Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #105 · 6:00pm March 18th
Nice advantage of a Bank Holiday Monday is I don’t have to have Monday MusingsTM ready to go on Sunday night, owing to not working up to nearly posting time of 6PM UTC (distinct from GMT, which doesn’t account for time zones). Meaning I can, and am, throwing this together shortly before pressing submit instead. Not a bad side bonus to national holidays always giving the following Monday off. 
That national holiday, of course, being St. Patrick’s Day. It’s certainly a very important day, what with all the political visits at home (someone in my family shared a clip of one of Ronald Regan’s visits where he quipped about us carrying on a wake for 1500 years) and abroad. Certainly due to my brother’s government job, I am quite aware of how much work goes into capitalising on it to keep our profile high in the wider world. It’s successful, at least: according to some statistics, Ireland has the highest international profile relative to population (helps when you’re an EFL country pinkiehappy:). And with all the political turmoil going on – just last week we turned down two constitution amendments by
majority votes of 68 and 74%, owing to the government majorly bungling the wording and presuming it would be a foregone conclusion – it’s as needed as ever.
The actual festivities are decidedly more mixed. Even if you’re never dabbled in anything to do with the day, you’re likely aware of the differences between how it’s celebrated at home compared to Irish-heavy communities abroad, something I saw firsthand in Boston twelve years ago. There’s nothing wrong with them, but except when you’re young or are raising young, they can feel kind of hokey, and I don’t think I’ve been to one at home in over a decade. Many Irish just stay home or to quieter suburbs, and I was no different this year, only venturing out near 5pm for a Pokémon Go Primal Kyogre raid event (which was itself bungled, but that’s another story). To my knowledge, most Americans still do actively celebrate Independence Day, patriotic nation as you are, but substitute in another big one that kind of glosses the locals by, and you get an idea.
Still, national pride is never not important, and for the important role Saint Patrick himself played in our history, I keep it deep to my heart. How many other non-American national holidays have this kind of international presence, sure? Best to treasure that! 
Good emoji timing there, because Scootaloo features in some of today’s fics. Okay, I can’t lie: she features in all of them. 
Been a hot while since I had a character-themed week, and as I’m gonna be mostly doing shorter weeks in cumulative word count off the malaise of doing these I’m currently struggling with, it’s more suitable than usual.
While some of my themed character weeks were chosen with an eye towards their best, or a range of things that could be done with them, this isn’t that. Mostly these are just fics that were on the stockpile and coupled together here because why not. Three of them do feature Scootaloo with Rainbow Dash (which, well, it is a pretty central part of her character), but otherwise, they’re all just fics that happen to feature Scootaloo. With a decent variety, though: only one is dealing with the drama of the two’s relationship and Scoots’ non-flight.
So, even if there’s a lot else that can be done with Scootaloo beyond these five, and has been done, this is a solid and decently wide sampler. Before all you folks who called me out at the Cadance week last year for not featuring any of Skywriter’s Cadance of Cloudsdale stories brandish your pitchforks again. 
Also, most of these reviews have been waiting for ages for a different theme that got aborted. So they’ve been waiting for some time to see the light of day. 
This time, I’m pretty confident I’ve done my job well and you can’t tell the difference between them and newer reviews. 
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Pegasus of Raphinae by Mica
Thunderstorm and the Four Winds by Carabas
A Feather In Her Cap by GaryOak
Summer Island by Bachiavellian
Even More Awesome Than Me by Emotion Nexus
Weekly Word Count: 26,989 Words
Pegasus of Raphinae by Mica
Genre: Drama/Slice of Life
Scootaloo, Aunt Holiday, Aunt Lofty
2,049 Words
June 2021
Long before Equestria was founded, there lived Princess Raphinae, daughter of Commander Hurricane. Disowned due to her lack of flight, and bullied at school for it, she certainly isn’t going to take this lying down. For she’s brave, and strong, and smart, and tough. She’ll found her own kingdom!
I’m not going to play coy with the “twist” that this is a self-insert story Scootaloo is writing, both because it’s clear, doing so would limit what I could discuss here, and knowing that doesn’t weaken the experience of reading this. The story is nothing more or less than Scootaloo crafting a scenario for her to triumph against the misfortunes in her life, and how things others consider misfortunes are really great. And because she’s just writing it for herself, she doesn’t stress these aspects, so while her writing makes them hilariously obvious, it’s not pushing the sentimentality. Helps the story is pure reflective narration, almost fully bereft of present tense dialogue, and thus gains the feeling of a mythical fable. The short length helps this tremendously, delivering this terrible self-insert with energy and getting out before the meta aspect keeping it afloat tires.
Also keeping it not just afloat, but sending it soaring, is how brilliantly the writing captures a child’s inner voice (when was the last time you read a story, fanfic or otherwise, that really felt like it was from a child’s perspective?). Never for a moment does the writing let you forget who is writing, both because of the story, characters and trajectory being exactly what Scootaloo would write, but also for the eventual reason revealed for how she ended up writing it (all I will say it involved a homework assignment gone awry).
This was honestly quite a delight, with the melancholy subtext underpinning it all giving it real weight. Once again, Mica demonstrates real knack for impactful short stories.
Rating: Really Good
Thunderstorm and the Four Winds by Carabas
Genre: Adventure
Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo, OC
6,026 Words
February 2016
Pegasi didn’t always have control over the weather. Millennia before Equestria’s founding, they lacked magic at all, and dwelled in mountain caves, where all they could do was shelter and pray when a storm came. But there was one among them, Thunderstorm, who saw it in herself to end her kind’s suffering. Already a hero with many achievements to her name, she sets out to the Great Winds of North, South West and East, to ask for or earn their control over the weather.
Telling a mythic legend that’s an enthralling tale is hard enough. Telling one that’s dead on for reflecting the values of the culture that invented it, and thus exactly the kind of folklore they’d invent, is even harder. All that is present here right from the setup, with the other pony tribes just having their magic, while the pegasi had to earn theirs, and continues right through to the end, the whole tale boiling down to a challenge of wills in bringing one’s ideals to life. Everything about the tale has the kind of distorted-from-many-retellings quality of campfire tales, or the ponies’ equivalent of Greek Mythology, where it’s either fully fabricated as a morale booster or distorted so far from what happened it might as well be. Hey, beats inventing the Pillars’ tales just to provide a terrible origin for the Tree of Harmony the show would retcon the following season anyway (and this was not only published over a year before Campfire Tales, but a whole two months before that episode’s premise was even written, in April 2016, so it’s first out of the gate and better).
I don’t bring up that episode just to take a justified shot at it – this is also a tale told by Rainbow Dash to Scootaloo, though not in the form of separate bookends, but with the whole narration being Dash’s, occasionally interrupted for her to respond to quips of Scootaloo’s we don’t see. This works wonderfully too, with her phrasing slotting in, the story suiting what she values, and the asides providing suitable chuckles (let’s just say Scootaloo is decidedly less enthralled with this mushy fable than Dash is). It’s enough for me to mostly, if not fully, overlook that the narrative voice isn’t always that solid a Dash voice.
The fic gets a bit meandering in spots, and it could for sure stand to be snugged up a bit, even apart from one point in the story that is deliberately long-winded. But that’s the only major complaint I can lob against it. Otherwise, it’s a corking myth and dose of world-building (personifying the winds as sentient storm clouds, naturally), a suitable framing context, and a great sense of layering and background context that really make it sing. Nice to be reminded of when the show cared about mythology and folklore, was solid at executing it, and paid attention to its effect on our modern characters. Which, after all, is the point of such tales.
Rating: Pretty Good
A Feather In Her Cap by GaryOak
Genre: Slice of Life
Scootaloo, Rainbow Dash, CMCs
6,731 Words
July 2013Reread
Ponyville’s Annual Bounceball Competition is upon the town, and Scootaloo, aware of how much Rainbow Dash had won by her age, is determined to follow suit. With the determination and drive to make the Wonderbolts sit up and take notice, she sets about pushing herself for perfectionism. In the end, though, that may be what holds her back.
This is one of those nice, soft n’ safe show-like fics, with no desire to complicate FiM by pushing into territory the show does not or cannot cover. Both in the baseline story, the moral, the type of ending (this was written in 2013, so you can probably guess) and the characterisation. Not an exact match, and in most ways, like the cadence of the dialogue, and the lower volume of jokes that don’t work well in prose form, the adjustment is well done.
If there is an issue, it’s that this is too bare; the show would not do a story like this for 21 minutes without some other complication or aspect to shore up the plotline. And without that, Scootaloo being super-stubborn and unrelenting for most of the fics kind of tires quickly. I understand this story was shortened down by 1,500 words (the comments indicate a doctor appeared in that earlier draft only, but that’s all I’ve got), and praise be for that, but it still doesn’t quite sustain its length.
Of interest is that the author rewrote the revision as a spec script and adapted that back into prose, adjusting as necessary (for instance, a training montage was reconceived). Quite impressive and with considerable tact, yet looking at that script, I could not only tell what parts felt padded, I could pinpoint more or less what cuts DHX would make were they to animate it. Side effect of my reading many of the show’s scripts? Probably, but it still speaks volumes.
The end result may be a bit slight, and a little too in awe of the characters to breathe 100%, but the base characterisation and tone, enjoying and respecting them and more or less capturing why we love them and the show so much, makes for quite the pleasant comfort read.
Rating: Pretty Good
NOTE: Humorously, the author gifted a hard copy of the fic to Scootaloo’s voice actor, Madeline Peters, at BronyCon 2013, and she not only thanked him, but approved and gave her blessing to it. Can’t get much more of an endorsement then that!
Summer Island by Bachiavellian
Genre: Adventure
Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, OC
10,825 Words
September 2015Reread
As a captain of a small one-crew airship, working as a trader and occasional taxi of the world, Scootaloo has seen it all. Her old friend Sweetie Belle, who she’s heard has been a rising pop star, wants to get away from it all, and thus years after they last saw each other, she contacts Scootaloo, commissioning her to take her out there. Where there is doesn’t matter, long as it’s away from here. Curious but loyal to her old friend, Scootaloo obliges, setting sail for Summer Island, a far-flung outlier port town and adjacent to home of the seaponies. Which Sweetie Belle is sceptical of, but still excited to see.
The narrative style of this fic is rather interesting. Present tense yet still third person, it’s also very much not from the protagonist’s point of view, with Scootaloo on the outside of Sweetie Belle. And even within that, it’s content to not give much away. If going strictly by what’s directly said in dialogue, not much more is learnt about how this adult Sweetie has been feeling beyond a general dissatisfaction with the high flung life of a celebrity. Sweetie Belle’s not actively hiding things, but she’s generally not coming forward either and Scootaloo’s often too polite to budge. It’s the rare case of a story that’s not confusing and never tricky to get that nonetheless requires a decent level of inferring.
The end result is a story that, despite the concept, Adventure tag, and a mid-story storm that threatens a capsizing, is more laid back than anything, content to settle with a quiet scene of short dialogue or even just nothing at all as Sweetie Belle stares out to the horizon. That runs the risk of belaying the depth, or the atmosphere, the sense of curiosity about Scootaloo’s own past, the contrast in tones when they arrive at the port town (it’s almost like a tonic, after a fashion), and so forth.
Within its indirect mission statement, the heart and emotions land well, though there is a sense of some topics being handled with such a light touch they barely register. It will certainly make one want more, and that’s mostly for what’s here being so satisfying, though some of it’s for barely teasing parts that feel like they should have been more present. Caught slightly between expanses of scopes, you might say; the ending in particular is rather rushed through and a bit off in the contrast it’s supposed to provide to Sweetie.
All that said, it’s a refreshing little adventure-adjacent slice of life, and certainly inspires with its breath and vision of life out away from society like this. Which, being what Sweetie wants now, is a fine instance of tying effect and perspective to content. A little muffled to be a knockout, but it’s impressive in a modest sort of way.
Rating: Pretty Good
Even More Awesome Than Me by Emotion Nexus
Genre: Sad/Slice of Life
Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo
1,358 Words
December 2020Reread
Scootaloo made a bold move in moving to Yakyakistan; even if it’s a great opportunity, her difficulty with flying doesn’t match well with the blistering cold. And it’s very, very lonely, leaving her with many a night alone in her cabin with no correspondence. Tonight, one of those things is not so.
At a first approximation, especially given the tiny length, this is just another fluff piece like so many Jinglemas ones. And that’s true once one looks at the content, with a teen/young adult Scootaloo (her age is not altogether clear, though I don’t mind this ambiguity) in a downer mood on her day home from work (though not nearly enough for the Sad tag, frankly), then given some uplift from a pick-me-up letter from Rainbow Dash. There’s more to it than that: the letter holds the balance of an older, more mellowed-out Dash, less embarrassed to be sincere that she’s still with Scootaloo and thinks the world of her for what she’s done. But even with that, this would be liable to gloss past the mind like many others.
What sets it apart, then, is that unusually for these kinds of really-short fluff pieces, the writing itself is more than merely sufficient. The piece has no dialogue beyond the letter, and unlike most such stories, it doesn’t lapse into so many thoughts it might as well be dialogue; there’s an appropriate balance between tell and show here in the thoughts and the description. More than that, said description often makes the piece’s reality feel more lived-in and the emotions feel truer. It’s quite a display of craftsmanship that notably elevates its stock (though still valid) character study, and for once, the length doesn’t feel like it’s taken the easy or quick route to be churned out either.
While not the kind of writing that makes one really sit up and take note, the technical execution of the piece has a consistent competence that elevates it above most of its contemporaries. Sometimes, these Jinglemas re-reads don’t turn out to be just an obligation, folks!
Rating: Pretty Good
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 1
Pretty Good: 4
Decent: 0
Passable: 0
Weak: 0
Bad: 0
I loved this aspect of Summer Island. Stories that require readers to figure things out for themselves without being utterly confusing are hard to come by, and I always appreciate an author who can pull that tightrope act off. It is in chasing after that difficult achievement that I keep running into the age-old problem: no matter how much you think something is obvious, some readers are going to completely miss the point. In the aftermath, one can never be sure whether they were too vague or their audience needs to improve their reading comprehension.
I'm actually working on a story right now that is trying to walk that tightrope. We shall see if I went too far over the edge (again) this time.
Interesting about the constitutional amendments. I think they were well-intentioned, but I can understand why they were soundly defeated. The state definition of "family" really raised my hackles for some reason, for all that it proposed to broaden the inclusion. In the US we have domestic partnership agreements and other contractual things* that stand in place of strictly delineated legislation, and I think it works better that way. Dunno if you have something like that over there.
I'm not much for stories involving the Crusaders, given that their canon personalities all involve a bouncy castle full of idiot balls, but that makes the exceptional piece all the better. I've read Summer Island and liked it quite a bit. I think FiMFic really needs a "Cozy" tag (the tone, not the pony) because this one would be perfectly labeled as a Cozy Adventure.
I will give Thunderstorm and the Four Winds a go, because it sounds good and... Carabas.
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* Pre/post-nuptials, power of attorney, limited liability, scope of action, etc., etc., etc.
To me that means either "English as a Foreign Language" or "English Football League", neither of which really apply to Ireland, so I admit to being stumped!
As you know I've written about the Irish referendums elsewhere, so on to the ponyfic we go! And it will doubtless surprise you not one jot, given the featured pony, that I've read four of these five. (The exceptio, Even More Awesome Than Me, is on the RiL list, so eventually it will be a full house!) Actually, though, I don't have a great deal to say about the four we've both read. I liked them all, you liked them all. If pushed, I'd say I liked Bachiavellian's fic marginally more than you did, and Pegasus of Raphinae marginally less, but there really isn't a lot in it.
Clearly the correct conclusion to draw here is that Scootafics are great.
Not much for me here this time... Was never a huge Scootaloo guy. Only focused fics of her that come to mind for me are coin flip and Three Gems and a Scooter.
5772875
Didn't know that, and honestly a bit surprised, given the second fic you cite below is one of your favs. But I suppose we all have that fic about character(s) and/or aspects we're not normally too fond of us that somehow hits us just right.
As for the other fic you mention, never heard of it, and searching "coin flip" with the Scootaloo tagged didn't turn up anything (without the character tag produced 22, none of which looked to fit at all). Was it from the pre-Fimfiction era, or are you just misremembering the title?
5772873
Ah. It was meant to be a slight variation on ESL for "English Second Language", saying how those countries can often get a higher foreign profile due to that being the main language of international travel. I actually hesitated with putting what I was abbreviating in for clarity, but thought it would ruin the joke and the flow. Evidently I should have been cautious!
Certainly, a fair share are. I don't have much patience these days for the standard Scootabuse, Scootadopt, or Rainbow Dash/Scoot drama, and they were quite heavy especially in the fandom's early days, but as the most popular CMC from a fic standpoint, with over 4,200 fics, there's plenty of creativity and writing chops where she's concerned. As this quintet of a self-projection story, a story told to her, a future as a solo airship captain, her desperation to impress Dash and a different future far away but with her friends still dear to her heart all show – quite a variety there!
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Indeed I was mistaken, here is the right one~: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/536460/the-vultures-coinflip
5772870
That was a major sticking point in the media before and after, plus people I've known too. Even as I'm aware plenty of other constitutions have outdated language (someone pointed out to me dated language from the Declaration of Independence that uses rather inappropriate terminology for the indigenous people and yet which basically no one complains about even today – possibly off the things you mentioned that supersede delineated legislation).
Both the newspaper and my mom pointed out lots of edge case scenarios where the new wording would have made things much harder for people to be properly supported, and/or given the government an easier out to paying people what they're supposed to. Certainly, going to court would have become a lot more frequent!
All of those things certainly do see some use on an individual level, but they're not nearly as prevalent: it seems to be that only the privileged can afford to do all that, and most normal-wealth people are stuck with the regular legislation. Bit like comparing private health to the public waiting list (tip: be careful which Irish you raise this topic up in front of if you don't want a legit sob story). Comparing Irish politics and our constitution to that of he world really is a strange one: more progressive than a lot of nations, but as a lot of has happened so fast – we only legalised divorce in 1995, right as the Church's grip was slacking – there's more antiquated hang-ons that don't benefit the inconvenienced.
That's not too surprising: even before your comparison once upon a time that used a Twilight story and a Apple Bloom story side-by-side, I'd picked up that kids as the focal perspective, and particularity the kind of realistic kids that bumble and make mistakes as, you know, actual kids do, doesn't do it for you. I can certainly agree that the Crusaders' standard schtick can tire, so I'm grateful that most such episodes do more than just repeat the formula.
Well, now we have that, Friendshipping, and Badass Twilight as tags you want. Among others. Maybe you should start a petition.
Hm. This is the only fic by that author which I've read, though two others are on my RiL list, and I have seen their name praised here and there. Seeing as nearly half their 37 fics are tagged Adventure, I can see why you might like their work.
I kid, I kid: I assume it's a mixture of many of Carabas' fics appealing to you personally, while also they are also a consistent purveyor of quality. That usually tends to be the case where author recommendations from you are concerned!
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And parallel to that, we also have: a lore or side detail bonus you really want viewers to notice, but you know making clear will ruin it, so you keep it subtle and only by inferring. And few/no people notice it, or at least mention it in their comments. This is something that seems to chase me on every one of my stories, because I love packing the margins with that sort of thing, and it’s doesn’t often comes in the form of jokes or delectable dialogue, the form people usually lap it up in.
But yes, walking that tightrope that has no obvious right balance, and even the best balance will miss some people, is often a frustrating bane. Best of luck with it for your forthcoming fic!
5772891
I feel seen.
Scootaloo's tricky, at least from what I've seen, though that's because she, like many fan-favorite characters, can easily be pushed into one of those typical boxes (Scootacute, Scootabuse... etc.) and generally may get well-received for it, even if the writing is lackluster. So it's easy to relegate her towards simplicity, at the cost of integrity.
Even for the one story I've written with her involved, I think I ran into the same issue, though the "solution" was to simply dial back a bit and focus on the other character primarily.
A particular characterization I saw from a few fics many years ago that I enjoyed was having her be not necessarily book smart, but stubborn enough to become fairly adept at understanding the complicated nuances around pegasi magic. I'm surprised that hasn't come up all that much. I never thought Scootaloo was particularly "dumb," so much as she may not care for formal education; in fact I'd like to think that she and the rest of the Crusaders are quite intelligent, or can be.
Anyway, all of these fics look very intriguing, but the Summer Island one looks right up my alley. Thanks for the recommendation!
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Recently TCC56 published his latest update on the trends of character tags, and while everything is dipping over time, some are dipping faster than the average. Chief among them are background ponies (they were heaviest in the early days before we had enough canon characters to make do) and foals. Unless you're Flurry Heart, Cozy Glow or Button Mash, you get far less fics in the 2017-Present corridor than before, even proportional to site output. Why isn't certain, but I think most folks have run out of things to do with them as foals, and not everyone will be struck with an idea to do with them aged up.
I raise this as the trade-off is we see far, far less of those kind of "easy reflex" Scootaloo fics, especially now we know of her relatives (and crappy parents, heh). So newer fics of her do have a better chance of being novel, if only because there's far less riff raff.
For sure, and there's a lot to be said for showing one can be smart in ways outside standard school education. And relative to a lot of cartoons, they didn't ride the jock stereotype with her all that heavily either. The thing with a character like Scootaloo, at least in the timeframe of the show (there's plenty of room for changing it later), is if a topic holds personal interest for her, she will put in the effort without even trying and excel at it. Otherwise, takes a bit of a push.
And certainly, if one is writing something to do with her struggling with her difficulty at flight, figuring out a lot about pegasus magic would slot in too.
Not too surprising, it has quite a bit of overlap with the story featuring Scootaloo that you wrote, of her being an adult with a wildly different, offbeat profession to that in the show, paired with another character who is the real one with the "arc".
Thanks so much for the thoughtful review! I really appreciate it. Your critique feels quite spot-on, and it's awesome you did some legwork into the background information surrounding the fic, including digging up the spec script. Regarding the final scene, I ended up truncating it in script form because my professor indicated the show's episodes wind down quite fast in the final lesson part, and that scene dragged far too long. The doctor was an OC who belongs to the lady who drew my Fimfic avatar, as a matter of fact, so it was one of those "kill your darlings" moments.
Reflecting on what you said in your review, I believe the issue is the story lacks a proper b-plot, since plenty of the actual episodes do A/B/C for plots. If memory serves, I think I didn't do a b-plot because this wasn't a sitcom style spec script, and A/B/C is typically seen in that episode style, but I think the story didn't have quite enough substance to carry the plot I settled on to carry a whole episode by itself. I think one of the Friendship Games episodes (or something similar?) ended up being a similar premise to this, except it obviously had better execution.
Thank you once again!
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Heh, if you know nothing else about me, know that I near-always do my research/homework when it comes to these sort of things.
Just the kind of obsessive sort that I am. The degree to which I'll drop such nuggets varies from review to review, of course.
Indeed, yep. A lot of it is also just how pacing of these things comes across written to watching – what seems like the right amount of lingering for a normal prose story is typically overlong in script format, while script format stuff can feel light, shallow and more like a highlights reel converted back to prose format, lacking as it does voice acting, animation and music that adds depth to the lines as written. Rare is the story that can work as well from one medium to another without the actual beat-by-beat flow getting reworked.
More or less, yeah. Though FiM didn't really do the typical A/B/C sitcom style plotting; if there was a B-plot, it near always was just an offshoot of the A-plot, likely to be less things for the kids watching to keep track of (also worth remembering, most sitcom do that plotting largely because the main cast get paid each episode regardless of how much they do or whether they're even there, so it's to make use of what they have to pay regardless – not an issue in animation, naturally).
A good example of an episode that has B perspective character without a B plot is "Putting Your Hoof Down" – Pinkie and Rarity's scenes and bits are fully in support of Fluttershy's story, at the most being comic bits to set something up there. Honestly, all you might have needed is a bit of that, other scenes from the perspective of others characters that still feed into the main plot, and it could have worked grand.
Course, we're talking about a story over ten years old now, so much of a muchness. I still enjoyed it plenty and found the behind-the-scenes development and coda with Madeline Peters really cool. You done good, man!
Omg I just checked FimFic again and tysm for the review! This is definitely my favorite thing I've written and I'm glad you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. You also like, nailed my thought process on what I wanted the story to be like and that's honestly super cool to see someone pick apart my brain just from my writing
Thank you again :D
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Not at all, glad you liked it! You wrote a good story, better than it had to be and than what most short fluff pieces written for Jinglemas are usually like. Take pride in that!
And yep, picking apart a writer's thought process from both reading the thing and whatever anecdotal evidence I can, that's me!
I near-always look around to see what they've said after reading the fic, though just as often there's little need to factor that into the review. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not. Here, it was. 