Special review: Make Your Mark

The lighting inside the Bright House is really rather appealing

So, here we go with My Little Pony's real return to "non-cinematic" content: the 44-minute special that is Make Your Mark, preceding the full series in September. It's fair to say it's had a mixed response from fans, and although you can't treat IMDb scores as more than a vague indication its current score of 6.3* isn't especially great. That's similar to a lower-middle tier episode of Friendship is Magic. Still, I went in with an openish mind, having enjoyed A New Generation last year, so what did I think?
* At review publication time. It may well have changed since

Right, I'm putting a page break in here. If you go any further, expect spoilers by the tonne. You have been warned!

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.

In case anyone is wondering...

 ...yes, I have now seen Make Your Mark. I have a busy couple of days going on at the moment, but rest assured that I will be writing about the special here before long. Sneak preview? I liked it. Not without reservations, but I liked it.

Ponyfic Roundup 393

Read it Later story count: 89 (-1)

You know what, after almost a year away I have actually written a non-flashfic MLP story! I'll give it a shameless plug in a few days (because this is my blog and I'm allowed to do that) but I won't try to squish it in here where I want to concentrate on other people's fics. Once again I have managed to read four of them, so here's the list as ever...

Certain Advantages by The Descendant
The Juggler by SanityLost
Tenebrae by Pearple Prose
A Day With Dash by PonyThunder

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

My Little Repeats 114: "The Hooffields and the McColts"

FiM Flutters realises she can copy Pony Life Flutters' size-changing spell...

S5E23: "The Hooffields and the McColts"

14 Nov 2015

My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.1

The one with mice living in a pumpkin in old Amsterdam

Thoughts: It's not "What About Discord?" That's one plus to start with. On the downside, the real-life Hatfield–McCoy feud is not that well known on this side of the Atlantic, so its resonances don't necessarily hit. What results is an okay episode with some nice touches, and happily a well-written Fluttershy. Her best scenes are with critters, such as a lovely moment involving a tortoise (not Tank). It's a shame that 'Shy very much takes second place in her team-up with Twilight – she's almost a "with" rather than a "co-starring" in the episode. The hillbilly ponies do what hillbillies do in basically every hillbilly story ever. That might actually work better over here, as they're less overplayed in the UK than I suspect they are in the US. Back to FiM: the guest characters are reasonable, if not especially memorable (even Big Daddy McColt) and the various vegetable-based attacks are mildly amusing. The resolution at least makes some use of Twilight's alicorn-level magic, ending on a suitably Pony note of friendship and reconciliation. I gave this three stars last time, but I can't quite justify that now. So it's bumped down to two, but it's a top-end two. Not a memorable episode – I'm having to look things up already – but it passes the time. And, as I said, it's not "What About Discord?"

Choice quote: Fluttershy: "I'm Fluttershy and, um, I'm here too."

New rating: ★★

Next up is "The Mane Attraction", which in 2015 I liked with a few reservations. I suspect I'll feel similarly now, though perhaps with some different emphases.

Ponyfic Roundup 392

Read it Later story count: 90 (nc)

With Make Your Mark drawing ever nearer, I don't think it's going to be all that long before I start covering my first G5 fics in this spot. I don't yet know exactly how long it will be, but I'm sure it will happen this year and perhaps before the end of the summer... anyway, for now it's still an all-G4 slate. Here goes...

We Are Forever by PapierSam
At the Swimmin' Hole by SockPuppet
Twilight Sparkle, M.D. by alexmagnet
The Incognito Cart by bahatumay

★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 2 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

Make Your Mark three-minute trailer!

( Text link )

Less than a fortnight to go now until Make Your Mark hits Netflix! The trailer above looks to contain the first three minutes of the 44-minute special. As the thumbnail doesn't give away anything remotely significant, I'm not going to bother with putting the entire post behind a spoiler cut. However, I will mention a couple of things now that do contain some spoilers, so pass this point at your own risk