Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #8 · 5:00pm Apr 25th, 2022
Discord: "Oh, forgive me, all you Pony fanfiction lovers out there. It’s just my chaos magic is also quite sensitive to interdimensional stress, and I can practically hear the flop sweat as Ghost Mike strains to pick a screenshot or gif for these every week.
"Oh, if only he had a draconequus on hand that allowed him to seamlessly retcon overambitious layout and structure decisions…"
Well, it was bound to happen eventually – my review backlog has been shrinking fast lately. I’m definitely not reading and storing reviews as much as I was prior to first posting these.
To compensate, I’m structuring my reading time more going forward, and aiming to not have it dominated by short, under-five-thousand-word fics as much. Or at least get in the odd longer fic to counterbalance. Like today: only five fics, but one 21K novelette keeps the word count healthy. That’ll be the aim, though I still haven’t settled on a plan for novel-length fics. For now, each week will always have at least five fics, even if that means 4 tiny ones alongside a heftier one. Just feels better, hitting that magic number!
Oh, and we’re also still continuing with the bonus Commentary Corner sections for Tell Your Tale at the bottom. Much shorter this time, thankfully, at “only” 1244 words. Still not quite sure yet how long I’ll continue these, I don’t know how much this kind of commentary is my strong suit, and the “proper” review at the end is already running out of new points to say about the webseries. We’ll see where these stand after Make Your Mark releases, 11 episodes in.
Is that my shortest intro yet? Probably! You’re all here for dissection of horse words anyway, let’s get to that.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Friendship Is Magic But With More Chill by hamster wizard
Cozy Glow: FIENDship is Magic by RainbowDoubleDash
Conundrums by Reviewfilly
High Stakes by Graymane Shadow
Lord of the Dragons by Titanium Dragon
Weekly Word Count: 30,578 Words
Friendship Is Magic But With More Chill by hamster wizard
Genre: Comedy/Random, (w/Profanity)
Nightmare Moon, Twilight, Celestia
1,851 Words
March 2021Reread
Right in the middle of her gloat of victory to Twilight and her friends in the ruin of the Castle of the Two Sisters, Nightmare Moon is asked a random question that derails her thought process. What’s worse, no one else seems to be taking her crusade for retribution and act of vengeance even remotely as seriously as herself.
This kind of ‘one character is frustrated by others being indifferent, and also pointing out the flaws in their plan’ fic is rarely my speed. Due warning I am the wrong person to review this kind of fic. But even by that standard, this seems rather flat, bouncing from ‘not taking seriously’ to ‘practical approach to winning back favour’ without much rhythm, either in the transition or in the jokes themselves, which don’t hit any notes one won’t have seen in numerous other fics.
I don’t know, maybe others will like this more, but my sense is this is a rather dull take on its genre. Can’t recommend it to those not gung-ho for random deconstructions of its variety.
Rating: Weak
Cozy Glow: FIENDship is Magic by RainbowDoubleDash
Genre: Drama/Sad
Cozy Glow, Tirek
21,497 Words
April 2020
Just what made Cozy Glow into the filly she became by the time of the School of Friendship? How could any pony, much less a filly, become so convinced that friendship is power? The answer is intertwined with the history-defining events that have popped up with alarming frequency in Equestria lately, culminating in the wrath of Tirek. An answer, you might say, that could result in quite the… FIENDship.
I won’t hold back – this fic was fantastic. Cozy Glow was such a washout in the show, and despite her open backstory being carte blanche for fanfic authors, I’ve yet to come across one truly satisfying, which just shows how un-winnable the canon facts there are. RainbowDoubleDash, against all odds, wins it (plus, he’s humble about the few tiny canon conflicts he runs into).
Where to begin? Actually crafting a scenario of personal tragedy for Cozy that properly feeds into her believing friendship is power would be enough, much less one that feels compatible with the show (if, obviously, not something we could see onscreen – of course, RainbowDoubleDash has ample practice nailing this balance from the LunaVerse), would be admirable enough. Yet finding a way to create a plausible setup for how Tirek and Cozy Glow know each other, and actually reach a certain understanding? Cherry on the cake.
The story is told as an alteration between the present day of Cozy encountering Tirek during the events of “Twilight’s Kingdom”, crossed with iterating flashes of how Cozy is further shaped by the major events prior to that. Honestly, its best achievement might be having chess be a core focal point of the story, and turning that into a strength of the story – right down to the story’s climax being a chess game with personal stakes and emotional investment on Cozy’s part.
I had my doubts this story would be as fantastic as I’d hoped, even off of Present Perfect’s praise. Yet it was, and then some. It’s intimately contained with a small scope yet effortlessly successful at implying so much beyond the page both within the story’s timeline and what transpires between it and Season 8. I could gush in more detail, but there’s little point. Whether you adore Cozy Glow, or are massively put off because of how poorly she was handled, in both the show and most fanfiction, this is the best backstory and setup for her I’ve seen, bar none. Essential reading. That it’s one of the best portrayals of Tirek too just sweetens the deal.
Rating: Excellent
Conundrums by Reviewfilly
Genre: Slice of Life/Random
Twilight, Luna
3,243 Words
March 2022
Twilight comes across a most unusual book in the depths of the Golden Oak Library. One she has no memory of ever getting for the library, much less seeing before. But when she discovers the book has word puzzles perfect for her, all that ceases to matter. They’re fun and stimulating. It’s not like this will consume her, especially if she comes across a puzzle she can’t solve – right?
This is a simple, straightforward piece, but an enjoyable one. Clearly the work of a relatively novice author (awkward phrasing and some typos abound), but a confident one. There isn’t really much to it beyond the surface story, despite the variety of the brain-teasers within, though the final solution to the last puzzle, how Twilight moves past it, and the eventual reveal of the book’s origin are all quite satisfying. And the characterisation of Twilight serves the story well.
ReviewFilly admitted in the Author’s Notes that this started out as a grander, more ambitious story, all serious and introspective, but they went with a simpler and more straightforward tale once it became evident it wasn’t all that profound. That’s great restraint, realising when something isn’t working and scaling back. This author has the potential to go far as long as they don’t rush themselves.
Rating: Decent
High Stakes by Graymane Shadow
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life
Twilight, Celestia, Luna, Cadance
1,313 Words
March 2022
It’s the end of a high-stakes poker game between the four Princesses of Equestria, the only acceptable way to settle an intense disagreement between these sovereigns. As will happen, Celestia and Luna are so caught up in beating the other – and relieving themselves of sheet-changing duties for a month – that they underestimate the other players in the room.
Graymane Shadow is among Fimfiction’s most recent successful authors, joining in the last few days of 2020. They hit huge with a series of four one-shots about each of the Equestrian Princesses triumphing over a demon specialising in their “weakness”, and have posted regularly since. They mostly write about the Equestrian Princesses (and TwiLuna), and have, as their mantra, to ignore the Canon elements of FiM that exist only because it’s a TV-Y show.
This is obviously a small, minor entry for them – not a lot you can add to the above plot skeleton with only 1,300 words. There’s some funny business as to how Twilight has changed things in her nine years of rule thus far, and sly jokes as to how she may well be the most crafty of the four Princesses (though without diminishing Celestia, an element worthy of praise – she even gets a moment befitting for her), and that’s about it. Though Cadance is also a good highlight here; I always appreciate a good fandom portrayal of her, and Graymane has that down pat.
It’s a quick little diversion from a reliable author, lighter than their usual work but no less competent for it.
Rating: Decent
Lord of the Dragons by Titanium Dragon
Genre: Drama
Other (Torch), Dragons, Celestia, Luna
2,674 Words
September 2016Reread
It’s almost time for the next Gauntlet of Fire, the contest that decides who will get to be the next Dragon Lord. A few weeks beforehand, Celestia and Luna are surprised to get a summon to meet privately with the current Dragon Lord, Torch. All in the name of ensuring the right dragon succeeds, and to ensure adult dragons that would sweep the competition stay well away.
This story is basically two things. It’s trying to reconcile the inconsistent dragon lore through to “Gauntlet of Fire”, especially the absence of large adult dragons in that episode and thereafter (background cameos excepted), and give that episode’s events extra meaning by framing it as all part of a bigger plan by the sovereigns in this story. I’d say it largely succeeds on both these fronts. The basic joy of the piece comes from how Torch interacts with Celestia and Luna (especially the latter, who naturally hasn’t seen him in a thousand years), and learning about both their relationship specifically, and that of the agreement dragons have with ponies. Using good character interaction to make what amount to an exposition dump flow smoothly isn’t a common skill, but this pulls it off well, mostly through using Luna to probe most of the questions – it does wobble a bit towards the end when the characters have already finalised their plans and get sidetracked into talking about history, but that’s a minor issue. Seeing how Torch knows his species is a shadow of their former selves, but still wants what’s best for them and for ponies in his own way, paints a good picture of a pretty unique one-off character.
There are other quibbles – the piece delights in having dark undercurrents to some of the topics the characters talk about, but is inconsistent at making them land when brought to the surface. Whether that be the oft-kilter discussion of what happened to Griffonstone, the poorly-explained origin of moonstones now in the hoard of each adult dragon, or even the true meaning behind some of Torch’s actions, it stumbles every now and then here. Not majorly, but noticeably.
Still, for such a quick recontextualisation piece, it goes does smoothly, and the headcanon presented within is a winner (upon returning to read this for review, I was surprised to realise I still remembered most of the broad strokes). An easy light recommendation.
Rating: Pretty Good
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 1
Really Good: 0
Pretty Good: 1
Decent: 2
Passable: 0
Weak: 1
Bad: 0
Tell Your Tale: Commentary Corner
Weird as this sounds, seeing scribbles used on logos and even the review quotes on the cinema display kind of works. Unlike many, I don’t have an issue with a written language being made up or illegible if it still communicates points effectively. Said film on the banner is Trotformers, because of course it is. That’s close to the best horse pun in this series thus far. I see one review gave it just three stars. Gotta make sure all scores are “positive”!
We got us a Hitch episode here, complete with him giving a tour to the others. Shouldn’t they know it by now? Unless it’s showing the revamped town. Unlike Sisters Take Flight actually being Ep. 1, we know this is Ep. 6. What did they not bother for the last few weeks? Incidentally, the shot of the Mane 4 walking past the camera towards hitch is easily one of the best-animated moments thus far. At least, the perspective felt right.
Izzy only took a few seconds leaping about to get encased in a unicorn trap again. Oh Izzy. I note that one pony she startled matches one of the more prominent background extras from the film, Dahlia (Hitch name-drops her early on). Coat and mane colour, style, even the flower accessory. Not bad! Wonder if some of the incidental roles thus far in Tell Your Tale were seen as background extras in the film.
Someone forgot to take down all the unicorn traps. I’m guessing Sprout. Hitch’s swagger about disabling it vanishes when pressing the release button does nothing. We didn’t see Sunny trying that, despite doing it before so he’s not alone in suffering from Webseries Intelligence Dilution. There there, Hitch. We don’t judge you for the writing these shorts saddle you with.
Aw, Hitch planned tour stops each of them would like. Thanks, buddy. His worry also gives Izzy the idea to self-levitate her box and follow her around. A lot to unpack here. Her magic is strong enough to separate a containment box from its fixtures (we don’t see them snap, they’re just gone), and is on Starlight levels. Believable power scaling? Get that outta here!
Hitch isn’t game for Izzy using her imagination to see the tour while with them, and cancels the tour. He reluctantly relents when they tether Izzy up with a rope to tug her along. Hope they don’t run Hitch being a grouch into the ground here…
Cue montage, our first non-song one of this series. Long as it’s not as repetitive as when “The Point of No Return” had two as pure padding, that’s cool. Which turns out to be the case, giving us just twenty-five seconds of Izzy’s box smashing up the street. Not a great first start, heh.
Next we’re at… some kind of art museum? The posters of ponified versions of famous paintings would agree. Seeing the Mona Lisa with a cute pony nose and the pig-like ears is… weird. Nicely rendered, though! Jazz, Izzy’s stylist, is also painting on a canvas outside, along with Posey and some stallion. Hitch’s happiness at meeting them diminishes on seeing the goofy painting of Izzy Pipp’s drawn on the box. Yeah, they’re clearly going for a “Hitch thinks they’re not taking the tour seriously, more fascinated by the box, and is hurt they don’t appreciate the effort he put in” story here. This continues in them barely noticing the rope-jumping activities in the forest in favour of swinging on the box’s rope.
The breaking point for Hitch is Izzy not being able to see the beach he thought she’d love, her being polite, then asiding she assumes they’re looking at a parking metre (audio’s too low in the mix here, had to use captions to get this – can you tell these are made quickly?). Yeah, now going down the rabbit hole of what they could be used for. In any case, Hitch goes full crowbar/pushing/stamping/chewing on the box, to no avail. Least Canterlogic’s products aren’t cheap and tacky!
There’s a funny moment where Izzy and Hitch ponder on what to do, and both he and the animation treat the painting of Izzy like it’s her. Eventually their pacing leads to Izzy wandering off the cliff. Guess unicorn levitation works like a hovercar, only goes half a pony’s height above the ground without extra exertion. And… nopony seems all that worried once Izzy rolls down the cliff. She also floats back up quick. Fake tension to lead to an emotional moment, check.
Of course, they did love the tour, Pipp the museum and Zipp the ropes course. Sunny, meanwhile, tries to deliver a terrible “think outside the box” pun that might have had fun cheesy value if her rig had greater facial variety than a South Park character. As it stands, the stock expression, and Jenna Warden being worse than Vanessa Hudgens as comic snarky moments, at least here, kills the joke. As does Izzy explaining it afterwards. Seriously writers, pick less insufferable jokes for “explaining obvious pun” moments.
And… the pun makes Hitch realise the emergency release button is on the underside. So… how would that work if the box was still grounded? Where’d the walls fold into? How does this have a floor if that was left behind when Izzy first levitated the box out? Yep, quality logical consistency here. This series isn’t wacky enough for that kind of cartoon logic to fly.
After Izzy’s parting moments of memories with the remnants of the box (still a better love story than Twilight), we end on the repeat tour getting promptly stopped by Hitch walking into a box trap. Buddy, you deserve that face-hoof Sunny gives in response.
So, another Izzy episode that’s really an “other characters” episode. Will she get her own starring vehicle soon? I can see why some might find Hitch boring – he’s basically the straight man to the funny other characters, in a way that works less well past the film he was designed for. As the first full showcase for his new actor… well, it’s not his fault James Marsden did a great job of bringing earnestness and mild snark that worked to the character. But it’s still quite the drop, on top of distractingly not feeling right (Izzy, at least, is simplified in writing such that she isn’t reminding us of her better incarnation, and thus the difference isn’t as distracting).
The short runtime here (first to clock in at under five minutes) is mostly felt in not addressing the others looking uninterested on the tour, just as notable a writing oversight as with mutating the problem in Nightmare Roomate. Seeing Maretime Bay proper-ish was neat. The background jokes weren’t half bad, though the flat, forced nature of how the other three acted stung quite a bit (Sunny, surely you can’t be that insensitive to how important this is to Hitch… actually wait, Nightmare Roomate showed you can). This insensitivity going completely unacknowledged, being the result of negligent writing, is just giving me flashbacks to the mean and dark undercurrents in Seasons 8/9 of FiM (most notably in sending a child to hell, though there’s plenty more).
Nothing terrible otherwise, though I’ll mostly remember this one for Hitch being done as plainly and as boring as I’d feared. Can’t be too many more “settling into new status quo/introductory shorts” left now.
Well, well, a taste of my own medicine, huh? It's a very fair review. Thanks for giving the story a shot and I appreciate the kind words.
Such is life when you're as ESL as I am.
That Cozy Glow fic actually looks interesting. I dismissed it when it first released (and I have a strict limit on how many stories I can add to my RiL right now, so I've gotta be choosy), but now I'm reconsidering.
I have to admit, when I saw Izzy lifting herself in that box made of metal my very first thought was "Holy crap, she's got Starlight Glimmer levels of magic!" I won't mind her being that strong... if they stick with it to the end. Which is a laughable idea. You just know in the very first "real" episode she's going to be depicted as only "semi-phenomenal" and barely able to hold a candle to anything that might come along to threaten her friends. Heck, I won't be surprised if they randomly switch her power from episode to episode based upon whatever will make the story go the way they want.
Give it a few episodes.
My only thought here is that, no matter what, Izzy's big "This is who I am!" moment won't remotely compare to the Smile Song and the way it so perfectly captured Pinkie's character.
To your backup woes, setting up a reading schedule helps tons (from one who has been doing such for seven years now (holy hayfries, it's been seven years?)). Granted, my system was always a bit, er, 'extreme' in some ways, like how I've been reading three 70k+ word stories simultaneously near-continuously for nearly a year now, with smaller stories on the side. I'm currently averaging ~32,000/day over the next six weeks, and that includes a break week. I intend to cut down starting 2023.
I'd suggest starting small, maybe reading one big story at a time while doing smaller ones on the side to pad the blog's numbers a bit. Once you've done that for, say, a couple weeks, you'll have a much better idea of whether you're going too hard or not hard enough and can adjust accordingly. The only catch is that you need to maintain the discipline to keep reading or, if you fall short, be able to catch back up in later days (my break/vacation weeks frequently help with this).
Lord of the Dragons was... readable. Torch being a cool dude and getting depth is relevant to my interests, but it was all what you'd expect from a 2.5k word "this went on behind the scenes" story.
As for the TyT, it felt dumb although I admit the gags with Izzy's face on the box were a lot of fun.
That Cozy Glow fic is going right on the RiL list. You and PresentPerfect both loved it, and I know RainbowDoubleDash can write well. Plus I liked the idea (if only sometimes the execution) of the IDW FIENDship villain-origin-story comics, so the idea of a ponyfic that does something similar for Cozy is very appealing. Golly.
Doubt me, will you? >:V
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Y'know, that's fair, and Lord of the Dragons was one of those stories where I wavered on the Decent/Pretty Good line. Ultimately, I let the fact it remained quite vivid in my head from my first reading of it some time ago tip the scale, which is probably not all that objective! And I'm not all that warm to "what happened behind the scenes of this episode" fics either. I do think it's reasonable and worth a read, more so than yourself, but I wouldn't go too far. It goes down easily enough, anyway.
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If you learn nothing else today, learn this: your ghost host round these parts does not lightly throw out his top rating. So when a fic is adorned with it, you'd best be assured it's top of the range, and not to be missed!
I didn't really get into it, but the title nod to that miniseries is truly earned. Once one accounts for a totally different medium, being a little more content/theme heavy than even the comics could be, and so on, this really does feel quite like those, except it fully succeeds. Excepting there's enough incident for a 3-parter comic here.
I think another reason I really liked it was how condensed and economic it is. Once upon a time we'd get origin and prequel stories that didn't have to be a full feature film or season, but could be squeezed into a medium read, a few issues or an episode. This felt like a throwback to that, a storytelling sensibility in short supply in media these days. Any story brave enough to keep itself short despite the temptation to go big and bold is worthy of admiration, doubly so if they can pull it off.
Looking forward to what you make of it!
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I was much the same, and even off of Present Perfect's praise, it took me several weeks to go for it. I won't hype it up more, but if you can afford a slot for a 21K-word fic on your schedule sometime in the following months/year, fit this in.
It's funny; I always appreciate you being around here, but I know full well your review backlog is so jammed (and that's after months of careful planning helping to whittle it down quite a bit), that you can seldom afford to chuck on fics that catch your eye. So I don't expect anything to latch onto you here. But if one does pique your interest enough to latch on… well, then you know I've done my job!
Indeed; I'd eat my kettle if this didn't happen. What little G5 content we have so far makes it clear that even the wobbly lore consistency in FiM was never going to be on the cards here. Earth pony magic getting short shaft there will look like a quaint, tiny little error soon, I'm sure.
I would say that on those grounds, G5 should be given the equivalent of 38 episodes between all G5 media to deliver on that front (the same amount of episode in FiM before we got "The End in Friend"). But I think we all know there's isn't a hope in Tartarus of it delivering, like you said, no matter how long it takes. Besides which, if the songwriters for the main G5 show are the same as the shorts… yeah.
Oh, don't worry, the plan's in motion already. A lot can happen even between writing the intro above and this evening. I'd also observed your schedule to get an idea of how some people structure these things. And quickly decided it was a poor comparison given how much smaller scale I keep. That said, your rough "reading one sizeable story slowly alongside one-shots on the side" strategy is already starting to form here, and I think if I can read 50K a week (not an issue, just have to commit to keeping it consistent), things will be fine long-term. These things are always adjusting anyway.
Doing these reviews isn't nearly as big a commitment for me as for you, of course – I'm by and large reading as much Pony fanfiction as I would be anyway. Just writing up about it. But structure's always good.
These are only the most minor of hiccups, the backlog still has a share of stories there. It's all in hand! Well, eh… mitt/nub, heh.
Thanks for the advice, in any case!
Thanks for the review! And I'm glad you enjoyed the story.
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Cozy Glow: FIENDship is Magic is a short enough read, if nothing else, which is frankly an achievement in and of itself for me. I'm verbose by nature. It probably helped that I was, you guessed it, trying to ape the style of the comics that I named the story after, so I tried to imagine writing in terms of comic panels and pages. Probably the result would need to be a double-issue, though.
Pretty sure it's the Pony Louvre, with a glass hoof instead of a glass pyramid in the courtyard. That's a damn obscure visual gag, but artists, y'know?
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My mind went to the exact same place at once. Mind you, my attachment to that ludicrous cartoon Miraculous Ladybug helped there, since it's set in Paris and the Louvre is important several times.
Decent is probably being more kind than I would have been - I definitely don't hate it, but as you noted, it's really just the literary equivalent of a snack cracker at a party - not bad, but hardly a meal.
Still, thanks for the shout out.
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Well, here I am
with egg on my face, ever the unculturedswinespirit. You'd think the Ponified Mona Lisa would have clued me in. Apparently not!Ha, I kid. We all have our lapses, and while I could make excuses with all the notes I was taking and the late time I was watching/commentating on the short, I'll take the folly face-first, and move on.
In any case, Maretime Bay's ever the multi-cultural city, isn't it? A shrunk-down version of San Francisco now has a French art museum in it. What's next, Ponified London Eye?
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If it had been longer, and dragged out it's one-joke idea, it probably would have dropped down a tier to Passable. I don't suppose anyone thinks I'm too easy on reviewing fanfics, but I do sometimes think I'm too lenient on short fics that are over before one knows it. We'll see if that gets refined in the future. But I enjoyed it, in any case, so the rating stays.
Thanks for popping by, in any case. I'm sure you'll be more satisfied once I read and review some of your more notable, polished, serious works. Well, re-read them – like many, I've followed you ever since you broke big with that Princess quadrilogy of one-shots. But since I read nearly the first half of your backlog before I rated fics (which I started doing around May last year), they're eligible for a revisit. Keep your eyes peeled!
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I haven't seen that one, but I hear it's pretty good. "Ludicrous" is a point in its favor from my perspective!
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It's just too bad that the "Houvre" is a pony pun that only works in print.
I expect that Maretime Bay will expand and contract as required by individual episodes, particularly as they only have the one earth pony city to work with.
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It's good fun, and after a first season that's pretty much "villain of the week" it does expand its horizons significantly by the end of season two. The most ludicrous thing about it is probably the release "schedule", which makes late-series FiM look a model of straightforwardness. You can an episode from several months ahead suddenly turn up in Brazilian Portuguese or something, ages before it's around in English or even the original French.