Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #104 · 6:00pm March 11th
March 1st saw witness to a brief but strong (and unexpected, to the ire of the weather people) bout of snow. Which, if you’ve never been to Ireland, is extraordinary rare – the last notable such spell we had was six years ago in March 2018, a cold front so strong it actually shut schools and college down for several days (all your Northern Americans and Canadians are yawning at this, I’m sure 
). And the last one before that was all the way back in December 2010 (alas, at a point when I was already off from school for the holidays 
).
That 2018 bout actually bought me a much-needed extra week on the alpha submission of my final year Creative Computing project, which was definitely helpful. And I even used one of the later evenings of the snow to make a Snow Jigglypuff in the front yard (which I still use as my WhatsApp profile pic). I may be a chronically lazy visual artist, but that doesn’t change that I have the mind of a visual artist; give me a limited timer with no guarantee of another chance, and I act! 
Sadly, this spell on Friday, despite coming off 4-plus months of blisteringly cold weather, clearly wasn’t going to last. On top of it being scattershot over the country as to where it had hit, I could tell even from looking outside while working it was the wet and slushy stuff, and once the stuff stopped falling, I knew it wouldn’t last. By the time 6pm rolled around, and I could have gone out and made a Snow Pony to continue the tradition Jigglypuff started, it was only small frosty clumps on the grass, little good for even forming snowballs, let alone a snow figure. 
Oh well. Maybe in another six years.
Note that besides this artistic indulgence, the yin to my yearly pumpkin-carving yang, I don't care for snow at all. Which shouldn’t be a surprise, given my oft-repeated dislike for cold weather (given I don’t care for Summer either, just give me April or October and I’m a happy sandboy 
). Something rather notable with how cold and windy it’s been since October. It’s certainly giving the global warming folks fuel for the debate fire.
This week’s very much a week of shorter fics, though don’t interpret that specifically as a reaction to the backlog woes and lull in personal interest for Ponyfic reviewing currently afoot that I discussed last week. Even if I don’t schedule in advance to the extent of the PaulAsarans of the world, it’s scheduled enough in advance for that to not make itself known the very next week. No, this is just the tradeoff to several chunky weeks, notably the last novel feature plus the 100th edition and 2-year anniversary. That’s a lot in a short period! But I don’t think such has compromised these fics. Pay the 22.4K word counter no heed. 
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Just Dodge! by DannyJ
Metamorphic by TCC56
Ceteris Paribus by FanOfMostEverything
Eternity by Taialin
The Insane Insurance Claim. by Hotel_Chicken
Weekly Word Count: 22,466 Words
Just Dodge! by DannyJ
Genre: Comedy/Dark
Lyra, Discord, Mane 6
9,299 Words
December 2014Reread
Most ponies don’t care for Discord, and Lyra is one of them. Though for her, it’s not just that he’s always causing trouble and being an annoyance, even as he’s reformed now. No, she considers himself a bit of an idiot, and thus isn’t afraid of him the way others are. When he is curious as to why, she tells him it’s because only an idiot would just stand there and let himself be re-petrified. Intrigued, he proposes a game where she is in his body and has as many attempts as she wants to avoid getting hit by the Elements. She does not exactly win first time.
Certainly, a large part of this fandom classic (is December 2014 too late to be considered one? Well, it’s got 31K views and is a one-shot, that’s hard) is that it is, indeed, a dissection of the powers of the Elements (and Discord, to a lesser extent), with all the shutting down of headcanon and easy poking-of-holes that fans are wont to do (which hasn’t stopped the fan theories extending the scenario running rampant through the comments, a real sign of inspiration and a treat if you like that sort of thing). It would be quite easy for such a thing to be rather ungainly to actually read, so props to DannyJ for crafting a proper reading experience out of it.
Strong writing is the main reason, with a deft blend of pacing (it’s a 9K fic with lots of short scenes that doesn’t drag), and a Discord that isn’t annoying to the reader and quite charming in how he interacts with Lyra. Honestly, though, it’s Lyra that impresses me most. While I’ve certainly read far less of her than most fandom veterans, I’ve read enough to be tired of her normal meta-heavy characterisation, yet this manages to not be that. The flow of how she addresses Discord being an idiot for not dodging doesn’t feel like she’s outside of the fic looking in, and even when the fic becomes something of an unconventional time travel one, the planting of a reason for her to win this (one where not all the cards are revealed, which I approve), keeps it grounded. There’s even a little bit of a character arc towards the end, with the elements that (lightly) merits the Dark tag. I found myself rather enjoying her.
It’s not all that much of a comedy (or, at least, the comedy is more of the thoughtful and philosophical variety), but it’s a well thought and careful approach to the concept. It didn’t blow me away when I first read it and it doesn’t now, but it’s still one I think should captivate most.
Rating: Pretty Good
Metamorphic by TCC56
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life
Maud, Mudbriar, Cozy Glow
3,559 Words
August 2020Reread
An orphanage in Canterlot is shocked to learn that two ponies, one of them sister to an Element of Harmony, want to adopt one of their former foals, Cozy Glow. They’ve got all the paperwork and approvals worked out, down to royal approval from the Princess. That’s not the strange part. The strange part is that this Maud Pie doesn’t want to unpetrify Cozy Glow.
A self-professed one-joke fic, and yet coming from TCC56, it shouldn’t be a surprise it not only doesn’t play down to “Maud adopting a filly turned to stone” (which is a corking idea), but ends up having more to it. The intro scene from the orphanage pony being nonplussed by the demeanour of Maud and Mudbriar is what you’d expect, but thereafter, it takes the concept in a rather more grounded direction, from an awkward but genuine party thrown by Pinkie, to Twilight’s reasoning for allowing this, to how Maud and Mudbriar perceive it all. In its own twisted way, there is some heart here, as long as one isn’t bothered by Cozy being still alive in there and views it all with a slight level of detachment. Which, well… this is as well as any story involving Cozy and her petrification can sit with me, with this tone and distance. Helps that it’s not that absurd beyond that.
If there is a catch, it’s that beyond the concept, once the fic gets to the punchline of the setup (which is basically half the fic), there isn’t much else in the way of comedy in its arsenal. At 3.6K, that does mean it’s almost over when the steam runs out, a wise call for a one-note joke (even with hearts and layers) revolving around two ponies who don’t emote and a third who’s a rock. It does still have a little of the “concept is really the joke” going on that won’t make the rest all that memorable, aside from remembering the nuanced execution that doesn’t short-change the joke. Which is a balance that boosts the fic enough to make it worthwhile if it sounds interesting, and one isn’t bothered by the lack of acknowledgment of Cozy living a facsimile of a family life.
Rating: Decent
Fluttershy is never late. And when she is, it’s only by a few minutes. So when Rarity is left waiting at the spa for over a half-hour, she knows something must have happened. What she finds upon galloping to Fluttershy’s cottage is anything but pleasant – one of her pets has died. As Rarity consoles her, and asks questions, she comes to learn now only more about her dear friends, but about the less overt kinds of strength.
Even if the long description didn’t pay tribute to it as the inspiration, this story is very much a gloss on the same concept as Estee’s classic Five Hundred Little Murders. Obviously with none of Estee’s biting idyllic cynicism, swapping the “everyone is useless and weak and not even worthy of my contempt” attitude of Flitter in that fic for Rarity’s worry, understanding and amazement as she learns how Fluttershy pays tribute to every one of her pets. And the greatly different tone this brings.
If one can get past the waiting game for the reveal that Fluttershy is stronger than most for putting up with this, there is a reasonably potent look at the emotional impact of death here. I especially liked the atmosphere’s variance, from the off, too-quiet cottage to the gloomy final scene outside. And many of the details chosen to set this story apart are solid ones. This is wrapped around a really solid piece of friendshipping between Rarity and Fluttershy, all while hitting a reasonable blend of not being manipulative or mugging for melodrama by being overwhelming.
And yet, I didn’t find myself immersed as I should have been. Something about the piece feels compromised by rather overdone, flowery prose, both in length dragging many points on past what they need and in diluting many points and the immersion. There’s little else I can point to why this felt “off” (though for how much content happens, this is not a 5.5K fic at all), so it’s not a big deal, but neither is it small potatoes. It’s enough for me to leave the other strengths in the execution muddled, though that probably won’t be so for most readers.
Rating: Decent
Ceteris Paribus by FanOfMostEverything
Genre: Drama/Slice of Life
Starlight, Fluttershy
2,739 Words
December 2020Reread
Hearing Twilight’s favourite Hearth’s Warming story did successfully get Starlight interested in joining the holiday celebrations. But once the musical numbers have passed, and the initial euphoria has died down, she still finds herself lingering awkwardly on the sidelines of a room largely full of ponies she doesn’t know. It isn’t long before she’s approached by Fluttershy, who contrary to her usual demeanour, is not only overly willing to listen, but has remarkable insight to Starlight’s predicament…
There’s basically two different hooks at play here, and to their credit, they do interact and boost each other. Which is good, for the first is largely your bog-standard bit of Starlight being more cynical and ridden with guilt from her past, not understanding why others are so understanding, the works. Were the story just reassurance on Fluttershy’s part that it’s okay to take things at your own pace, as it largely is for the first half, it would be a diverting but swiftly forgotten snapshot of Starlight’s mental struggles from this time.
The second hook changes that, and shows atypical shrewdness on FoME’s part (well, less atypical for him than most ). There are quite a few ideas at work here for why Fluttershy gets the specifics of Starlight’s mindset: bonding over difficulties with family, and Fluttershy noting how awfully common they are for her and her friends (no attempt is made to address Pinkie’s family, but everyone else’s gets a mention), is the step that first made me sit up, and Fluttershy’s familiarity with Discord and helping him reform making her less on edge around a former cultist/nuclear terrorist. But it’s the connective tissue between the pair, why Fluttershy is more forgiving of Starlight’s cult village than she is herself, and even has an alternative approach to Twilight on how to move past it, that really cements the deal (unsurprisingly, this tissue was FoME’s starting point on writing the story).
The fic doesn’t shy back from pointing out the prickly edges to character’s personalities and their relationship with others, the kind the show just glosses over, which gives it more than enough depth for its length. It’s a little bumpy in talking flow (most points progress naturally from one to the other, but there’s a few where the outline list of points for the story to hit shows itself clumsily). Some very concise and fitting lines of dialogue and thoughts that do wonders for characterisation, another FoME staple, round the package out nicely.
Rating: Pretty Good
The Insane Insurance Claim. by Hotel_Chicken
Genre: Comedy/RandomSlice of Life
Twilight, OC, Celestia
1,408 Words
August 2023
Twilight needed to make some official claims on everything she lost when her library was destroyed. Now, only a few months later, quicker than she expected from the government, the pony handling her file shows up. But it’s not because it’s all been processed. No, it turns out some of the books Twilight’s had, and in particular some of the ones she’s consulted over her time in Ponyville for whatever situation she and her friends were in, have raised some not-so-welcome eyebrows.
So, this story basically exists to ask, “so, about Twilight always having a spellbook for just the most maddening kind of magic to allow that episode’s plot to happen, and that existing in publicly-available books…”, and make (light) fun of it. It makes reasonable use of that premise, keeping from the perspective of the stoic insurance pony (who could stand to be minded for more personality and comedy, but she serves her role fine). The story’s pace is quick enough that by the time the direction it’s going in is clear, it’s almost over, and we can soak in the “aha, that one!” fun of the details of which offending incidents are being brought up. Lastly, of course, there’s the always-reliable fallback of the offender trying to rebuff their case, only for the government pony to instantly shoot them down, having come well prepared. And then the coda epilogue completes it on a more hilarious note that you don’t really see (let’s just say it does the opposite of what you’d expect with said character).
A quick n’ dirty crackfic, and the writing and individual jokes aren’t really better than competent. But enjoyably competent, so it flew by.
Rating: Decent
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 0
Pretty Good: 2
Decent: 3
Passable: 0
Weak: 0
Bad: 0
Fun fact: one of the engineers in my company went outside and made a snowball a few years ago from one of Houston's exceptionally rare snowy winters. He then put that snowball in his research team's freezer. It has been sitting there, undisturbed, ever since. Someone even poked a toothpick in it with a duct-tape flag showing the date and time of retrieval. It was done on a silly whim before my time, the snowball is still there, and nobody has ever felt any urge to remove it. The guy who did it isn't even with the company anymore, but that snowball? It shall outlast the company and the heat-death of the universe... or so the joke goes.
I saw Eternity and was like, "Wait, I know that one!" But it's been so long I had to go look at my review to recall what I thought of it. Apparently I approved, but was put off by the blatant issue of time constraints that would be put on a pony who does what Fluttershy apparently does for every animal.
I would consider Just Dodge! a classic. I never paused to think about such things as time limits to the concept of an MLP classic, but I think it's old enough to qualify.
I'm going to have to remember that phrase.
Yup, it's a fair summary. Metamorphic was never anything more than a 'concept is the joke' story - it wasn't deep and it wasn't nuanced. Wasn't meant to be! And it got a lot of flak because - as you can see in the comments - a number of readers are not cool with the whole Cozy Statue thing.
Honestly I'd originally intended to have it end at the end of the orphanage scene but it wasn't quite long enough to publish, so the rest got tacked on to flesh it out more. Running out of steam was a significant concern, as you mention.
Still, it's not bad for a fic that I expressly made out of spite.
I suppose my thought process with omitting Pinkie was that there was no way Starlight's been in town for multiple months without having a very clear idea of how much Pinkie loves her family. But yes, Jinglemas is always a nice opportunity for unexpected prompts and character interactions.
5771968
As you gathered, it didn't bother me at all. Mostly that's because I have no personal care or investment in Cozy at all, but I found it did a fine job of communicating the tone of the kind of comedy it was for real-world implications like that to not be the sort of thing to take a fic like this too seriously for.
I should also say, I'm not always saying things like a fic isn't deep or nuanced as criticisms, necessarily. Often such things do put a ceiling on how high a fic can soar unless it's doing something really unusual and really well, but I mostly mean them more as an acknowledgment against false expectations. Which, given how many of your fics do bring that depth and nuance despite their brevity, is an important distinction to make.
I certainly enjoyed the fic, make no mistake: on this reread, the dividing line between Decent and Pretty Good came mostly from asking myself how well it lingered in the mind and what I thought others would find of it. So, it's a strong Decent.
I think I communicated that aspect poorly. What I was trying to get across was that the 3.6K length meant that, while it did run out of steam, it was over pretty soon thereafter, so it wasn't a significant concern. A mild one, maybe.
I'm a little confused about your comment about the length: ending at the orphanage scene would have left it still over 1K, and actually just shy of 2K. You've published fics shorter than that before. Or is this when it was an entry for that Cozy Glow contest, and that happened to have a minimum word count the first half didn't reach alone? Meaning when the fic got rejected, it was left hanging with extra material no longer needed?
5771966
Which also means that freezer has never been unplugged or lost power for long enough for it to melt in all these years either. Which, well, maybe that freezer is important enough for that department that it always has a backup generator connected just in case, I wouldn't know. Bloody impressive in any case, and a nice showcase of the fun and goofy things one can slip into their work every now and then.
Oh, that was largely meant in jest. Possibly I should have attached an emoji to get across the tongue-in-cheek tone of the aside, like
or 
. Certainly all 2 or 3 times I've read it, it's felt that way going in to me. Hitting those kind of views for a one-shot would be amazing in 2012, being honest, never mind lat 2014.
As they say, a stopped clock is right twice a day.
But that is the kind of succinct wrapup phrase I like to write and to read. 
5771971
Which is totally valid: it just stuck out because of the complete omission, as opposed to a "I know Pinkie adores her family to no end…" kind of aside. Starlight already made one for Twilight, after all, on her way to getting to Rarity's folks where Fluttershy course-corrected her presumption, so it wouldn't have broken the immersion or flow at all. And would have actually improved the former. But it's a minor quibble.
This fic was from the same Jinglemas that marked my Ponyfic debut, so I well remember, yes. It was one of 30+ I read in a casual binge over a few days, but both then and now, it stuck out above the typical fluffy limitations of most of its brethren, likely off the same minor but impactful strengths at the margins that earned this a Pretty Good, even if Starlight self-introspection isn't exactly a topic that lights my interest up.
5771973
Oh, absolutely, that's what I meant. When I was writing it running out of steam was a serious concern. I was constantly worried I was stretching the joke on too long.
Well to start it's worth noting it didn't get rejected as such - I started writing it for the contest, noticed the part where it wouldn't be acceptable and then self-rejected. It never got submitted as part of the contest itself.
As for the rest, uh. Well it's a funny thing - when it came time to sit down and do rewrites/edits, the orphanage scene actually did end up expanding to the current size. It was originally much shorter - at around 900 words. I didn't realize until just how how much I'd expanded it, in fact!
This was a pleasant surprise. Thank you, Mike. I liked the review. Though, just so you know, you accidentally linked the wrong blog in your comment.
Also, damnit, is it really ten years this year since I published that thing? What happened? How come none of my old clothes fit? Why do my bones hurt? This is horrible.
Oh, Ceteris Paribus is also in this review. I liked Ceteris Paribus.
5772058
Not a slip I've done before in copying the comment blurb links. But it was bound to happen at some point! Mondays, you know.
And this mistake applied for all five fics covered this week (meaning FoME and TCC56 found their way here anyway and didn't feel the need to mention it; not sure how to interpret that 
). They're fixed now, anyway.
Only nine and a quarter years, really.
But time do be a killer mistress. As Discord knows all to well from his millennium-plus in stone.
Your comment on that fic was one of its most recent, so yep, I saw that too. 'Tis a good fic!