Ponyfic Roundup 462: Spotlight on A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies

Read it Later story count: 94 (-1)

Words read this week: 86,362*

As I trailed last week, this time I'm breaking my nearly absolute "no incomplete fics" rule to look at a story that's technically On Hiatus but which I'm not sure I really believe will ever be finished after a full decade without an update. Its writer is not new to Ponyfic Roundup, the highlight being Love on the Reef, which I gave four stars back in PR 196. This story, however, is something unlike anything else I have read on Fimfiction. Good thing? Bad thing? Read on...
* Word count excludes the 5,000+ words of "The Ending" blog post, although I have read that.

A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies by D G D Davidson
Other, Twilight and Mane Six
G1/G4; Dark/Adventure/Crossover/Human; 86k words; Dec 2012–Sep 2013; Teen

When the ponies decide to introduce themselves to Earth by entering a horse show, they call upon a legendary warrior from their distant past to get them ready. Featured on Equestria Daily!

You don't get many G1/G4 crossovers, but this fic really goes for that. The Mane Six have come to Earth as "ambassadors" and will publicly appear at a horse show (the how and why are vague). They need to be groomed, so who better than a young woman who has met talking ponies before? Megan Williams, or as Twilight Sparkle calls her, "Magog the Mighty" and her siblings "Danel" and "Moloch". What follows intersperses sections with them dealing with the G4 ponies and long sections showing what happened to the "Ponyland" of G1. It's not a story of sugar and spice, though those familiar with that gen won't be surprised. The author has clearly done a lot of research, bringing in not only screen characters like the Moochick but the G1 comics (remember the Jewel Wizard? You will...) and even stories from the toys' backcards. Whether you can stomach the harshness and (since there's no AU tag) reconcile it with canon... well, good question, but it's certainly a fascinating – if occasionally disturbing – attempt. Three stars because I'm glad I read it but I can't say I enjoyed it all. (Edit for clarity: Some I absolutely did, otherwise it wouldn't be a three!) ★★★

There will be, as ever with a Spotlight review, many spoilers beyond this point!

I'm honestly not sure where to start here, or indeed what to make of the fic as a whole. Something straightforward first, which is that Demon Slayer follows a common and sometimes rather irritating pattern of the chapters getting longer and longer as we go along. The first is under 3,000 words: the last is over 25,000. While we're talking about technical stuff, the writing itself is good. Hardly any typos and a style that lends itself to reading on. How you react to this tale will be down to what you make of the story, not the text as such.

As I mentioned above the break, D G D Davidson has clearly really gone to town on his research for this story. Having seen the whole of the My Little Pony 'n Friends series I probably know a bit more about G1 than the average brony (UK PonyCon has helped with that!) but the A/Ns at the end of each chapter in this fic demonstrate that Davidson has gone much further. I mean, we have ponies like Tux 'n Tails who never even appeared in the show yet who takes a fairly significant role in the story late on.

That's the whole marriage thing, which is (nearly) where we end up as a consequence of this fic's big deal: that the massive imbalance between mares and stallions in Ponyland, combined with the "Big Brother Ponies" (in G1, almost the only equine males) barely ever being around, is leading the little ponies to die out as a species. The only ponies who have appeared in recent years were created by the magic mirror of the now apparently dead Queen Majesty (a canon toy but never in the show).

"Magic mirror?" I hear some of you say. "Really?" Yes, really. This is also from the G1 comics, but Davidson has linked it with the other magic mirror we know about: the one in Equestria Girls. Given this fic's publication date, only the first film is referenced, and so stuff like Sci-Twi and the Sirens isn't relevant. A weird late scene (what am I saying? All of this fic is weird) has "our" Twilight awkwardly asking Megan if she needs any help with boyfriends. Yes, Flash does get mentioned...

Still, if we're into "icky shipping" then I'm not sure we can really look past the scene in which Danny kisses Surprise on the lips. Yes, yes, I did just write that. As the author points out, human/pony shipping (although the Danny/Surprise one isn't quite that) is in fact canon in G1 thanks to Heart-Throb's infatuation with human fairy tale characters. But even so. Talking of Heart-Throb, it's interesting to see her wanting monogamous marriage even after Wind Whistler decides a stallion+herd of mares setup is necessary for survival.

Ah yes, Wind Whistler. I rather like her in the show, with her wordy and intellectual turn of phrase? Here, though she starts out like that, she progressively becomes more and more unpleasant, setting herself up as a military dictator before too long and yearning for an empire of "love and tolerance" (oh yes). She even bursts into the Moochick's place where Molly and co are working out what will become the virtues embodied by the Elements of Harmony (no, really) and tries to arrest (G1!) Twilight, who isn't really alive by then.

Look, I know I'm not making a particularly good job of describing this story. It's just so utterly bizarre, sometimes in a very appealing way but sometimes less so (at least to me) and though I have to admire the world-building that Davidson put into all this, I find it hard to say that I really enjoy all of the result. All the more so given that the last part of the story (bar "The Ending" blog post I linked to at the top) consists of Megan telling (G4) Twilight about how Wind Whistler demanded the Rainbow of Light and how, when Megan wouldn't give it to her, Wind Whistler attacked...

I'll leave it there, just as the author did with the story. (Actually, what I just mentioned isn't quite the end, but hay, I can't spoil everything for you!) I haven't even covered the running theme of Megan's awkward family life, but I don't think that's a particularly big deal – even if it seems like that to her. She's still only eighteen when this story takes place, after all, and though she may have shot a broken-legged horse (she gets Stared by Fluttershy for recounting this) in some ways she's still a kid. To end as I began: I honestly don't quite know what to make of this fic.

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That really was quite a ride. Moving on... I've decided that there will now be two weeks of regular Ponyfic Roundup now, then on 1 November I will start looking at the stories that were to the judges' tastes in the second Thousand Words Contest. Doing things this way allows me to get to a few fics that I'd prefer not to keep waiting too much longer. Here's next Wednesday's quintet:

In Creeping Twilight by Shilic
Amber Hearts by Blondlionezel
The Iridescent Iron Rat by horizon
The Third Alicorn Conspiracy by starfox64x
Sweetie Ban by Casketbase77