Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #92 · 6:30pm Dec 11th, 2023
Fifteen weeks strikes me as a reasonable break between Author Spotlights. And with the end of the year upon us, let’s look at an author whose work nearly always makes me laugh and/or smile. Not that this guy needs the promotion, with nearly 2,800 followers to his name (it’d be even more were it not for that immortal enemy Real Life™ – more on that later), but round here, what the ghost says goes. Thus, I give you Aragon.
Technically, he intended his username to be Aragón, but website URL’s not being conducive to accents sent that ship sailing many years ago. 
It is really quite impossible to write any sort of satisfactory lead-in to Aragon as an author if you’ve never come across his works before. So perhaps it’s a good thing virtually everyone reading this will already know him and/or his fics quite well! 
But for the sake of formality, I’ll give it the old college try. He is largely a comedy writer (38 of his 46 stories carry the tag). Normally, such a fact and ratio would lead one to expect largely gentle bone-ticklers, or LOL Random fics. Not even slightly. Absurd gets us closer, but even that is only a cursory surface-level approximation.
I think a decent way of getting a handle on his work is to look at the evolution of his writing style. He started off writing mile-a-minute comedies, totally lacking in anything resembling a filter, and afraid to take the gas off the pedal in catapulting joke after joke at the reader (his words, not mine). Oh, and with characters’ attributes heightened to absurd, almost-parody levels. This would likely not have worked, and tired fast, except the jokes not only had a high hit ratio, but tended to be high in density and layers, and use actual structure and narrative momentum. This, combined with razor-sharp timing (in the fics and in their release), meant he hit BIG, to the point his most-read fic by a wide margin, A Hell of a Time (a response to the princess’ time in Tartarus in “Twilight’s Kingdom”) came a year and two days after he started writing and has over 50K views. Not bad for a Spainard who learned English in part from watching FiM (there is no ESL syndrome with this chap, though I’m sure proofreaders helped with that a lot early on).
Over the following few years, he experimented with occasional non-comedies (one of which, I Don't Want To Write This, I’ve reviewed), while his writing style refined and honed. His taste in comedy didn’t change much (it sounds cynical to describe it, except it’s utterly sincere), but he mellowed out of characters screeching a lot, having every line be an absurd observation, and so forth. I don’t know if I could even describe this as gaining a filter, necessarily, but it not only made the fics better, but allowed for a broader range in styles – there’s a 18K fic below that I shudder to think what it would have been like written early in his career. A slog by the end, most probably*.
* Incidentally, while I loved it at the time to an Excellent rating, I don’t know how well his heist novel Crime and Funishment will hold up when I return to it. 80K for that kind of manic pace with minimal filter is… it’s a thing. We’ll see.
The end result of all this was, his style became so distinctive that it became synonymous with him (plus, bereft of the baggage that prevents other styles being successful), to the point that not only could he have the long description for a 16K Rarity story In Hindsight simply say “This is a story about Rarity’s hips. (All good stories are)”, but the EqD Writer’s Ways on How to Write an Engaging Synopsis would use it as an example that works largely off of author branding (the story is actually a AppleDash and RariTwi story – ostensibly). Indeed, his fan following is so strong (we all know a high follower count often does not mean this), it would allow him to branch out into a different medium and carry a reasonable chunk of that pool of viewers with him.
Nowadays, one could easily presume Aragon has retired from Ponyfic, given he’s only written two quick ‘n’ dirty contest entries since February 2020, almost four. Not at all, he’s just drawing them instead. As the lad was set on entering the Spanish legal system and becoming a judge, financial woes came a-calling, so when push came to shove, he started doing lengthy fan comics (100+ panels, typically) posted as blogs. Viewable to all (even the fan Discord isn’t paywall-blocked), but supported on Patreon, and between their high quality and his prior fanbase, he’s supported to the tune of €961 per comic, a height I don’t think exists for anyone on Fimfiction besides Monochromatic (who is the reason RariTwi exists in any notable form, so…).
Even more impressive is the comics’ effective minimalism: Aragon didn’t draw at the time, but he learned, and by keeping backgrounds non-existent, doing characters just as outlines, and using character-coded colours for outlines and texts, he focused on subtle but effective changes in facial expressions that sell the jokes that much better. They’re not the easiest to find on mobile (user profile indexes only being available on desktop, alas – for now, you’ll have to scroll through his blogs), but they’re absolutely worth your time. They even make half the characters being egotistical six ways to Sunday actually work and be charming, and not just annoying.
With all that, there was no way to represent him fully in just five fics, but in organising them as a chronological snapshot, I’ve formed a reasonable approximation. We have an early “no filter” fic, a rare serious outing, a longer comedic adventure only possible once he’d mellowed out, a “no filter” fic in his later phase, and an unusual one-off in childlike whimsy.
Truly, Aragon’s work is a miracle, making so many plotlines and jokes that should by all rights be DOA just spark. I think I’ll credit this to his sincerity – despite the ostensibly cynical places he goes sometimes, there is near-always a gentle sweetness to him and his view on FiM and its characters all that makes the writing endearing. How much of my opinion there is because I cannot readily separate the champ from his work, I cannot say: I’ve been in his Discord server for almost a year now, sometimes feeling out of place with the face pace most folks there operate at, but on the receiving end of a lot of respect, friendship and much-appreciated votes of confidence from him. Which does a lot for someghost’s insecurities. 
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Here’s the five fics, and you can expect more from him again soon.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Daring DONE! by Aragon
A Million Little Lights by Aragon
Evil is Easy, Governing is Harder by Aragon
Friendly Fire by Aragon
Grave Implications by Aragon
Weekly Word Count: 38,939 Words
Daring DONE! by Aragon
Genre: Comedy
Twilight Velvet, Twilight, Celestia, Night Light
5,509 Words
October-December 2013Reread
An alcohol-infused slip up at a party leads to Twilight letting loose to Rainbow Dash that her mother is the author of Daring Do, under a penname. Naturally, Dash excitedly writes a fan letter to her. Twilight Velvet is not best pleased. Things only get worse when word of this reaches the other Princesses, who are just as much mega-fans as Rainbow, but without the rules of society to hold them back.
In the aftermath of me reviewing some of Aragon’s older mile-a-minute comedies last year, he expressed (some) regret and embarrassment at how desperate they felt in hindsight, totally lacking in a filter or more than the barest structure in having the characters’ actions and reactions exaggerated to absurd extremes, relative to his more carefully calculated later efforts. At the time, I acknowledged this, but felt that even in works of his dating back to 2014, the batting average of the jokes was already high enough as to render this largely a moot point.
Having now reread only his second work (and a true breakout hit: 5000+ views and 1600+ likes in the first week is absurd for an author who had less than 50 followers beforehand, even in 2013), I can better see what he meant, for this story’s structure is even more shaggy. More noticeably, the comedy isn’t often expanded on or evolved over the course of the fic.
More often than not, the threads of jokes just get swapped out for others, and not always in the most organic way: the lack of the Rainbow Dash tag is accurate for how little she factors in after the setup, just a few late-on enquiries about Velvet reading her fanfic that is not only not acknowledged by Velvet, but doesn’t get a resolution. The two main threads, of Velvet berating Twilight for letting this slip, and then Celestia and Luna pestering her with their fan-filly enthusiasm and ridiculous theories about future Daring Do books, do connect and overlap, which is good, but by the time the fic’s second chapter pivoted to Royal Guards demanding Night Light do something about Velvet going berserk in Canterlot Castle to find a solution out of this mess, it had kinda lost me.
It’s testament to Aragon’s natural talent at this kind of comedy that even with these determinants and less variety in the jokes, this was still funny. The difference between Celestia and Luna’s brand of geeking out was a nice touch, and while the letter format isn’t used in a sophisticated way, it does lead to some great in-jokes on how ponies are sending letters in situations like this. And as seen in future works of his, the happy, comparatively-sensible attitude of Night Light and Shining Armor as they watch this chaos unfold is used as suitable capstone to the chaos. Largely just a stepping stone curioso by now, but it’s a better start than most authors out there.
Rating: Passable
A Million Little Lights by Aragon
Genre: Drama/Slice of Life
Celestia, Shining Armor
2,093 Words
March 2016
Celestia catches Shining Armor peering through the keyhole to her quarters. The thing is, she knew he would be doing this, she knew she’d catch him, and she knew exactly how the following conversation would go, down to his reaction to seeing evidence of her not being the perfect paragon Equestria presumes her to be. It’s hard to miss that, when you’re surrounded by untold lights showing you everything. Lights that you can’t turn them off.
I always find it interesting, with a notable author, to see which fic of theirs got the coveted Royal Canterlot Library feature (before 2020, when it slowed to a crawl and eventually terminated altogether), and to what degree it is representative of their normal output, beyond the particularly high quality for that given fic. Colour me surprised then, for Aragon’s such fic is one of his vanishingly few non-comedies (only 8 of his 46 fics lack the Comedy tag). And not only that, it was a deliberate attempt to mimic the writing style of another author (Pearple Prose). But I’m glad for that, for this shows both Aragon’s versatility and his approach to writing areas that are less of a strength (going by the RCL interview, he is of the “tackle your writing weaknesses head-on, don’t run from them” mentality). More on this being a not-representative-of-the-author's-bread-and-butter choice later.
Fittingly for a fic aping someone else’s style, it is very dense with material despite its short length, one where you can feel (if you’re looking for it), that every line has been fussed over. Even before knowing it went through many rewrites. 
The essence here is that Celestia does honestly want so badly for ponies to not believe in her divinity. She is a goddess, but doesn’t want to be. She does fight it enough, not solving the problems of the world or other ponies in a flash not only because they won’t learn anything, but doing so had made things worse in the past. But she can only do that so far. At one point, Celestia muses on the difference between respect and worship, which is telling of the whole thing here, walking the balance between a living symbol and an object of zealotry.
Celestia’s characterisation, similarly, walks a balance of being awfully relatable while also being ever-so-slightly alien, in a manner that feels fitting. Her inner struggle is calm and quiet, but not less resonant for it. The material of her talking with Shining plays this out in a relatively normal fashion, but it’s her musing afterwards, with a lot of repetition of key phrases, that really drives this home. You get self-deception, visual metaphors, reflections on the past and the future, and so on: that the fic remains perfectly readable and easy to digest while having all this and earning it is the most impressive thing of all.
Naturally, I don’t know how impressive I’d find this without the knowledge of its author or being a deliberate breakaway (and Aragon’s answer to “Celestia is a God” fic that aren’t where his own headcanon lies), for said knowledge certainly makes it very impressive. Either way, though, it’s an impressive, layered piece that doesn’t demand or mug, but merely is. You can rest easy, Aragon of 7+ years ago (): you widened your writing skillset with this one.
Rating: Really Good
Evil is Easy, Governing is Harder by Aragon
Genre: genres
Celestia, Luna, Daring Do
17,653 Words
March 2017Listened to via Illya Leonov's reading
It is a normal day over breakfast with Luna when Celestia decides she’s going to go mad with power. As one does when they’ve been affronted. A few weeks later, Daring Do is breaking into the castle to rescue her kidnapped assistant, subdue Princess-but-evil-again Luna and take down Queen Tyrant Celestia. If she can find her, that is. And along the way, there’s a visiting king to calm down and an unsuspecting rebellion to quash. Not quite in a day’s work.
So. A lot of Aragon’s work has high praise going in, and this had that twice over: it was the story of his chosen for the Royal Canterlot Library’s Correct the Record, for authors whose featured work didn’t best showcase their strengths (not just for his such work not being a comedy, but in the style of another Ponyfic author), but it was also a story that so impressed the judges of the inaugural Imposing Sovereigns contest that FoME agreed to overlook it flaunting the word count limit (not a hard hard one then, granted), to which it then proceeded to be only one point short of being the 1st place nomination for every judge. Like… geez, how could any story live up to that?
The answer is it doesn’t, but it’s close enough that it’ll do. Being the redo RCL feature, it is very typically him, in being a mile-a-minute comedy, with lots of narrated asides to the reader, dozens of jokes that have either arcs or at least plants or payoffs (often two, so the second catches us unawares), the majority of the cast being detached from reality with a kind of chipper insanity, and a kind of detached wry way of looking at things that doesn’t drip into cynicism (least, not the toxic, draining kind). But on top of all that, it also has an actual story with plot beats to hit in a well-paced fashion – it’s an adventure story, so it can’t just be a collection of vignettes forming a narrative skeleton – it’s one of those “every new reveal recolours the whole story to that point” fics, and the absurdity takes unprecedented directions.
Aragon had mellowed out of his “throw everything at the wall” phase by this point, which has the odd effect of leaving this a fic that does still feel like it’s tossing things and hoping they’ll stick (it’s not one of his more measured-though-still-absurd fics he’d switched to by then), yet because everything ties into something else, even just the plotless jokes bouncing off each other, it’s not tiring and exhausting like you’d suspect. My listening to the reading may have had something to do with that.
It’s also helped by positioning Daring Do as the straight mare among all the oddballs here, but having her not be that straight and also subject to some role reversal in others noting an oddity she doesn’t (her assistant’s observation of how Daring subdued Luna is… a thin). Point being, she makes for the right kind of guide such that the fic doesn’t descend into a “I’m surrounded by idiots!” commentary. Enough that, coupled with her delightful chemistry with her assistant Sugar Song (and enough references to a past adventure of theirs in a prior fic of Aragon’s to be distracting, alas) my usual high resistance to stories with Daring being real only occasionally poked its head in.
Then you’ve got turns of phrase that themselves are jokes and setups, everything from Luna’s delight at being a good prisoner to the manner in which the bottom falls out of Celestia’s game, deconstruction and social commentary on Equestrian politics that aren’t just the butt of jokes but are never taken seriously to the point of derailing the fic either… Honestly, I’m not sure I have a reason for not giving this the highest rating, other than for all its strengths I didn’t unreservedly adore it. But make no mistake, it’s one of Aragon’s strongest fics, both for his fans and those who find some of his fics to be a bit much – despite being long for a mile-a-minute dense absurdist comedy, this doesn’t tire like they sometimes do.
It’s proof, if nothing else, that we do our best work when satisfying ourselves, if Aragon’s desire in the RCL interview to satisfy the Indiana Jones part of his childhood is anything to go by, and how the swashbuckling adventure aspects of this and an undue sincerity of unabashed fun recolours his usual approach to his bread-and-butter absurdist comedies.
Rating: Really Good
Friendly Fire by Aragon
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life
Young Six, Twilight, Starlight
11,184 Words
December 2018Reread
Six certain students are going through something of a rebellious stretch. Teenagers, what can you do. So they skip class yet again, loitering out in Sugarcube Corner. In other news, it is Hearth’s Warming, and the School of Friendship is on fire. The two events may be connected.
You may wonder what a Student Six fic is doing here, given my known apathy for the last two seasons. Well, I’d read it before, apparently, and though I could have picked any of numerous other fics for this final slot, this spotlight was the most motivation I was ever going to get to go back to it.
I jest, somewhat. Aragon reportedly first-watch binged Seasons Six, Seven and the handpicked relevant Season Eight episodes in the lead-up to writing this (at a rate of five episodes a day – even beating out my 3+/day when I binged all seven after the Movie brought me in, in fifty-odd days from November up to Christmas 2017). Another credit to him, then, for he adapted the Student Six to his droll style of comedy very well, as regards what personality traits to expand and play up. There’s a lot of affection for them, actually, to the point many aren’t even exaggerated much at all, but just responding to those that are, or other ponies altogether. Silverstream’s enthusiasm bordering on being psychotically dangerous is the only one that truly leans that way, and that’s a tertiary trait.
There are parts of this narrative that are rather grounded, largely in the character discussion the Student Six have amongst themselves while going about their business. Which only serves to make the absurdity happening around them all the starker. I daren’t say how they caused the fire, but Twilight and Starlight discussing this and how it happened feels like a tonal resurrection from a 2014 Aragon fic, the kind where there is almost no boundary to how dumb characters can be if it’s funny and they’ve got conviction. Though other parts don’t feel as much of a lurch (what the students do at Sugarcube Corner, and how it goes, feel rather more fitting).
Frankly, it’s a crapshoot how well the blending here works. Even the structural setup and payoff, while successful and clever, feels muted. The fic undeniably works and is funny, even if there is some juxtaposition that mutes the differences rather than enhancing them. Honestly, the only real liability is the length: unusually, despite the density of the individual jokes and micro pacing, there’s a lot of repetition of gags and plot threads. Which is the point, of course, but even those tend to ramble on and lose energy or impact by the fifth time. Lord knows there are worse drawbacks to writing for a Jinglemas deadline – I know more than most – but this dulled focus does take some sharp sting out of the end result. Still, worth it for how Aragon handled the Student Six well, if a bit less sharp relative to his regular characters.
Rating: Pretty Good
Grave Implications by Aragon
Genre: Slice of Life
Twilight, Celestia
2,500 Words
February 2019
At the tender age of four, Twilight Sparkle’s mother took her to buy a tombstone. Her tombstone, more specifically. It’s an old Canterlot tradition born from when the things were very expensive, and while the things are easily affordable nowadays, the tradition lives on. Besides, given their age, most foals forget about it until later in life. Twilight is not most foals, and her curiosity as to the large space below the pony’s name on the tombstone, and what it’s intended for, has only intensified with time. And recent… events.
This is not at all the macabre comedy you might expect from the description. Something that possibly needs stating, given the author. It’s far closer to being a whimsical musing on the possible interpretations of buying a tombstone early in this culture. There’s an almost childlike wonder throughout the first half: scenes start and end with the kind of succinct and blunt statements used to great effect in children’s function (“And that was that” puts in a key appearance). And through Twilight talking with Celestia about this in her youth, then later with Shining Armor, there’s a mixture of a wide-eyed naivety along with a kind of light melancholy that feels altogether fitting.
The fic’s back half, jumping forward to the show’s timeline, manages the delicate act of stepping out of this childlike mode without breaking the piece or not feeling of a part with it. It also manages to make its tackling of a very common topic, and one most of us are pretty sick of by now, feel, if not fresh, at least uniquely applied to this concept. I don’t know that it necessarily turned it all the way around to being an active strength, but I certainly felt pleased enough in the moment with how it was handled.
The meaning of the tombstone is left somewhat deliberately ambiguous at the end of it all, which feels appropriate for the fic. Other than not being quite his usual kind of fic (there are very few out-and-out jokes here), this does feel like a more casual fic for Aragon. So it says a lot that it still works quite well, even if it never had any pretensions to being a home run (the lad never does, frankly: he’s ever-so-modest, but he still always puts his all in everything he writes).
Rating: Pretty Good
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 2
Pretty Good: 2
Decent: 0
Passable: 1
Weak: 0
Bad: 0
I had no idea Aragon switched to comics. I'll have to investigate this at some point.
I've only read five Aragon stories, none of which are these (although one of them has been on my "want to read" list for a very long time). But it says something that of the ones I have read none of them landed below a PG rating. Definitely someone I want to eventually read more of over time.
Aragon is also personally responsible for my hardening the word limit in future contests, which I feel is the highest form of praise possible. “Outstanding work. I’m going to ask that you and everyone else never do it again.”
But yes, his stories, whether pure prose or sequential art, are always a manic delight.
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I'll leave it to the Maestro himself to recommend one that's short and can give a quick good impression, but they truly are something. Imagine one of his mostly-talking-heads fanfictions drawn, and you're part of the way there.
Of the five you have read, I've read three. Covered I Don't Want To Write This last year, and have also read A Hell of a Time plus Crime and Funishment. Good fics!
I'd feel guilty about adding to your backlog, if I wasn't adding such class work.
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I had heard that extra lore surrounding Evil is Easy, Governing is Harder, yes. And that it was the story's quality kept it from getting the sack. Probably for the best – both it getting through and the word count for the future.
Darn you, FoME.
I spend over 4K on Aragon and his works, and you come along and use your natural/trained talent at succinctness to deliver a phrase like "manic delight" that perfectly sums up the champ's works. 
Aragon is one of my favorite authors here! His story "WORLD IS IN DANGER. DON'T TALK TO ME." is a bit of a commitment wordwise, but it's not only my favorite story of his, it's one of my favorite stories on the site.
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At this point, 15K isn't much of a commitment for me, as on top of covering one novel (40K+) every month, I try to cover a novella (20-40K) halfway in between each novel. So, on a four-week cycle, Week 2 might be a novella, Week 4 a novel, that sort of thing. I read a 15K book with two hours set aside one evening.
I can't say this one appeals to me all that much: it does look quintessentially Aragon, but there's like a dozen other works of his that appeal more by virtue of not being EqG. So I still wouldn't count on seeing it anytime soon. But I do love seeing the enthusiasm all the same!
Great choice for a spotlight!
Aragon regularly does amazing things. For example, there's a rule in comedy about repeating jokes: you can only repeat a joke three times, and the third time has to include a twist. Any more, and it stops being funny and starts to actively irritate the audience. Aragon laughs in the face of rules. He can throw in a repeated joke like a backbeat, and it keeps getting funnier every single time.
I have a near pathological hatred of glacial pacing, so his rapid-fire comedies are quite to my tastes. With anyone else who works at that pace, you'd expect the flood of jokes to be--well--sloppy. But that's never the case with his work. His attention to detail is amazing. This carries over to his comic work as well. The ponies are all just simple outlines, right? Not quite. Each pony had a body type. It's subtle but the angles and curves are different and appropriate for each of them. He went to a great deal of trouble to get something right that most people won't even notice. That is excellent craftsmanship.
His comedic timing is unbelievable. I've already noted how he can evolve a situation to support a repeated joke, and the interval between repeats is just as (or more) critical to the success of that as the structure. It's not just textual flow; his sense of timing carries over to his comic work. He knows exactly how many panels to repeat to show a character's pause to indicate disbelief or shock or a how-do-I-put-this moment. That's something that professionals struggle with!
Same. But... There are approximately two authors on this site that can write purely EQG stories I might enjoy reading, and Aragon is one of them. Haven't read it yet, but it's on the list.
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Well, not every single time, given the (marginal!) diminishing returns I felt on Friendly Fire. But the overwhelming majority of the time, absolutely.
"Number of times iisaw has reminded me he prefers his fiction to move fast, +1…"
I kid, and I even tend to agree when in a bind and picking my fiction. It was probably clear, but I never object to his fast-moving stories because they are fast-moving. Only when the energy to keep themselves consistent at that pace dissipates. And that is rather rare.
Something I'd have touched on if the opening intro hadn't already pushed on 1K! It's most obvious with ponies being next to their EqG counterparts ponies (once one looks past different accessories, mane styles and outline colour). Personally, I don't like my ponies to be angular, and Aragon's art style does lean in that direction. But for the above-mentioned reason, he makes it work and then some.
When I first started reading his comics back in 2021 (?), being that I am a visual storyteller above all else, this was the first thing that stuck with me, above the verbal jokes which are, I'm sure, what most folks think about. "This chap knows the right length to hold his reaction panels for. Fair play!"
I am often envious of how easy he makes being this funny look. Myself, whenever I try to write funny, nine times out of ten, the results softens to not being a comedy somewhere along the way, and I accept that and lean in the new direction. And when it does survive being a comedy, it ends up being largely sitcom-style. Good sitcom-style, but…
Oh, agreed. But Aragon's EqG work leapfrogging over nearly everyone else's in levels of interest doesn't mean it's gonna be at the same level as something FiM related he writes, still, in terms of "does this appeal to me?". That said, he's only written six EqG works, I've already read one, and the other five only add up to 36K. So probably not as late to get to some of them as I might have initially indicated.
I've read Daring DONE!, but it was in 2014 (Ponyfic Roundup 2, would you believe!) and so I wouldn't put too much store by the four-star rating I gave it then. However, I've also read Evil is Easy, Governing is Harder and bar some mild grumbling about it really pushing its E rating I liked almost everything about it. But yeah... it seems I've reviewed eight Aragon fics and never disliked one, so draw your own conclusions!
Didn't know about the comics -- interesting! I'm really not a comic reader (the last one I truly followed in this fandom was the sadly never-finished Dash Academy) but both your and iisaw's comments do whet my appetite for these a bit.
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Ha, I supposed I'm so used to considering the E rating as the equivalent of G and PG together, rather than its official definition of what would be acceptable, content-wise, in the show (which many of those fics break, but that's on the TV-Y rating), that this didn't occur to me, and I just mentally filed it away under being a hard PG. But I get why this would leap out for you.
I scanned through those eight reviews as I've read most of those fics. That's good, as these kind of over-silly, mile-a-minute comedies aren't something you've always gelled with. The right sampler (plus nearly half of the eight you've covered being non-comedies) will do that.
It's best to not think of them as the typical fandom comics one might read on Deviantart and the like. Most of them are characters against a featureless background (though with a establishing shot
traced– EDIT: poor phrasing on my part, meant to say redrawn and adapted – from a show vector, like the outside Carousel Boutique, so we know where it is), and while characters enter and leave as they pass, and there are other props and effects, but they are closer to a stage play.I say this not to undervalue the effect that the poses and facial expressing and comic timing have – as iisaw and I have noted, those aspects really make them much funnier – but just to give you an idea. I don't really read many fan comics either, but as they are always standalone except for the rare two-parter, there's no barrier to entry.
If you want a quick sampler, one of his comics is only 20 panels, It's Optimal. Inspired by the Friendship is Optimal contest sometime back and kind of a promo for it. Obviously that means it's closer to a newspaper comic rather then telling an actual story, so I'm sure Aragon will come along later and say it was a terrible one to pick for giving an accurate impression of what they're like (they do have tangential jokes opening and closing them, but not taking up most of the pages as here) But it works!
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I mean, I laughed. There's not a lot more than that that I want from a comic, regardless of how (a)typical it might be for its creator. Though sheesh, only two and a half years since it was published and the NFT joke at the end already seems old. (Didn't stop it being funny, though!)
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Honestly, the first panel of that one could stand alone as a great bit of character humor.
Well! This was humbling. I gave myself some time to think of an adequate response, cause this was a lot of effort and it caught me off-guard. Which is good! Love getting caught off-guard. Keeps you on your toes. Keeps you GUESSIN.
Anyway, I mostly agree with everything said in here, which makes sense, since it's pretty much universally positive. My early phase was seventeen jokes a minute, which I don't particularly regret (much as I keep repeating that I think those stories don't hold up) because they really let me hone comedic timing to a degree where I became comfortable with jokes. I wish I could offer some hindsight on how to write comedy, but ultimately it really just starts and ends with "be funny and write the jokes well"; it's not an innate thing, but you do really gotta learn with practice.
Either way! I'm really flattered by the end comment about the "gentle sweetness" in my stories; truth be told, I always make sure my stories have a -point-, right? And often the characters eventually say it out loud to each other. Which is a bit corny, sure, but it works if treated with enough sincerity. And that ties into what you said, because if you have a point, if the story has some sort of moral so to speak, chances are the ending is going to be happy, because the way to explore said moral is to show that, if you follow it, things end up working out.
So yeah! God I don't really have much to add to this blog, it's just a comprehensive evolution of my writing style. I keep getting flattery for the layered storytelling and the way I tie up jokes into plotlines, but honestly, that's just a matter of consistency. What one needs to remember is that, what for the audience is an aside, for the characters is reality and not a joke.
So you do gotta keep it in mind as you write, and simply juggle it all. On a personal level, I also just like it when stuff is brought up early as a joke and then later influences the plot, because I find it a borderline perfect way to foreshadow twists -- so I do it very often. As it was said earlier, I do it to the point that I tend to do it more than once, because the audience is expecting the first callback; it's the second or the third that are the real twists.
As per Friendly Fire, which I agree lacks the tight focus of my other latter stories (I wrote it and edited it in two days! You can tell a bit!) a big part of why I dedicated so much time to writing the Student Six interacting with each other was that I wanted to show that they were friends. This is a weird thing to mention, seeing how the show is named Friendship is Magic, but I often find that some writers don't actually write the characters simply hanging out, or enjoying each other's company. That makes sense -- conflict is the soul of storytelling -- but Friendly Fire is, in a way, me trying to explore characters getting along with utter sincerity as the conflict itself. In a meta way, I was going "see? you can have friendship in the story and still make it work".
Oh, and regarding that RCL interview -- here's a lil trade secret: the reason why they even did the "Correct the Record" thing was me! Literally because they thought that A Million Little Lights, while good, wasn't purely indicative of my style. Mind that once they announced the concept, they held a vote so the public could decide which stories would make it, so it's not like it was MADE FOR ME that way, but I did inspire the idea!
Lastly, regarding the reviews in general -- yeah, no notes. Evil is Easy I still look at with delight because, damn it, I just adore Indiana Jones so much, and Daring Do lets me relive that childhood reading the novel adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's one of my favorite memories. And Grave Implications was inspired by two things: First, me learning that apparently my parents bought me a grave when I was a child? So I guess that if I died tomorrow we know where I'd end up. And, second, that my uncle was named after his own older brother, who died way before he himself was born -- which means that my uncle grew up visiting a cemetery to look at a grave that had his name. What a weirdly grim family, mine.
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They aren't traced! I don't trace anything, I freehand every establishing shot. That you thought it was traced is probably a good sign, eh?
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What's funny is, I wrote that wayyy at the start of the NFT craze, to the point where, if you look at the comments, most people don't even know what an NFT is by that point. And yet the joke is already pretty old! I love how far and how quickly that shit crashed. Rest in piss, NFTs.
...Anyway yeah that comic isn't the most representative of my usual ones; as Mike said, it's more or less an extra I drew just to lightly poke fun at a friend. If you want to read anything of mine I genuinely recommend you just pick whichever you prefer. The newer the better, though. This one's pretty good unless you fucking hate the Student Six, and even then, for example.
Fun to hear that you and 5758657 didn't know about the comics, though! That's mostly what I do nowadays, even if I don't consider myself retired from writing pony. I do still wanna write fics; I just don't have a lot of time, and the comics take precedent because they take so long to write and, well, I am using them to pay for my studies. Lol. Hhahah. Hah...
(I do take pride in my art, though! i'm learning! The comics are indeed simplistic out of necessity; they're so long I need to make the art quick or else they would take years to complete, even if it just takes 20 min to read them, but I do think my comedic style is very visual. I grew up reading comics, after all.)
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Just gonna respond to a few of your points here, bud, but rest assured I was very flattered that you were very flattered by this.
It's sometime I'm very attuned to, the structure of jokes, as it pertains to plants and payoffs, just from learning it for more dramatic purposes. In a "normal" work your plant would ideally be relevant to the scene it appears in, so the audience doesn't cop that it'll be relevant later. In comedy, this usually just means making a joke out of it, but if it can be both, well, then you've got something!
It is pretty much the mantra of the show. Even transplanted into your mentality and suffused with a lot of snark and egotistical characters dialled up to 11, that shines through.
It did still get a Pretty Good, so you can bet I enjoyed it plenty fine. More just that I've read enough works of yours that give the air of chaos but are ruthlessly organised about it, so something like this which is a little looser (and not by design) is noticeable to an analytical mind like myself.
Many blogs back, iisaw and I chatted about how many writers are so gung-ho on the notion of conflict to generate any interest that it ruins the characters in doing so. Think iisaw said this was in relation to Let do This' ability to make all of the Mane 6 utterly likeable no matter the situation. He (iisaw) coined the term "conflict poisoning" to refer to the usual reverse situation.
In any case, I agree that many writers miss this, and it does take quite a delicate hand to make getting along interesting in and of itself. It being the conflict is one way to do that!
That had a partial real-life inspiration? Oh my. Guessing that's more specific than just a Spanish thing? I'd assumed it was either a total fabrication for the fic, or pulled from some ancient or underdeveloped culture.
As you may have gathered, poor phrasing. I meant to just say they were redrawn from show references/screenshots.
Boiling something down to its essence does often make it more impactful, as we all know. I don't think anyone looks at your comics and thinks they'd be better with detailed backgrounds, full colour and intricate shading! I'm reminded of the observation among animation historians that Looney Tunes not only wouldn't be "better" with the animation quality Disney employed at the time, but also likely would be so fussy as to lose the snappiness that make them as funny as they are.
Not when they're 150+ panel behemoths and one is taking in the drawings' boosting of the dialogue as opposed to just reading it and moving at a constant speed, they don't!
A Million Little Lights is mostly good, and then the ending twists rocket it into the stratosphere for me. Wistful and lonely, a stark revelation that Celestia is a piece or pawn within her own game, lying to herself to keep her fading last grasp on equinity alive. Few stories made me love Celestia quite like this - a god who knows she must never be seen as one - for others, and for herself.
Evil is Easy is peak Aragon for me. A wind-up to jokes that are so silly, which takes so long, can only be viewed as supreme self-confidence of the author, and it is utterly earned. Luna's perspective is as terrifying as it is hilarious. 11/10 excellent.
I am a patron of Aragon's comics and they are amazing. He's just so patient of a writer, willing to wait literally a hundred panels to complete a joke or reveal some early note to be vital.
Very happy to see him get the spotlight, I can think of few who deserve it more.