Present Perfect vs. Background Pony · 3:10pm Dec 30th, 2021
The stories that make up the "Big Three" of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction. Timeless classics written when the show was young, producing side stories, parodies and counterpoints for years to come.
Except there aren't just three big fanfictions in the MLP:FiM fandom.
Back in July of 2018, local coolperson Avonder realized there was a notable gap in my reviews. He offered to send me a hardbound copy of the newest printing run for shortskirtsandexplosion's classic epic Background Pony.
Let me be very clear: This was amazing. It was a story I wanted to read. It was a very nice pair of printed volumes. They were numbered. They had my name in them. They came from Russia. Avonder is an incredible person. By October of the same year, I had it in my hands and it was time to start reading.
You should be noticing by now that that was over three years ago. This should prime your expectations for the coming review.
Everyone's gonna hate me after this. Let's end the year with a bang.
I'm going to start where the twenty-five pages of my notes do: with a quote from Soge (I think, I had it written as "Soga"), wherein he describes Background Pony as a story
which starts off amazing, and quickly degrades into trash
I would maybe quibble with the word "quick", but otherwise, this is a fair assessment as far as I'm concerned.
The first chapter of the story is excellent, and everyone should read it because it is in itself a complete story. It gives us the setup and execution of the central idea: Lyra Heartstrings is suffering from some kind of unknown curse, whereby no one can remember her for long. If they get distracted while interacting with her, or turn away for a moment, they'll forget she was ever there and have to start the conversation over. We even see ponies forget they were talking to her in the middle of conversations! And she can't get around it by writing things down, either, as anything she writes or that is written about her will vanish in short order.
Alongside this forgetting effect, she's also cold. Really cold. All the time. It's proportional to how far away she is from the center of Ponyville, for reasons I think we find out later on in the story. This is of course why she ends up wearing the iconic hoodie seen in the story's cover art. The coldness keeps her from leaving Ponyville, though I think there's also some kind of magical force field in play there as well, so she can't just go to the princesses for help.
And yet, despite all this, Lyra is trying her best to do good around Ponyville. The first chapter specifically deals with her helping out Derpy and Dinky, and it's super cute, you guys. She's able to learn things about ponies and then come back to them later and use what she learned to ingratiate herself with them. Yet ultimately what she does, if it sticks, will never be remembered by anyone. But she's at least a big enough pony to be okay with that.
Think about it: no one ever remembering you exist. Unable to form relationships. Unable to do things like order food or, later in the story, receive medical care because the people helping you forget what they were doing in the middle of doing it. Lyra's life is difficult. It's soul-crushing. She's trying to reconnect with her old childhood friend Twilight Sparkle, but try as she might, Twilight just will never remember any of their interactions, not now and not from the past.
And like, she gets a bunch of money in that first chapter because she's playing music in the town square and ponies don't remember already having dropped bits into her cup. She could honestly rob the town blind, y'know? But she doesn't. She's here to do good. Chapter 1 of Background Pony has an excellent premise which it uses to tell an uplifting story. It's great.
And then it keeps going.
Granted, I myself said "chapter 1 really is kind of a complete story, save that it presents so many ideas, you'd need another 400 fucking thousand words to explore them all."
But you don't actually need 400 thousand words to explore them all. You need maybe 100 thousand. <.< And that's the main problem with Background Pony.
It's not that it's repetitive. I mean, it can be, but the various stories of the ponies Lyra helps tend to be good. And they're maybe a third of the whole story.
Another third of the story is lore, and wow, is it good! Lyra knows nothing about what's going on at the start of the story, but slowly she uncovers these ancient songs that no one remembers, elegies from a symphony that have magical effects when played in order. These songs are linked to all sorts of things: ancient pony history, the creation of the goddamn universe, a lost realm filled with tortured souls — the unsung, what an evocative name! — and even a third alicorn sister.
Like I said, this is at least a third of the story, and whenever Lyra was searching out songs or trying to play her way through them without losing her mind, I was at my most invested in the story. It leads up to, and I want to stress this, a really cool creation story in the last few chapters. That third alicorn sister OC isn't even a bad idea, she's cool!
Unfortunately, there's one third of the story remaining. At least a third. And it is awful. It's philosophy. It's conversations of stilted, purple dialogue that don't go anywhere. It's repeating scenes to drive points home. And it is Lyra
constantly
goddamn
WHINING
Don't get me wrong, her life is really, really hard. She's constantly alone, she's constantly cold, and she's fighting an enemy that is as inevitable as entropy. She's got a right to be upset, to be sad or despondent in between the periods of triumph. That's fine.
But we get page after page after chapter after chapter of incessant, purple whining. I'm talking solid "woe is me" stuff, and it never lets up. We get it, already, after a few chapters, but that's not good enough. It tends to start a chapter off, which is never a good way to begin anything, and it just drags the whole thing down. And on. It drags the story down and on. And I hate it.
The intense, neverending depression was why it took me three years to read this story. I needed a therapist to get through this damn book, and not because it was depressing! All those words, all those paragraphs upon paragraphs of characters talking in flowery prose followed by a journal entry where Lyra whines yet again about how much her life sucks just drained away all the potential fun a story like this could have had. It's criminal.
And since I'm talking about depressing things, let's skip right to the ending! Y'all had years to read this, I'm not marking spoilers!
I've heard a lot of people say they were really upset at how Background Pony ended. And perhaps the best thing I can say about it is that I am among their number, so I was at least somewhat invested in the story. The ending comes in two chapters, the first where Lyra returns to the realm of the unsung and confronts Princess Aria about breaking her curse, and the second, where she just lives out the rest of her days without her curse having been lifted.
See, the first issue I have is that ultimately, this ending is unfair. Lyra didn't ask for this. She didn't wander into a dangerous place she shouldn't have been. She wasn't inhospitable to a wandering god disguised as a mortal. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got saddled with this curse whose ultimate goal is to drag her to the realm where all souls who have been forgotten trickle into. A curse, I should add, that was birthed from the sorrow of a creation goddess being unable and unwilling to deal with the first recorded death in existence. Which is a great backstory, no lie, and I appreciated that said goddess is called out for what she did.
But despite this, despite the fact that Lyra fights as much as or even more than anyone could reasonably ask of her to fend off the worst parts of being forgotten, despite the fact that she spends the story alternating between trying to help ponies, trying to find more songs, and occasionally trying to care for herself, in the end, she's given essentially no choice whatsoever. Princess Aria can't be remembered by anyone, most especially the aforementioned creation goddess. She's basically got a kill-switch on reality to either reset or unmake anything that might make her remember her daughter.
So Lyra can either play the final song and return herself to where she was before the story started, back to the mortal realm with no memory of the events that happened during it, which shaped who she is now. Or she can do nothing and remain as she is. Except, she pretty much has to do nothing and remain as she is, otherwise there'll be no one available to conveniently stop Discord when he inevitably shows up again.
Ultimately, she decides that what needs to happen is asking Princess Aria to remove her love of music so that she can never potentially find the elegies again and risk returning Aria's name to memory. Except… I have no idea why she decided to do this? Because all it means is that she's put back at the start of the story, still cursed, and also missing a major facet of who she is. She does not win. She loses, big time, as she grows old and her memory slowly leaves her.
And why?
I can't say it's for no reason. There is a message here, that being that doing good is more important than being remembered. That even if everyone in the world forgot who you were, it would be enough that you had done something to improve anyone's life. And that's a nice enough sentiment if you don't mind the idea of fading into obscurity.
I am not one of those people. I hate this ending.
Back to the bit where I was complaining about philosophy for a moment. The ending makes all of that so much worse because nowhere in the final chapter is that thesis statement ever stated. I wrote that paragraph simply by taking a moment to ask, "What's the point of this?" and putting all the pieces together. I did not need reams and reams of papyrus detailing the meaning of art or memory or loss ad nauseam, and yet that makes up a substantial portion of the story! Lyra's actions could have stood on their own merits when it comes to message, but nope, I guess we need an entire page to spell out in detail just what it was trying to say.
And yet, that's not even the worst of it. The worst part would be chapter 16, where Return of Harmony happens and we find out that the real story is that the Mane Six were dealing with a duplicate of Discord while he was busy engaging Lyra in a battle of wits that she ultimately won, and so he let the Elements win. This is… Do I have to explain why this is utter bullshit? The third alicorn OC is usually a bad idea in fanfiction, but in this case worked because she fit the creation story (though I should mention, she's shipped with Discord). But telling us that an entire episode was basically a lie, whose resolution only came because of the behind-the-scenes actions of basically an OC — and Lyra is basically an OC at this point in time — is just…
God, it makes me angry. Also, Discord makes too many references. And the Below Decks version of Return of Harmony was just not great. Like, Cheerilee's cutie mark has nothing to do with flowers, c'mon.
So I've been pretty negative up to this point. Is there anything worth praising? Yes, actually. Like I said, the first chapter is excellent, and for the first half or so of the story, I found at least every other chapter enjoyable. In particular, I consider chapter 11 the highlight of the story. It's a masterful piece of historical journal work, in which Lyra dives into the writings of one Alabaster Comethoof (what is that name though), another pony who fell to the unsung curse in long centuries past and spent a lot of time writing about it and just what was going on around the time of Princess Luna's fall.
Like, seriously, that chapter is fucking outstanding. The authorial voice is completely different from Lyra's. The chapter really helped me get through to the end, ultimately; it was timed perfectly, especially since chapter 10 sucked. Also, I like that 'sarosian', skirts's name for batponies, makes an appearance. There were some references I actually appreciated, like Caramel getting married to a pony named Wind Whistler. An early chapter featured a very funny scene of Rainbow Dash continually forgetting she's trying to destroy a barn. The story features pre-canon Moondancer, and she's a great character, as is the totally unnecessary love interest for Lyra. And there were a few lines I wrote down because they were really good:
"How come it feels like you're always searchin' and I'm always waitin', and the days just go by faster and faster, and all we end up bein' is alone?"
"The universe will never die; it can only spread thin."
"She was truly beautiful in every pitiable sense of the term."
And also the scene on page 218 where Lyra gives Scootaloo a way to deal with her tears after an injury with dignity, telling her the healing ointment smells bad and ponies often have runny noses and watery eyes after using it. Like, my god, what a character moment.
Then again, there were also a lot of not so good things I kept track of:
"You're getting all washed up over nothing"
"I receiveth it, thy reaper of warmth"
"Ponies call me 'Scootaloo'"
'produced' is an exceedingly terrible saidism
"the best bridges in history have been built by the architects simply collapsing, so as to show where the ravines are in the first place"
"I have seen the land between the firmaments. We are not afraid enough."
"Does everything in the world stand to be fixed?"
"In a way, you could say I bake a little bit of my friends into each of these cupcakes."
page 54 of book 2, the 'real' chapter begins: "I couldn't help it; I stopped reading."
"Stop abusing Scootaloo!"
"All this time, you've made it so hard… so dang hard, and now you give me an open invitation?"
"I don't understand. What invitation?"
"To call you 'Mommy' once again."
Also, the story fails both the Zecora and Luna Tests. The journal entries outside chapter 11 frequently are too detailed to actually feel like journal entries. The Moondancer chapter is marred by neverending arguing. There's a lot of "heeheehee" and stuttering and other little dialogue-writing tics that are a hallmark of shortskirts stories and really goddamn annoying in large amounts.
Oh, I never mentioned the colors. There's colored text in this story. Lyra's name and anything referring to her is written in green. Things related to Princess Aria and the elegies are in purple. Anything regarding Alabaster is cornflower blue. It's… a thing. It was kind of annoying when it was entire paragraphs or even pages of one non-black color (or worse, two), but it did occasionally inform the narrative. Although mostly, I was miffed; I began the story writing down all the purple words, thinking they would unlock some mystery, but really they don't, we're just told what they mean across the course of the story. And parasprites are somehow a part of the creation stuff, they're also purple, and I just never knew how to deal with that.
I don't know. Here's all the funny shit I wrote in my notes:
so after four paragraphs of philosophizing over the nature of sleep, she declares that a dream is like a song
why is this 21 thousand words long? why are some chapters longer? there was a stopping point in here!
"There's something to be said of short scraps and explosions" come on
this wouldn't be so bad if Fluttershy were actually giving us new perspective on what happened instead of just summarizing the episodes; the same is true of this whole chapter, which wouldn't be so bad if Rarity's self-loathing and whining weren't dragged out for fifty pages D:
okay, it's not just me, Lyra's speech is too purple and meandering for Scoot to understand, too
poop joke
Scootaloo sure doesn't sound disentangled from the spiritual self or whatever
Lyra's telling her to carpe the diem
that was three solid pages of romantic dream that really adds nothing to the story
"adorable, but nopony upstairs" yeah, that's Sweetie Belle all right
she promises not to write again until she performs the eighth elegy, and for fuck's sake, I hope she sticks to it
"When will it end?! When will it ever end?!" my thoughts exactly
sounds like Pinkie was probably forgetting her all day and just pinking on regardless
Sethisto is in this story c.c I just don't
she reads aloud the first line of the story and comments that it's a good thing she's the only one reading it, because it would never catch on, come the fuck ON
Luna calls him to her chambers and spends the night ignoring him, saying nothing, only for him to notice the "Nightbringer", an unidentified instrument said to have played the songs of Creation; why do I get the feeling it's a lyre?
…YEAH IT'S A LYRE
why are the mane six bowling? I mean, this is riveting and all but :|
OH BOY NOW THEY ARE PLAYING CHESS
IN CHAPTER THIRTEEN, I BEGIN SKIMMING
and then Fluttershy just starts waxing philosophical about the relationship of ponies and animals, like Lyra is literally trying to get a word in edgewise and just can't because we need paragraphs of monologue right the fuck now
Vinyl Scratch is there, and she is clearly drugged up, a sex fiend, and straight
oh, goddammit, they're all going to tell a story now, aren't they? I've never seen a chapter so dedicated to being irrelevant
holy fuck, the reams of pony puns, spare me
a fucking Billy Talent reference
"All that we've been doing is philosophizing." YES AND IT IS BORING
did he just make a poop joke? a very subtle poop joke?
"You were Celestia, Moondancer was Luna and I was Star Swirl" what in the goddamn
fucking Sibsy is referenced by name
"I've done enough thinking, enough philosophizing, enough talking and incessant rambling." YA THINK???
are you fucking kidding me
And yeah. I gave myself permission to skim after a while. Because the chapters were longer than some entire fanfics, and this was not okay. The year gap between me reading two consecutive chapters was a bigger hurdle to my comprehension of the text. Deal with it.
Background Pony. A lot of people love it. I am not one of them. If you have fond memories of the first chapter, of the original premise, of that indelible, iconic image of Lyra being adorable and wearing a hoodie, hold on to them. That's fine. But no one is gonna tell me this was a good story on receipt. The bad far outweighs the good, and there's just so much here. It could have been 100k words and that would have been sufficient.
But it wasn't. And so I wrote a really long review about it. Ironic.
2/5
I'm really tired of long fanfics.
The good news is, now I can finally get to all the hard copy books people gave me during Bronycon 2019. Though the first one's gonna be a PDF…
Like I said in the fimfic IRC all those years ago:
It's one chapter of a great story, and then 19 chapters of
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
LYRA SUFFERS
... and then I was booted for using all-caps. Because what are rules for, if not to prevent suffering?
I made it all the way to the end too, and I'll admit, parts dragged on. I'll compare it to Handel's Messiah because the blasted song goes on for *TWO FULL HOURS* plus change. Mary's labor was shorter. (Then again, I'm still writing on Letters, which is longer, so...)
c.tenor.com/Pwtdh41VdAYAAAAC/thats-fair-rdj.gif
Was this review being deliberately meta, by being unnecessary long and saying the same thing several times?
5622162
Oh God it's infectious, like a virus.
…well, looks like I was right in my judgment to never read this one. Though if I can force myself to stop at Chapter 1, I might just read that. Had enough experience with concept tease one-shots over the years to be able to live with not reading further. Especially given where it goes.
I've still never read Past Sins or Fallout: Equestria, and don't really intend to. I respect their influence, but many of these early huge hits clearly got big mostly on concept and getting there first.
Your review all serves to point out most longfics would be better if they applied published fiction levels of restraint in the word count and plotting. At least partially. Not everything justifies A Song of Ice and Fire or War and Peace lengths. Frankly, very little does. This is at least partially why I tend to be selective with fics over 100K, and especially over 200K. Of course, when most fics are only partially planned before they start writing, that level of discipline can't be applied across the whole board. And many fics wouldn't exist at all if they were published and improvised somewhat as they went along.
Fanfic is multi-layered and complicated, y'all. But I'll try and bookmark Chapter 1 to read soon. And this is coming from someone who really doesn't care about Lyra much at all, though that's partially because she's got the whole "human fascination" thing. And I don't need or want humans in my Equestria. A ghost's gotta have his tastes, you know.
If you want a short fic, go review mono’s Taco Bell shitpost thing :3
There's a reason I'm never reading that fic again. It destroys you because of the way it is written and drawn out. I'm glad I read it, but I also hated it. It was like reading turn of the 20th century naturalism like Maggie: Girl of the Streets again, but instead of a school assignment, I was subjecting myself to it. I basically read the whole thing in one sitting and was not okay afterward because it left me feeling empty.
1) Do I ever recommend this one to others? No.
2) Do I regret reading it? Also no.
3) Do I actively dissuade people from reading it? Yes and no as anyone suffering from depression should steer clear of this and any work like this.
4) Do I agree with your assessment? Yes.
5) Will I never forget this fic for hitting me straight in my greatest fear, loss of mental faculties? To my chagrin, yes.
I hate this fic, but I think that's the point. It is why it is the only fic in my favorites with a dislike on it.
I've never read Background Pony, because I don't like these kinds of stories. I really like ponies in hoodies though, and it gets annoying when someone makes a Background Pony quip in response to one being posted somewhere. Either way, a few of my friends have read it recently and they had similar thoughts.
I also vibe that on long fics. The Enchanted Library burned me out hard and nowadays I try to stick to stuff I can read in an hour.
I feel like it's probably for the best I never finished this one. To be fair, I never really cared for most of the "big" fics in the fandom. Last Pony on Earth, Past Sins, My Little Dashie, Fallout Equestria - I'm such a hipster.
Heh, I have said for years that Background Pony is a fantastic story followed by 400K words of purple wangst. Hell, waaaay back in the day, I made a post on Ponychan asking people what I was not getting about this fic? Why is it apparently one of the best fics ever but I couldn't get past the first 1/4 of Chapter two? No one ever gave me a solid answer.
I know that Skirts was in a not-so-good headspace when he wrote this, but it's just too damn depressing for me, as you said. I will maintain til my last dying breath that Skirts is an incredibly talented writer, and an all-around groovy guy to boot, but this is just a slog to read. It sucks, because like you said, there is apparently a lot of great world building, but I can't get past all the flowery wording, effusing Skirts' literary endeavors with the sickly sweet syrup of purple prose, encasing them in superfluous words, a cocoon of needless descriptors that chokes the pace out of the story like so many sinewy vines of ivy suffocating even the most abundant of garden.
Also, apparently in the old Noble Jury Skype chat, Sharaloth pointed out a very simple and easy way that Lyra could have broken the curse without ending reality. Shame I can't remember it.
Wait...
Goddammit!!!!
Loved the first chapter, hated the whole thing by chapter five where I gave up. The only one of the BIG, IMPORTANT fanfics that I never finished. Thanks for the review; it's kind of nice to know that there was some really good stuff buried in there, because I share Jake's opinion that...
5622222
...in search of a talented editor. A lot of people hate The Hobbit movie trilogy (myself included) but the unauthorized edit down to one long movie is excellent. From what PP says, I'll bet flensing out the morass of wangst, philosophy, and purple prose might transform this story into something remarkable.
The epitaph on the tombstone of so many long stories that died in agony, isn't it?
5622274
I'll just let you know, I did edit Background Pony. I wasn't a professional at the time, but I did do my best. I know your comment didn't intend to be an indictment of my ability, lol. I have a degree in English and I teach it now, which I didn't back then. I would have done things a bit differently if I had the skills I do now, but believe me: Skirts's old school writing was Purple Prose and we did our best to cut stuff and suggest edits and reworks. There were five people pre-reading and helping edit Background Pony, and we had a lot of cuts and a lot of work done, but at the end of the day, the story was Skirts' and he wanted to philosophize and wax poetic, because that was how he wanted to make Lyra. I personally enjoy the philosophy and the excess, but I'm also just the type of person that enjoys poetic musings and really flowery stuff, so maybe I wasn't the best person to judge what was "too much". I certainly think it was *a lot* of purple prose, but that was the point, along with all the waxing poetic and philosophizing. As they say, "it is what it is", and if you don't like that, well, that's fair! I think Skirts himself would admit, these days, that Background Pony is too long and belabors the point. I still love it for that purple-ness, but that's nostalgia for you.
Ah, by the way, I really enjoy your work.
5622176
There's also plenty of people that *enjoy* the story, and I wouldn't take PP's review as the end-all-be-all. I'll personally recommend going for it and reading past Chapter 1. Chapter 1 is self-contained, so you could stop there, certainly, but I think as a whole the story is really great. Yes, it does wax poetic and it is very purple, but it is ultimately, in my opinion, a really great story. Yes, the ending is sad, but I find a lot of catharsis in the ending and how it goes about. I think it's beautiful. However, if the idea of wading through a lot of excess poetics and philosophizing too much, then maybe just go with Chapter 1. I don't blame people for getting tired when they read this story, it's a long journey and to get to the end and have the main character "fail" can be too off-putting.
5622302
I wouldn't exactly say that this story "died in agony", it is one of the most well-known and hotly-debated fics in the fandom, has been translated into multiple languages, and had a lot of positive and negative reviews. I think it was successful. I edited it, and I still enjoy peeking into the comments and seeing new comments on it and discussion that happens around it. I mean, it inspired songs and fan-art because of the impact it had on folks, for better or ill. It's pretty cool, overall.
5622179
I think this really is a fic that creates a lot of debate because of the nature of how it goes about the storytelling and how the ending goes. I don't blame people for not liking it, it can be overwhelming and it is *depressing*. I personally love the story, and rather than feeling empty at the end I felt... empowered? It's a story that ultimately is, as PP said, doing good things without needing to be remembered. It's a positive philosophy, even if Lyra suffers for it. I think there's good there. That said, I also totally understand when people walk away from the fic going "I feel empty", because it CAN have that effect as well. I think it's fascinating how polarizing this story is, personally: people either love it or they HATE it, and there's so few in-between opinions!
5622407
Really comes down to taste at the end of the day. I think I'm a pretty good middle ground of polarization since it made me feel sick, but I think the decisions made in the story had valid reasoning behind it. Again, I just really hate the way it made me feel, and that's fine. I'm glad it made you feel empowered as my mind couldn't escape that deep seeded fear I have of losing my mind.
I've always been terrified of being struck dumb from a blow to the head or some neurodegenerative disease. I actually struggle a lot when around drunk people or anyone with a neurological disorder that hinders their intelligence. I also just can't handle babies or very old people. Seeing that happen to Lyra filled me with existential dread. Well done. I favorited it and gave it a thumbs down for a good middle ground response.
5622406
Hey, it's Skirt's story, and he's the one who is ultimately responsible. It's hard to fight a stet (or a lot of them) if the author doesn't depend on sales. I enjoy restrained florid prose (think Saki), but we all have our limits. Thanks for the compliment! Since you've read my stuff, you can see that my tastes don't run to "expanded" stories. For what it's worth, that first chapter was brilliant.
Edit: Also for what it's worth, even considering this review, I rather read the whole of Background Pony than watch The Hobbit trilogy again.
I remember trying to read Background Pony sometime in early 2018, back when I just got into the pony fandom. I think I just got past a few chapters before getting tired with the seemingly endless suffering, so I decided to jump to the last chapter to check the ending. It's not, as far as I know, a happy one, so I immediately abandoned it. Not saying that the story is bad, just that it apparently doesn't suit me.
(TLDR: Yeah, that's fair.)
I want to preface by saying that I absolutely love Background Pony, but I can see why other people wouldn't. I prefer reading long winded fics over short stories, usually I don't even bother with a story unless its over 100k words. Also I'm a bit of an emotional masochist. I feel the endless rambling was fitting for Lyra's character to showcase her loneliness and her hesitation to continue the journey.
I do agree chapter 10 was the low point of the story, but I think its fitting as a intermission of sorts. Plus the scene with Bon Bon melted my heart; and though its never brought up again I thought it was sweet that at the end of the chapter Pinkie Pie wanted to spontaneously build a log cabin.
I'd also like to add on that Chapter 12 was pretty rough to follow the first time because of Granite Shuffle's disjointed stories and the fact he was name dropping so many new characters. But it was easier to understand on a second read and it'd be fair to say its kind of the point of Granite's character to be hard to follow.
As for the ending, I thought it was perfect. Maybe its a bit my own personal experience, I was introduced to Background Pony through And The Rainfall's song Blank Pages. And I don't want to say it necessarily spoiled me, but it did temper my expectations. I went in knowing Lyra wasn't going to get a happy ending. It still had its intended effect on me, chapter 19 made me cry and chapter 20 left me in a minor existential crisis.
The main point where I'm afraid I have to respectfully disagree is that the ending being unfair to Lyra is an issue. I'd argue that is what makes a tragedy ultimately tragic; Lyra didn't ask for it, but regardless it was still the hand she was dealt. Again my opinion is molded by my own personal experiences, I've been dealt my fair share of tragedies I never asked for in my life. And I think that is what lead to me falling so in love with this story and why I relate to Lyra on such a personal level. There is no inherent justice in the universe, it just is. Sometimes life just creeps up on you and hits you with a sucker punch, and all you can really do is get back up and limp on.
I don't think I can truly put into words just what Background Pony means to me. Hell, I've dedicated the past two years of my life to work on a full reading of it (technically two readings I spent the first year on a "practice run"). No other piece of literature has inspired this level of passion in me before, and I don't think another ever will.
All that said, I see what you mean and I respect your opinion. I'd summarize Background Pony as a story written by a depressive, for depressives, but not recommended for depressives. And to anyone who bothers to read all this, thanks.
To each their own.
I have no idea when I stopped reading the story, because I marked all the chapters as read. But if Background Pony were a television series, I would have switched to reading episode synopses on Wikipedia somewhere around the third season.
5622407
I just want to say that personally, the ending made me feel both empty and empowered. I remember describing it to a friend of mine as "It turned me into an oxymoron, I am both empty, and fulfilled. I want to cry for Lyra, but I'm also happy for her in a way." I remember weeks after first reading Background Pony I had this hollow weight in my chest, and soon after I felt a rush of inspiration to do something, anything, creatively to "give back".
5622274
I haven’t watched any of those three movies since they were new, but it’s always been on my lists to watch a one-movie version. Only question is, which one? There’s like a dozen fan edits, and at this point, even with research, it’s hard to know which one. I’d guess the 4-hour edit, given you do say “a long movie”.
Course, I’m probably not the best judge of such things, especially as regards Peter Jackson, given I actually love his King Kong. Surprisingly, there are barely any fan edits of that around, and the ones that are around go too far and are incompetently edited. They clearly come from a place of hostility (“this movie bores me no matter what, give me less to sit through, please”), while a good edit needs to be genuine and love the material, just be efficient and pragmatic about the overall package. One of the tasks on my bucket list is to do a fan edit of that myself, chop off 30-40 minutes, keeping it basically the same but removing all the removable excess (don’t want edits to be obvious in the watching experience, another unavoidable issue of going as far as the existing edits!). Just need to figure out the technical know-how of extracting, separating and splicing audio from its layers and channels. Some day, I suppose. People do that all the time these days, can’t be too hard.
5622406
Not letting PP’s take be the only decider. It lines up with my own personal preferences and judgements, is the thing. Not ruling out going further past Chapter 1 when I do give it a go, just saying it’s unlikely. Maybe it’ll captivate me enough to go further until I give up round the point iisaw did, that’s also a possibility. We’ll see.
On the topic of old fandom classics not justifying the hype and influence, I’m reminded of Sunny Skies All Day Long now. There’s undoubtedly better “Celestia goes undercover as a normal pony for a day” fics (even the comics got it on it many years later!), but it’s still short, competent and likeable. So, you know, old classics come in all kinds! At least, it’s hard to be that angry at a story that short when it’s competent. Which does not mean good, of course.
Fun fact: that fic has more views here then on its most popular YouTube reading (that being Scribbler’s). How often does one see that?
5622406
This comment reinforces something I kept finding myself thinking as I picked at chapters over the course of this year: That skirts did not so much need editors as he did minders, people who would be able to keep his urges in check. And it sounds like that was not a thing that was accomplished.
5622410
I'd rather watch the Hobbit. <.< It did not leave me in existential despair.
5622419
It's not marked as a tragedy though? That tag existed back in 2012...
Also, like, the universe may not be fair, but that's why we read stories with happy endings. Because living in reality sucks ass.
5622452
Fun fact: I also detest Sunny Skies. :B Though that's at least more because it is objectively not a great story.
5622458
Skirts had five non-professional pals editing for him. I won't say we did the best job, but I will say we did the best we could with our skillset. I was just starting my own writing career, and barely into college (studying Psychology!). I can't really say that I would have pushed Skirts much harder, though. As I said, I like flowery writing and purple prose. Maybe I wasn't the best choice, sure. But I'm damn proud of what I did to help Background Pony, and it's still one of my favourite fics, warts and all. Yeah, it'd be better with some more pruning, it could do with a lot less belaboring of the point. But honestly, I still like going and reading some of those chapters and the prose and poetics. I know you skimmed it, and I don't blame you if you stopped having fun, but I guess it's just a difference in taste that really separates the opinions of the people that read it. You have your taste and I definitely understand it! I liked it a lot, even if I see what you mean about it being too long and too purple. Maybe we weren't the right editors for you or what you wanted or expected out of the story. But for the story we got, for what it is, maybe we were right for all the people that *do* love it. I think that's pretty cool!
Thanks a ton for the review, though. It's a bummer you didn't enjoy the fic, but I also understand why you didn't. And, well, there's always Chapter 1! I think Skirts himself has said that he appreciates everyone that love that first chapter but hate the rest of the fic, lol
5622452
Sure, and that's fine! I trust Present Perfect quite a lot with his reviews, I think he knows his stuff and he reviews fairly. I also know that this fic is quite polarising in how people feel about it. JakeTheArmyGuy is a dude whose taste in fics I trust quite a lot, but he dislikes BP! It's just that kind of fic. You either go in and you like the premise, buy into the prose, and enjoy the philosophical musings... or it drags too long for you and ends too sad and it's a rough read.
I guess it is a rough read no matter how you go about it, but the emotional catharsis at the end of the fic will either be there for you like it was for me or it won't like it was for a bunch of these cool folks! It's a ride, for sure.
5622458
I hear you there, but the sad truth is that people just want to write anything from optimistic to realistic endings; from the uplifting to the deepest darkest endings one can imagine. Some may have had a bad time and the way they deal with it is to recount it as a horse fic. But where there are people like Sgt.Sprinkles and Aurora Dawn, there are just as many (if not more) that will put a positive (and/or comedic) spin on the ending like milesprower06, Scherzo, xTSGx, and Ponky.
As much as some would hate this fic, it is as much a cult classic as Rainbow Factory, Cupcakes, Fallout: Equestria, and Anthropology. When you point out Lyra, people know the background pony. When they think of background pony, they may think of this title.
Oh, and I should be honest... I kinda skimmed over your pages of pages of pages of complaints. Just so you know.
5622447
I didn't know there were multiple edits of The Hobbit! Now that I think of it, it doesn't surprise me. The one I watched was a little under three hours long. It pretty much cut out anything that wasn't in the book and 80% of the interminable, improbable chase sequences.
There's tons of free software out there for video editing, and 90% of what you'd need to do are pretty simple cuts and cross-fades.
5622458
I think it's the whinging and whining that would get to me most. Well... if you could skim the book, maybe I could play The Hobbit at 3x speed.
5622598
So the length of just one of the actual, published films then. Fitting!
Anyway, the 3-hour cut, eh? I’ll bear that in mind. The two I’ve heard the most about are called, I think, the Tolkien Edit and the Angry Cut, and I believe they’re 4 hours and 4.5 hours respectively. The former was the first one and done shortly after the third film hit home media, thereby gaining the most online traction. The latter was done by someone with actual film editing experience, and knew to keep some things that cutting would create issues for (I don’t have professional editing experience, but a lot of these points speak to me). So he says, anyway - I haven’t watched any yet myself. Just some of the sample clips the editors put on YouTube along with explanations of their choices.
Ha, this I know, I’ve been a YouTuber for over six years (even if I haven’t done anything there for over a year and was less active the year before anyway). I’ve just seen enough poorly done audio edits (where the jump cuts in the soundtrack blatantly announce themselves), I think, that I’ve built it up in my mind as being more difficult then it is. Though I’ve done enough research and preparatory work to know the edit would be less removing whole scenes, and more trimming individual shots from most scenes. Which is more time-consuming and requires more specialised techniques.
Cheers for that.
As I say, it’s on the bucket list, and branching out’s always good. I’ll get to it at some point. You always know how to get right to the point in a positive way, iisaw!
5622486
Tryna one-up me in the meta department, I see. :V
5622612
You're welcome!
Oh yeah, most people completely ignore audio, and just cut it right along with the visual.
The single bit of advice that I think would most benefit a beginning editor is to bring up the sound of the next clip a second or so before the visual cut.
I'd highly recommend reading In the Blink of an Eye if you're at all serious about editing. It's short, but incredibly useful and full of practical techniques.
What.
I've never read this, partly I confess because after a couple of books of Austreoh making me never want to set eyes on the word "seethed" again I couldn't face a super-long Skirts fic. But I may at least go and read the first chapter at some point now.
5623240
Despite all this, I still want to read Austraeoh. <.< It's gonna be a different beast, at least.
I suspect you can gauge someone's 'brony age' based on how frequently they make references to real-life elements of the show/fandom, or how many direct quotes they pluck from the series.
I know I found that sort of thing fun in a secret handshake sort of way during my 'evangelical' phase in the fandom, but ten years later, I find them ranging from immersion-breaking to outright vexing.
I haven't read an MLP fanfic in years, but man I enjoyed the hell outta this review.
5622157
this is a mood
PP you said nothing here i dont basically agree with even almost what, 7? 8? however manyyears its been since I read this as it came out-ish
5622176
Fallout Equestria has always annoyed me since it is just 'Crib FO1-3 plots, and put ponies in their place' to the point where its constant wink nudges instead of like, inventing one's own mythos.
Thank you for the summary.
I've tried reading that story twice and barely made it through the first chapter both times. I just couldn't even start the second chapter, it just wasn't for me. Yeah, first chapter read like acomplete story and I just couldn't see reading through the rest of it just to find another story with some unknown plot where the whole thing was probably (I wasn't 100% sure) of the universe beating Lyra over the head with "you suck".
But I've always wondered what the rest of the story was about, and now I have a good idea of what it covered and I can say I am glad I went on to read other things.
Not every story is a winner for everyone. Me, I'm in love with FoE and I love Past Sins (granted, I *really* want to pull out a red pen and attack it these days) and many others, but not everybody loves them. And that's okay.
5633049
lol, please do XD
5622419
Doesn't really remove it as a fault, but it felt engaging in considering the long ramblings being Lyra's journal entries mostly, making her a bit of an unreliable narrator from start to finish by complicating the conversations she has with others and using her own views to see them just a bit differently(fitting into the nightmare the situation is, her efforts to interact with others are what pulls her away from total despair and by reflecting on them in long winded sentences, she's both reminding herself what her struggles are for and preventing herself from falling into that despair she narrowly avoided thanks to Caramel).
As far as I'm aware there hasn't been anything against it, but a re-write of sorts that keeps to its ending(as they said, even knowing the disapproval it would face)could help in making the whole thing connect better with SS&E's current experiences in writing as from reading it the first time around, chapter 16 is the first time the tragic ending feels alluded to while the other moments of despair feel closer to something sweeter with less sad moments..