Present Perfect vs. The Party Hasn't Ended · 9:09pm Jun 4th, 2019
haha I almost forgot to post this
It may not be the first ponyfic I ever read, but AbsoluteAnonymous butterscotchsundae's The Party Hasn't Ended is pretty damn close. Like, first twelve at most.
For this reason, it's always been an important story to me. Specifically, it's the reason I've held a lifelong love of PinkieDash shipping. So like, The Elements of Awesomery would not exist in its current form if not for this story, that's what I'm talking about.
But with that said, its age coupled with the fact that I was once definitely a wide-eyed, "Oh my god, ponies!" kind of fan have kept me from going back to reread it for last eight goddamn years, out of fear that it might not hold up to my memory of it, to say nothing of the importance it holds to me.
Well, like the saying goes, don't meet your idols. Or, I guess, don't revisit the first fanfic you ever read…
The Party Hasn't Ended is a shipfic of a certain brand. I mean, it's S1 through and through, the kind of story where the author tries to shove in every background character with half a name, just to remind you what universe we're in. It's the kind of story where Derpy is present, but all she does is say "muffins". (I'm pretty sure Feeling Pinkie Keen was the newest episode when this story was being written, at least at first, because there are tons of references to what happened in it, not to mention Bridle Gossip, and Sonic Rainboom shows up by the end.)
And it's the kind of story where everyone gets shipped. On top of the focus PinkieDash pairing, there's Caramac (haven't seen that in a hot decade), LyraBon, maybe Rarijack, Fluttershy is the object of affection for Cloudkicker of all ponies, Twilight's got it bad for Big Macintosh, and there's even a hint at the end of Twiluna. Or at least, Luna's got her eyes on some unspecified pony.
That's a lot of goddamn shipping. And unfortunately, very little of it is any good. But let's go back to the beginning before we start picking this apart.
The story begins with Pinkie Pie throwing one of her secret, fake surprise parties for Rainbow Dash, all by herself in Sugarcube Corner. Normally, she sets up a whole party, has a little fantasy about dancing with her Dashie, and then breaks down, tears it down, and cleans it up all by herself, refusing any help.
The actual conflict starts with the fake surprise party, which usually cheers her up, failing to do so. This leads Pinkie to wonder if that titular party inside her, a metaphor for her general state of being, has ended. Her friends notice she's feeling a little down, they throw her a party to try and cheer her up, and she insists on cleaning up after, while Dash insists on helping. Cue a song where she accidentally tells Dash she loves her, then Dash finding the banners with her name on them from the fake party out back. She gets dirty, Pinkie gives her a bath, gets her talking about secret crushes, and then just fucking kisses her.
And Dash quietly freaks the fuck out and leaves.
Everything else that happens in the story, from Pinkie maybe trying to kill herself (? It was never quite clear…) to the giant freaking storm that wrecks Ponyville, is a direct result of this encounter. This is a story where love is a tangible power in Equestria — admittedly, not altogether unrealistic in season one — and pretty much everything revolves around it. Like, you can just use it to do whatever at the most dramatically appropriate moment, is what I'm saying.
But the damnable thing is — spoilers — they get together by the end, and Dash is all, "Oh hecc Pinkie, I luvs u" and that is just a really far cry from Rainbow Dash calmly saying she has to go home now because Pinkie just kissed her. Okay, I've left a bunch out, let's get back to the summary.
So afterward, Pinkie disappears, Dash denies she had anything to do with it, and we find out a little bit more about her history, specifically Gildash was kind of a thing, and that thing hurt her. Okay, fair, that sounds like Rainbow to blow one bad breakup out of proportion. Then the storm shows up, a big black one centered on Dash's house that the pegasi can't do anything about.
Hey, remember when we didn't know Nurse Redheart's name? Because I sure don't, but there's a Nurse Cross and a Nurse Mercy in this story, and I am 100% sure they're both actually Redheart.
Anyway, the storm is a creation of, who else, the Nightmare, and it wants to take over Rainbow Dash because her heart is full of despair. She is eventually taken, comatose, to Twilight's place, which is where Zecora brings Pinkie Pie, also comatose, who she found out in the woods. This brings us to the bulk of the story: battling the Nightmare in the world of dreams. To her credit, butterscotchsundae predicted Luna's role in dreaming. Also to her credit, this story passes the Zecora test, which is about the best thing I can say about it, all things considered. :/
I have to wonder if this was a discovery fic for the author. Because it's shot through with melodrama, lines like "her whole universe was a broken dream of her broken heart", but the dream sequences were actually pretty good. The imagery was rendered well, at least, and the plot kind of starts to solidify once we get into it, for all that I'm pretty sure the author didn't have a plan at the start of the story. Point is, the writing is really shaky all throughout, especially when it comes to POV, but things improve over time.
Anyway, Twilight casts a spell to go into Pinkie's dream scape and finds a party that gives both of them the things they want: Rainbow Dash and Big Macintosh. This is how we learn what the Nightmare's plan is, to give Pinkie what she wants and thus get into her heart and take her over.
Then Twilight and Pinkie defeat it with put-downs. I am not fucking kidding. They just sit there and fucking roast the Nightmare to its face until it shrinks down and storms off into Dash's dream. And, for whatever reason, Pinkie has to follow it alone because I guess this isn't a TwiDash fic? I don't know why anything happens in this story.
So Pinkie goes into Dash's dream and finds that she keeps being shown scenes from her past, though this isn't apparent at first, with the Nightmare telling her to give up and let it in, and every time, she chooses to kill herself instead of give herself up. The Nightmare then resets the dreams, but respect.
This leads into a very long sequence which is actually the crux of the story. Dash, in flight school, was roommates with a pegasus named Star Catcher (hey, a G3 reference I didn't get the first time I read it!), who was totally into her despite Dash being oblivious to everything but flying. Pinkie keeps showing up as a face in a mirror, and Dash doesn't remember anything going on in the outside world, including her. Repeat this about six times before Star Catcher gets drunk at a formal gathering and kisses Dash, who calls her a filly-fooler and berates her for making her look stupid in front of the founder of the Wonderbolts (?), then leaves because this is Drama City.
Unfortunately, this is also the entire reason behind her behavior earlier with Pinkie. It wasn't just a "you're my friend, I don't need anything more" kind of situation, it was this specter of Dash's past coming back to haunt her. Some mare wanted her, and she wasn't into that, and she doesn't know how to deal with her emotions because she's a huge goddamn child. That's why she just left Pinkie sitting there like an idiot, that's why her heart's full of despair making her a target for the Nightmare, something something giant storm.
It's justification, is what I'm saying, but I still don't quite buy the way her past is overcome.
Anyway, this leads into the finale of the story, which is just as long and drawn out as pretty much anything else. Pinkie takes a hit for Dash, accepting the Nightmare into her heart, and Dash wakes up thinking Pinkie is dead, just when she was finally willing to open herself up to her.
Pinkie starts defeating the Nightmare with her "old magic": laughter. Every time it tries to show her a horrible scene (quite often from other fanfics, yes there's a Cupcakes reference, and I'm pretty sure Rocket to Insanity is in here as well), she hears Dash's voice calling to her, finding the strength to turn it around somehow: it's a prank, it's a joke, it's not what it looks like. And the Nightmare just keeps getting more and more frustrated, which was kind of hilarious, all things considered. I mean, issues of agentless Luna aside, the Nightmare isn't utilized terribly well in this story, but watching its arc is honestly kind of fascinating.
Because if there's one good idea in this fic, it's what the Nightmare actually is. I almost don't want to spoil it, but since I'm not exactly recommending people read this story…
Pinkie figures out, somehow, that the Nightmare is actually Loneliness. And then she goes inside its heart — no, I don't know how — and witnesses a scene of its past. It was once a tiny little foal-like thing from beyond the stars, left in Equestria ages ago by its mother, who was trying to protect it. Not much is gone into about why or from what, and we don't see much more beyond this, but I felt like it was an extremely creative idea, if you're going to go with "the Nightmare is an outside force and separate entity from Luna". (And, despite what I said earlier, I think it's suggested that this isn't even actually the same Nightmare, it's just taking that form to strike terror into ponies or something.)
All of this ends with Pinkie 'defeating' the Nightmare by promising Loneliness she'll come back and visit, like its mother never did. She wakes up, she and Rainbow Dash to a Sonic Rainboom to stop the storm because of course they do, there's a shitton of "Oh, Dash!" "Oh, Pinkie!" and of course the party inside her comes back, the end. With lots and lots and lots of making sure everyone gets one final scene, whether they were important to the rest of the story or not.
Oh yeah, and butterscotchsundae also predicted Hurricane Fluttershy.
If there's one thing I can say for this fic, it tries its damnedest to be epic. I mean, everything from the dream fights to the storm itself to that final rainboom is just steeped in grandiosity. But so much of this story is held back by pacing. Like, Rainbow Dash takes herself and Pinkie up out of the stratosphere to do the most epic rainboom ever. There's actually no gravity, you'd think this would be cool. But they just spend a lot of time making romantic overtures at each other, and talking through their issues, and fucking dancing in zero-G, and it's like, these things are all well and good, but there's kind of a crisis in Ponyville at this moment, could you please get a move on? The danger is built up so well, and then the characters just take a few minutes to ignore it and faff around.
Also there's a sex scene in between scene breaks for some reason because Rainbow Dash is a virgin and this was important to the story you guys.
Anyway. I've had very little positive to say about this story, so I wanted to drop a couple of those in right now. For all that the drama is high and the plot very often makes no sense, the characters, at least Dash and Pinkie, are written really well. Dash's jerk actions make sense given both her character in the show and the history created for her in the story. Pinkie's vulnerability makes sense in hindsight, post-Party of One, while I can absolutely buy her ability to hold off the Nightmare's nightmares with solely her own strength of personality.
And though the main shipping was overwrought and dramatic, and the whole story values being in a romantic relationship above literally anything else, it does get one thing right: LyraBon. Early in the story, Pinkie shows up to suggest to Lyra that she and Bon-Bon would make a good couple, and Lyra laughs it off. Then a later scene shows us that Lyra's actually really got it bad for her friend. The last scene of theirs is during the storm, when literally everyone in Ponyville gets a scene, and we see them trying to wait it out, with Lyra's head in Bon-Bon's lap, and the latter thinking that maybe this isn't so bad after all. And absolutely none of this is important to the story beyond being part of that "get you a special somepony!" theme, but it's sweet, it's natural, and it's really, really elegant in ways that the other 99% of the story absolutely is not.
Well, I guess that was more damning with faint praise than anything. For the record, along with the POV shifts, negative things I noted include hot dogs (seriously, what?), the pegasus bullies being written extremely poorly, memes ("Confound these ponies, they drive me to distraction!"), Pinkie being "presumed waterlogged and scared", and the phrase "little pink pony". Because by the end of the story, the author has decided that this is the sole proper way to refer to Pinkie Pie when not using her name, and it shows way too much I hate it
So yeah. The Party Hasn't Ended Yet is a really old story that hasn't aged well. It's old enough that I have no idea where it's placed in the author's body of work, but it's not the first time revisiting her stories has disappointed me (see also: Swayback Mountain). Whoo, and looking through her Fimfic gallery, there's still quite a few I've read but never reviewed. I'm gonna have to do this again sometime, aren't I?
Well, I don't think anything can really be learned from this other than our tastes change over time.
2/5
Only good for a first-time fanfic reader.
I hope butters is doing okay, I've tried emailing her the last couple of years, but she appears to have found life beyond the ponies.
5069465
She's just one of many who left the fandom five+ years ago. :B
5069494
out of curiosity, could you explain that joke where you started calling her AbsoluteAnonymous but then crossed it out? Is Butterscotchsundae actually one of AA's alt accounts?
5069506
No, I thought the story was one of AA's when I started reading it, and it took me a while to realize I was wrong.
Oddly enough, though I never read this story, your review brought back good memories of those heady early days. Brought a smile to this oldster's face, it did.
How about a little apropos music?
5069465
BSS had a kid.
I’m 90% sure TPHE started like no kore than a week after Griffon the Brush Off. It certainly is a super duper s1 trope filled feat of fandom speculation. Hell, it created fandom speculation.
I remember loving it when I first read it (one of my first 10 fics as well) but cringing a bit internally when I read it again after s2. A lot has changed and it’s not all just my tastes.
I don’t think I could finish it we’re i to read it today.
I found this at a baseball game Shave Ice truck four years ago
i.imgur.com/I5EQrUe.png
5069600 Heh, that's cool. Thanks for that little update :)
5069602
whut in the whurld o.o
5069602
WTF. All the crazy steps that must have happened to land that there.
Rough going back sometimes. Glad you found some things that still are positives, though.
Regardless of how the story itself holds up (taking your and Chris's word for it; never read it), I still like some of the music it inspired:
5111507
Yeah, I do like the song. :)