Ghost Mike's Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #23 · 5:01pm Aug 8th, 2022
Time’s a funny thing, innit? Today just so happens to be my birthday. And get this: in my first year of doing these Ponyfic Review Monday Musings, it coincides with my birthday being on a Monday. And thanks to the calendar-correcting oddity that is Leap Years, that won’t happen again until 2033. My first year of doing these, my birthday falls on one. 
What are the odds, eh? Must be a sign, me thinks. Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it were it not for that overlap.
How does it feel? Well, I ain’t getting any younger! I think, this many years removed from education, I’m starting to be more aware of wanting to accomplish one’s goals, be they little short-term things, or long-term ambitious ones. I won’t lie, it’s a bit intimidating, especially as I feel I can easily fall into laziness with many things. But on the other mitt, life’s pretty good. Got a steady job, saving readily, enjoying myself with my interests. Maybe things are a little stale around the edges, but I do like my comforts. And things aren’t completely stagnant either: I did embark on a fiction reviewing project that’s still going strong five months on. 
Plus background Ponyfic writing with the occasional published bit. Long as I continue to gradually keep new things a-coming at a pace that suits me, I think this is worth sticking with for now.
Anyway, as a little treat to myself, I’ve decided to pull the trigger on a Ponyfic review idea I’ve had for a while. Way back in January-March, there was a Who Crossed Over My Little Pony? Contest, where entrants had to write one-shots that crossed MLP over with any given cartoon character(s), as long as that character(s) first appeared in or before 1947, or is present somewhere in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. A real niche contest that would only appeal to a select few – they got sixteen entries in the end, which isn’t half bad at all, given the circumstances – yet one seemingly tailored for me. Let’s just say ‘Cartoon’ is in my username for a reason (and I don’t mean because I just replaced ‘Karma’ with Pony and added ‘Mike’ when adapting my YouTube username). Animation is one of my raisons d'être (just, y’know, not in a professional capacity, at least not anymore), and while of my interest there tends to lie first and foremost with feature films, classic cartoon shorts are pretty high up there. Obviously this blog is a place for MLP, and not a place for me to yabbit on about other animation trivia and opinions, so I largely don’t. But FiM is a cartoon, and all the better for it. And not just for finally giving toy commercial cartoons something of a good name. Point being, I felt I had to give the contest a go.
Sadly, mitigating circumstances meant I couldn’t quite throw together much beyond a rough story (basically, Pinkie would have been a new student teacher of cartoon slapstick at a Toon Acting university, with the class’s main professor being Bugs Bunny, or possibly another mainstay of the form, and the conflict would have come from the differences in the slapsticks and meta humour between Pinkie’s 2010s era and that of the 40’s, and both parties not being fond of the other’s much – it would have repurposed my academic knowledge of exactly how classic cartoon slapstick was timed to perfection into a dramatic form). That doesn’t say what would happen beyond the long description, so I’m still leaving the door open for giving it a try sometime. Still, I regret that it never materialised.
But, I figured, why not review the contest’s entries? It was something I debated with for a while, given I tend to not be a fan of crossovers much, and reviewing all of them would be bound to dredge up a fair share of dregs. For a while, I strongly considered just reviewing the four entries that placed (plus a bonus one I’d read when it was still running). But, in the end, perhaps spurred by Loganberry’s ongoing ambition to review all 29 entries that placed for the Thousand Words Contest (minus his own), I decided, what the hay. Regardless of the quality of some of them, I’m well-poised to get what each entrant is going for with their given crossover. Live up to my name, eh?
So, the next three weeks of Monday Musings here will be devoted to reviewing those sixteen fics. As that doesn’t divide by five evenly, I’ll make my birthday blog here the first since #7 back in April to have more than five entries, with a bonus sixth. Joy! To keep this balanced, and not swayed by any preference I had for some fics over the other, I’ll be reviewing them in release order. Regular entries of an assorted menagerie of fics will resume on August 29th.
M’kay, enough housekeeping. Enjoy the classics-cartooning-by-way-of-MLP goodness. Me, I’m gonna get back to breaking in Wave 2 of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Courses DLC. There’s few things that put me in a sunnier mood than some karting round the Mushroom Kingdom. Especially when my birthday is lucky again, and lands 4 days after 8 new tracks drop*.
* Yes, the tracks are largely retro tracks built and ports from the mobile Mario Kart Tour, with only one fully-new course each wave. Doesn’t bother me, and I never touched the mobile game anyway. It counts! 
This Week’s Spectral Stories:
Pony Season by Doug Graves
Nyardaffotep by Ragnar
Speed Demon by Boltstrike58
Strong to the Finnich by KnightMysterio
A Lesson in Kindness by bkc56
When Tom Cat Met Angel Bunny by EileenSaysHi
Weekly Word Count: 23,600 Words
Pony Season by Doug Graves
Genre: Crossover (really Random/Comedy)
Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Other
2,624 Words
January 2022
It may be Pony Season in Ponyville, but when Rainbow Dash spots a strange bipedal figure sneaking around the trees, he insists it’s ‘Wabbit’ Season. Unsure of what this creature is that he’s hunting for, and with nothing better to do, she decides to help him. Things only proceed to get stranger from there.
The basic concept of Elmer Fudd hunting for Bugs in Ponyville, with everypony having all manner of reactions to this, is a reasonable one, as is Rainbow Dash unwillingly helping him. However, it falls apart after the first 1,000 words, when Fluttershy, upon finding out Elmer is a hunter… develops immense cartoon attraction for him, and spends the rest of the fic trying to make herself appealing to him. I get what the author was going for, cartoon characters have had crushed spring from nowhere since before Talkies came onto the scene. But such a thing has no hope of being tonally reconcilable with the comparatively more grounded world of FiM and its characters. Something Looney Tunes has taught us since time immemorial is that even the most seemingly random things therein have a throughline, a basis, or a sense of evolution. This has none of that, and nothing about Fluttershy’s personality lends itself to crushing on Elmer. Especially given she would logically hate animal hunters, which itself is based in her character yet has enough potential for cartoon comedy, opposing Elmer with fury and becoming a worse nemesis then Bugs, that it screams to be the obvious direction here. In any case, the rest of the story gets more fragmented and disconnected without purpose (well, beyond vague callbacks to specific Elmer shorts, but they’re not integrated organically), with more ponies popping up and not really doing anything other than being confused at Elmer, until the final punchline lands flatly.
Elmer’s personality is captured pretty well, though the effort is crippled by heavily overcooked phonetic dialogue for his impediment; it’s every bit as distracting as the worst written accent for the Apple family, and also makes some of the words that we’re actually supposed to get be indecipherable. A few other gags land well (I loved Elmer’s permit for hunting), but by and large this is an empty evocation of Elmer’s classic cartoons, and a disastrous mix with FiM’s characters and tone.
Rating: Weak
Nyardaffotep by Ragnar
[No cover image]
Genre: Random (Crossover
Discord, Other
1,145 Words
January 2022
There are few things Discord is truly afraid of. One of them is a being whose chaos is not constrained by even the few limits he has. The arrival of this figure forces Discord to try and rally everypony to do something. They fail to see the problem.
Discord being portrayed as lesser chaos, given how even the variety and timing of his visual humour in FiM is a far cry from that in the Golden Age of cartoons, is quite the idea. As is using Discord as a bridge between ponies and Looney Tunes. It’s hard to describe humour this rooted both in being random, and in the reader having a fairly encyclopaedic knowledge of classic Looney Tunes (not specific shorts, but enough to be able to recognise all the tropes callbacks). Suffice to say the tone is knowing and clever, the few moments afforded to the ponies are nicely chosen, and the final punchline is befitting the source material and chosen character.
It’s a very short, breezy entry, and one with a rather limited audience – truth be told, it took me a second read to really get it – but it delivers on what it promises, relative to the written medium it’s employing and how meta it’s trying to get.
Rating: Decent
Speed Demon by Boltstrike58
Genre: Comedy/Slice of Life (Crossover)
Rainbow Dash, Twilight
5,363 Words
January-February 2022
Rainbow Dash can live with not being the best at many things. But the one thing she absolutely must be the best at, is being the fastest living creature in all of Equestria. So when Twilight’s research turns up a new flightless bird in the desert that seems able to match – nay, even beat – Dash’s top speed, she doesn’t take it lying down. This road-running ostrich is going down! If only Rainbow can manage to get it to play by her rules.
Swapping Wile E. Coyote for Rainbow Dash in a Road Runner cartoon is such an obvious, of-course concept. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t require finesse to pull off, on top of handling the medium displacement of moving a Looney Tunes cartoon to prose format – unlike Friendship Is Magic, these are cartoons whose strengths are irrevocably tied to that medium. Boltstrike58 chooses to play this much closer in tone to FiM. Specifically, early FiM – on top of taking place when Twilight was a unicorn, the character’s personalities and attitudes slot in perfect with their Faust-era snark (Twilight’s investigative, go-on-a-mission side is a highlight here), and several moments from early episodes that themselves felt Looney Tunes are alluded to or followed up on. One “Feelin Pinkie Keen” gag is just perfect in this regard. This fic could have come out as far back as 2011 (late 2011, given Dash is the recipient of the moral), and it would have been a perfect fit for both the show and the type of content, fics or otherwise, the fandom was making.
But that’s not to say the logic of a Road Runner cartoon isn’t integrated – it is, in some ways, and any viewer well-versed in that series’ rules (as they are) will be moderately satisfied by how they get interwoven with Rainbow’s increasing desperation to win. That said, this aspect falls somewhat flatter, with the golden rule of the Coyote done in by himself broken for Dash largely falling victim to happenstance (not getting this tends to be what separates would-be Tex Avery imitators from the true heirs).
Another mild positive is that even a cartoon centred around a coyote falling off a cliff still has a build spine of escalation and momentum, and so too does this, loosely. Though it could definitely stand to be tightened up a bit more, with much of the first chapter especially being drawn-out setup that would have worked far better as after-the-fact dialogue following an in media res opening.
And of course, the written medium means the slapstick can only land so hard, especially when it’s all rather linearly done, so it frankly blurs together (helped not at all by the intervention just arbitrarily working after scenes of not). The join between merging up two cartoons with wildly different tones and level of sentiment does show the seams, especially at the end. Going for a more sincere, lesson-learning ending does fit FiM, and the fic still has the good sense to end on a more Looney Tunes-type joke. But the ending does feel a bit flat, as it can’t fully go in for the FiM ending either, for fear of making the join fully fade.
All in all, this was an amusing little diversion, and it deserves praise for a decent attempt at merging the two different properties’ tones and sensibilities, though looking beyond the surface-level of what makes the Road Runner cartoons work would have resulted in a tighter, better-crafted fic. A bit slight and likely to fade from memory quickly, due to the ceiling enforced by the written medium and tonal join of different cartoons. But that's the nice thing about Tex Avery-type slapstick – even the lesser variants, or in different, less-well-suited mediums, are still entertaining.
Rating: Decent
Strong to the Finnich by KnightMysterio
Genre: Comedy/Random/Slice of Life (Crossover)
Twilight, Mane 6, Zecora, Tempest Shadow
4,030 Words
February 2022
One very large fight later, Popeye finds himself in a bright day-glo world of nothing but pastel equines (and a few equally strange creatures). As he tries to find out where he is, and how he might get home, this world’s inhabitants aren’t quite sure what to make of him, especially when he shows inexplicable strength during a random monster attack. Double that for spinach giving him even more inexplicable strength.
This one is pure, goofy fun, and to reasonable effect. It’s obviously not a straight retelling of a Popeye cartoon, but as a common ground between his overt cartoony-ness and the world of FiM, it does an admirable job, if strained. The best part is undoubtedly Popeye himself - it’s been a while since I’ve seen any of those old shorts (and I get the feeling most modern viewers know the basic context and content of his cartoons without having actually ever seen one, not unlike Felix the Cat), and this one wrings most of its humour from the ponies being utterly befuddled at his appearance, strength, reliance on spinach, numerous fourth-wall breaks (to the extent of confusing Pinkie) and desire for Olive Oyl. That’s all expected stuff, though, and when the fic frees itself up for more randomly absurd reactions, like what Tempest Shadow makes of this, it makes a bigger impression. My other favourite highlight is repurposing the mumbled asides that were a hallmark of the Popeye cartoons into this context, which probably says more about me than the piece.
I can’t really call the piece better than competent, though; it wraps up with a rather rickety conclusion that makes rather a mess of the balance between the differing tones of the two pieces (even if it provides a nice meta-commentary on other absurd element), and while it’s natural to ends on the wacky note that it does, it ends up paying lip service to the few more grounded elements earlier. Also; the fic’s tone and general prose, while readable and enjoyable, gets strained enough replicating the visual medium, and showing reactions of everypony, that it feels a bit light. Definitely a fair laugh riot, and not inaccessible to anyone who’s never seen a Popeye cartoon, but not enough to sway anyone sceptical of wacky crossover skits like this.
Rating: Decent
A Lesson in Kindness by bkc56
Genre: Drama (Crossover)
Fluttershy, Other
8,458 Words
March 2022
On her way to Zecora’s hut to get some fever medicine, Fluttershy happens across an injured pegasus colt in the depths of the Everfree Forest. Unwilling to leave him be, she does what she can to nurse him back to health, all while he learns about her and what she does.
Well, this is certainly an interesting way to tackle the contest; taking a character with very minimal source material and working a semi-dramatic slice of life out of it. The pegasus here is Peter Pegasus, an energetic black colt from the Pastoral Symphony segment of Fantasia (and if you’ve never seen it, forget these fics: make fixing that your number one priority, though honestly compels me to admit that is one of the film’s weakest segments, being both long enough to get rather dull, and also droning and insipid, though the magnificent use of colour saves it). Given the absence of not just dialogue but diegetic sound from that film’s animation, the characters are obviously more vessels for recontextualizations of classic music then other pieces of cinema sourced for this context. So bkc56, almost certainly picking this character for this choice, basically had near-free reign to do what they wanted.
What they did was… fine. And, ironically like its source material segment, overlong and frankly dull, and naturally lacking the woozy of a compensating factor that is the technical peak of Disney Animation. Once one gets used to the novelty of full-sized horses in this setting and Peter’s FiM-level sapiance (as opposed to the animal sidekick-levels in Fantasia), it quickly sinks in how little actually happens here. Fluttershy brings him back, there’s some mild tween-like indifference from the colt that fades over the piece to interest in what she does, a few minor incidents around the house, and then between chapters, the dilemma of finding Peter’s parents (also characters from the film) is resolved.
Frankly, it’s an unremarkable and plodding slice of life, enlivened by just enough compensating factors to make me feel marginally positive about it. As the whole fic has Fluttershy in her element, she remains reasonably compelling, though the 1st-person voice for her strains a bit, with the quoted thoughts often feeling intrusive and not quite right. And despite having so little source material to work with, a few token nods to the pegasi in the Pastoral Symphony are worked in, mostly in Peter’s more energetic, curious moments and the majesty of his parents in flight (and I do like the unremarked oddity of them performing in, basically, their source material).
It still doesn’t alleviate the fact that Peter is basically a generic OC here, and sans the crossover novelty, this fic has very little going for it. I get that exploring a character nearly an open slate was interesting, but these results don’t really justify that direction. But it’s moderately diverting in the moment.
Rating: Passable
When Tom Cat Met Angel Bunny by EileenSaysHi
Genre: Comedy (Crossover)
Fluttershy, Angel
1,980 Words
March 2022
An odd-looking bipedal cat shows up at Fluttershy’s door, seemingly lost. She was about to go grocery shopping, so with the promise of food, she gets him to curl up for a nap while she’s gone. Of course, he’s not the only pet in the house, and upon finding his favourite resting spot taken, Angel Bunny is none too pleased.
While the majority of entries for this contest looked for some offbeat angle to approach the cartoon crossover, this one had the bravery to basically be a Tom and Jerry short played straight, just with Angel in the place of Jerry. And thus giving us even more sympathy for Tom then we would normally have. Let us not deny this: EileenSaysHi evidently adores cartoon slapstick in the Tom and Jerry mode, and had a blast recreating the broad story strokes of a short, one where the scale of the conflict escalates more and more as the short progresses in a way that feels natural, where some of the individual beats can still take you by surprise (that is what separates wannabe cartoon slapstick from the real deal), where you feel the size difference between Tom and Jerry, and where the balance of power gets tipped back-and-forth with enough that energy that you can kind of forget the outcome the formula mandates, in the heat of the moment. As regards the beat-by-beat flow of the events that actually “happen”, it’s quite satisfying. Doubly so with the bookends of a talking Fluttershy feeling very much like the setup and closing beats provided by Mammy Two Shoes. And Angel is a perfect fit for a FiM character to cross paths with Tom.
Of course, inevitably, this short runs into the problem of trying to capture visual slapstick in written form. And while careful shaping of each word can get across a similar effect*. This necessitates heavy visual description, and the balance, pacing and flavour of these is all over the place. Some paragraphs will be described in a very plain, quick, script-like format that goes through its beats so quickly you have to slow down and use your mental knowledge of Tom and Jerry animation cycles to visualise how it would look. Yet others will linger on moments well past what would happen onscreen, and get purple prose muddled around overwrought description. And as the fic elects (probably wisely) to share some limited character thoughts with us, rather than just describe the facial reactions of the two, there’s a tone of voice mashup confusion throughout.
* Of course, the same is true of cartoon slapstick as it is animated. Just compare the visual timing and physical movement of most modern day attempts to evoke cartoon slapstick with its forefathers. They’re trying, but the last 5% that makes it zing invariably just isn’t there (there are exceptions, of course).
I don’t want to say any of this killed the story, but it did have the effect of making very little of it felt at the sensory level, just something that glazes over. Still, playing a Tom and Jerry short this straight, in this format, was always going to be an uphill battle, and the thought put into the events and moments therein more than gets my admiration, even if it’s a bit of a muddled read.
Rating: Passable
Spooky Summary of Scores:
Excellent: 0
Really Good: 0
Pretty Good: 0
Decent: 3
Passable: 2
Weak: 1
Bad: 0
Can honestly say I never expected this story, out of all my stories, to pick up a review, especially now.
Ah well. It was very much an experiment, given it featured several "firsts" for me -- first story set in FiM/Equestria, first story that's not dialogue-driven, first genuine crossover. (Actually, it's currently still the only one for all three of those, though the former may change soon.) But yeah, given the genre, I decided to make a few literary sacrifices for the sake of trying to make the visuals being conveyed as clear as possible. While I got a few nice comments, it doesn't seem to have paid off with you (or some of the contest judges, for that matter).
Regardless, I at least met your criteria for "barely acceptable", which is nice. Hope you can get around to reading some of my better stories at some point.
Also:
Can confirm this is not deniable.
Well, Decent ain't bad.
5678442
Well, you’re on the money with the “especially now” part - given this contest ended four months ago, it’s certainly odd I’m only getting around to reading and reviewing all its entries now. Just scheduling and hesitation to blame for that, really.
The story quality for this contest ended up quite strong, given the difficulty of crossovers and bringing cartoon universes/characters into a written format. So the winning entries/honourable mentions were also going to be the ones that went above and beyond the norm. Perhaps also, that a decent few entries went for “recreate that type of cartoon short” meant that they kind of blended together in the judges’ mind, such that only the top tier ones stood out. Given only one of the four finalists was a straight-up recreation of the guest characters’ series style, I believe this is so.
Other folks seem to interpret Passable as a more snide rating then I do, for whatever reason. In any case, this was on the strong end of that tier: had the description been just a little smoother and more consistent, or lacking in the rough transitions to narrated voiceover, it would have been a rating tier higher. It’s a perfectly enjoyable and readable story. Just inconsistent and sloppy enough that it doesn’t linger, is all.
I’ll bear that in mind. You probably already know I am generally not warm on EqG stories, but short little comedies/slice of life stories, if the premise looks especially interesting, can go down well. We’ll see.
5678457
Honestly, I can't say I'm that familiar with you, so I didn't know that. But I'll keep it in mind. Hmmmm... with that criteria in mind, no promises, but maybe The Disciplinarians would be the best bet.
- Equestria Girls
- Comedy
- Drama
- Slice of Life
Principal Celestia is put on administrative leave and risks being fired after yet another magical disaster on campus. Can she outwit a vindictive superintendent?This was a very interesting contest. Shame more of these aren't done better, though.
5678464
You’ll see it firsthand next week, but this first batch of the sixteen (I reviewed them in order, as noted above) was rather rougher on average then the rest. Perhaps because these were generally rushed out quicker, while the rest were all submitted in the last 5 days before the contest, giving them that bit more preparation time. It’s a contributing factor, anyway.
In any case, there’s a fair chunk to come that are hefty recommendations overall, not just with the crossover/cartoon-as-written caveats. Look forward to that!
I've only read the Road Runner one, and agreed on your review of it.
I'm glad you decided to review the contest's entries, because I doubt I would have heard of it, otherwise.!
5678488
[Checks and verifies that the fic was featured on EqD.]
In all seriousness, I do remember your (brief) words on this fic when Logan reviewed it back in March (while the contest was still running!), and given I broadly agreed with FoME, even without reminding myself of its EqD feature, your reaction overlapping here too isn't a surprise.
5678504
Well, good thing you're tuned in now, in advance of a stronger slate for the next two weeks! What fortuitous timing, as they say. If, ah, not as fortuitous as it would have been had I done this less then four months after the contest in question, heh.
5678594
I wasn't the one who approved it for EqD...
5678626
I blame whichever individual/Mandela effect (I legit cannot remember which it was) informed me that EqD only has a single fanfic pre-reader these days… 
5678628
We probably could get by with one, but there's value in it not being unilateral and having others available for second opinions.
I don't really have anything to say about today's stories; I'm sorry to say they just aren't really my thing.
5679035
As I'd stated, due to the crossover aspect and the medium displacement likely to be a factor, they weren't really a thing for me going in, despite and because of my animation interest and expertise. As I'd stated to others, the contest entries reviewed over the next two weeks have a notably average higher quality, including a few entries strong enough to be heart recommendations to everyone. Given that, I'd still understand the above issues intimidating one off - were it not for the contest, I doubt I'd be reading even the strongest of these.
5679045
Welp. I'm just a little disappointed none of the ones selected did a crossover with Lovecraft- although, then again, that's not exactly limited to this contest prompt...
Th-th-that's all folks!