Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #81 · 5:00pm Sep 25th, 2023
Due to the eternal conundrum that is air travel, next week’s Monday Musings will go up late, as I will still be airborne on the way back from UK PonyCon at the usual time of 18:00 BST. It’ll still go up before midnight, as I’ll have it ready to go before departing on Friday, give or take a one-paragrapher on how it went to add before hitting Post; you can’t get me to miss a day that easily! 👻
Also, we’re finally at UK PonyCon! 
I don’t need this as badly as I did last year, where it was the right pick-me-up at the right time, but as I’m going into this one without having to combat a loss of appetite bug (please don’t jinx it… 
), I’m anticipating pure bliss and escapism once again. Both for the event, and for being with dear friends. And this year, they’ve continued the double-VA booking; it doesn’t beat Andrea Libman last year (the signed Pinkie Pie I snagged in the charity auction still has a place of pride on my desk 
) and Swedish VA Anneli Heed, but I’m certainly not gonna say no to Kelly Sheriden and Elley-Ray Hennessy! You can expect the usual con report (probably split in two again, depending on how it goes for me) to follow in the weeks afterward.
Oh, I suppose I might as well briefly mention Chapter 5 of Make Your Mark, which I blitzed through on a few dull evenings: all the core issues more or less remain, with only marginal adjustments here and there, but it did make it as my highest-rated chapter yet. Mostly off only the first two episodes being among the show’s best, for having something resembling sturdy plot and character arcs and possessing mild forward momentum (plus two of the show’s best songs). Which only made them tolerable, the in-the-moment execution is still schizophrenic in its inability to make anything flow, but that’s not nothing. The air leaked out as the episodes went on (the big emotional lynchpin of Episodes 3 and 4 should absolutely have hit, like, at all), and the last two returned to the usual whiffy nothingburgers most of the episodes have been. So the chapter definitely ended on a low note, and really hit you with how much dramatic potential on the table was avoided, what with only 106 minutes in the last drop come November to resolve everything. So more of the same, even if the “higher within the show’s quality range” average of the lot isn’t nothing.
Those two things should cover this opener (yeah, Disney100, but come on, like I have anything to say about seeing Beauty and the Beast on a big screen you couldn’t predict; it’s the masterpiece of the Disney Renaissance even if it wouldn’t be my personal favourite). Ponyfic time. In what is becoming more commonplace, it’s dominated wordcount-wise by one or two fics; three of the five today are the entries for the second Thousand Word Contest I read while it was ongoing. And on the other end, another novella from one of my favourite authors, as well as a one-shot from an author I remain impressed by. Enjoy!
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Out of Light Cometh Darkness by Loganberry
The Shadows Before Dawn by hawthornbunny
The 200 Words Contest by DeathToPonies
What Cats Know by Daedalus Aegle
Run for the Roses by 8686
Weekly Word Count: 37,559 Words
Out of Light Cometh Darkness by Loganberry
Genre: Horror
Twilight
1,000 Words
July 2023
Alone in her bedroom, Twilight isn’t sleeping. She can’t sleep, not when there is no one and nothing else.
Loganberry’s first attempt at horror goes not just for the psychological side over the gore angle, but for the cryptic way of answering very little over providing any definitive conclusions. Things are so vague here that it’s not even a given that this is set in the future when Twilight is ruling Equestria; the only timeline identifier is that this is her castle (just not which one).
Many a piece of horror has gained a lot of power from this, and from having short, blunt statements mixed around what limited descriptions we do get, but there doesn’t end up being much of a purpose to this beyond it being a writing exercise. That, or even I, not an avid horror reader by any means, have read enough of this type of story to not be unnerved more than marginally. Not certain either way, but the vague use of a grey light that might or might not be doing something, ditto for what a referred-to ocean actually is, didn’t accomplish much beyond a light unease. An unease that, when the fic was over, didn’t take long to fade.
It’s a reasonable exercise, and as a piece to read it works, but except for that narrow band of horror-adverse readers willing to try something mild, this is a rather anonymous piece, with little that will stick for even a few minutes.
Rating: Passable
The Shadows Before Dawn by hawthornbunny
Genre: Drama
King Sombra
1,000 Words
July 2023
King Sombra has already died and come back to life more than once. You could almost say he’s used to it. So it is that when he next finds himself in the Astral Plane, in the presence of the ethereal spirit of the very Tree of Harmony he seemingly destroyed, he is intrigued. Doubly so when it has a proposition for him.
As amazed as I am that it’s taken me this long to review a fic by my good friend hawthornbunny, it’s fitting; he’s a very infrequent author, known mostly for assisting with Magic the Gathering-related MLP tasks (namely the database hosting FoME’s 10K and counting custom MLP cards for the game from his Friendship Is Card Games blogs that also cover the official canon content), and sometimes with pre-reading or editing others’ fics when asked (including two of mine, thanks buddy). Moreso, I binged very nearly every one of his fics up my alley in 2021, when I rated but didn’t review horse words. So I would need to re-rate one, or wait for a new fic from the charming lapine. Guess which one of those happened?
It’s a bit of an anticlimactic result in terms of having something to talk about. Even by the standards of not giving away the point of a thousand-word fic, literally everything that happens beyond the teaser above is far too spoiler-y. The best I can say is that this is one of those canon-patchup exposition fics which, while fully that, is graceful enough in expressing its points, having thematic and symbolic links between the ideas. Plus, it’s reasonable at inferring character between the lines, as you’d have to with this tight a length; it feels far less constrained by the thousand word limit of the contest’s second iteration then most (there was only one point that I didn’t get due to truncation), using that to decent effect to make the handful of lines of dialogue said by the characters feel impactful enough.
The other best praise I can pay this fic? The headcanon concerns elements of lore I do not like reading about at all, and yet I liked the ideas here. Within the boundaries of a tiny quasi-drama (the prose is workmanlike and flat, so it’s not a fic that really feels, but this didn’t bother me), they worked for me, even if I would normally deteste them in virtually any other context. If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I’m very consistent at keeping canon timeline elements present in the fic I don’t personally like out of my evaluation, but for one of those to be more a less a positive? A rare sight indeed.
Headcanon dump fic like this, with ideas I would normally not stand, working for me on both fronts? Fic’s doing a lot right. With hawthorn doing right in saving his earlier contest story attempts for future fics (be warned, this Author's Notes blog spoils everything about the fic), and making this tiny little slip intriguing and nicely self-contained, I have to say, I’m impressed.
Rating: Decent
The 200 Words Contest by DeathToPonies
Genre: Comedy/Random/Slice of Life (also Horror, w/Violence)
Pinkie
1,000 Words
July 2023
Writing a story of a thousand words? Ha, pish posh, easy peasey. Twilight has decided to up the game, and issue a different kind of challenge to her friends, to test their linguistics and self-brevity: five stories in the categories of Drama, Slice of Life, Horror, Comedy, and Experimental, all no more than 200 words apiece. Naturally, Pinkie just sees these restrictions as an opening to have even more fun.
The above description barely even scratches the surface on the number of subversions and twists and turns of this meta approach to the second Thousand Words contest. What’s most curious is that the stories within aren’t the kind of “FiM character writes fiction” travesty where their personal voice intrudes everywhere. Instead, they’re from the position of Pinkie having taken the challenge perfectly seriously. Yet you can still pinpoint it’s her, from the well-intended but slightly clumsy feel to her attempt at Horror, to the sincere if flat opening Drama number of a snapshot of Twilight on a mission, to even the Comedy one of a visitor to Equestria showing that funny character are terrible at being intentionally funny (it didn’t make the Comedy one not the worst and a drag, but it’s something). Weirdly, the Slice of Life one on Philomena’s escapades feels more like a comedy, which is kind of fitting for Pinkie.
It’s the last Experimental one that really singles this work out, a bizarre Frankenstein Matryoshka Doll of snippets that unveil a new meta layer with each one. By the time it is sputtering out single sentences that are whole stories, your brain is reeling, but you’re glad for it.
This isn’t some masterpiece of the experimental form, to be clear; it has every feeling of the author trying a quick n’ dirty idea on a whim and just rolling with it, bringing with it all the roughness and badly-ageing ideas such spur-of-the-moment things bring (the Comedy chapter is an outright failure, but most of the rest are perfectly unremarkable stories divorced from their context here). Such things that make these sorts of gambles tend to wear me down, and this anthology is never not trite, but it’s so good-natured and well-intended in its in-universe content that I had a pretty splendid time with it.
Rating: Pretty Good
What Cats Know by Daedalus Aegle
Genre: Mystery/Sad
Sweetie Belle, Opalescence
9,157 Words
December 2016
Ever since yearly visits as a filly on Hearth’s Warming to a grandmother, Sweetie Belle has had quite a fascination with cats. Especially off something she noticed about that cat when her grandmother passed. Now, many years later, it truly dawns upon her how there is something special about cats. She doesn’t know what, it’s a total mystery, only that there’s something. Thus begins a journey of discovery on Nightmare Night, to those who might know, those who do know, and to herself, all so she may learn what it is cats know.
A story pretty phenomenal with atmosphere, this is nonetheless not the easiest to get into. Both on account of being a slow burn, not answering many of the questions it raises, and being a weird offbeat tale, but not in the usual, delightful way such a phrase likely evokes. Yet at the same time, while it is a foreboding tale, and sometimes a dark one, it is more of the imposing yet graceful sort, rather than something scary.
The narrative voice is unusual being both first-person, and featuring an older Sweetie Belle (how old is one of the unanswered things left to implication), along with an odd “she’s writing this” gimmick basically abandoned almost instantly. It certainly lends it all a melancholy aspect long before you figure out what the story is actually about.
As befits a travelogue, the bulk of the story consists of Sweetie going to several others for answers, and this is a bit mixed; they improve as they go along, with the final party being a perfect choice and really delving into the quasi-magical logic of cats in this universe. Before that, though, there’s a visit to Twilight that, while containing some interesting world-building, feels out of place, and both it and the following Fluttershy/Discord one feel tonally, in future canon and lore-wise like side avenues from the author’s own works (he admitted as such in the Story Notes for Twilight), and it did make much of the middle not as compelling.
As mentioned, the final visitor as well as the scene that closes out the story are pretty spectacular, and brings in the personal impact oddly distant by intent throughout. Getting to that point means a bit of artificial story construction (there’s a not-zero number of occasions of it withholding things just to move things along in the intended manner), but the technique, atmosphere and most of the ideas at play here make for a very intriguing oddball tale. One I think is a little tiring and which I admired more than adored, but I admired it a lot. Still, it’s one I heartily recommend if you’re even slightly curious.
Rating: Pretty Good
Run for the Roses by 8686
Genre: Drama/Slice of Life
OC, Mane 6
25,442 Words
February 2016Reread
Single Measure isn’t like most bartenders. Primarily this is because he keeps an inn in Ponyville, which is like no other town he’s worked in, for the kind of company it brings. Regardless, like all bartenders, he knows his place, so when Applejack wanders in one evening and drinks without comment, he doesn’t pry. It’s not his problem. When she vanishes after leaving the town, it’s everyone’s problem, and he has a front-row seat to the search’s efforts as a pit stop for everypony involved.
As one of those stories about the town community of Ponyville more than any one pony, this nonetheless had a pretty quality OC at the centre of it all. His thoughts and prose are descriptive but vivid, his outlook and balance of doing his job versus intervening for ponies’ own good gets a healthy workout (the difference in how he approaches Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash show this off best). There’s a mood about how he observes and partakes in things, his perception and impression of townsponies he knows and doesn’t know, that really sells the events. And he’s not alone: alongside one of those “chirpy but helpful” OCs as his waitress, the various Mane 6 members, and even the CMCs, feel really convincing even as they bounce around (except perhaps Rarity, who’s laid on a little thick). Pinkie especially expresses genuine upset when her efforts don’t pan out in a very concise and effective manner.
Which is kinda the opposite of the story overall: it’s no slow burn, but even after the opening chapter that’s wallowed in descriptions a bit too much for its own good, it’s certainly doing what it can to make the time taken for the search realistic, with the bartender’s perspective as he is involved in everything from the initial search by the guards to putting up ponies between rests, to indulging some fruitless attempts and consoling others in ways that fit them. For me, it worked very well, and the fic flew by, but it might not for others.
This is a story far more about that, so those hoping for some big answer as to why Applejack was missing that lasts longer than it takes to tell it may be disappointed, but it nails that the why and the effects matter far more, and so the front-row seat to Applejack and Rainbow reconciling in ways befitting their characters hits harder. Despite its publication date, it feels quintessentially Season 4 (I don’t think there was anything in there opposing that, unless you count Rarity briefly acting similar to her flirt interrogation in “Rarity Investigates!”), and though it is by necessity a bit more mature due to all the presence of drink than most of 8686’s work, it is as cosy and warm and inviting as the rest of them. A more minor effort that’s a little different from his usual intimate show-evoking character pieces, but it’s no less solid for it.
Rating: Really Good
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 1
Pretty Good: 2
Decent: 1
Passable: 1
Weak: 0
Bad: 0
What a good batch of stories this week, I knew about most of them before, good to see that they were confirmed by you over here!
And have fun at UKponycon! Bringing Equestria to earth to enjoy friendship and fun of pure MLP is no easy feat~
Onwards!
I just saw your work-in-progress Archive of Reviews spreadsheet. It is nicely done (and it even includes audiobook readings!)
One suggestion: please add a filter on the first row. Users can add temporary ones but it is a little easier/better to have one by default.
Best wishes with your convention experience!
I've been reading a lot of DeathToPonies lately, and coming to the conclusion they ain't bad at all! :O
I've read "What Cats Know," and your second paragraph sums up my feelings toward it perfectly. Not answering most of the questions can rankle the "need to know" crowd, as Paul Asaran calls them, and I am typically in that crowd. But the issue here for me is that those answers drive what Sweetie Belle's emotional journey is, and so I'm left at the end not knowing what effect any of it has had on her. But I'm an atmosphere junkie, and this does atmosphere so well that I can forgive a lot. I remember writing up something similar not too long ago. Maybe Loganberry reviewed it this year...
5747937
He did indeed; that would be how it ended up on my list. I do like to avoid reviews works another still-active Ponyfic reviewer just covered, so I try to give it a while before publishing it myself. Sometimes that's just two months, sometimes over half a year!
Comes and goes, you know.
5747932
I, eh, wouldn't call it work-in-progress, for that implies it's barely started scraps I only just put together; while it is true that there are some features I'm still adding (I started adding the word counts of the individual stories a little over a month ago, and will go back and adds the lengths for all past stories when I have a free afternoon), it's existed for well over a year, since after the first dozen Monday Musings or so. Besides, as long as anyone's capable of using CTRL/CMD+F, and flipping between the years, they can easily find any fic I've covered, or a particular author. That's basically no work at all. And they also have my individual Fimfiction bookshelves for each rating (linked in the sheet every time that rating is used), if they want to narrow their search to a particular rating.
I am not familiar with these filters you describe, and while a brief look at some guides does posit some applications they could be helpful for, your sentence is phrased as thought you had a particular one in mind. Pray tell?
5747945
I mentioned work-in-progress because I noted the word counts (for review date) and for the column were mostly zero. I agree you do not need them; however, since you included them with a count of "zero" it looked like you were planning to finalize more things about this chart. Thank you!
To add a filter:
1. Highlight all of ROW 1
2. Top Left. Click DATA.
3. Click "FILTER VIEWS"
4. Click "CREATE NEW FILTER VIEW"
-Now you can see row 1 highlighted.
-Now, in the bottom right of each cell in row 1 you will see three horizontal bars in a reverse pyramid shape. Click on those. Then you can filter.
- People can do with it whatever they want.
- Right now, of course, people can create individual temporary filters, but it's more welcoming to have one set up on entry to the worksheet. (e.g. you're setting up the filtering tool rather than a particular filter. This would also allow you to add a new tab containing ALL your reviews (if you add a column for year and mass tag it with the years--something that would take only a minute or two), then someone could sort everything in one place rather than needing to navigate by year. It would make it easier for users to divine statistics, etc. For example, I can filter to "Really Good" and see that Aragon in 2022 has 3--more than others. (available by filtering or by clicking on DATA-Column Stats and looking to the right. The Most least table beneath that will be incorrect as it will include hidden rows that are filtered out.)
Thanks for the review as always, Mike. I think most of that can be boiled down to "This was Logan's first attempt at Horror* and to be honest it rather shows" -- which I'd consider a fair assessment. I'm actually slightly surprised it's been received quite well by readers. Okay, FOME was nice about it, but that's what FOME does. I am hoping to try Horror again at some point, using what I've learnt here. Definitely not the gory kind, though!
* Okay, you could maybe make a case for To Be the Candle being such, but in fact I tagged that one as Dark.
See you at UK PonyCon in a few days!
So, What Cats Know is an odd one for me. I love it exactly as it is, and wouldn't change anything about it. But I've seen what I thought were minor details at most that have thrown readers off entirely, to the detriment of the story. I've wondered how to react to that, if at all. And well, it's a mystery story, and I resolved early on not to give away anything about it, even about things nobody has ever commented on. And I firmly believe that nothing good comes out of an author arguing with their critics.
Regardless, thanks for the review, I'm glad you liked it well enough for kind words. I think it's one of the gems in my collection, and I'm always glad to see it get some notice.
Holy heck but that title unleashed my memories of loving Dan Fogelberg as a teen.
Gave him another listen recent and it didn't hold up. Sort of one of those performers who who used their beautiful voice to sing the exact same song 20 different ways.