Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #3 · 6:00pm Mar 21st, 2022
Rarity: "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! Ghost Mike thought it would take several weeks, if not months, to get so welcomed and respected as a FimFiction reviewer, yet look what's happened in just two weeks! All the boosts! Even considering everyone being desperate for more of this with the official closure of Seattle's Angles and the Royal Canterlot Library, this is beyond his wildest expectations! Thank you so much!"
Celestia: "You're… very welcome, Rarity, even if I'm not sure why you're thanking me. I had nothing to do with any additional view traffic Ghost Mike's received. Though I must ask, any reason you're doing the thanks on his behalf?"
Rarity: "Oh, he can only communicate via the written word. Nopony would see or hear him trying to do so face-to-face. At least until he commissions animated gifs of himself giving thanks. So he relies on myself, Twilight and others to be the message ponies. Not that we mind, he's dissecting our further adventures! It's the least we can do."
Celestia: "You just had to ask, Celestia, didn't you…"
The recommendations from storied members in our community to this humble li’l review blog series just keep coming! This time the signal post comes from the Maestro himself, Present Perfect, ever a welcome Fimfiction mainstay, and someone who can review numerous fics swiftly in a single paragraph apiece. A finely honed talent, that. And thanks to his boost, I’m approaching the coveted 50 Follower mark. Hopefully these reviews can organically close that gap soon, eh?
Today’s a Rarity-themed week, as promised. But before we get to the fics, here’s something I found worth sharing.
We all have our own experiences with how we got into MLP. For the uninitiated: I saw the 2017 movie as part of my “reviewing every theatrical animated movie” videos series on my YouTube channel, Cartoon Karma (a series I packed in after 2018, it wasn’t worth the time and actually hindered the channel’s growth), was intrigued enough to check out the show, and ended up bingeing seven seasons in 53 days. Then I gradually got more into the fandom over 2018, finally making proper acquaintances towards the year’s end. Regardless of my story, a commonality is that many of us didn’t already know someone we saw face-to-face who was already a viewer. That’s even more true in the UK & Ireland, with our smaller population, and especially if one joined as late as I did – I was only vaguely aware the show was a thing, and had no inkling of the depth and popularity of it or the fandom. I sometimes think back to when I was seriously sick and missed close to a month of education in October 2011. Imagine if I’d come across the show and got hooked then! I’m a huge Powerpuff Girls fan, anything’s possible. What would my fandom experience have been like? Would I think differently of the show? Would I have stuck around or drifted out? Who knows.
After I got into it, I became aware one friend of mine was a casual viewer of the show, having watched it just as a viewer, never going into the fandom (though aware of it) and having drifted off mid-Season 5. That was kind of it, I didn’t see him for a while, though in recent years he’s become one of my reliable cinema-going friends. Even then, though, MLP only resurfaced once in a blue moon.
I bring all this up because a weekend ago, I had him over to watch the new Pixar film together, Turning Red. As befits a razor-sharp ghost, I had an idea, and proposed we watch A New Generation afterwards, making a double feature out of the afternoon. And he was game! So now I not only had the opportunity for an ideal viewing experience not on my own, and to reevaluate my opinion and judge it as fairly as possible, but to see firsthand how it played for a casual watcher of Friendship Is Magic.
It went down well. He liked it fine enough, and largely found it to be of the same “reasonably decent” quality as myself, if perhaps somewhat less enthusiastic given I live and breathe MLP (he slightly preferred Turning Red, where I was the reverse). Like me, he found it unmistakably a kids’ film, but not so infantile an adult can't watch it. He agreed it got too fast-paced and overstuffed after the 1st act, and that the worldbuilding was best to not logically think about.
Easily the best observation was the humour; I’d already long since concluded the film's approach to moderate chucklers and grin-inducers over the usual animation babysitter formula (a mix of toilet jokes, innuendos and pop culture references) was a wise play, something he agreed with, alongside having the humour being actually based in character. Yet grinning and chuckling over the better ones together made for a more fun experience (thanks to him, I've come around on the Darth Vader breathing gag). Not stuff that’s going to stick with him for long, but it made for a warm, smile-worthy experience. Though emotion and sincerity isn’t a priority for him, he too found the campfire scene really sweet. Agreed the animation and visuals were fantastic, and agreed Izzy was Best Pony.
There were two major differences. He wasn't fond of the songs much, finding them to be mostly standard pop (and the nonsensical lyrics of "Danger, Danger" didn't last beyond the shock value). I can understand this, they took time to grow on me, and the structure of them isn’t naturally that of a book musical (note: we saw Encanto together and found it to be “fine, I guess”, but he really came around to it on a repeat viewing; I have not bothered and have soured on that film). More surprisingly, he figured Sprout was going to be a lame annoying sidekick character, and thus him becoming a mama’s boy dictator was a big surprise. He loved how Sprout was always portrayed as a fool and the butt of jokes (the one-two punch of Sprout needing a stool for the podium and the drape smothering him produced much reactions for us both). You know, I can see this too, it’s fair.
So, it was a very fun experience, and it confirmed a lot for me about how a more casual viewer might take to the film! And you can tell when he was into the show by instantly pegging the mid-credit scene as them getting their earth magic back – I had to sadly tell him the show basically dropped any signs of earth pony magic after he drifted off it. We talked a lot afterwards about it and what the G5 show might be like (mostly the animation, and my saying that though reusing the movie assets gives it a big boost, the character movement will have to be far cheaper, and thus limit them to to more surface-level slice of life stories – he mentioned The Penguins of Madagascar as an example of a comic tone where the movie-to-show downgrade can use more limited animation better, a solid point).
And me, call it the shared experience, but I think I warmed just that bit more to the film. Still basically the same, but how often does one’s opinion on a film go up on the 3rd viewing after having done so on round two? Don’t think I can see that happening again, but I’ll admit it – this is a far better film than the 2017 flick, which I’m surprised I was charitable on. It’s totally fair Hasbro sought to avoid that film’s pratfalls.
Anyway, that’s enough G5 talk (save that for a future week, might do a theme of G5 fics). On to fics featuring everyone’s favourite generous fashion horse!
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Oh Pony! I Shrunk My Sister! by Nailah
Cherished by kylesugarman
Already Perfect by hamster wizard
April Fourths! by shortskirtsandexplosions
Good Morning, Cookie by PaulAsaran
An Article on Unconventional Romance by HapHazred
The Princesses Gambit by Scotishbro
Weekly Word Count: 23,286 Words
Oh Pony! I Shrunk My Sister! by Nailah
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life
Sweetie Belle, Rarity, Twilight
1,905 Words
April 2019
Rarity just wants to finish some orders, and, as usual, has no time for her younger sister, nor to risk accepting help that could go awry. She suggests for Sweetie Belle to practice her magic, an idea both like. However, a spell going awry and shrinking Rarity (now she knows how Applejack feels!) puts a pin in plans, forcing Rarity to appease her sister to get turned back.
This is a promising concept, with all sorts of visual and verbal jokes possible as wacky shenanigans ensue. However, the story absolutely fails to deliver on this. It’s not nearly as wacky as it would seem, with relatively few jokes, and the ones that are there only muster themselves to a mild grin at best. The narration musters itself up to wry asides every now and then, which is nice – there just needs to be much, much more of it. The character relationships, while stiff, are at least not objectionable. They’re just plain.
What absolutely kills the fic is its pacing. Now, a fast-paced story can absolutely use that to amplify the comedy, but that’s not what happens here. Instead, the pacing feels like it’s constantly skipping over things, with obstacles and story ideas, like Opal potentially being a terror to small Rarity, or using her as a toy, brought up and dismissed in the same breath. And at the micro level of the actual writing, paragraphs are squeezed together, lumping together pacing jumps, perspective changes and changing thoughts. Even in such a short fic, this was all enough to make me glaze over not even 1,000 words in. And as the fic brings in Twilight and Spike, this only gets worse, leaving us with barely anything happening in the story despite moving so fast. It’s overstuffed and totally empty at once.
On top of that, the grammar and prose is quite disjointed, using periods instead of commas where dialogue is followed by the speaker’s identity every time. Add to that pronoun overuse that requires one to reread the sentence, using four-period ellipses in the place of normal ones, and more, and this story is in desperate need of just a prose editor, never mind the content and pacing. Yet apparently it’s already been edited. Yeah… no evidence of that.
Despite an intriguing setup, I cannot recommend this fic even to the very curious. The pacing mangles both the story’s content and the flow of words, the grammar errors annoy, the character work is barely adequate, and the comedy doesn’t provide nearly as much amusement to justify wading through the above. A sad case of wasted potential.
Rating: Bad
Cherished by kylesugarman
Genre: Sad/Slice of Life
Rarity, Sweetie Belle, Applejack
4,022 Words
February 2022
Ponyville being a small town, just about everypony turns out for community events, even school pageants. And the quality of the production and performance of this one is exemplary, especially Sweetie Belle’s performance and song. Yet what should be a moment of great joy doesn’t last, for Sweetie Belle can only focus on the fact of who didn’t see her. Put in a position of having to comfort her sister, Rarity opens up about what she’s had to endure, and just what Sweetie Belle means to her.
This is why I keep an eye on the Featured Box, and even occasionally scan the New Stories. Sometimes a new author signs up and publishes their first story on a whim, and it turns out not half-bad, leaving you quite impressed. This applies very much here. While there are telltale signs of someone relatively new to Ponyfic, including a few cases of LUS in the descriptions, there’s a remarkable amount of competent and accomplished writing. The canon nods and bits of side lore in the early parts are nicely done, and the tone throughout is well managed, only occasionally going for a cheap emotional play.
It should be noted that the fic gets to this place by making some tweaks to canon, which lie within the realm of “technical possibility”, so the fic isn’t strictly AU. But it is still making pretty big stretches to stir up the main drama and conflict. This will sit less well with some viewers, I’m sure. Me, it did take the fic down a peg. Otherwise, it could stand to reign in the flowery description a little, be more concise, and watch for alternating between dialogue and description abruptly too many times.
Obviously there are plenty of “Rarity comforts Sweetie Belle” fics, and plenty of “the hardships and negligence Rarity’s endured to grow up and for her sister” fics too. I’m sure some readers will have Simply Rarity spring to mind for the latter story type in particular. But this is a solid, if simple, showcase of Rarity’s generosity and love soldering through toughness that would break most. Plus, it shows once again the value of setting a new fic in the show’s early days (the author says it’s Season 2-era, though it can fit anytime between there and Sweetie Belle getting her cutie mark, though best before “For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils”). I look forward to kylesugarman hopefully writing more, and improving on the sturdy start shown here.
Rating: Decent
Already Perfect by hamster wizard
Genre: Sad/Slice of Life
Rarity, Twilight
1,281 Words
February 2021Reread
Decades into her fashion career, Rarity finds that it’s no longer quite what it was when she entered it, nor what it was when she innovated in it. A visit from Twilight does little to convince her otherwise.
This is a surprisingly thought meditation on coping when one’s interest and field is no longer what one loved about it, and that person, or pony, refuses to move with the times, adamant in preferring it as it was, even if that means stagnation and rejection by others. Quite easy to mentally apply in any number of contexts (insert Principal Skinner "Am I so out of touch?" meme). And really, that’s about it. It doesn’t really end after those points are mediated on, but just stops on a sad note of giving up, without further reflection in the details.
The theme is thought-provoking enough that I enjoyed reading this, though it’s too slight to go beyond that. Not a bad effort at all.
Rating: Decent
April Fourths! by shortskirtsandexplosions
Genre: Random/Comedy/Romance
Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Tank
1,969 Words
May 2017
Try as she might, Rainbow Dash just can’t get to proper sleep after a gruelling two-week training session with the Wonderbolts. You see, Rarity has her dates mixed up regarding a certain prank-themed holiday, thinking it’s three days later, and due to her unique fascination with Rainbow Dash, has laid out prank after prank through her house for her return. Or what she thinks is a prank, anyway.
This is a fic for those who like really random stories. Almost nothing after the initial setup is explained properly, and the reader has to just roll with it as Rarity acts very bizarre in her pursuits and Dash gets even more agitated, culminating in her going ballistic in what the comments assure me is a reference to Austraeoh, though I can’t confirm that.
That said, the randomness’ nature, while bizarre, is never off-putting to the level of wanting to turn away (though I feel a longer fic would test this to breaking point). In its own way, it kind of works? Those more at the speed of bizarre-even-for-random fics will probably get more out of this. Though judging by the comments, even they are left nonplussed.
Rating: Passable
Good Morning, Cookie by PaulAsaran
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life
Other (i.e. Cookie Crumbles), Rarity
2,518 Words
March 2018
In the midst of straining to feed her tantrum-throwing daughter – one of the more wearisome tasks for any mother – Cookie Crumbles is startled when her older daughter Rarity starts calling her by her first name. And since she’s at that age where getting a rise out of one’s parents is so rewarding, Rarity refuses to relinquish on this, no matter what Cookie points out. If only she had the right idea to put the rebellious teen in her place…
As someone more used to PaulAsaran’s fics that are either longer, tackle more serious subject matters, or are set in EqG/Anthro AUs, this proved simple in comparison. But simpler doesn’t have to mean a downgrade, and for the most part, this is a nice, fun little snack. It’s enough that we get a portrayal of Rarity’s mom (who doesn’t even have a character tag!) worth getting behind, one who at first seems outplayed by her soon-to-be-fashion-forward daughter but soon reveals just why she’s able to mother Rarity. The balance of a Rarity that doesn’t quite resemble the mare we know, but who we can see evolving into said mare, is pretty great too.
Add to that the cathartic feeling of Rarity being put in her place, a light ship tease, amusing moments from Hondo Flanks wisely knowing to avoid the catmarefight going down, plus winking writing throughout (especially in the side business of trying to feed Sweetie Belle in the first half), and this was fun. Not likely to linger in the mind, but well worth a read.
Rating: Pretty Good
An Article on Unconventional Romance by HapHazred
Genre: Comedy/Romance/Slice of Life
Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Rarity, Mane 6
8,023 Words
January 2016Listened to via Scribbler's reading
Writer’s Block is never fun, and that’s exactly what Rarity finds herself dealing with for this month’s article of Rarity Writes. Ever since getting the space from Prim Hemline, she’s enchanted the elite on a monthly basis, and gotten much free publicity out of it. Yet now, with fashion in the off season, she’s strapped for concepts, having to reach further afield. One evening over drinks with her friends, while explaining this and having them all spitball ideas and even considering concocting a fake story, she finds the perfect subject material when one of her friends casually drops big news like it’s nothing.
Truthfully, the framing story of Rarity writing the article fades into the background after the story’s 1st third. It still serves a helpful purpose in keeping this moving along at a quick pace, so even those less warm to shipping or AppleDash shouldn’t grow restless. Though as AppleDash fics go (a genre I generally don’t bother with much, though I’ve read my fair share and concluded the fics tend to be largely very rote), this is an unusual one, and very solid. The relationship the two have is decidedly unromantic (by Rarity’s standards, anyway), and yet because it’s an exploration of two ponies trying to find themselves and their place in the world, and thus a relationship that works for them, it’s far more effective. Certainly, Dash’s portrayal of settling into the town with much nerves, and the pressure to put up a front except in a very private space, warrants merit. Toss in effective character voices, the framing story coming back towards the end for maximum impact, and a killer line towards the end which many begged a sequel to extrapolate on, but works as an ending joke, and you’ve got a really nice shipping story. Asking how the lives of both participants are better for it, and having them approach it as something meaningful, is always a welcome choice.
As I understand, HapHazred is a big AppleDash shipper, or has at least written the pair a lot, and in this case, fair play to him: he’s written a fic that transcends its immediate audience to be quite worthwhile for the rest of us (though we won’t gush as much).
Rating: Really Good
Alright, I'm cheating somewhat as regards this being a "Rarity" fic, but she's the viewpoint character and sets the wheels in motion. And this week was rather light in the word count department otherwise. It counts! 
The Princesses Gambit by Scotishbro
Genre: Sad/Slice of Life
Rarity, Twilight
3,568 Words
March 2022
Twilight is helping Rarity pack up the boutique for her move to Canterlot. With the unicorn wallowing in the nostalgia of every item, and thus moving at what could be charitably described as Tank’s pace, Twilight has the idea to use a game she found upstairs to re-energise Rarity. In the aftermath of their game, Rarity finds herself sharing how she got hooked on chess in the first place.
This is a very cookie-cutter fic you can probably predict the full shape of the moment it becomes clear Rarity learnt as a filly from an old stallion who is in the park daily. It’s every “child brightens the life of an old person on their last legs and makes their last days a bit brighter before they pass on” story, with not a single surprise along the way. It’s be nice to say the chess element freshens this up, but it is equally stale in its storytelling tropes, with both games told through recited notation that demands copying it on a simulator to keep up for those who aren’t chess notation experts (and as pointed out in the comments, the Fool’s Gambit in the first game isn’t even done right, on top of not clarifying how Rarity lost so easy – why ScotishBro considers it too late to fix this bloop is beyond me). I’ve seen fics use this approach and have the character-based moments along the way make it still fun, but that doesn’t happen here, the delivery of the game is rote and mechanical.
There’s little objectively bad here, though the prose is rather plain and has a few typos and errors. But nothing that’ll stick either. Best to leave this board packed away.
Rating: Weak
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 1
Pretty Good: 1
Decent: 2
Passable: 1
Weak: 1
Bad: 1
Ah, Good Morning, Cookie. Every once in a while I go back to that one just for the sake of a smile.
I'm not intuiting whether "decent" or "pretty good" is intended to be a higher score. Is it the latter?
Cheers! Very glad you enjoyed An Article. It was one of the earlier stories I wrote that kind of got me into writing Rarity, which I've come to learn I really rather like doing.
5645196
Excellent -> Really Good -> Pretty Good -> Good -> Decent -> Weak -> Bad -> Terrible (a rare 0-score grade). Decent is basically the minimum passing grade.
I realise now that the context for this tiering system existed in the explanations in the first two posts, but is lacking here. Going forward, I might include a chart at the top of each posts before the reviews, with how many landed in each tier this week. Most other Ponyfic reviewers do the same, and I see the benefit.
5645199
Pretty good is better than good? As I use it, "pretty" usually means "sorta", "fairly", or "somewhat".
5645204
(This may just be me, though. Just feedback.)
Cool
5645204
On reflection, I've been considering my labels, and I can see how the specific meaning I apply to "decent", "good", "pretty good", etc. in this context might not be as instantly clear . I did say I was open to renaming the tiers as I went. After some thought, the following sounds reasonable to me.
Bad
Weak
Decent-> Passable. Given this is the lowest tier that still sounds as a positive assessment, there's little ambiguity with this, I reckon! I can also see how the word "Decent" sounded more unabashedly positive then the "just about satisfactory" quality I truly mean here.Good-> Decent. Since the word "Decent" sounds better to most people than it previously did to me, this is the perfect new place for it, for fics that one does feel positive about, but only to a muted level. And by removing the "Good" label, there's no confusion between that and "Pretty Good" below.Pretty Good
Really Good
Excellent
Already I'm finding myself feeling this is better and clearer, and depending on how I feel over the next few days, I'll likely implement it for next week. Hopefully it's clearer for you too. That's what happens when moving from private bookshelves to public ones, the mounds of memorised shelving context clear to me isn't clear to others.
5645239
Hello. I suggest that "Bad" sounds like something would be worse than something classified as "weak", so I vote for not flipping the two. Another option is to add a number after each, so Excellent (1) or (8), Really Good (2) or (7), etc. Good luck!
from your post:
5645239
I think those are a lot clearer, yeah.
5645269
I agree that "Bad" is generally worse than "Weak" but it depends on how the words are used. Weak can be used as an exclamation, informally, in a way Bad can't. Based on the other terms I'd interpret it as, "this story has a weakness to it that keeps it from being something I'd recommend", as opposed to "this story is weak, yo". I think some people might mistake the two, though.
Some reviewers try to soften the blow with categories that reflect positives. There's an author here, I think Ba'al Bunny, who uses "needs work" for a low tier and "flawed but fun" for a tier above that one, for example. "Needs work" is a bit less accusative than a modifier that qualifies the story directly like "bad".
None of this is essential criticism, just stuff to think about.
5645279
To build on your response, I think one option you presented (with an adjustment in brackets), "Needs [Significant] Work" might be better as a solution than "Bad" for reasons you mention about "softening the blow", although my suggested interpolation of "significant" may work at cross-purposes to that goal.... Maybe "Flawed, but Interesting" for the tier above that one?
If a reviewer does not care about ruffling feathers as it were, going with "Bad" as the lower and "Flawed" as the higher may serve as succinct labels.
For MikeCartoonPony, I would also suggest that PaulAsaran's review categories are kindly labeled... but MikeCartoonPony is using more tiers.
Gotta admit I was a bit surprised to see one of my fics getting reviewed. Not a bad kind of surprise though, I love getting feedback on my work. I will say, I agree 100% with your assessment, pretty much everyone who read the fic thought it should be longer, maybe having another chapter to wrap things up or end on a more positive note of some kind. As it is now it just comes across as "sometimes life sucks" the short story, which sounds a bit half-assed. I did kind of feel like I hadn't done the concept justice ending it like that, so maybe this is a good excuse to go back and add on to the story.
Great work btw, keep up the reviewing!
I would very much approve of bad being changed to "needs work " some writers are very sensitive, especially when they don't even know they will be reviewed until after the fact
Not read most of these, so one or two will be going on the RiL list. Especially the fic by HapHazred, I think.
No useful input from me on tier names, given I'm a total pleb who uses stars.
5645239
I think this is mostly a sensible arrangement. "Pretty Good" has different connotations in different areas of the US, let alone between the US and the UK! In the Western US, it depends entirely on intonation to convey the degree of appreciation. What you propose is clear for ranking purposes, but I'd recommend going with Good and Very Good instead. As for changing Bad to Needs Work... I don't know if that's better for saving hurt feelings, or worse for giving a writer false hopes on that particular fic. But as long as we understand that Needs Work means Bad, sure.