Underappreciated Author Spotlight: Mike Cartoon Pony · 12:19am Aug 6th, 2023
I think I first encountered Mike Cartoon Pony due to him frequently commenting on Loganberry's Louder Yay! blog. Then he branched into posting episode reviews on his own blog and later fic reviews. Sprinkled amongst all that was some writing. Why you should read it, after the break.
Mike posted his first story in 2020, when the fandom had shrunk substantially. Three of them are Jinglemas stories, and the other two are contest entries, so maybe it takes some sort of prompt to get him going? That's fine. That's often what it takes to get me writing these days, too. But with the lower audience and posting only five stories in five years, it's perhaps understandable that he hasn't gotten a lot of attention.
So first: ping the blog. Mike posts a fic review blog every Monday, and that's worth a follow right there. He's like Loganberry in that his ratings skew high. That's not a criticism; what I mean by it is that all but the lowest couple ratings mean he still liked the story, so in conflating it to a numerical rating, getting a 3 or 4 out of 10 is still a positive. At least that's my impression of it, but Mike himself will no doubt stop by to confirm. There's a pretty extensive discussion of each story, so even if you don't agree with the rating, there's still a lot to think about and a lot of feedback for authors, provided they read it. There, and also especially on Loganberry's blog, Mike has lots of interesting details about episode production: changes to the scripts, scene edits, etc.
To the stories, though. Since there are only five of them, I can go through them all. In fact, I've already read three and so only had to tackle the newest pair for the complete set.
First up, we have Shouldering a Holiday Burden, written as a Jinglemas gift. After reading the front-page synopsis, it's pretty obvious where the story will go and how it gets there, but that's pretty standard for Jinglemas fics. You don't want to depress someone with one, after all, unless the person requesting it specifically asked for it to be that way, I suppose.
The Young Six are traveling home for winter break, and Silverstream in particular is planning to attend a yearly festival. but while wrapping up her semester, she overhears something about Gallus that she's not supposed to. And while trying to rectify that, she again becomes an inadvertent eavesdropper. Now she wants to include him in her own celebration while tiptoeing around her reasons for it.
Characterization is the big draw here. Mike gets the various characters' voicing right, which is essential in a low-ish-key drama like this. The plot even takes a nice direction in Silverstream not taking on the burden for all this herself. Which isn't to say she doesn't take responsibility. Quite the opposite, and it was a well-considered element to have her discuss the implications of her involvement with the appropriate school staff so they can make sure she's not going down a harmful path. The way they have her reason through it by aligning it with specifics from the curriculum was a great touch, in that it adds legitimacy to the institution. I mean... a school of friendship? That's an awfully big endeavor for something that would seem to be... self-explanatory? Easy to deal with one-on-one with the few kids who couldn't work it out on their own? It did a lot more to justify the school's existence than the show ever did.
Then comes putting that plan into action. I've written a story like this as well, so I appreciate the thought put into it. It's not as simple as asking Gallus to go along with her plan. She knows he's very set in the way he thinks about things, so it takes a good amount of psychology to wrangle it all in a way to achieve the outcome she wants. It's not too complex, but I thought it was yet another clever touch for Silverstream to apply the social engineering she did.
Of course it comes to the warm ending you'd expect from a Jinglemas story, but that's as it should be.
Second is The Endeavor Within, a contest entry (and given Mike's nationality, I'm surprised it wasn't spelled "endeavour").
Phyllis (Sprout's mom from G5, that is, not Starlight's plant) is not buying all this friendship stuff Sunny Starscout has been promoting. Phyllis has appointed herself the official sorter-outer and has Sunny summoned to explain herself. At least on that point, Sunny agrees: they need to have a face-to-face meeting to iron out what happened and keep it from happening again. But of course Sunny is talking about the irrational fear of other pony races while Phyllis is talking about the destruction to her factory.
While the movie did play her as a doting mother, this story opts for a sweeter take on it, which is more relatable. It also provides Sunny a firmer avenue to argue her case, as she can frame it as being beneficial to Sprout. Speaking of frames, there's a literal one that provides a motif and symbolism for Phyllis's concern for Sprout, and themed objects like that are a solid way to give repeat appearances and tie the whole story together.
Nicer still is that Phyllis is a deeper character than it initially appears. She's become jaded, but at least she's self-aware of that, so it's not like she can't see Sunny's point of view, besides them having an unexpected connection. And Phyllis isn't set up as a strawman, either: she's given a plausible reason for her beliefs, one which Sunny has to unravel. That's chapter 1, which takes place either before the movie or at least early in it.
Then we're bookended with a chapter after the movie, when we see the aftermath and the misunderstandings that led to it all. It's not too many stories than can make a sympathetic character out of Phyllis, but it also hangs together logically as to how the misunderstanding started in the first place. Overall, effective as a character drama.
Next up, New Wave of the Frozen Variety, another Jinglemas story.
Vinyl doesn't identify with her parents well, so when they want to go to the park together in the winter, she mostly sits off by herself and grumbles about it. There she meets Octavia, who's busking nearby. Both of them make the obligatory assumptions about the other. Vinyl particularly doesn't appreciate the way Octavia's making money off it while appearing to be someone who has no shortage of it. But as Vinyl's family had come to ice skate and Vinyl has her skates with her, Octavia assumes she wants to. And it's yet another thing Octavia is annoyingly good at.
There's nothing complex here, but it's a pleasant look at the two breaking down those initial assumptions they made, and it avoids a lot of the tropes that come with that. Them largely disliking each other's musical styles, yeah, but not the usual "that's not music!" arguments.
I can't really go on at length, because it's a single "how they met" scene, but it does atmosphere well, and that's one of the quickest ways to grab my interest.
And then to the two I hadn't previously read.
Madame Pinkie Pie's Project was an entry in the first 1000-word contest, and I know from lots of experience what the quirks are of writing short fiction. As it's the first I've seen Mike write, I went in not knowing how well he'd navigate the difficulties of it.
And it should also be said that it depends a lot on the genre chosen. A drama? It's harder to make that work while actually having a complete arc. A comedy doesn't need to tell that much of a story, though, and a comedy is what we have. And at the end, I have mixed feelings.
It's a bit of a bait and switch, in that the novelty of Pinkie competing as an adult in a science fair takes up the bulk of the story and is indeed what the synopsis promises, but the big joke is something else entirely, expanding it so that other adults are entrants as well (the synopsis made me expect Pinkie would be the only one and therein would lie the story's humor). However, the big joke is a pretty funny one. So if you want a couple minutes of light humor, this will amuse.
Lastly, The Spike has Been Berried, another Jinglemas story marked only as Slice of Life. That's how most Jinglemas stories go, so no surprise there, and Mike's previous two were good, so there are my expectations going in.
For reasons that go unspecified (at first), Spike has agreed to spend time at every house in town doing chores. The last one on the list is Berry Punch.
I like stories of this type (and have written some myself) where a character has a totally unexpected talent. Here, they kind of both do. It's a while before any alcoholic beverages are mentioned (and to be fair, there's even plausible deniability that she's only talking grape juice, not wine, of that type, though later on, it's definitely adult beverages), which is immediately a little different than both takes on her. But then she has quite a bit of business knowledge.
That makes sense, for the number of ponies who run businesses, that it'd have to be the case, right? Take the flower mares. They must know a thing or two about assets and taxes. But there's also this overarching mood of ponies being silly creatures that makes it easy to gloss over all that and say it doesn't matter. Here, Berry Punch does explicitly deal with the business side of things, and Spike understands a surprising amount of it.
It's perhaps a tad stretched out, and it's not as heavily edited as Mike's other work, but it has a very sweet ending on multiple fronts, and I appreciate that there are clever tie-ins to several canon things. One of the more heartwarming of the Jinglemas stories I've read.
With all that, Mike has 123 followers as I write this. I don't know how much writing he'll continue to do, though I'd speculate we'll at least get yearly Jinglemas stories. Those are consistently good, and with all the reviews to boot, consider adding yourself to that number.
Check out my previous underappreciated author spotlights:
Casca
Lucky Dreams
Ceffyl Dwr
Miller Minus
Impossible Numbers
Newcomers Edition with PapierSam and President Dead
Middle Ground Edition with Chris, PatchworkPoltergeist, and Norm De Plume
NaiadSagaIotaOar
Orbiting Kettle
Jay Bear
CoffeeMinion
Jarvy Jared
Only one I've read so far is The Endeavor Within, which was great in its character work, amongst other things. The one flaw I saw in it was that sometimes it felt like scenes were going longer than they had to (something the ghost himself acknowledged when I commented on it in my review). MCP is also up for prereading sometimes, having helped me with some of my more recent stories. All around class-act, I'd say.
Yep, Mike's awesome. I'm a total loss at reviewing.
Whoo!
*Garbled ectoplasmic sounds*
Well… this certainly was a very, very unexpected surprise to wake up to! Not least because your last Underappeciated Author Spotlight was over a year ago, and with me having only written five short stories across three years, I barely register as an author to most folks at all (my follower count was only 35 before I started Monday Musings; I'd estimate that at most 20% of my follower count comes from my stories as opposed to my Ponyfic reviews (or before that, episode discussion/opinion pieces, with the occasional Production Changes post).
The timing of this feature is a little unbelievable, in that something locked for inclusion in tomorrow's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings will change it… quite substantially. But, despite your many talents, Pascoite, I never laboured under the impression of you being psychic. So, it is what it is. You can decide how to react to said news tomorrow yourself.
Given my proclivity for rambling in comments when constructing replies on the spot, I'll do my utmost best to keep my responses here concise. But as I'm very thankfully to you for this, buddy, you'll forgive me if some indulgence creeps through.
It's actually less that it takes a prompt to get me going, then I'm just such a second-guesser with my story ideas and can't motivate myself to write them except when the story really, really latches onto me. The trio of Jinglemas entries are not about them being for a contest, as for me signing up to force an external deadline that I can't miss (well, yes, Breezies, but it would be a poor show). And the other two had enough enthusiasm and gung-ho energy stem from other sources to force me to squeeze them out, as I'll get to for those fics.
Uh… wow.
While I certainly do sometimes think myself that I can be too easy on how I judge works of fiction, all interactions with followers of my reviews and discussions in the decade-plus I've been doing them is that people either think I'm fair or too harsh.
So, why yes, I will stop by to confirm.
I can see how a look at my average review ratings here might confuse, so, I'll try and explain. In terms of a number scale, I would liken it as such:
In Chris' reviews on One Man's Pony Ramblings, he noted that his 5-star system was really a 10-point system, but with 0-5 collectively under the 0-star tier, where he felt it was kinda pointless to really differentiate between different levels of a fic not worth the time. Mine isn't that, but it falls under a similar logic, of lumping together more of the "not worth it" tiers. Point of fact, I think Present Perfect's tiering system is a good analogue to mine, where my Weak/Bad correspond to Not Recommended, Passable to Vaguely Recommended, Decent to Conditionally Recommended, Pretty Good and some Really Good to Recommended, and the remaining Really Good plus Excellent to Highly Recommended.
I have seen over time the advantage of the ratings' focus in it being worth reading over its actual quality as the reviewer found it to be rather more useful.
The other reason for my seemingly high ratings? I am very selective about what I read, not just in terms of characters, genres and story types that don't do it for me, but in terms of the seeming quality. I rarely look at a story that doesn't look at least promising and had competent packaging (rereads I am obliged to cover excepted), and while some slip through the cracks and turn out to be disappointments, this means I usually find most fics I read to at least not be a time waster. There is little value in reviewing a fic that is obviously not worth it and appeals to its audience regardless of critical reception from folks like me. So as I don't like abandoning a story I've started reading, I'm just selective. Still take plunges for enticing options! Just not as much as some others.
I still think of myself less as a reviewer like PaulAsaran or PP, and more just reviewing the stories I happen to be reading anyway, as a point of discussion. Though of course running the blogs does dictate my reading schedule a bit (and make longform stories harder to get in), but it stands nonetheless!
Now, as for the actual author aspect…
I drafted responses to each of the five stories here, but cut them to post in another comment after they got to be too much. Then I misplaced them in shuffling around the notes. Probably a telling sign they weren't needed. I think the below shows better restraint. I may return later, after your reply to this, and add the most essential parts of clarity or responses to your observations.
I am not an ambitious writer. As much as I like reading ambitious stuff, I find I lack the confidence or the skill to tackle something fully outside of my wheelhouse. Which is why, though my writing efforts over the last few years have been largely focused on an Ponyfic adventure novel, my resumé of published works thus far is just small, intimate character piece (and one gagfest). I like to do small steps of ambition within them – the light atmosphere and unobtrusive mute Vinyl in New Wave of the Frozen Variety, the character and timeline and history threading and motifs of The Endeavor Within – and I do think I am good at a certain breed of cozy, warm, yet challenging kind of light drama character piece. But that's it, the kind of stuff you like, and appreciate, and find done well, but is rarely something to gush over. It's for that reason I would qualify most of my works as just Decent (I'd give The Endeavor Within), though that is of course with me noticing shortcomings most readers likely don't, not to the same degree. As with most authors!
Unlike many other authors here, I've been writing and reading and reviewing for long enough that I don't find a substantial difference of evolution across the two years of fics I've got here. My preference for them would have little correlation to how old they are, in either direction. You've observed in the past with other authors that reading and reviewing makes one a better author, and I agree – I've just been doing that in one form or another for long enough that you can't readily see the evolution in my works here. By here, I'd well shed any ego or sense of pride and narrowed to just telling a good story. To the degree of only writing for stories that latch onto me and demand to be told. Hence the low output of only two a year.
That said, make no mistake – when I do write, it's because I want to, and because I believe in what I am telling, and that I'm delivering something truly worthy of the reader's time. So I am very grateful for the kind words, buddy. Hopefully some of the readers here will read and enjoy them (I do feel they all deserve wider audiences then they have, especially the last few), get tuned for the next time I churn something out, or just staying for the Monday Musings. I keep plenty active there, after all.
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*More garbled ectoplasmic sounds*
Thanks very much, lads. Means a lot. You two are pretty special when it comes to the ol' horsewords too.
Art of brevity's a tricky customer, eh? Especially as I've often tried to tighten up my stories in the later edits but found it hard to do more then marginal prose trimming. All scenes and the incident within seemingly needed but occasionally over-laboured in the prose. I suppose it's something you never really stop learning.
Which still stands! I know you're current in-progress works are more longform stuff, or tied to Bulletproof Heart, but I'm always up for pitching it again if you'll have me, friend. And others reading this, no guarantees, but if you're looking for someone to assist on a one-off, I might consider it.
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D'aww very kind of you to say. I think you'd be better at it then you think – and I think my reviewers are not that good, honestly – but considering the immense quality of your own written horse words, my respect for you is tenfold regardless.
Oh, this is a very nice surprise! I really am happy to see this, not least because Mike is a good friend (though we've only met in person at UK PonyCons) and I can vouch for the fact that he puts a lot of thought into his writing. I enjoyed The Endeavor Within (I too was mildly surprised at the title's spelling) because of that character work. I'll be looking forward to whatever he comes out with next. The fact that I may or may not have had a sneak preview of part of it a while back doesn't hurt that!
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Well, that’s assuming I publish nothing else between now and that work! Which itself could be taken to mean it comes out sooner rather then later, or that I don’t do Jinglemas/any other contests/one shots of my own volition in the interim. Neither are likely, being honest. But I appreciate the vote of confidence – for that, my current works, and me as a friend – all the same!