"PerNoWriMo" 2: A Force for Good? On Pony Comics, Academic *itches (Take Your Pick), and Mort · 2:22pm Nov 8th, 2023
One week in, and the challenge is going pretty well. I had a really great day yesterday and wrote 5,471 words, so it's safe to say I'm staying on target.
"The secret to success is to do everything exactly once and then promptly abandon it!"
Blog Number 234: Comical Island Edition
In other news...
I have a candidate for the Imposing Sovereigns IV Contest!
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It's still in the editing stage, and I had to double-check it was on-brand, but I can safely say that the... fourteen-month hiatus (wow, seriously!? 
) will be broken before month's end. YAY! 
EDIT - Thursday 16th November 2023
Sorry for anyone who was accidentally inconvenienced. I should've put this up at the time:SPOILERS AHEAD!
Sorry about that.
EDIT ENDS
Although not so much recently, I have been catching up with the main pony comics from the 2012-2013 age (it completely passed me by, which is why one of my Chrysalis fics makes no reference whatsoever to her comics backstory). Some of these are really dang good! I really liked the "Return of Queen Chrysalis" and the "Art of Gazebo Repair" arcs, and since I've read up to the "Friendship Ahoy" arc I can at least say all of them have been entertaining.*
* "Summer Wrap Up" is unforgiveable, though. "Summer Summary" or "Summer Summing Up" was right there.
The only disappointing thing about Tiberius...
I've also read a few of the Micro Series. Apart from the cheap-as-hell artwork, the Twilight one I thought was quite sweet. The Rarity and Princess Luna ones were hoots.
(Although is it just me or is Luna depicted as... really little sister-ish in the latter?). Tiberius is golden. 
The only dud out of what I've read so far was the Rainbow Dash one, which I spent waiting for the "and then it was all a dream" shoe to drop, only to realize, "Wait, they're serious?" I mean, the timeline mess-ups alone discount it, and story-wise it just sort of feels, "Oh, this is what we're doing, is it? OK..." Haven't read the rest yet.
For bizarre research purposes (and anachronistically as a result), I also read all the 2015 FIENDShip issues save for the Sirens one.*
* I was warned ahead of time.
General summary:
- No prizes for guessing the Sombra one was my favourite.
- The Chrysalis one I quite liked too, though it felt more like a series of superfluous just-so stories, but the framing device added a little extra (even if it made Twilight look like an idiot at the end, and the backstory reveal of the Changelings is... kinda trying too hard, if you get me).
- The Tirek one is uniquely frustrating because it feels like the setup for a really deep story before it suddenly just ends.
- The Nightmare Moon one had its moments, and at least somewhat salvages the Nightmare Rarity story, but... I dunno, Luna/Moon's walking around on the moon learning about dreams for the first time is a setup that never really felt convincing to me.
- I also had a look at the 2013 Annual about the fall of Sunset Shimmer. I feel they could have done better. As I put it to Mike when talking about it, the effect overall is (and I quote): "Hey, this comic explains how Sunset got impatient and abandoned Celestia for Human-Spinoff!" "Wow! So how did it go down?" "Sunset got impatient and abandoned Celestia for Human-Spinoff!" "Oh, OK."
- Also, the age mix-up with the Canterlot Five and Twilight is all kinds of no, and Moondancer's sooooooo much better as a character in "Amending Fences" that it's laughable.
For that matter, I'll also quote my reaction to the second story after that one:
Oddly, the second story I liked more than the first. Nothing amazing, but the idea that the HuMane 5 (very nice: your own coining?)* were on their way to becoming the Elements before Sunset's intervention has all kinds of destiny implications. And much as I rail against destiny as a plot device, it's at least thematically interesting and raises questions worth pursuing about the coherence between the two doppelganger worlds. Plus, it's mostly slice-of-life identity crises, which is low-key but closer to the show's strengths.
I even liked seeing Babs Seed's sister. The wiki suggestion that Sunflower was based on Taylor Swift (aesthetics only, as far as I know) sounds like one of those crazy bits of trivia I could do much with. Yeah, the comic doesn't do anything particularly interesting with them, but you know me and side details like that. Also the Wonderbolts and Miss Harshwhinny cameos.
The continuity's awful, though. If the HuMane 5 are in Freshman Year, then why are younger students like Babs and Diamond Tiara around?
* Ghost Mike reserves the right to use, misuse, abuse, and outright neglect "HuMane 5" on all platforms for all intents and purposes for all royalties and for all of time and space from the Big Bang till the Heat Death of the Universe.
Been watching shows too!
- I saw Little Witch Academia last month. True, I have complaints: something about the myth arc in the second season felt way off compared with the cosy slice-of-life development of the first, or else it's less the myth arc (which, after all, was heavily foreshadowed in the first season) and more that they can't seem to decide if the main guiding villain is the most sociopathic scumbag ever or a sympathetic lost child. It felt at odds with itself, is what I'm trying to say.
But on the plus side, it had some great (if underdeveloped) characters, and yeah, it's nice to watch such a cosy show (also, Diana Cavendish might be the best character in it, but it takes till near the end to appreciate why, and damn do I wish Diamond Tiara had an arc this good). Also, also, the parallels between this and The Owl House are hilarious (again: compare Diana with Amity).
Also watched BNA (Brand New Animal) around the same time. Thoughts:
- It pains me to say it, but this really is a show that trips itself up in the very last episode, and hard. It's like it hit a deadline and then also wanted to introduce ideas with zero foreshadowing or thematic sense at the same time. It's a mess.
- Which makes it all the more galling, because everything before that is an incredibly tight and (give or take some speculative fiction finagling) well-designed bit of dark/brutal social exploration, fun/threatening slice-of-life in the big city, and personal relationship development between central heroine Mishiru and everyone around her.
- I especially love the way they tie various elements together in creative ways, such as the traditional Japanese tanuki-kitsune depictions, and the comparisons between godhood, blood connections crossing boundaries, celebrity idols as mass movement figures, and protecting a group versus raising their spirits. Even the villain is actually pretty impressive as a spinner of plausible deniability right up to the grand plan's execution.
- But then the last episode hits, and it's like What The Hell Happened!? You were running so well! Then you tripped at the finish line! WHYYYY!? I'd still recommend it as a first watch, because that leaves an 11/12 success rate, but... damn that ending.
These new Leo Nickolls cover art designs make Discworld look like some edgy dark fantasy. They're really not, guys. They're full of Dad puns.
- Lastly, I went for a bit of a nostalgic reading trip and revisited Mort by Terry Pratchett, widely regarded as one of the best of the early Discworld books. It's certainly crucial for setting up the mythos of (best character ever) Discworld's Death, and the concepts they bandy around with determinism, changing fate, and - something I appreciated more on a re-read - the death-defying romance angle is pretty clever. Certainly, it marks the beginning of the most creative subseries of the Discworld collection. But...
All that said, I have to admit there's a reason I generally regard Reaper Man as the first "true" Death book, and it basically boils down to me just not getting into Mort all that much. Besides the super-rushed ending and the "wait, they had chemistry?" romance plot, I just never really liked Mort as a character, and unfortunately he's our central focus. I can't think of any other Discworld protagonist who's more obviously defined by his role in the plot than by any discernible character, which feels inconsistent start to finish. Interesting things happen to him or because of him, but never because of who he actually is as a person with identifiable wills beyond the generic and too-obviously-plot-motivated ones. Heck, Albert's more interesting than him, and Albert's a total bastard.
I'm not posting this for any thematic reason: I just really love A Hat in Time.
- Overall, keeping well. The domestic and work situation has become more labour-intensive (today is a bit of a reprieve, or I likely wouldn't be doing this at all), and sadly I expect that to be a major focus over the next couple of months. Hoping, if nothing else, the encouraging writing pace doesn't falter too much over the coming weeks.
I think that just about wraps it up. Also, I apologize - generically, I know, I'm not proud of it - for any missed messages or dropped topics over the last year or so. I'm trying to be better about it.
Till next time, then? Impossible Numbers, out.
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I usually go for Summer Shutdown.
Good. You're not missing anything there. And yeah, FIENDship is Magic is something of a mixed bag, but when it works, it works.
And yeah, I do wish there were more to Sunset's backstory, and I don't just mean internal consistency. Fascinating stuff, I just wish it played well with others. But then, it is about pre-reform Sunset...
Hey, there you are!
Not much to add to the comics talk, not now you've told the world where most of these notes originate from (
), but I remain happy they've given you a fair share of entertainment. Having had the last 4-5 years of the comics be overwhelmingly forgettable fluff down to absolute drek, it's refreshing to look back at this debut year and see how nearly everything was a success. The property at that stage really did inspire the best in people!
I probably do need to re-read the Twilight micro, and better separate it from the art. Still don't remember a bloody thing about the Dash micro. And "Art of Gazebo Repair" remains many people's favourites all these years later for a reason. Least, favourite of the low-stakes ones.
Well, this extra uppercase variant, anyway. I can't claim credit for the "Humane 5/Five".
As an aside, I remain convinced part of the problem with "The Fall of Sunset Shimmer" was the writer having to write about a character and setting brand-new for the DVD movie, and without the scrutiny of basic continuity correlation later issues would have in place. Hence the path of least resistance (though what can you do in 8 pages?) and the age continuity errors, among others.
Never watched Little Witch Academia, though I am well aware of it for its love of Western animation.
Otherwise, I haven't read Mort, but did you know that after The Princess and the Frog, John Musker and Ron Clements first developed an adaptation of it that was looking really great, but then, in an unheard-of problem for Disney, they couldn't acquire the rights? Yeah, guess they didn't want to sell for even a really high price. Though I do note there have been very few Discworld film adaptations, and almost all British tv television films or miniseries, so possibly Pratchet just trusted very few with his babies. As a result, they developed three original ideas instead to avoid the problem repeating itself before settling on what became Moana.
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I like to compare notes with other people's rankings, quite apart from the Sombra one routinely topping people's lists. The Tirek, Nightmare Moon, and Queen Chrysalis ones are a mixed bag for completely different reasons, so I wonder if it could work as a (rough) measure of what people most look for in a story.
The obvious conclusion is that they didn't know what they were going to do with her after the first movie, because otherwise the answer I'd have gone for would've involved reconciling the two versions of her personality before letting the evil side take over.
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i.pinimg.com/1200x/26/52/bf/2652bf422dd085aac4826221ff0a5835.jpg
The inverse being that I'm going to have a rough ride from this point on. I'll reserve judgement till after the fact, but the general impression I've gotten is that the main series peaked early.
I'll have to report on the other micros as and when I get around to them. It's been a while since I cracked open a comic, though, so I'm not making any firm predictions.
Honestly, it's the first comic where my reaction is less "I'm happy to make this canon" and more "mmmmm skip".
I think you mean adaptation here?
Very much so. A wise policy, in my opinion, though a Musker and Clements treatment would definitely be worth seeing. Even if it didn't pan out... well, they did direct Aladdin, Hercules, Treasure Planet, and The Little Mermaid, so it couldn't have been all bad.
Besides, Discworld done in beautiful Disney animation? Yes, please.
What makes this even funnier is that The Princess and the Frog has some eerily close parallels with another Discworld novel, Witches Abroad (Louisiana Bayou-esque setting, themes of good and evil magic-crafters, princess and frog elements, even the themes of practicality and hard work versus wishful thinking and laziness).
Now you've pointed out this bit of Mort-related trivia, I'm deeply curious as to whether that was intentional. I guess we'll never know for sure, but damn do I like the idea.
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10/10 Headcanon incorporated.
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The Fall of Sunset Shimmer was a standard trope, ploddingly (in eight pages!) told. Every writing teacher/writer giving advice I've ever encountered has emphatically said to skip over that sort of thing if you're sufficiently unwise to make it part of your story in the first place.
Considering how Hollywood mangles film adaptations, this is probably for the best. The animated series was horribly low-budget Hana-Barbera levels of art, but stuck to the original story quite well, as have the several adaptations for stage that I've seen.
EDIT: Oh holy carp! How could I have forgotten the utterly disaterous series based on Guards! Guards!? What an utter steaming pile of s#!t!
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I had forgotten how much I liked the first couple of years of the comics. I don't know if anybody has ever cornered Price and/or Cook at a con and asked them if they were enthusiastic fans of the show, but I would bet serious coin that they were. Just seeing their names together on a cover cause a jolt of serotonin and dopamine for me.
I know there were other artists and writers that were consistently good, but those two...
We are in accord about BNA, however. It seems to me that 99% of writers were out sick on the day that the "How to Write a Satisfying Ending" lesson was taught.*
I haven't watched Little Witch Academia yet, though it is on my radar. The consensus between people I know has pretty much been First season: Yay!, Second season: Meh. Do you think I would lose much by just watching the first season?
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* Having recently rewatched The Good Place, I am reminded that some series get it spectacularly right, and that makes the rest all that less enjoyable.
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Did you ever see the Sky adaptations? That'd be Hogfather, The Colour of Magic, and Going Postal, unless there's a fourth I missed. My own view is broadly that each is good, just not as good as the originals*.
*That's simplifying. Hogfather I think suffers from glacial pacing and a couple of dubious casting choices, and Going Postal moves some things around in a better position (making Adora Belle Dearheart the mastermind behind the Smoking Gnu is ineffably clever), but overall feels a tad watered-down (much better casting, though). The middle one is the only one I'd consider an outright improvement, though that's largely because it combines the original with The Light Fantastic, which is by leaps and bounds the better of the first two stories.
You mean the Watch live-action one?
Avoided it.
Can't say for sure what their levels of enthusiasm were, but I tracked down a couple of interviews on Equestria Daily dating to 2014/2015, if you're interested. Here's some choice extracts from the Cook interview:
https://www.equestriadaily.com/2014/11/equestria-daily-interview-series_15.html
And here's a few from the Price interview:
https://www.equestriadaily.com/2015/02/equestria-daily-interview-series.html
I see your Granny Weatherwax and raise you Sam Vimes.
Seriously, though, the best characters of Discworld are so phenomenal that Death has some stiff* competition.
* PUN! OR PLAY ON WORDS!
The funny thing is that Alan Sylvasta turning out to be a Beastman "pureblood" god - while still a profoundly terrible idea that upends the discriminatory angle for the sake of a rules-cheating twist - is actually not the worst thing about it. On one level, Shirou is such an overpowered character that you kinda need a god-like enemy to rival him (though in that case, I'd have thought either an artificial god that Alan created specifically to destroy Shirou, or Alan getting a shot of the vaccine into Shirou that doesn't cure him but still slows him down enough to level the playing field).
Really, it's the piling on of a poorly explained Nirvasyl blood cure (something something human-Beastman blood mixing?), the wolf howling thing, the climax revolving around a TV broadcast, and the lack of resolution for the rushed happy ending that's the worst thing - just all that is too much. I'm not even convinced making Nirvasyl Syndrome a real Beastman thing and not some kind of pharmaceutical scam was a good idea, considering the show's already biased towards making Beastmen look really vicious already.
If they'd just stuck the landing...
I think that would be a fine way to tackle it. Watch Season One - which is mostly episodic and self-contained - and base any further considerations on that.
For what it's worth, I'd say Season Two still has great moments and episodes, so I'd be inclined to encourage you to watch it for those. But if Season One's not winning you over, then I don't think Season Two is going to change your mind much.
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Lucky you. I become enraged every time I think about it. It was that bad. Someone squatting in the street, unleashing a flood of diarrhea onto a stack of Pratchett's books would have been less disrespectful. (though more entertaining)
Yes, I've seen the Sky movies. I think those three are the only ones. They are enjoyable, but I hope nobody watched them as an introduction to Diskworld because they don't come near to conveying how fun the books are.
I thought of one more adaptation, a short film with Cohen the Barbarian:
I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier. It may well be the best adaptation of Pratchett's work so far. If you haven't seen it before, make sure to watch through the credits and pay attention to the lyrics of the song!
Thanks for pointing me at the Cook/Price interviews! They jibe with my assumptions about how they approached it. The "don't worry about it, just go nuts and have fun" attitude seems to be a ridiculously successful technique.* Maybe that's a contributing factor to the gradual decline of the comics?** Perhaps the later issues were often approached with the knowledge that they were touching a hugely successful "property," and self-constraining factors (to say nothing of executive interference) came into play?
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* For just about anything.
**Or any long successful series, really.
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That's a good point I hadn't thought about. It probably did play a part, and in the show too. History is littered with tv shows where a later generation of new writers come in fans of the show that correlates with a decline in quality, after all, and we know in many of those cases that over-reverence played a part. Very astute!
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Agreed. There isn't really much that they do that's an improvement over the books, and plenty that's at least a step down. Plus, you lose a lot of the narrator and meta-level comedy translating from page to film.
Just watched it. That was grand. đ I remember reading that short story a long time ago, though I don't remember where and when. Cohen's nostalgic bastardry is one reason Interesting Times remains my favourite Rincewind novel.
You can't fight Cohen the Barbarian with stock market prices!
My pleasure.