Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #18 · 5:00pm Jul 4th, 2022
As hinted previously, I’ve run out of energy with doing Commentary Corner for Tell Your Tale shorts every week. And while most shorts do have something unique to say, it’s still largely just frustration of the “what are you doing, writers?!?” variety. So, as of this week, I’ve decided to scale them back; rather than a play-by-play commentary, Friendship Is Card Games style, it’s more of a standard recap and impression.
The particular nature of this week’s short, starting out strong and respectable (for this webseries, of course) before it derails in unexpected ways in the second half, means it didn’t end up too much shorter. But I’m hoping that shorts of normal quality fluctuation hereafter will be substantially shorter, and quicker to do. I may still end up packing this in in the future, but let’s see how it works for now.
More importantly: Ponyfic! Let’s just keep it away from Twilight. We don’t need a repeat of the weekend reshelving. Or her sleeping on books of the stuff.
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Plenty of Fish in the Sea by FanOfMostEverything
Born a Unicorn by Cynical
Mate in Five Moves by Karrakaz
Her Faithful Companion by PonyThunder
Twilight Sparkle Falls Asleep in Class by BronyWriter
Weekly Word Count: 32,697 Words
Plenty of Fish in the Sea by FanOfMostEverything
Genre: Comedy/Romance/Other
Twilight, Queen Novo, Cranky Doodle Donkey, Other
3,611 Words
February 2022
Relations between Twilight and Queen Novo are tense at the best of times, and on the hippogriff sovereign’s current visit to Ponyville, she makes no secret that she still holds Twilight’s attempted theft of the Pearl against her. And as if holding her tongue regarding her own feelings on the matter wasn’t enough, Twilight then finds herself playing mediator between Novo and another party, one she never would have considered to know the Queen, much less have an even more chequered past.
This being FoME’s entry for a Crackship Contest should give you a pretty good idea of what's in store. His usual barbed, biting, acidic style of humour is in full force, filtered through taking separate elements and characters of the show that are just such “well, duh” candidates to cross paths you almost can’t believe it’s hardly been done. His tendency to have short prose and efficient dialogue, wedged around ideas that would justify their own story being kept to a single aside, is as ever-present too. Chap knows his stuff, and I’m glad he still writes regularly.
The crackship part is interesting, because despite being ostensibly that, it’s treated relatively sincerely and logically. As much so as anything else in the story, anyway, where there’s a heightened level of ridiculousness about it all, but not one that renders it unbelievable. We’re laughing about it, not at it.
It’s short enough yet dense enough that I don’t want to spoil much more. Though suffice to say, the retorts when Twilight finally snaps back at Novo are great, and the chemistry between Twilight and Cranky is quite nice too. I think the tone of fic, and being partially centred on a character as thin and unlikeable as Novo, does put a ceiling on how effective it can be, but it’s doing a lot to get near the ceiling of those boundaries.
Rating: Pretty Good
Born a Unicorn by Cynical
[No Cover Image]
Genre: Slice of Life
Twilight, Rainbow Dash
4,103 Words
May 2013Chapter 1 listened to via Scribbler's reading
Twilight houses a secret, one that she can’t bring herself to share with anyone. She doesn’t want to be a unicorn, she wants to be a pegasus. Yet living with this, in a world where they’re a constant presence in the sky, and two of them are her friends, doesn’t get any easier.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a fic where the warning flag was raised this early, right there in the concept. The fic itself mentions constantly that she’s the most powerful unicorn in Equestria, and yet we’re supposed to accept that Twilight wants to be a pegasus and is the very same Twilight who’s spent untold time over her life studying and improving at unicorn magic, before the show and during it. Had this leaned harder into Alternate Universe, or gone with a different unicorn, it might have had merit, but not as written. And while I don’t judge it for being written after Twilight’s ascension, and being set earlier (you come into this fandom in 2018, you better come to old and retconned fics with an open eye or you’re writing off tons of Pony fanfic), the knowledge of what’s around the corner for her completely cripples any tension or more than the barest sympathy here. Plus, you know, she uses the glitter wings to fly in secret in the story, another crippling point to the story’s very theme and concept.
As it stands, what’s actually told with that broken concept isn’t really there; the first chapter is just Twilight’s inner monologue as she watches some aerial displays, while the second one, added months later, has Rainbow Dash finding out about it. Like many “added a while after the fact” chapters, it doesn’t add much to something that was already structurally complete, even if the character sincerity and emotions are nice (Dash’s “I’m here” sentiment is the one part that works without caveats, but that’s one beat in 4K words), making it all feel rather rote. The technical writing itself isn’t quite strong enough to sell the story, and unwisely opens the whole story on a weather report, so even apart from the concept, alarm bells start ringing early.
Obviously this is just a transgender allegory, that’s impossible to miss, but for such things to work, the actual text must be solid. Somewhat rickety writing and a completely inappropriate choice of lead character prevents that from ever being a possibility, leaving just a muddled sadfic that never feels authentic, despite good intentions. This one’s unable to take flight.
Rating: Weak
Mate in Five Moves by Karrakaz
Genre: Romance/Drama/Slice of Life
Rarity, Pinkie, Twilight
19,460 Words
March 2015
As of late, Rarity has been making more of an effort to squeeze in regular time for all her friends. In the case of Pinkie, this means a weekly chess game, or more. Lately, though, Pinkie has seemed awfully distracted, not at all like how much effortlessly better she was then Rarity at first. Uncertain how to process this development, Rarity decides to look into possible reasons.
First things first; this isn’t really a chess story. I mostly mean that in a positive way, in that none of the usual tropes associated with it are present, nor do we focus on the strategy of the game. It’s just something for the characters to do, and to set the plot in motion (plus some cheeky chapter title metaphors), and for all that it’s de-emphasized as the story progressed, it still remains mentioned enough that its usage doesn’t feel completely mechanical? I think that aspect might end up being in the eye of the beholder.
Anyway, this is a tough shipfic to get to grips with, in that the story is typical, but the actual writing for it is generally solid, with roughly equal balances of strong and weaker aspects. In the case of Rarity, she is generally very well characterised, with how quickly she twigs Pinkie’s crush from a tiny slip early on especially standing out. On the reverse, there’s odd choices of characterisation too, lapses in control of her actions and thoughts that serve a purpose, and could be buyable coming from her in the right circumstances, but don’t quite sail (her jealousy of Pinkie also playing chess with Twilight, long before shipping gets in on the game). Similarly, the prose is mostly above its genre, except for those occasions where it gives up showing gracefully and exposits character motives, or repeats ideas.
Still, for the most part this is a reasonably easy fic to invest in, with a good sedate pace, mostly strong characterisation, and just enough interesting ideas at the margins to set off pretty ordinary main content. It deflates at the ending, though; after a mostly fun penultimate chapter, it ends on a note that leaves the final chapter just an exercise in typical moping on Rarity’s part before it wraps up super suddenly and with none of the flair that has bolstered clichéd elements to that point. It’s not bad, not nearly, but coming when it does, it takes enough out of the final result that this fic, which is otherwise strong enough to pass for those not into RariPie or shipfics in general, end up ultimately still only for such people. They’ll like it more than fine.
Rating: Decent
Her Faithful Companion by PonyThunder
Genre: Slice of Life
Twilight, Spike
1,354 Words
February 2017Listened to via Clever Hooves' reading
A late night of studying can be taxing on anypony, even one of the smartest unicorns around. Thankfully, Twilight’s got the best friend around, one to look after her even when she can’t. A friend she’d do the same for.
The cover art gives the story away, that of Spike putting a blanket on Twilight dozed out at her desk and thinking fondly on how much she means to him. But that’s really kind of okay. This piece has no greater ambition than being heartwarming via the selfless love the two have for each other. And as someghost for whom the Twilight/Spike relationship is one of the most important character dynamics in FiM, I get behind it if done right. This is one of those.
I’m not altogether certain the tactic of almost exclusively long paragraphs was the right call (there’s literally only fifteen), as many of the details within might stand out more if given more individual space, but that’s the only thing I’ll hold against the piece and what it’s trying to do (and the audio reading largely alleviates this quibble). Its ambitions are modest enough that it’s not going to stick out that much, but it’s quite the competent execution of those feels.
Rating: Pretty Good
Twilight Sparkle Falls Asleep in Class by BronyWriter
Genre: Comedy/Random/Slice of Life
Twilight, Celestia
4,169 Words
October 2012
A late night of studying can have quite the effect on any student. Twilight Sparkle’s about to discover that she’s no exception, and her attempts to stay awake during her morning class may have unforeseen consequences.
I’d dismiss any visions of a madcap Alice in Wonderland type of fantasy. This is awfully sedate, with Twilight’s dreams just having the lessons’ contents change to dark magic, her grades drop, and her notes vanish, all stated in a very plain manner that might be meant to make them come across as more absurd, but does the opposite. Even an amusing Calvin and Hobbes reference accompanying Celestia’s embarrassed reaction to something atypical at the ending only produces a mild chuckle.
It’s competent enough to not feel like a waste of time, but a premise like this deserves a far superior execution. Still, it is a very early one-shot from BronyWriter, and I’ve read enough to know it’s not reflective of his later work.
Rating: Passable
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 0
Pretty Good: 2
Decent: 1
Passable: 1
Weak: 1
Bad: 0
Tell Your Tale: Commentary Corner
Just because the play-by-play commentary is gone doesn’t mean I can’t still wring some humour out of these!
Sixteen shorts in, and we actually have a first: the first short to drop notably in quality at the end, as opposed to the start, middle, or across the whole thing. Because the opening premise of Dahlia, the flower background pony across these shorts (and a film-made character), being basically out of a job because all earth ponies can instantly grow their own flora now, is something unbelievable for Tell Your Tale: an actual legit exploration of potential ramifications of ponies suddenly having magic back. And Sunny wanting to help out, I can roll with that. Better than Izzy, anyway. There’s no shortage of weird and odd writing decisions at the margins, as there always are: why does Dalhia not have magic yet? But the montage of Sunny demonstrating plant growing hoof movements and Dalhia copying them to miniscule success at first, and finally a skyscraper flower stem once she thinks about what makes her happy (look, you can’t question every writing contrivance or you’ll be depressed), that’s all grand. I mean, working within how blatantly objectionable a poor a lore choice instant plant growth is, of course, but that’s not this short’s fault. Featuring somepony outside the Mane 5 to make the town feel like, y’know, a community, and one with as cute a design as Dalhia (kind of like finally giving one of the G4 flower girls a moment in the spotlight) is nice too. And while I’m not bothered to check if her voice here matches her one line in Make Your Mark, it’s fitting enough for a one-off character. Even if all the scenes of her normal leg designs next to Sunny’s makes my ethereal skin bristle.
Then we get to the second half, and… Dahlia’s joy at growing giant flowers all over town is broken when windy weather knocks one down, scattering pollen all over town. I actually kind of dug the vibe of the pop song over the montage of everypony sneezing from the hayfever neighfever (Gillian Berrow’s tendencies strike again), mostly because it reminded me of the original song Get Back Up Again from Trolls (seriously, it’s properly fantastic, for the visuals if nothing else, watch it now if you’ve never seen it). Bringing back the Zephyr Heights newscasters (not seen since Ep. 1, Sisters Take Flight) to comment on this development with mean newscaster zest (And Posey being Worst Pony) sticks out mostly for how unnecessary it is - there’s no reason to not just cut from the montage’s end to Sunny moping at her mistake. And this short wasn’t so thin on plot it needed to waste 37 seconds on this. All that did was cause more tonal whiplash from having to rush through Sunny apologising and convincing Dalhia to try and fix this together.
Because… I can’t believe I have to type this… Dahlia sneezing onto her flowers gives them the power to alternate colours, rainbow-style. Folks, a little girl’s webseries. Sunny hits on the idea of making flower necklaces to make everypony forget about them (and the neighfever just vanished here anyway) and give her a purpose again, helped by Pipp doing a social media plug. Then, right as Sunny remarks on getting a happy ending… the colours bleed off her and Hitch’s flower necklaces, leaving them bleached like the aftereffects of dye. Words fail.
This short goes from Tolerable quality in the first three-thirds, to commonplace structural issues in the fourth minute amplified by a needless news scene, to… whatever that last minute was. I mean, this short already had to compete with awkward pandemic allusions and being thematically compared to Hurricane Fluttershy, arguably FiM’s best ever episode, but it was bearable, until the gross-out booger aspect intruded. That wrap up is so divorced from what came before, so “you really didn’t think this through, did you?”, and naturally lacking the visual or timing energy to put over wacky schtick like that. It’s a lot like MARETIME BAY DAY 2.0, also a top-tier short brought down by a “what the” decision, though that was character assassination to kick off the plot. Up to the viewer whether this nonsensical business is better or worse. It annoyed me less, anyway.
TOLERABLE
- Alicorn Issues (Ep. 14)
- Foal Me Once (Ep. 7)
The Game Is Ahoof (Ep. 12)
"NORMAL"-LEVEL BAD
- Mane Melody (Ep. 5)
- The Unboxing of Izzy (Ep. 6)
- Zipp Gets Her Wings (Ep. 3) * Originally titled Zipp’s Flight School.
- Neighfever (Ep. 16) NEW
- MARETIME BAY DAY 2.0 [sic] (Ep. 11)
Making a Foal of Me (Ep. 15)
BROKEN WRITING IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT
- Sisters Take Flight (Ep. 1)
- IT’S T.U.E.S. DAY [sic] (Ep. 9)
- A Home to Share (Ep. 2)
- Sunny-Day Dinners (Ep. 10)
Nightmare Roomate [sic] (Ep. 4)
VILE WEED
- Dumpster Diving (Ep. 13)
- Clip Trot (Ep. 8)
Eh, I'll take it.
Honestly, it's nice having a character everyone can agree to hate sometimes. Not only does she make for a good antagonist, making her sympathetic is a fun challenge.
I completely missed out on the new TYT, but since they're so short I never feel like I miss anything, either good or bad, nor do I feel obligated to go and watch it... Which is perhaps a nice thing to feel, and which contrasts some of my earlier feelings about G4.
(one cannot avoid making those kinds of meta comparisons... Or at least, I can't.)
Regarding the second story reviewed, seeing its flaws leads me to consider the idea that allegorical writing - perhaps even faintly political allegorical writing (political only in the sense that it is a socially governed issue) - is the hardest kind of writing to do. Certain genres have gotten away with it through careful precision of ideas and anecdotes - I turn to Magical Realism and my boy, Gabriel García Márquez, as one of the premiere forms of it that I'm aware of.
I wonder if few fanfics get that right, not because they are fanfics, but because in trying to present allegory, they either lean far too heavily on being overt or on being "sagely ambiguous." This latter quality seems, to me, paradoxical and antithetical to the point of political or social allegory, since it seems defeatist in nature to itself.
Italo Calvino wrote an essay about the right and wrong uses of political literature, and I find a point that he makes particularly compelling:
"Literature is necessary to politics above all when it gives a voice to whatever is without a voice, when it gives a name to what as yet has no name, especially to what the language of politics excludes or attempts to exclude… Simply because of the solitary individualism of his work, the writer may happen to explore areas that no one has explored before, within himself or outside, and to make discoveries that sooner or later turn out to be vital areas of collective awareness."
If true (and there's no way to tell, since it's but argument), then it stands to reason that literature as political theater is best formed as a giver of movement and change, not a teacher or essayist.
Though, it's worth mentioning Calvino's own thought about his thought, about how such an understanding of the function of literature in a political sense, presumes the role of the author and constrains them to this purpose... Without acknowledging issues of, say, why this author in particular should speak to this topic. Who speaks for a marginalized group best if not the marginalized, as they say - but then, if you wish to present a full picture of the problem, would you not benefit from also letting the oppressing party speak?
That isn't to say that these allegories to transgenderism require either that the author be transgender themselves, or that the view they present be strictly black-and-white, but it does invite consideration about the function of literature as this demonstrator of something hidden yet known; as this expressive, God-like authority that brings light to the shadows of our dreams and doubts.
Funny that something so short should get me to think so long.
Oh, for sure. Unsympathetic characters are a must in our fiction, but it's much harder to enjoy their presence when they're such thin nothings as Canon Novo is. Not that fanfiction can't elaborate on that, it can and should. This just puts a ceiling on all but the most exceptional writing of said character. Not that low a ceiling, to clarify; this is still quality writing from a pro, no two ways about it.
I should say this fic was quite close to being a tier up at Really Good. Close enough that it may well have been just personal preferences, or the choice in the spur of the moment, that kept it from making that leap.
Passable seems about right for my story. It was one of my early ones and as such, yeah, passable is accurate. It wasn't written to have much substance anyway.
I'm just floored by how gratuitous "Neighfever" is, like... "Hay" is a horse word, people! What the fuck?
5670029
It really is amazing, how far they’ll go to insert horse puns into words that are already a good equine fit in their human spelling. And almost always terrible ones too. Understandably, I didn’t have the energy to dwell on it beyond my strikethrough gag.