Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #78 · 5:00pm Sep 4th, 2023
In the early hours of this morning, the total number of public stories on Fimfiction passed 150,000. There have been plenty more than that, of course, excess from delisted and removed stories – though not nearly the 540K you’d guess from the URL IDs, many of which are generated by a user but never have a chapter actually uploaded or published – but it’s an impressive total no matter what way you spin it.
Plus, it doesn’t account for all those fics that never made it to Fimfiction either. Even if, compared to the early years, it crawled, taking six years to hit 100K and another six for the following 50K.
I won’t mince words, of course: considering how popular and all-imposing the MLP fandom was for much of its life, it certainly feels like it should be bigger. On fanfiction.net, three other properties outpace it, in Twilight (222K), Naruto (439K) and Harry Potter (846K), though I would wager that only the last of those is actually bigger once you look from just when G4 started. Even in the MLP fandom, fanfiction remains something of a second darling, and I’ve thought now and then lately about its current state: small, diminished, but sturdy. And as that’s the only state I’ve ever experienced it in firsthand, I don’t mind.
Plus, we’ve got the best fanfiction website around, bar none. Hard to compete with that.
Was there a point to all that? Probably not, beyond the novelty of the 150K number. It just didn’t feel appropriate to lead or dominate with the latest Disney100 screening again (Peter Pan, for those of you keeping track, and probably the pre-90’s Disney film I watched the most as a kid). Though I did experience a certain other kind of cinematic experience on Saturday, courtesy of National Cinema Day’s €4 tickets (which no doubt contributed to 70-odd people seeing Peter Pan alongside me, more than double any of the prior Disney100 screenings), making a double feature out of it, and checking something off the bucket list after a decade of waiting. And unlike those Disney Animations, this was something I knew I’d get the chance with eventually.
That was, of course, seeing Jurassic Park in a cinema, for its 30th anniversary. And as I did not really grow up with it (my first JP was, alas, The Lost World, though that does have its moments and values), and had only seen it four times prior, a lot of it was still fresh enough for me. It speaks to the talents of Spielberg and his crew that the film can be pretty heavily flawed – a very messy, dog-eared screenplay; a rather mixed assortment of character and actors where only Grant and Hammond really emerge, and more in comfortably familiar ways; and exposition that’s rather draggy after your first viewing – and still be an absolute miracle of adventure thriller filmmaking. Sometimes with scenes that have no dinosaurs at all!
And of course, with effects that are more impressive than half of what gets released nowadays, between the dinosaurs being half portrayed by amazing animatronics and the CG being either disguised from full view (rain, dusky sunrise, motion blur) or when it is present, the rest of the filmmaking is so effective we’re disinclined to care. Chiefly in the “Welcome to Jurassic Park” scene that shirts self-parody in the buildup and reveal of the dinos yet triumphs regardless. And then the thriller half of the film never lets go. Forget the kids experiencing this for the first time being scared something fierce – the big-screen presentation had me very tense, especially during the raptor scenes.
That’s the power of this level of cinema, and seeing Jurassic Park on a big screen with a full audience (okay, a 100-seat screen, but it counts), the way it was meant to be. Feels so good to partially right the wrong I made a decade ago of passing on its 20th anniversary reissue being my first viewing of the flick where dinosaurs ruled the earth.
So, yeah, that pair of films left me in a pretty good mood (Peter Pan’s not nearly the masterpiece it was for me as a kid, but the highlights of Hook, Smee, the crocodile and Tinker Bell are 50’s comic Disney at its finest). Let’s see if today’s assortment of Ponyfic can keep that up, and also be some pretty good stuff.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
The Rain, the Poison, and the Job by HapHazred
House Guest by Pascoite
Every Little Bit by The Descendant
This is a Stick-Up by Georg
Miles to Go by AugieDog
Weekly Word Count: 30,711 Words
The Rain, the Poison, and the Job by HapHazred
Genre: Sad/Slice of Life
Other (Wind Rider), Rainbow Dash, Wonderbolts
989 Words
September 2015
Caught in the act of framing a promising Wonderbolts Reserve who was threatening his all-time record, time seems to slow for Wind Rider as he reflects on his actions, and whether he really is the villain. And whether this young hotshot knows what she’s getting into, chasing a dream of being a Wonderbolt.
There’s a few things that make this tiny little fic (benefactory of post-release adjusted Fimfiction word count reading accuracy letting it squeeze in under 1K!) stand out. First is the way it embraces noir-style dialogue like “Rarity Investigates!” itself did, though being played straight and depressing rather than for parody and comedy, of course. Haphazard’s fascinating background to the fic, as explained off Present Perfect's review of it, notes how it intentionally fused his then-proclivity for dialogue-less experimental fics (one of which, No Words Required, I’ve reviewed to a Pretty Good) into an instant-new-episode reaction fic, and the results there show strongly well. It’s a little meandering at times (you can feel it struggling to be even this long), and yet the headspace and bleak, gloomy view just feels really atmospheric.
The main one, though, is how it treats his viewpoint. Unlike the episode, and plenty of other fics about Wind Rider to come, he harbours no delusions about his actions, and knows what he did was bad; we just only get implied explanations for it. Which isn’t just that the Wonderbolts are corrupt and decay your soul, though it is that; there’s an extra link to Dash throughout that feels fresh against all odds. It even hits the balance of him acknowledging that perhaps things are changing in the Bolts, though probably not.
For such a tiny slip of a fic, the mix of effective noir style through Wind Rider’s hollow internal justification that even he clearly doesn’t believe it makes this quite different from what you’d expect. And certainly not what you’d expect from an episode-response fic. With those strengths in this quickie, it’d be a crime (
) to not recommend this.
Rating: Pretty Good
House Guest by Pascoite
Genre: Drama/Horror/Thriller
Diamond Tiara, Spoiled Rich
2,169 Words
August 2019Reread
The thing about Discord’s escape from stone prison and his subsequent brief reign of chaos is, well, no one really remembers the other creatures that ran rampant in his wake, because when he was recaptured, they went. But they were very much there, as Spoiled Rich knows all too well from when she and Diamond Tiara, on vacation at their holiday home, found themselves holed up inside against a… something trying to get in.
No surprise coming from Pascoite, but this is quite the effective piece of atmospheric horror. We learn precious little about what’s out there, only Spoiled’s certainty that it can’t get in if you don’t let it, but that doesn’t stop her from trying to be quick and quiet when she has to venture to other parts of the house. The horror here isn’t actually too intense by intent (it is a proper E-rated story), and until the closing note, is more of a supplement to the spectacle of Spoiled’s haughty personality withdrawing in on itself in place of the fear making her both rational and irrational. Pascoite keeps a fine balance of interesting characterisation here through moments of how she’d never do things like opening canned food normally and still has to work up to it, past times she did something like this, her gentle yet worried instructions to Diamond… those who love little details like that will find quite a lot to like here.
Mild yet still intense fear that relays every stumbling moment in visceral detail carries this to a satisfying conclusion, and while it’s more doing lots of small things well then big things that knock you out, it is doing those small things really well. Somehow, I only rated this a Decent when I read it before (a time when I had one less rating tier, granted). Not so now!
Rating: Pretty Good
Every Little Bit by The Descendant
Genre: Slice of Life
Spike, Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Rarity, Scootaloo
17,962 Words
September 2013Reread
A charity auction takes a turn for the worse when Rainbow Dash, volunteering a kiss to raise money for the foals of Ponyville, is humiliated by rowdy teenage colts making all sorts of tasteless remarks. Worse still, Dash doesn’t lash back and teach them a lesson, but instead shrinks in further on herself. And while many are appalled, all are shocked that the one to end it all by placing an actual bid… is Spike.
Am I only now covering my second Descendant story here? Despite having read fully half of his backlog before? There’s always one of your favourite authors you overlook, isn’t there… Suffice to say, for those not hugely familiar with his work, that he was a really early author (nearly half of his 31 stories were originally written before his publication bottleneck of November 2011), supposedly a very kind and affable person, and has very characteristic work due to a few common traits things applied in unique ways: immersive early fandom interpretations of unexplored parts of the show; a relaxed, lived-in pace and approach to prose, a cosy homeliness, childlike wonder and sincerity even when the fics aren’t E-rated, and perhaps most famously, one of the most fresh and beautiful depictions of Spike as a proper child without sacrificing the personality and maturity he has from his unique upbringing. All these things are so regularly wonderful that even when a fic has something holding it back, they tend to work really well.
Such is the case with this fic, his 4th-last and thus late enough for Twilight to be an alicorn (which has no real impact on the story, but is incorporated fine). Even for those familiar with his work, there is some egregious pacing balancing here: the immediate start is raced through to positive effect, but then lingers on the debacle at the auction far past the point of building tension, instead making it a test of patience. Which perhaps wouldn’t be so notable if it didn’t contain some rather cringe parts that could have survived being short affairs, in the colts’ raunchiness and Spike’s initial outward reaction to it all (which does end up having an explanation, though not one that quite explains it away). Otherwise, it does also have a case of assuming things it’s being cagey about are subtle when they’re quite clear, and while this does have its own charm, it works less well here due to the length of the piece and it does contain some mild adult content (while still being squeaky clean, amazingly).
Past that, there’s a lot to like, not least in how such an implausible setup has an explanation that not only makes sense but actively deepens the characters. It’s certainly one of the more plausible takes on why Dash is the way she is, and her wrestling with her often-buried sensitive, insecure side. Especially as it progresses, it has a lot insightful to say on gender roles for both Spike and Dash, a boy and girl with traits far more common of the other side, and while Spike’s side is built far more due to him being the featured player and Dash not getting any perspective until the second half (and presumably the author being male) they both work really well, reinforce each other, and make the talk between the two occupying the last quarter of the story not drag despite being rather protracted.
Along the way, there’s well-characterised small roles for Rarity and Scootaloo, Twilight at her mother-to-Spike best, quite a gift for making the specific moments of a predictable and slow plot surprise you, and a naked, unabashed sincerity that means that, even when there is a lot here worth being improved (the auction scene is truly something only a nakedly sincere author could do, and yet the colts’ behaviour just doesn’t vibe done like this), it is absolutely a story worth reading. A little soft for The Descendant in places, but the strengths more than dominate and make this piece a must-read.
Rating: Pretty Good
This is a Stick-Up by Georg
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life
OC
5,426 Words
August 2018Reread
Many years ago, Ponyville was even smaller than it is now. So small, its bank was run by just two ponies. But even that isn’t so small as to exclude it from being robbed for the first time. The robber being a young, twittery bundle of nerves, he gets a very… Ponyville experience.
This fic has everything a “kill him with kindness” fic of its type should; the magic of friendship permeates the core of it, making it all feel so tied to the setting, tone and moral centre of the show. But only after we’ve gone through much skillful bamboozling on the part of the teller Silver Standard. Even if you think you can see where it’s going in the general, the specifics keep coming out of left field.
The jokes are largely easy, being misdirection and sleight-of-hoof types, but they are rather clever. Honestly the best part for me is how the robber isn’t just left a monosyllabic pile of confusion throughout; after doing so for the first half, he adapts and reacts. Nor is the conclusion the expected “send him on his way” or “trick him into becoming a legal customer” ending either. The ending is also the perfect little touch alongside adding more to the lore of Ponyville/Equestrian finances peppered throughout the fic.
This is, of course, a rather modest slice of life comedy: even as a lot of it is done well and unexpectedly, it's low on ambition and contains little that will stick past reading it. But as a solid meat-and-potatoes fic of its kind, one that makes the experience memorable if not the specifics, it’s quite the piece of consistent light entertainment. Pardon the short review, but it’s a good chortle, and one that absolutely races by.
Rating: Pretty Good
Miles to Go by AugieDog
Genre: Slice of Life
Filthy Rich, Spoiled Rich, Diamond Tiara
4,165 Words
November 2019Reread
Ten years on from the switch in power on the throne, Filthy Rich has finally stepped aside and let his daughter take over Barnyard Bargains. He has no need to worry, and he doesn’t. Yet a week in, after a habitual check at the store he mentally slaps himself over, the question begs: what does he do now?
It’s probably not a surprise if you’re in any way familiar with AugieDog’s fics (including his alt Baal Bunny account’s resumé too), but there’s a narrative voice at work here that does quite a lot to make a stock “coping with retirement” scenario flourish. Filthy Rich is the kind of inquisitive narrator who berates himself at his own mistakes, but gently, and makes observations with the kind of boyish enthusiasm that could conceivably carry someone through the life of a CEO with honest passion. Thus, everything from him having to force himself to sneak out of his old workplace so as to not seem to be in charge, to distancing himself from joining Spoiled for a meeting at the Friendship Castle, to pitching in around the house to pass the time, to rekindling an old pastime, to keeping himself only semi-retired as a compromise, it all feels curiously authentic and lived-in.
The two other things that boost this ordinary story are the pacing – it manages to be relaxed and languid, pushing up against being rather slow several types, but always picking itself back up just in time, and it’s short enough for this strategy to not wear out by the end – and the characterisation. The minor players of Diamond Tiara and Randolph make solid impressions as bit players (the latter’s prodding along of the plot really shows how well he gels with and respects Filthy), but it’s Spoiled that really stands out. Or, less her and more Filthy’s view of her. On top of a bit more of a rounded and filled-in picture for the both, there’s a middle ground nailed here of Filthy mostly seeing a better side of her, being aware of her coarser side, knowing how to calm her, working around her follies (both in the house and in business), yet clearly loving her. Honestly, this was what most impressed me, as I can see the ingredients, and they shouldn’t work together (least, not by my analysis over the time of reading the fic and writing this), yet by some chemistry, they do. Filthy and Spoiled are fully believable and not just caricatures.
A bookending connecting Ponyville’s current expansion (a rare case of the post-Season Nine angle being barely present yet not being superfluous) to that which his own grandfather did during its founding makes it all) brings this ordinary idea executed rather wonderfully full circle. It’s a fic liable to surprise with how well the characterisation and voice and final takeaway make do, certainly.
Rating: Pretty Good
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 0
Pretty Good: 5
Decent: 0
Passable: 0
Weak: 0
Bad: 0
You see 150k stories and think "Wow, that's a lot!"
I see 150k stories and think "Is that really the best we can do?"
I've tried on a few occasions these last couple months to convince myself to go to the movies. Every time I do, I look at the showings and where they are and all I can think is "Or I could spent a fifth the cash to watch the show at a time of my choosing in the comfort of my own home on this big-ass monitor and maybe multitasking on another project during the slow bits in six months' time while eating a fresh, home-cooked meal." A movie having a great story is nice and all – preferred, in truth – but I don't need a massive screen to enjoy a bunch of people in a room talking.
That being said, if Jurassic Park came to one of my local theaters, that might be enough to get me in one of those seats.
Don't know any of this week's stories, but I know all the authors, so I'm sure I'll be reading them eventually.
Wow! All stories get the same rating; has that ever happened before?
Don't forget -- if you try to upload cover art at the initial story creation, instead of at edit, and the cover art is too big, you create a story. Then you ensmallen the cover art and try again -- new story. If it takes five tries to get the cover art, you now have six identically named stories with different ID numbers.
On the topic of ID numbers, One morning last year, I noticed the most recent blog was 999,995 or so, created a blog, hit "Edit," and started mashing "Save as new entry" until I got this bad boy.
5745206 Hey, I learned something. I normally try to make my story layout and save it before wedging cover art in because I've got a knee-jerk reaction to "Failure means having to type all that stuff again." That means I've been evading a problem by accident. Paranoia rules!
Thanks Mike! I'm very much a meat-and-potatoes guy and it shows in my writing. Afraid I'll never win any literary awards, but if it means happy readers instead, I'll take it. (and your watch, and your wallet, and any rings...)
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Oh. Then I really didn't help the number disparity trying to upload my first story with full-sized cover art, over and over again.
Hee hee, Beat Bunny? Is that a spellchecker artifact?
On the topic of story numbers, it may be just that I'm not technically gifted enough to figure out how to embed pictures in stories. I know the method of choice used to be to use imgur, but they cut us off and led to lots of broken links. You an link directly to a derpibooru image if you don't need it edited in any way (or, I suppose, do the required edits and upload it as a new image). The point being that I know you get one free image as cover art, but I've never found a way (if one exists) to get fimfiction to host in-story art as well. So the couple of times I wanted a single in-story image, I created a dummy story so I'd have the chance to upload cover art for it and then use the link generated to embed an in-story image in another story. I also used to upload writeoff stories here to check formatting before entering them in the contest, and there are some I've never revised and published, so a few more phantoms there. I do have one story I unpublished because it was received so poorly, a parody of Lovecraft's The Rats in the Walls.
Haven't read any of these, but all authors I like, except for that one rock-themed ne'er-do-well.
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I mean, I don't really. That was part of the point, acknowledging the milestone while also feeling that I thought it'd be a lot more. But honestly, between deleted/removed fics and those that never got cross-posted to here (because the author drifted in and out of the fandom in the early days, doesn't know about this website, or has their own reasons), I'd be very surprised if the number of fics isn't really at least 200K, in practice.
I do get that. I should clarify my home setup isn't great (mixture of laziness, largely watching what I do on my computer anyway, and not having moved out yet meaning it's not my home and/or setup to upgrade). Also, I don't get out much period, so going to the flicks is one of the vanishingly few social things I do.
And I'm very economical, near-always going for better times/venues (my preferred one has adult tickets at just €8.80 before booking fee), and never buying expensive cinema snacks. So while certainly not nothing, I keep it cheap enough to feel worthwhile. Certainly not, ah… six times the cost of renting it digitally at home half a year later! You understand if I laughed at the reality of that. Unless that's just the reality of average US cinema ticket prices these days?
I should also clarify I don't go that often these days myself either – before Disney100 made a special case, I probably only went on average… once every two months? Six a year is still well above the national average of about 3.2 in Ireland, but not huge.
Honestly, I've almost never had noisy/talking audiences much. The last time I can actively remember such while watching a film was a gaggle of rambunctious kids during Toy Story 4, in the lost pre-covid era.
Maybe it's just a cultural thing, that a lot of Americans are more… well, rowdy. But I won't commit to that assumption.
Weirdly enough, it wasn't in great circulation the weekend that just went past; most of my regular cinemas didn't have it at all, and some that did had it on Friday and Sunday, but not Saturday (avoiding the National Cinema Day discount…). Compared to the wide release for its 20th, it certainly was a far more limited affair. This was even smaller than E.T.'s 40th this time last year.
In the States, JP was reissued the weekend prior, and according to Box Office Mojo, was in 1,224 theatres. Dunno what kind of town you live in, but unless you just missed it, I'm guessing that limited enough to not include anything super local for you.
Yeah, I didn't notice until the blog was done that they were all pretty well-known names. Like the quintet of Pretty Good ratings, coincidences all.
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I don't believe so! Plenty of weeks have had three stories with the same rating, and a few have had four (mostly the jumbo author spotlights, though Chris' regular-sized one had four Really Goods). But never a monorating lot! Hopefully the meat of the words on each of these collections of horse words still marks them out as distinct.
I will confess that a lot of stories I've read lately have gotten the Pretty Good rating (before posting this blog, almost half of my stockpiled reviews had that rating), so it's not that far-fetched. But still very unusual and cool. Coincidence, mind.
>>> Sees "Every Little Bit"
Is that the one I think it is... It is!
It devastated me (in that really good, "Dang, that was a good read, that was a darn good read" sort of way) the first time I read it and introduced me to the work of The Descendent. Like you, I was touched by its sincerity, which I think allows one to largely get over the colts' somewhat flat characterization (necessarily flat, I might say, though the older I become and the more horror stories I hear from my younger cousins about boys their age... Even hyperbole has some roots in tragic reality). Also the ending stuff with Spike and Rainbow was really cute.
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You misunderstand. I'm not saying the other theater goers are loud. In fact I've never had that experience even once.
I was referring to the content of the movie itself.
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A phantom artefact, lost to the winds now.
I've yet to have a published story with in-chapter art, but I have been often annoyed by this limitation with my blogs posts over the years in situations where I'm not just using screenshots from the show. Unlike most, I haven't yet cracked the knack for effectively searching for what I want on derpibooru either, one reason I've often given up and done without an image in a situation where I'd have liked one.
I do know there are other common ways people get around this image hosting beyond imager, I just haven't yet needed to look into them myself. For my UKPC blogs, I usually made tweets with the photos I wanted to use and linked to them here, as well as some from friends' tweets. Resourceful!
Honestly, that is probably exactly the sort of thing I'd do too.
Interesting. Presumably you could have made an extra unpublished chapter on an existing story rather than a new one altogether? But your point does show how many reasons there could be for making another story page that never gets used, thus better rationalising how we got 541K story IDs out of 150K actually active.
He sure is a sly one. Up to no good as usual…!
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Whoa. Did not know that. I don't think I've ever done it myself, I think I've only added my art for all five of my stories when putting in the long description later (mostly for being largely just repurposed show/movie screenshots, with minor edits), but I'll bet that contributed to it a lot.
I remember that, you crafty old sod.
A dad's gotta keep himself amused somehow, to be fair. 
The number of active blogs is 722.3K, meaning about 71% of the blogs ever created have stayed up. Makes sense, far fewer hurdles that would justify a resubmission, and far fewer logical reasons to delete a blog. Though not none (glances in the direction of iisaw).
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Ha, I'm sort of the same, overly cautious!
Oh, I wasn't trying to downplay your work – if anything, over this year, now I've read enough of your stories close to each other to associate them with an author, you've been a rather reliable "provides a good quality laugh" craftsman. Least, with me mostly reading your one-shot (but still substantial) comedies. Stories of other genres will hopefully get their foot in later.
And, I mean, I saw your recent blog, where you mentioned publishable fiction being one of your goals. God speed you on that, I say!
Mm, you'll be searching for a while, my kind don't need any of those things… 👻
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Well, even a dozen aborted attempts is but a tiny blip on the radar of the current disparity of 391K+, so I wouldn't sweat it, buddy.
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Well, here's another weird coincidence! These are all stories by authors I know and like, and I haven't read a single one (yet)!
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I don't think I could pinpoint my first work of his now if I tried, though I could probably narrow it down to a shortlist. This one is a possibility for that slot.
I think it mostly does, yeah. Just not fully. The story was this close to a Really Good, and only my knowledge of The Descendent being able to avoid these issues in some of his other works kept me from pulling that trigger.
I've heard stuff and seen it in media, but have been lucky to not bear witness to such things myself.
Lad does have a knack for making such things work and not be corny or cloying, yep.
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Oh! Well, that would lead me, going back to your original statement, to infer that most movies you watch period are small-scope stuff that is largely just people talking. Barely a movie at all, sounds far more like television. And you presumably didn't mean this for large-scope blockbusters that are visual vehicles too, despite being a bit of a Venn diagram overlap no-no.
Either way, I get that you feel a cinema screen barely makes any positive difference. And yeah, for a lot of movies, I can concede that.
I assume the vast, vast majority of deleted blogs are deleted when the entire account goes for being a spambot. I've seen many a blog in Vietnamese, or hawking crypto, or hawking building supplies (!), or espousing the benefits of one or another erectile medicine, or...
Frankly, looking at the new blogs feed is a ride...
There, I scrolled three seconds, and reported a real estate sales bot.
I've read two of these (Georg's and The Descendant's) and I had broadly the same feelings about them: I found them enjoyable but they didn't blow me away. HapHazred's is on my RiL list so I should get to that in due course. The other two... well, we'll have to wait and see, though I have a lot of respect for both authors.
I'm not sure I quite agree on that. Several people outside the fandom I've mentioned the (then) 100k-plus number to have been absolutely amazed by it. Even in 2012, although ponies were indeed popping up all over pop-culture-world, there still wasn't the assumption that everyone would know who Twilight Sparkle was in the same way that there was about (for example) Katniss Everdeen. I've thought for all these years that 100k is more than MLP had any right to expect, even after the brony fandom took off. Having it centred on Fimfiction rather than FFnet or later AO3 is a bit of a double-edged sword, of course, but I think on balance it helped as it encouraged the remarkable network of writing support resources that existed for a few years a decade or so ago.
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All I'm saying is movies that don't have some sort of visual/audio spectacle going on just don't seem worth going to theaters over. That's all I really meant.
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Which is what I suspected you meant, buddy. Awkward phrasing on your part just led to inferring it as more of a blanket statement on my part. No matter now.
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Possibly. It could be that my fervent belief until checking the statistics that MLP was effectively the second biggest fanfiction fandom in the internet era beyond Harry Potter contributed to being underwhelmed (though again, factoring in time window and fics not on Fimfiction, MLP would outpace Twilight). On the other hand, if Naruto – a very popular manga/anime, but still a manga/anime and thus something a lot of average people won't have heard of – can reach nearly 500K… well, I guess it just proves these things aren't all black and white.
Ultimately, while I can't go as far as thinking 100/150K is as impressive as yourself, on reflection, considering how much of MLP's appeal lies in the visuals and music, it's ultimately a fair enough figure.
Now, as for when we hit 200K in about 2031? Well, that'll be a different story altogether!
Not having experienced said resources myself, I can't weigh in on that. Though in a broader sense, I'm fully on board with the community this website has made possible being something amazing we wouldn't have had otherwise.
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Not all black and white, indeed. I suppose part of it is always going to be subjective. For example, I'm imagining a vaguely defined metric called something like "mainstream respectability", which includes things like whether most adult fans would feel comfortable acknowledging their interest in general chat. Nobody these days is surprised by adults being into Disney or Star Wars or Doctor Who -- but even at the fandom's height, I don't think MLP really got to that point of mainstream respectability. Anime is not a subject I'm much clued up on, but my feeling from outside is that (these days, at least) it's rather closer to it than MLP ever managed.
If I were going to push my side of the "argument" (in quotes as I'm not trying to "win" anything here) then I'd also point out that our 150k is far higher than the FFnet totals for either Star Wars (60k) or the combined might of Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (71k). This is a mug's game of course, since going purely on FFnet numbers MLP only has about 32k.
On the other hoof, I willingly acknowledge that sometimes MLP fans have gone overboard in their desire to "prove" things about our fandom that aren't really there. Less so now thankfully, but ten years ago you really did see people claiming that FiM was the best cartoon in history, or that Lauren Faust was the greatest creator in (TV, at least) animation history. We're better off these days to be doing without such hyperbole.
If I think about it, I suspect the most exceptional thing about ponyfic is Fimfiction itself. This fandom, even now, is largely resistant to the pull of either FFnet or AO3, to the extent that I barely ever look at either of them. Fimfiction is, I think, the largest single-fandom archive in the English-speaking world. (I have to make that qualification as I have no idea what might exist in Japan, say.)
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Beal Bunny is still a little off the mark...
clean fuckin' sweep let's goooo! >:V
so pleased you enjoyed The Rain, the Poison :D that's an undiscovered gem, that is!
Pretty good is always preferably to unaesthetic mid. Cheers for the review! It was, as you're aware, an interesting story to write.
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So thank yourself!
I mean, if the timing wasn’t clear, you covering it nearly two months back got it here, buddy.
I always try to leave a mild time gap between recommendations of fics I got off others’ recommendations. Means it’s another chance for them to stick, rather than just a simultaneous echo.
Finding a way:
To make Spoiled work as a character was straight-up the hardest thing about "Miles to Go." I'm glad it pays off for so many readers!
Mike