Present Perfect vs. Progress · 1:51pm May 21st, 2018
Rawr, I'm agin it! >:V Down with progress, we need more egress!
I had to, sorry. :B We're actually talking about fanfics today.
So once again, I'd like to remind you all that, back in season one, we had no idea what Luna would turn out to be like in season two. Enter Andrew Joshua Talon and his multi-part story Progress — perhaps better known by the title of its first entry, Luna Versus the Microwave — which was the first (major) fanfic to posit that Luna would be out of touch with modern Equestria. It was an obvious notion, in hindsight; it would not be the first idea the story got right.
That said, Progress sits in a weird place for me, personally. It's the very first fic that I ever considered my "favorite"; yet, as it went on, I found myself enjoying it less and less. I've always been very hesitant to revisit it, while knowing full well I would have to eventually. Perhaps having a pre-tarnished image will help soften the blow?
A note before we get started: I'll be reviewing each of the stand-alone stories and arcs as individual pieces, with their own scores, but the only one that will matter is the one at the end. It my be a true average or just a final impression, who knows. This is a long review (of the three stories left to review this week, this accounts for more than half the remaining page count). Well, let's get started with...
Luna Versus the Microwave
This gets off to a bad start with Princess Luna being "formally" Nightmare Moon.
Oh, who am I kidding? It gets off to a bad start with the title. It was far more common back in season one to have ponies encountering objects from our modern day, without requiring any sort of explanation for why and how there are microwaves or computers or what have you in Equestria, but that still doesn't make this a good idea.
But it does the tone for what's to come. Despite being a comedy, Luna is still wracked by guilt — for all that she's doing her best to accept her sister's forgiveness — and the humor mostly comes from her bumbling. This is the kind of thing the Happy Luna Contest was created in reaction to.
Oh yes, and lest I forget, this also sets the tone for Progress's main running gag: the abacus. If you have ever read a story where Luna has and/or pays exceptional attention to an abacus, that story's author has also read Progress. I'll admit it was funny back in season one, but even given the abacus's lack of prominence in this story, seeing it again reminds me of what it once represented, and tells me I'm not going to have a fun time with this series.
Luna Versus the Microwave is a short, inoffensive ur-example of "Pony Discovers X", and pretty much everything that happens in it has been done to death here in 2018. Not the story's fault, save for not setting a better example for later writers to follow.
2/5
Luna Versus Baseball
If there's one thing Progress does right, it's portray Luna as out of touch with modern life. Even if that modern life is not always showlike, nobody but nobody expected Luna to turn out like she did in season two. Progress is, unfortunately, the closest we ever got. Still, hardly anyone else was writing Luna like this at the time.
What they were writing Luna like -- again the fault of this story -- was essentially a child. Say what you will about the opening of Luna Versus Baseball, where she's catching up on various cities' policies as an excuse not to go outside, this story is focused on cute. Celestia finds her cute, we're invited to laugh at her bumbling, the glasses and budding abacus addiction are meant to make her adorable. It's stories like this that spurred Aquaman to write that post against infantilizing Luna back in 2014. That was all I could think about while reading this, and again, I expect this will be the norm rather than the exception moving forward.
I believe this story also features another first: Luna going out in disguise as a regular pony. I don't know if Sunny Skies All Day Long was written before or after Progress, but if nothing else, you can probably trace the name "Selene" back here.
On that note, the plot! Celestia convinces Luna to go out and socialize by joining the Apple Family on their trip to the first baseball game of season. (I don't think baseball has ever been a thing in Equestria, but it at least fits far better than microwaves.) Cue humorous misunderstandings and 'hilarious' hijinks as Luna fails to grasp the concept of baseball, sports, and other ponies in general. There's a running gag about her getting hit in the face with baseballs. Big Mac hits on her. (This becomes a thing in later stories…) Mostly, it's just a question of her doing something dumb in the name of being out of touch, and the audience being invited to laugh.
I can still remember, seven fucking years later, being somewhat let down by this piece after enjoying its predecessor. And for all that it's far more focused on slapstick — which doesn't translate well to prose (neither, for that matter, does baseball) — I can kind of see why. If you're not taken in by the underlying push for cuteness, there's not a whole lot to enjoy here. I sure as heck didn't appreciate the "Casey at the Bat" reference, for one.
Is it all bad? Well, mostly, though I did sort of like how Apple Bloom is written. Her attempt to use 'Miss Selene's' connection to the princesses to get a cutie mark was charming, if nothing else. But overall? It's just a swing and a miss finally I get to use that phrase when it's actually relevant.
2/5
Luna Versus Lodging
This is the point where Progress goes from being a series of one-shots with some shared themes and running gags to a long-form story with an overarching plot… that won't become apparent for a while still. But we're reintroduced to Sundance, Luna's attendant, who featured previously in Microwave. She's given a lot more personality and character of her own, as she gets to be Luna's roommate.
Yes, it's another story both about Luna going out in disguise and one of the princesses trying to learn about her subjects first-hand. It's… got some issues, but they're mostly different than what came before.
For starters, once again almost all of the comedy comes from Luna's antics, and by this point, you're either on board with that, or you never will be. Whether she's blowing holes in the wall to shut off an alarm clock, overreacting to slights, or just gleefully making everything worse past the breaking point, if it can be fucked up by Luna, chances are it will.
That said, there's also some decent humor besides. We're introduced to Sundance's boyfriend Hoyden (what kind of a name is that?), and while he's a bit of a boorish dope, they have good chemistry and he provides a few laughs. Granted, one of those laughs involves him going off into the bushes to privately freak out; this by itself is funny, but when we're shown the contents of that freakout, and they contain the words "don't ask for a threesome", the gag suffers rather a lot. And the threesome thing becomes a running joke, topped perhaps only by the Doctor Who references as the worst in the piece. But so much of it is very sitcommy, and that doesn't really hold up.
One more thing that I have to comment on is the shipping. Back in Baseball, there's a brief scene where Big Mac tells Luna — Miss Selene — she's cute, in an offhanded sort of way, and a lot of hemming and hawing and blushing is had. This is carried forward as Big Mac just so happens to be friends with Hoyden and just so happens to be set up on a blind date with Miss Selene, which then turns disastrous. Like, that's just a few too many coincidences in a row.
But overall? While I don't think I really enjoyed this, it is definitely a step up in quality, despite the author's own admission that he doesn't do well with long-form plots.
2.5/5
Luna Versus Communication
We have reached maximum overabacus.
I'm not kidding; there's a scene where the character talk about her treating it like a baby.
I realize the traits ascribed to Luna in this story are, by and large, the same things present in Twilight Sparkle's character. Perhaps it's an attempt to make at least one of the princesses approachable, given that Celestia at this time was still very easy to read as the Sun Goddess, which this story agrees with. There's even a scene that talks about that very thing!
But whereas Twilight had enough actual character to hang 'adorkable' on, Luna had none before season two, and the author has clearly overstepped in trying to make Luna the same. He's gone into full-on wooby territory, and I'm probably just repeating myself trying to make this point.
Because, for all that she gives them something to talk about, I found myself thinking while reading this that I would really appreciate a story about Sundance and Hoyden — we find out in this entry what his job is, and it's genuinely kind of hilarious — without Luna in the background. Which is where she ends up here, for the most part.
This is a direct continuation of Lodging; also continued from that story are the 'humorous' asides and daydream sequences. Things like Sundance and Hoyden imagining Luna in leather and fishnets for… reasons? I can understand why I would have appreciated this seven years ago, but now, it just seems like a poor attempt to make sure that Comedy tag is earned when the story really wants to be a lighthearted slice of life. Or, at least, when I wanted it to be. :B
Though the plot this time around is rather more subdued, it still ends up in a 'comedy' of errors, perpetuated by the already-tired running gag of "Luna fears baseballs". I mean, it sort of makes sense in context, but just look at that. That just shouldn't be a thing. It's clear no one ever stopped to ask "should we be doing this?"
2/5
Luna Versus the Heat
This story does something none of the others have so far: recap what's come before it. That's annoying.
Otherwise, this is kind of all right. I mean, it ends on a fucking CSI joke, this isn't highbrow humor we're dealing with, and taken in that light, it might just be the best entry so far. But that still doesn't mean it's good.
For once, it's not about Luna screwing things up, not really, so that's a nice change. She invents the swimming pool! And while I could have sworn it was about her destroying an air conditioner, said destruction is, again, not her fault. Though I'm definitely done with Hoyden's horndog routine.
At least it wasn't a heatfic, for all that it wants you to think it might be.
2.5/5
Luna Versus the Facts of Life
The absolute shortest chapter of Progress — less than 900 words — is just a brief scene of Celestia teasing Luna with her history of sexual conquests. While the kind of thing I enjoy, even now, but this didn't do anything for me. Maybe it's the shortness, or the lack of being an actual story. Maybe it's that Celestia overdoes the teasing more than once, setting the whole thing on edge and blowing out a lot of the comedic potential. Whatever the case is, it's certainly worth skipping, for all that it doesn't take much time to read.
2/5
Luna Versus Storytelling
So Luna and Sundance are watching TV and…
Yeah, look, I've got an old story about Pinkie writing fanfiction on a computer and posting it to the internet. We all did this back in the day. It's not bad, necessarily — though certainly poor world-building — but it is dated as hell. I'm going to try and move past this.
In this case, it's worth moving past, because this is hands-down the best entry in Progress so far. Like, good enough that I expect nothing else will top it. (I seem to recall the next entry is where I originally started losing patience with the story.) We've gone from "Meh, it's okay?" to "Wow, this is actually great!"
What's so great is the story Luna tells Sundance and Hoyden, about a stallion in olden times who wanted to marry her and did all sorts of feats to try and 'capture the moon'. It's told so well, it feels like a ponified real-world myth, though I don't think that's the case.
This also means that this entry is very different from the others because it's so serious. There's little to no attempts at comedy, and the myth has a tragic ending.
But I want to be clear that narrative sobriety is not the reason I like this so much. (For all that I have to admit Andrew Talon's sense of humor is very different from mine.) It's that Luna is finally being treated as a character instead of a pile of foibles to be mocked. It shouldn't be hard to treat her like this, but there you go, elevation above its fellows.
That said, it's not perfect. There's a Fallout: Equestria reference, and another, more oblique, to Gurren Lagann. The various TV shows they flip through are rather inane, which is likely the point, though I will say the black and white movie they're watching, which intercuts Luna's story and serves as juxtaposition to it, isn't too bad. I would still have been fine if it wasn't there, but, no, not too bad at all.
3.5/5
Luna Versus Ponyville
This is the longest entry in Progress and yet, in many ways, it's no different than anything which came before it. Luna is sent to Ponyville by her sister — how many of these start with Celestia confronting Luna because she's hiding behind her research? — because Luna caught Sundance and Hoyden in flagrant delicto, and this has blown her tiny little mind. Cue "one chapter with each of the mane six"-style storytelling and lots and lots of anguished jokes.
It's not all bad, mind you, mostly bad, culminating in an adventure in the Everfree Forest with the CMCs that just seemed like every such story ever written, ever. No amount of "dinosaur fighting a giant ape" can cure that.
Of course, the worst part is probably early on, when we're treated to a Cupcakes joke that just never dies. :| It's not funny now, it wasn't funny back then, I really wish people would knock this shit off already.
I don't know, I could go through this step by step and moan about every awful thing that happens, but at this point, I feel like I'm just repeating myself. (And I think I'm now repeating myself about that...) Progress isn't going to get better. For the sake of justifying the amount of time spent reading it, however, I will point out a few:
- An early chapter could have been called "Luna Versus the TV". She watches ponified Mister Rogers.
- This at least has the first, possibly only, time one of those daydream sequences is actually funny, thanks to the line "Our child!" It makes sense in context.
- The main joke is that Luna's in disguise as 'Miss Selene' and literally everyone knows who she is at first glance. Except Rarity, apparently? I have no idea what was going on there.
- There's a Sethisto joke. Why is there a Sethisto joke?
- The scene where Luna and Fluttershy meet by literally bumping into each other is actually funny.
- But it also comes in the same chapter as a pair of tasteless jokes, one about Fluttershy and Angel being in an abusive relationship, and another about therapy.
- Given that we get some backstory for Luna, in which she herself describes herself as being a literal, actual goddess, Aquaman was completely right.
- I'm not sure when these chapters were originally published, but this finally failed the Luna Test despite not having her speak EME ever prior to now. I don't think the Luna Test existed, is the point.
That's it, really. I feel like this was a tremendous waste of time. And I'm still not done.
2/5
Luna Versus the Dreamlands
Once again, Andrew Joshua Talon shows us that he is not a bad writer, just that he and I have very different opinions on comedy. This entry is less a two-part story and more two stories focused around a central theme.
We've definitely moved into the realm of season 2, as Discord is in this entry. However, as I had to remind myself while listening to this, Luna's dream powers were not revealed in the show until season three, meaning once again, Andrew Joshua Talon reveals himself to be something of a visionary.
As for the plot, the first part at least is something of a continuation of Storytelling, once again featuring that lost and forgotten stallion from Luna's past. The imagery is fantastic, and the overall sense of loss and heartbreak is palpable without being cloying or out of place. Part two, the one with Discord, is, by comparison, altogether different, being more interested on giving Discord his just desserts.
Now, I had to wonder about this a little bit, but this is again me coming from a post-season-three perspective. Thinking about it in context, it makes sense to want to dole out punishment to one of the best villains in the show shortly after he was introduced. (And what happens to him? Kind of terrifying! Though there's good reason for Luna to be so vengeful.)
On top of that, the overarching plot continues, as Luna is still at Sundance's place, though how the earlier misunderstanding was resolved is left as an exercise to the reader. Also, that plot leaps ahead rather without warning right at the end. Still, this is one of the best entries in Progress, living up to the bar set by its predecessor.
How sad is it though, that the best parts of a story tagged comedy are the ones which eschew comedy all together?
3.5/5
Luna Versus Wedlock
As a slice of life entry, this is good. As a comedy, it's good. I'm not sure what to make of that. c.c The reason why this works? It never overstays its welcome. (Indeed, it's the second-shortest Progress entry.) All the comedy comes from either Hoyden being an idiot or Luna being too sleepy to perform a marriage ceremony; not once does it overreach. And this leaves it in a weird spot where it's not terribly impactful, entirely because the joke is an anticlimax. But it works. I just wish this were more of a standard baseline for Progress than something of a high bar.
3/5
BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE.
While reading Ponyville, I was thinking I remembered some things that don't appear in this version. Turns out, I was right: it originally went Ponyville 7, then Heat (which doesn't make any sense), Ponyville 8, Facts of Life, Ponyville 9, Storytelling and then a bunch more chapters on FFN that aren't on Fimfiction. How in the fuck am I supposed to review this properly? By beating my head against it, that's how.
That being said, I think the version on Fimfiction is meant to be taken as "the sum total of Progress", and yes, I didn't find this out until I was done reading what's on FFN. <.< Just so all that effort isn't wasted, here's what you'll find there:
Luna Versus the GGG: Luna has a dream about Big Mac fighting Abacus over her. Points for "harlequine", but substanceless and pointless in and of itself, especially considering whatever it was supposed to set up never really came to pass.
PONIES! IN! SPAAAACE!: Luna takes over the Equestrian Space Agency. The point at which I originally fell out of love with Progress. Mostly dull and tedious, though chapter 2 features some of the best Blueblood skewering I've ever read. I wish more of Progress had held to that caliber of comedy. Never actually finished.
Luna Versus Vigilantism: In which Luna becomes the Mysterious Mare-Do-Well. Turns what happens in SPAAAACE into an actually effective spaghetti incident, but I got the feeling even the author was starting to get tired of the story. Features a fantastic McDonald's pun, a terrible Watchmen reference, and a rather incredible comedy of errors wherein a plan to have a mock supervillain fight ends up usurped by the last person I would have imagined. It was really fun when it wasn't focused on Luna being dumb. Also never finished.
So that's Progress, then.
You know, I actually went back to try and find all my original comments on the EQD post of the story, to get a glimpse into what I liked about Progress back in the day. I learned A) that there a metric fuckload of comments on this story, and B) trying to read old comments on EQD is a severe pain in the ass. :/
(I also found that there are three side/fan stories: Celestia vs. Time, Luna vs. Threesome and Luna vs. Videogames, all but the last of which are on Fimfiction. I think I'll leave well enough alone and not review them, for all that the author at least jokingly suggested the second one is canon.)
The only conclusion I can come to is just that I liked different things back then. I've really changed as a person in the years spent in this fandom, and I no longer, to quote myself, find Hoyden's libido to be a source of amusement. It doesn't help that, as I've said again and again, Andrew J. Talon's idea of comedy is almost entirely removed from mine. There are flashes of brilliance in here, but it does bother me that the chapters I most enjoyed were the ones completely devoid of comedy.
Progress is one of those stories where it's clear the author didn't know what they were getting into when they started writing it, and just started adding in whatever seemed like a good idea at the time, in order to meet demand. Pantsing a story like this was obviously not a good idea, considering all the digressions that lead nowhere, the poor running gags, and the fact that it was honestly never finished. (It's at least marked Complete on Fimfiction, that's all I need.) Whatever came before it, this is no longer a story I can enjoy. And I didn't enjoy that I didn't enjoy it.
2/5
The antagonism inherent in the titles of these blog posts feels strangely relevant.
Tomorrow, Antipodes by PK!
I'm just gonna leave this here.
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Progress was old even when it was new. It was never good - our standards were just low back then.
...
Or, you know, it's about the second most common name for the moon and a popular name in its own right. I don't think people needed Progress for "Selene" to be a thing.
Really, PP.
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Bow chicka wow wow
Well, now I have the Carosel of Progress song in my head.
I don't see the problem with having a microwave in Equestria. But then again I still massively love this story.
We see Gabby playing baseball in The Fault in Our Cutie Marks.
That one sentence sums up the fandom entirely.
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Same with the dream powers. It's an easy association to make, especially if you're in early-fandom "god-like alicorns" mode.
Naw, we got it from Faust. She told us early on that "Princess Selene" was Luna's name in an early draft of the pilot. AJT's just making another meta-reference-which-isn't-so-much-a-joke-as-an-acknowledgement-of-a-thing-which-yes-does-in-fact-exist, i.e. his entire M.O.
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Yeah, that too
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Oh, certainly not.
But did anyone do it prior? :V
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MORE PRESCIENCE
4866089
Oh, well, there we go. :B
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Csquared08's avatar itself was the perfect response.
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It really is. To so many things.
Progress... huh.
Yes, all the flaws you pointed out are absolutely true, but I can't bring myself to hate. I think there is room in the fanfic world for impulsive, inconsistent, low-quality Slice-of-life written mostly to make its own author squeal with glee. Hell, I'm writing one now. It's clear the author derived great joy from his childish, woobie Luna, and I can't even bitch about his pandering because he was like the first to do so.
Reading Progress several years ago encouraged me to write my own fanfics in more ways than one. Positively, it was a joyful, amusing romp with the ponies I craved to see more of, and gave a mental "yeah, write a fanfic! It'll be great." Negatively, Progress lost me as it turned to the already-tired trope of using Blueblood as an ass-man: a nonthreatening moron placed solely to give the characters and audience someone to laugh at and feel smart/liberal. All for the horrible crime of shooting down gold-digger Rarity.
A desire to turn this perception around spurred my first fanfic, and more down the road.
I haven't read many of these fics, but this series of yours intrigues me. :) I'd be very interested in seeing you take on Past Sins (a fic I have much less nostalgia for), and Simply Rarity, which was also hugely inspirational and I refuse to re-read because I hate crying.
God.
I remember this fic. It's part of why I hate this fandom sometimes. There was noting terribly wrong with it, but people went apeshit for it. They raved about it constantly. That fucking abacus became a fixture in so many other stories. It got fucking old after a week and then kept going.
Maybe I started out as the grumpy person you're becoming PP, because I don't really remember thinking this was worth a lot. I was always confused about its popularity. And the more it was shoved in my face the more i grew to loathe anything with Luna in it. Bleh. Worst horse than AJ.
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Lauren Faust, nearly. Chris mentioned this below, but the "nearly" is because Faust called her Selena. There's a drawing in The Elements of Harmony book. (p26) Here:
s9.postimg.cc/oagrixaa7/Selena.jpg
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I don't really see how whether anyone doing it before has any relevance to the fact that you can't really say he started it when it's a common thing. That's a clear causation/correlation fallacy.
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I think i feel the same here: at the time I really, REALLY wanted to like something and progress was very easy to like. Something silly and not very long that made me feel happy for little sad Woona. I don't know a lot about overall quality and i didn't read the Whole serie to the end because, well, I went down a different path. BUT! But progress was what I needed to start reading fanfictions and see that they were fun and make me want more of them. Nowadays it probably is a lot less interesting; I'm not going to read it again, will keep it as a distant memory, like Always sunny in Fillydelfia, Sunny Days all day long, or Bittersweet. (the one where Pinkie has diabetes) Too afraid to realize how different I am from those days.
I'm ok with this review, mostly because I can easily belive everything you wrote; still, somehow it hurts and I can't help feeling guilty because it hurts. Don't even know why, but I wanted to write it here before it hurt even more.
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Well, it doesn't matter either way, cuz he didn't. :B
I've gotta stand up for Luna Vs. The Threesome, which I honestly think transcends its source. The comedy feels very different from what bugged you about the original, partially because it's a different author but mostly because it shifts away from Luna to focus more on Sundance and Hoyden (which is a fantastic decision because they felt like dynamic and likeable characters here).
And I mean yes it's borderline clop but it doesn't shortchange the story.
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...If I regret this, I know who to blame. >.>
I might be wrong about this, but I think if nothing else Progress was something of a learning experience for me. Namely, that it's okay to stop reading something you used to like if it seems to have gone downhill, or even if you've just changed. At least, that's where I learned it in the context of fanfic. My way, waaaaayyyy too long history with Dune should have had me ready for that before. But yeah, sometimes it's just not worth hoping it reclaims what you loved about it.
And yeah, it did feel like after a while AJT had really lost interest with the main thrust of things, hence space and vigilantism.