Thoughts of a Ponyfic Reviewer 6: See Ponies

It's been a while since I did a post in this series. This one won't be very long, but at least it's something! I've been musing on the fact that, of us few remaining regular reviewers, we're not always reviewing exactly the same thing.

What am I talking about here? I'm talking about the difference between reading and readings. For example, Present Perfect has a substantial number of readings in her reviews. Mike has at least an occasional one in his. But me? As far as I can think, in over 400 Ponyfic Roundups, I have never reviewed a fic without reading it on a screen or on paper.

It's interesting to think about how much of a difference this makes. Of course, there's a distinction between a straightforward "talking book narrator" reading and a Scribbler special with guest VAs, sound effects and the like. Listening to the latter type especially has some significant points of difference from reading the story in text.

As a simple example: something that tends to infuriate me in a fic is when authors consistently mis-spell character names. "Pinky Pie" is a classic example (and "pinky pie" is worse). This problem doesn't exist if you listen to a reading of the same fic – or at least it does, but you don't know it's there. The same goes for iffy speech punctuation.

I don't think any of this is a problem, as long as a reviewer mentions when they've been listening to a reading instead of reading the text – and certainly the two I named above do that. But since I prefer to read fics, I shall continue to plough my own furrow. Anything you come across in Ponyfic Roundup will have been looked at, not listened to.

Thoughts of a Ponyfic Reviewer 5: We are not the Only True Arbiters of Good Ponyfic

Because anxiety, I have to say this first: this piece has been mostly ready and waiting for me to get it finished for ages. If you're wondering whether it's a subtweet (oh, you know what I mean) at something you said, it isn't.

Today my subject is something I confess I have sometimes struggled to get right. My job as a ponyfic reviewer is partly to give authors constructive feedback but, first and foremost, to help people reading this blog to decide whether they'd like to read any of the stories I cover. It is not to make them feel they're being lectured. For example, consider these two (made-up) summing-up passages from reviews:

1. "If you can look past its hurried pacing and a number of minor but persistent grammar and spelling errors, this fic may be worth a look if you want an undemanding short read."
2. "If you have low standards when it comes to pacing and grammar, I guess you may still like this fic."

Although the second passage is the more concise, it's also the poorer summing up. Even if I don't mean it that way, that passage can easily come across as patronising and even sneering. Worse, it suggests that I the reviewer am the Only True Arbiter of Good Ponyfic, and that someone who disagrees with me must surely be doing so because they don't care as much as I do. Nope. Wrong.

Yes, I know it's easy to get frustrated when a story which seems to have glaring flaws becomes enormously popular, to wonder how it is that all those people can't see those flaws when they're staring you in the face. We've all been there. Nevertheless, it's not for us to tell (or even imply to) readers who like that fic that they're doing it wrong. Because they're not. They're not us.

This isn't so far removed from another principle of good reviewing: play the ball, not the man. We can criticise a story all we want, but telling its author outright that they "really need to stop writing this stuff" is a no-no and rightly so.¹ Much the same applies here: again we can criticise a story all we want, but if we shade into condescension towards the people who like it then that's our problem, not theirs.
¹ There are a few exceptions, such as unrepentant plagiarists

The best reviewers can simultaneously point out flaws in a story, even serious flaws, and give those reading its review a good idea of whether they'd be likely to enjoy it anyway. This is the aspect I tend to find the trickiest, since my reviews start from a position of "this is how I feel about it" and are perhaps therefore less... "professional", I suppose, than some other reviewers' assessments.

Still, even if I don't always get the combination right in my own reviews, I do at least acknowledge that it is there. Although some things are outright errors – barring specific context, "Pinky Pie" is one such – it still doesn't mean that a reader has low standards or doesn't care if they nevertheless greatly enjoy a fic that persistently makes those errors. It just means the errors don't put them off too much.

To adapt a common writing adage, as reviewers our main task here is to show our readers what a fic is like, not to tell our readers what they should like. We're writing these reviews for them.

Thoughts of a Ponyfic Reviewer 4: Why rate, anyway?

 All being well, I'll have a review of Make Your Mark up here tomorrow.

Some while back, a friend made an interesting point to me. They mentioned that, in another of their interests outside My Little Pony, people held shows at which they demonstrated what they'd created. It would, said my friend, feel pretty weird if someone went around such a show giving star ratings (or something of the kind) to each person's creation. So why is it common for ponyfic to use rated reviews?

I think I have an answer to this, although it's not a perfect one. That answer is time. Consider this: you often get rated reviews for albums, but you hardly ever do for individual songs. It's common for art exhibitions, but rare for a single painting. Film and computer game reviews generally carry ratings, whereas you don't see this for adverts even if they're very popular (for the UK, think the John Lewis ads every Christmas).

All the things I've mentioned take a considerable investment of time on the part of the consumer. Although someone really into art would say that a good picture can repay many hours of study, most people will decide whether they like a drawing in a few seconds – and if not, they can move straight on to something else. But if you want to watch a film, that's going to mean spending a couple of hours of your time on that one thing.

The same applies to ponyfic. Sure, a very short story can be consumed in a few minutes – though even that's longer than it takes to glance at a photo – but at an average reading speed a medium-short fic of say 20,000 words is going to take you at least an hour to get through, and a 100,000-word novel will take five or six hours. That's a considerable investment on the reader's part, even if (as is likely) they're already well disposed towards the general subject of MLP.

If you're physically present at an exhibition on a theme you're interested in, then you can walk around and scan the displays, getting a good idea very fast of which ones you might want to take more time on, for example to speak to the creator. That's not nearly as easy for ponyfic, since you only have the description, genre tags and cover art to go on. Hence the extra help that ratings can give.

As an aside, this means that having several active reviewers is a particularly good thing, since you're not beholden to one person's opinion. With the smaller fandom these days there aren't many of us regular reviewers left, and so Mike Cartoon Pony's entry into the arena a few months ago was particularly welcome. Anyway, there you have it: a significant reason for ratings is that ponyfic is time-consuming, for readers as well as authors.

Thoughts of a Ponyfic Reviewer 3: Just Another One?

Most of the time, reviewing ponyfic is a good deal of fun. I wouldn't have been doing it for seven and a half years if it wasn't. But not everything about it is sunshine and rainbows, and one of the things I don't enjoy is having to give a story a negative review – setting down a one-star rating at the end of the paragraph is always a disappointing experience, and all the more so if I'd gone into the fic with high hopes.

I'm always conscious that there's a real person on the other end of this. The author of the fic may or may not have a realistic idea of their writing level, although in my experience it's really pretty rare for anyone to be that far out. Not all writers care what external reviewers write, and there's no shame in that. But for those who do, seeing that single star can be a harsh experience. How much should I take that into account when writing?

One thing I am not going to do is to write only praise. There's a place for recommendation blogs, certainly, but that's not the same thing. It's imperative that a reviewer is honest, otherwise what's the point in reviewing at all? But I do always try to look for some good in a story, whether it's an interesting choice of character or an imaginative setting. Putting praise first can help to draw some of the sting of the criticism that follows.

The most usual reason for a one-star rating is that a fic simply doesn't hold together well as Pony fic – for example, a story that might work well enough on Earth but completely ignores the presence of flight and magic among ponies. Fics with a lot of technical errors, to the extent that they become actively wearying to read, also tend to get ones. Moral considerations are rare, as if I hate a premise that much I won't read a fic in the first place.

In any case, I don't want to drive anyone away from writing ponyfic. If the author enjoys doing it, that's reason enough in itself. But Fimfiction is a place where, in general, ratings and reviews are considered a part of the game. That isn't always the same in other fandoms and interests (that could one day be a Thoughts entry in itself) but it is here. I'm comfortable that an honest one-star rating is a fair thing to give – just so long as it is given fairly.

Thoughts of a Ponyfic Reviewer 2: If You're Gonna Dish It Out...

I've always felt that if I'm going to engage in the – let's face it – rather strange game of reviewing and rating other people's stories, I should allow them to do the same to mine in return, should they so wish. Actually, I think that in general it's better if ponyfic reviewers take this approach. The easiest way to do this is, of course, to have your own stories out there for people to comment on. This is in fact the usual practice.

Consider: the main individuals still in the "regularly reviews ponyfic" game are probably Present Perfect, PaulAsaran and me. Including these three and a non-exhaustive bunch of high-profile reviewers who've now moved on, the published story counts are, with active reviewers bolded:

Present Perfect: 96
PaulAsaran: 69
Foals Errand: 48
Titanium Dragon: 43
Loganberry/Louder Yay: 30
Chris/One Man's Pony Ramblings: 21
Soge: 8
Singularity Dream/City of Doors: 3

Of course, this isn't everyone, as lots of people have written at least the occasional ponyfic review in a Fimfiction blog or wherever. There are also the more substantial contributions from the members of the Royal Canterlot Library, Seattle's Angels and – now we're going back a bit! – The Royal Guard. All now moribund-to-dead in 2022-world: indeed, in the case of TRG, their Fimfiction group has long since been entirely removed.

Although I can't cover everyone, I do want to mention one more person, who is in a kind of class by himself. That is Pascoite, who remains very active. Although he keeps the amusing "occasional author" line in his Fimfiction bio, in fact he beats all the others mentioned here with 98 published stories – the last uploaded only a week ago. He doesn't review ponyfic much now,¹ but scroll through enough anime review posts and there's still the occasional Underappreciated Author Spotlight, so I'm going to bold his name here.
¹ I don't count pre-reader feedback for Equestria Daily, since as a rule that is not public

I do allow and indeed encourage mini-review feedback (within certain limits) for the monthly Flashfic 150 contests I run, but there is no requirement to have published ponyfic to give those. I do very occasionally submit a non-competitive flashfic myself, though. There's also the whole other area of YouTube and the like. I tend to find video reviews frustratingly slow to get to the point, so I very much prefer text-based thoughts, which is a major reason I'm not considering video reviewers in this blog post.

It's interesting that all the reviewers I've mentioned have at least a few published ponyfics, and most have a total well into double figures. I can't speak for any of the others, but I think I would feel rather uncomfortable if I was pronouncing on other people's Pony stories but not giving any kind of "comeback" – sure, they're able and very welcome to comment, but I rather like that people can look at my writing and see that I'm neither completely illiterate nor a Nobel Prize candidate.

Ponyfic isn't everything, of course. I don't think there's any way to get a total word count for Louder Yay, but I'd be willing to bet it greatly exceeds the amount I've written for all my fics combined. I always leave comments open on here, so that's also a way of allowing people to have their say on what I've written. The question of "why review anyway?" is a different one (and one I may return to) but for me, at least, if I'm going to dish out verdicts then I feel I should be able to take them as well.

Thoughts of a Ponyfic Reviewer 1: Background Details

Thanks to Mike Cartoon Pony for indirectly inspiring this post.

Yes, this is a series now. Woo. It's not going to be especially structured or appear at regular intervals, but then this is me we're talking about here; what do you expect? :D

Something that's always pleased me in ponyfic is when an author takes the trouble to get background details right, or simply to add a fun little Easter egg. Sometimes these are little bonuses that the reader probably wouldn't even notice if they weren't familiar with the subject, but which give those readers an extra smile or two. For example, a story I read a while back¹ had a glancing reference to the Theresa May/field of wheat story, which I doubt anyone much in the US has ever heard of. It amused me so much that I had to stop reading for a moment because I was laughing so hard.
¹ The Cloptimist's very good Red/Yellow, PR 249.

It's also very satisfying as an author when you've done this and someone compliments you on it. It happened to me recently, in the "background research" sense rather than the "Easter egg" one with The Unbearable Lightness of Bucking, for which I did a reasonably significant amount of preparatory reading on existentialist philosophy. (If you haven't read the fic, trust me, it is relevant.) Although it's perfectly possible to enjoy the story without that knowledge, I was delighted when someone who clearly did know the subject complimented me on my use of it. It was a lovely feeling.