I Have Been Reading: Background Pony

Welcome to ‘I Have Been Reading’. My little blog slice where I talk about some of the fan-fics I’ve recently read and/or enjoyed. Todays story is Background Pony by shortskirtsandexplosions.

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So Background Pony is a strange fic to describe, at least without horribly spoiling everything, but bear with me and I’ll give it my best shot. It follows the life of Lyra Heartstrings, music history major, amatur philospher and utterly doomed mare. Lyra has a small problem, reality no longer thinks she exists. No one remembers her, no one notices her unless she goes to extreme lengths and all her efforts to the contrary get slowly undone as the universe slowly religates her to the background.

It’s a sad story, and a lonely one. Lyra’s quest is very much her standing against the world, relying on fleeting generosity to survive as she tries to save herself from a terrible existence. The pain, the loss and the damage her absence causes are all wonderfully illustrated and I strongly recommend you give this story a try, if you already haven’t.

From a more critical angle the story does have it’s flaws. My biggest issues is actually the length, I can’t point to any one area that could have been skipped, nor is it too verbose, but I do feel that everything could have been tighter. Scenes could have been shorter and Lyra’s aims could have been thwarted just a few less times and the theme still hammered home.

In addition, the way the story is structured is more as a series of connected short stories, and not a single narrative. While this is an interesting choice, it means that every so often there are entire chapters that are almost unrelated to the actual plotline and, while one of these was my absolute favourite chapter, I do have to question whether they were all necessary to tell the story.

In the end though, neither of these quibbles were enough to stop me thoroughly enjoying Background Pony, and I would strongly suggest you give it a read. And give Lyra a hug. She needs one.