, in two years, under absolute secrecy. Partly because some of it’s heavily pornographic (when you’re a living god among mortals, it happens more than you’d think), but also because some of it contains deep secrets, or would pierce her public image.
You can rest easy about the pornographic art aspect; it’s purely as window dressing for the concept to make it more breathed-in early on, and only referenced openly – never explicit, so the equivalent of cutting away from it – for as long as it needed to get the point across. And to produce humour from Celestia’s nonchalant take on the volume of the stuff. After the early setup, it’s never focused on again; the Teen tag is accurate.
That leaves everything else, and everything else is pretty darn great. It would be all too easy to make a laundry list of the things on offer here done well – good poetry and excellent Old English, the right perspective and balance of a character discovering truths from the show’s opening episode via implication and piecing it together rather than from a clumsy monologue, Celestia at her best moody/self-doubt self, meditation on her motives and what she needs to be for Equestria, and all while following an OC doing their duty and having vignettes humorous and telling along the way. Sounds like a melting pot that would be a pacing nightmare, nothing shining through in the right way, and yet it all largely does. Granted, that’s because some of these aspects are brief – the poetry and Old English confined to two scene openers, for instance – but when they are, they serve their purpose.
The printer pony’s perspective is key to all this. Full of questions and heavy confusion early on, especially when he knows of the authors of some of the work he’s seeing. He comes to roll with it a bit more, yet is always contemplative and a bit timid in his own way which makes him an excellent guide, and the vignette approach to much of it lets the sheer density of the fic and the many throwaway observations and bits land. The end result of him working it out off some things Celestia’s drops manages to not just be another rote “Celestia shares her past with someone moment”, but feel like a conclusion by keeping his perspective and relying mostly on implication, far more powerful than any direct dialogue from Celestia. And the last scenes afterwards seal it.
If this is in any way indicative of Shrink Laureate’s work (I have read one other story of theirs before in my pre-review days, Time Enough, which netted a Pretty Good), an author many have vouched for as a reliable paragon of excellence, I absolutely must check out more of their work, even as much of it doesn’t look personally appealing to me. This was a fantastic take on a novel concept leading to some more common ones carried off just as well, and only a few bumpy passages in the choices of scene therein (there’s an outdoor one that serves no purpose and doesn’t really produce any laughs or further immersion) holds it back from the top rating.
Rating: Really Good
This Lonesome Cattle Call by Loganberry
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life
Fluttershy, Twilight, Applejack
1,225 Words
April 2022
Fluttershy’s got herself the Critter Concert Classic coming up, and has enlisted Twilight Sparkle to help organise it for her. All seems to be in order, until a massive series of unbelievable contrivances combine to leave them short of enough performers. Enter Applejack, with just the solution they need. At least, until it opens up another issue with its own cascading list of problems…
I normally like dumb joke fics, and this is absolutely one of those, but it’s one of those breeds where I am not the audience, being a feghoot, meaning it finished in a terrible pun. And when I literally did not understand the final punchline and had to have it explained to me, I seriously considered not reviewing this fic at all. I certainly wouldn’t have read it were it not written by my good friend Loganberry. After a while, though, I figured I had enough to say about the preceding 1K and change to make it worthwhile.
The fic, as mentioned, is still a dumb joke fic, so the list of reasons why everypony else is unavailable goes over fine, as does a sort of heightened frustration and limited common sense on the part of most parties involved (even a borderline-insulting sideswipe at Spike manages to, if not work, at least fit and not offend). As does the reason for the problem thereafter. Frankly, it does feel frustrating that the titular aspect is only a plot point and not an actual focus here; literally everything about this fic is engineered for the end punchline, and you do feel that as you read it. Yet, I will concede, it’s in a way that telegraphs a punchline is coming, yet not what it will be. That deserves props, even if the fic is otherwise merely technically competent and structurally rigid.
Applejack’s characterisation, which hits an agreeable-within-this-tonal-space balance of being headset yet gentle in asserting herself as so, came across pretty well. That worked, more than Fluttershy and Twilight, who came across as largely just plot vehicles.
I’ve evidently made an absolute hash out of looking at a fic I barely get even after explanation (and for something written and intended to be a quickie with no ambitions other then grinning at the terrible joke, so I feel kind of bad even being critical of it), Overall, though, if you like feghoots, this should be up your alley. Otherwise, eh. Worse ways to spend a couple of minutes and 1.2K.
Rating: Passable
The Next Iron Pony by Vis-a-Viscera
Genre: Drama/Random/Slice of Life
Fluttershy
1,680 Words
November 2022
Fluttershy is running. She has to. And the only way she can keep going, besides cycling through the techniques to keep herself from collapsing, is to remind herself just what it is she’s running for.
Nothing quite as dramatic as all that, in reality, though in the moment for Fluttershy, it can feel that way. The first half is one of those stories really locked in a character’s physical and mental space, where you feel every quaking muscle in Fluttershy’s body even though she’s not letting up. More than that, though, it’s the progress of her doubts and then getting a second wind – in concept no different than any such situation in the show, but here made into a more intimate, personal and fiery sort in a way only carefully crafted prose can do. The second half, once Fluttershy’s running has concluded, is in effect more of a wind down and context setter for what was going on, but while it’s certainly not as striking, it being more sedate and normal is so obviously the point that it doesn’t register as weaker.
Nothing shocking or too unusual to the notions or meat of what happens here, but the technical execution leaves it all feeling rather sublime and a great touch to a pony’s battle with personal growth and self-realisation. A simple and short one-shot with quite a lot of power.
Rating: Pretty Good
The Courtship Catastrophe by Dianwei32
Genre: genres
Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Spike
28,989 Words
February 2014
You wouldn’t think Rainbow Dash would be much of a teacher, but if it’s about flying (or Daring Do trivia), you’d be hard-pressed to find a better coach. She’s so good, it’s a wonder Twilight hasn’t already learned all she needs from her friend. Only Dash, naturally, is missing the forest for the trees: Twilight well knows how to fly by now and is only feigning sloppiness in order to spend time with the pony she’s hopelessly smitten by. Which would be fine, except Dash is dating Applejack right now. And she’s far sharper than Dash at reading ponies…
That’s a hook far more enticing for the hopeless romantics in the crowd, but it’s compelling enough for this aromantic spirit, especially with cover art like that. The base plot, while definitely in possession of more than a few cracks and not exactly fulfilling of that promise is mostly sturdy, with the proper emotional swings hit, from Applejack and Dash’s resulting anger (and I liked how Dash wasn’t angry at first until the worse info was revealed), to Twilight’s shame, to the awkwardness even in trying to smooth things over afterward all present. And Spike being present not just as a side prop or butt of jokes, but an active player of action, hits me where I live.
Sadly, the merits dry up pretty hard there. The fic isn’t sloppy, exactly, but it suffers quite badly from execution in both the macro and micro, largely in ways common to the hyper-focused romance fic. Dialogue ranges from being competently in-character and lively to being placeholder outline lines, the latter dominating during any lengthy talk. The characterisation is similarly mixed: Dash fares quite well (and gets most of the comedy, not just from dense moments either), but the other two feel like plot props more often than not. Applejack is her usual indifferently serious T-rated fic depiction, veering from being horny with Dash in private to rather un-AJ rage, sometimes having spirit but never the liveliness she’s known for. Poor Twilight, meanwhile, especially off knowingly faking being bad at something, a rather tough pill to swallow for such a studious, academic pony (the premise would be far smoother were this accidental) is just a lovestruck mush without even what snark she had by Season 4.
These bumps would be forgivable if the scenes were lively and fun, and they sometimes are. Most of the time, though, Sianwei32 is at a loss for how to write them except to mechanically clomp though the plot, with all the tell-y narration and ungainly perspective shifts you’ve probably already guessed that make the often rather dull chapters even duller.
And then there’s a lot of the common clichés common to these kinds of “romance first” fics. Do you want to bet everything and everyone that is around is sidelined without comment if they’re not directly involved in the story? You bet! Pinkie and Fluttershy never appear, the other Apples are technically present in some scenes but always brushed past without mention even when you’d think they’d have something to say. No lived-in world is this, just a boxed-in canvas for the plot. Even Spike falls prey to this, only appearing in library scenes where his absence would be noticeable.
Add to that the usual array of mangled pacing that drags out dramatic talks with no flair and leaves much of the actual growth between scenes (both intentionally or not), right down to time-jumping past the major decision for an unearned punchline at the end, and you’ve got a very underwhelming romance fic. Outside of Dash’s portrayal, there’s nothing here that isn’t inconsistent and wobbly in execution, and often veering more towards the bad side of that line. Heavy romance fans can bump it up a tier, but for folks like me, the few positive points aren’t remotely worth the rest.
Rating: Weak
Airshipping Is Magic by Blueshift
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Random (Alternate Universe)
Twilight, Trixie
1,197 Words
January 2012Reread
If Twilight and Trixie were zeppelins, and in love, how much would that change their relationship? Well, depending on your point of view, either a lot or not at all.
Blueshift’s most famous “pony is x” fic, this marks the latest case of me coming effectively cold to a fandom classic (I don’t remember a thing from when I would have read it before), and having to weigh how it holds up now and for me. Yet I don’t know if I’ve ever done it for a fic this short. And when a fic is this short (rightly so, in this case), and a random crackfic bordering on trolling the reader, it’s hard to grapple with.
It does all the things you’d expect; play the facts straight of Twilight being an airship with reflected details of her life from the show transported to this context, drop Trixie in and have their egos brush off one another, then have things get more intimate. All played straight expect for the fact of them being airships. And all the terribly brilliant puns.
I mean, hay, there’s enough in here for this to qualify as an airship clop story, and yet I liked it. That alone says a lot. I don’t know that I’d go above that (I think you have to really adore dumb humour of have seen firsthand the fic’s influence for that) – even among “pony being x” stories, to say nothing of his other work I’ve read, Blueshift moved above this early quality pretty quick into his career (it was first written in April 2011) – but I’m glad I read it.
Rating: Decent
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 1
Pretty Good: 1
Decent: 1
Passable: 1
Weak: 1
Bad: 0
That one was a t-r-e-a-t. Inspired me to undertake a dive into Old English for my own work, and I haven't regretted it ever since. I wish more fanfiction were sort of leading you to want to learn more, you know? Works like these are the best, in every genre of fiction
Best wishes to the author
Absolutely no surprise which of today's bunch rated highest! I haven't actually read Shrink Laureate's fic yet, but I will certainly do so. FWIW I've read three of their stories: two got four stars and one three. Certainly an author I'd have no qualms reading something more from.
As for This Lonesome Cattle Call... well, yeah -- if the punchline of a feghoot doesn't land, that's a much bigger hit than a similar problem would be for many other fics. I'm certainly not saying I think it was a particularly great story -- as you know, it was written after a long writing drought, and of the two stories I wrote in fairly quick succession (this and We Are the Everfree) I doubt anyone much would make this their preference. Still, if the punchline had landed it might have scored a little higher, but that's the risk you always run with this kind of fic. I'd probably only give it a "Decent" myself, and I like feghoots. So a fair review, as always from you -- thanks!
Princess Celestia's Private Library was a delightful story for me in several regards, not least of which is the absolute inevitability of its central concept. Of course there would be such works, and of course they would contain NSFW material. That the archaic language is done well is a balm to my soul.
Shrink Laureate v. gud, can confirm