6-Star Reviews Part 141: Background Pony

To read the story, click the image or follow this link

Yessiree, the review you've been impatiently waiting for is finally here!  Late, no less--was there any other way?

Below the break, my (looong) take on shortskirtsandexplosions's Background Pony.


Impressions before reading:  I read the first chapter of this story after reading Inquisitor M's review of it (review of the first chapter, that is), and was definitely intrigued.  In fact, I've been really looking forward to picking this back up based on that first chapter, despite what I've since heard about the ending.

Though in truth, I don't know much about the ending other than that it's a downer--although I could hardly help but notice people ranting about it, on this blog and elsewhere, I've made an effort not to read their comments, to avoid spoilers for a story I knew I was going to be tackling sooner or later.  So, if you're one of those ranters, sorry for ignoring you!

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  Lyra Heartstrings is cursed: she can't leave Ponyville, and everyone she meets forgets who she is and everything she's said or done as soon as they leave her presence.  The only clues she has to her condition are the ancient elegies which haunt her, songs she is determined to learn and play in hopes that they'll help her regain her old life.

Thoughts after reading:  Let's start with the colored text: this story uses colored text.  As such, you need to read it on a color screen to get the full effect of the fic.  However, I gave some thought to the matter, including re-reading a couple of key chapters on my e-ink reader, and would like to suggest that the story is actually stronger when read in black and white.  Although it's difficult to explain why without getting into spoilers, I will say this much: there is little or nothing to be gained from the colored text which a reader can't discern from the words themselves (albeit at later points in the story), and the presence of chromatic writing calls attention to the framing device in needless and distracting ways.  Nevertheless, SS&E obviously intended for the work to be read in color, and I definitely recommend doing so if you want the full Background Pony experience.

A bit more on the framing device, now: the entire story consists of Lyra's diary, starting not too long after the curse that turns her into a living ghost takes effect.  Although journal-format stories often struggle to balance the needs of the narrative with the limitations of containing only what the focus individual would plausibly chose to write in a journal (or, even more often, completely ignore the latter in service to the former), Background Pony's central plot justifies much of the meticulous recording of conversations, musings, and other such: Lyra literally has no one else to talk to, after all.  Indeed, the author does a commendable job of showing just how starved Lyra is for meaningful interaction, from the obvious (when she talks about how starved she is for meaningful interaction, natch) to the subtle (describing Applejack's twang as "something that violins can only dream of" sounds like a stretch, especially coming from a musician... until you realize that Lyra isn't really commenting on AJ's timbre, whether she herself realizes it or not).  The dense, rambling style in which Lyra writes further drives home the nature of her plight; I've seen people bash the "purple prose" in this story, and while it's true that there are plenty of pretentious excesses here ("As a matter of fact, ponies have always been cursed since the beginning of time--not by a frigid dome of amnesia, but by a transitive sphere of ignorance that constantly threatens our very dreams and aspirations from their genius conception to their desperate expression."), they serve an important purpose: they serve as a gateway both to the depths of Lyra's isolation, and a window to her character.

Of course, dense and pretentious prose isn't for everyone, even when it has a concrete purpose.  But it's important not to confuse dense and pretentious prose with pointlessly dense and pretentious prose, and this story clearly belongs in the former camp.

No, the biggest problem with Background Pony (outside of yet another mediocre Zecorah ("Come and enter, stranger or friend.  For I have brews for all ills contained herein.")) lies in its inconsistent tone, and its beyond-languid pacing.  To start, the former: each chapter of this story has a wildly different tone, almost as if each were separate stories.  From the domestic desperation of Lyra trying to help a pony with an abusive father in one chapter to the psychological horror of some of the "discovery" chapters to the whatever-the-heck-SS&E-was-thinking-when-he-wrote-the-Pinkie-chapter chapter, this fic is all over the place in terms of mood.  To some degree, that makes sense; each chapter is a different journal entry, and one would expect a prevailing attitude to carry each such entry.  But these don't just feel like different moods; they sometimes seem to lack any relation save their protagonist and her plight.  Especially the Pinkie chapter.  While there is the odd reference gag throughout the story (I managed to both scowl and smile when Twilight explained that robots were banned from Equestria after the Coltlerian Jihad), Pinkie's chapter is basically one giant meta-joke, an unending stream of fourth-wall allusions, memes, and show/fanon name dropping.  Personally, I wouldn't have enjoyed reading it on its own, and when it interrupted a story I was interested in, I found it an incredibly unwelcome intrusion.

Although I may have especially disliked that chapter, the entire story is full of intrusions of varying levels of offensiveness.  You could probably gather as much without my telling you; a story with a simple conceit (if one ripe for exploration, admittedly) doesn't get to a half-million words without some padding.  Some of this came in the form of Lyra's wordy and self-absorbed musings, with their tendency to ramble and repeat.  More came from extended side-stories, which often ran tens of thousands of words themselves.  The relationship between Twilight and Moondancer, a childhood friend (and Lyra's non-role in the lives of both) is interesting territory to cover, certainly, but thematically it doesn't really add anything over its 70-pages; it merely reinforces what previous chapters have already made explicit to the reader.

This kind of dithering directionlessness is endemic to the fic as a whole, and as such there are places where the work loses all momentum.  There's a sort of meta-appropriateness to that, I suppose--Lyra's path forward is as nebulous to her as the story's direction is to the reader--but it's certainly easy to see how one could begin skimming large segments of the story, trying to find the end of one seemingly interminable sub-plot whose only purpose seems to be to reiterate what the reader already knows for emphasis (a not-unreasonable thing in and of itself, but taken to ridiculous lengths here).

Voicing is hard to judge, as all dialogue is transcribed by Lyra.  Thus, when one comes across overwrought philosophical arguments which seem out of place for the ponies having them (I'm looking at you, Twilight and Moondancer chapter), it's easy to suppose that Lyra's voice is merely slipping into the words she's attempting to write from memory after the fact.  Likewise, when characters begin to adopt vocal mannerisms which seem strangely formal (Pinkie using the phrase "atop the hill overlooking Ponyville" in a casual conversation, say), it's quite possible to interpret that as a feature of the journal format, rather than an error.  Nevertheless, I found issues like these to be a distraction to me.

As I mentioned in the last post, SS&E has a habit of writing "even still" for "even so," which irked me to no end as I read.  Past that though, the story is mostly well-edited, at least considering its size--such technical issues as I did encounter were isolated incidents, and widely spread.  About a half-dozen editors are credited at the end of the fic, and one a work this scale, I imagine they were every bit as necessary as the author insists they were.

And now, we come to the ending.  Alas, I'll have to break out the spoiler tag again; if you don't want the ending, er, spoiled, then don't click it.  Up here, I'll just say this: it's clearly not for everyone (I used the word "downer" above; for the sake of not giving away too much, I won't elaborate or correct myself up here), I had no problem with the ending.

The ending is a classic tragedy: Lyra is forced to make an impossible choice, between surrendering her existence or causing the deaths of millions.  Although she forges a third path, the ending is still bittersweet; Lyra retains her existence, but is unable to rejoin the ranks of the remembered.

So, it's not all sunshine and daisies, obviously.

That said, this is a far cry from Antipodes' "tragic ending out of nowhere," which I talked about last review.  SS&E goes to great lengths throughout to set up this ending, to the point where I would almost accuse it of being too obvious that the story must end with Lyra forever remaining unremembered; the direction of the story is made clear in chapter seven (when she realizes that she has no place in Morning Dew's life), and by the time Discord has been dealt with, it's easy to guess what the ultimate ending would be. Or at least, to realize that the story can't end with her breaking her curse.

So, it's thematically appropriate.  But is it satisfying?  Personally, I thought so; the entire story is about bearing burdens which we have not earned, and for Lyra to receive a reprieve at the end would have undermined that message. This is, in the end, a story about "what must be done," and the conclusion reflects that sacrifices do not fall only to the wicked.

So there's that.

Star rating:  ★★★☆☆ (what does this mean?)

At its best, Background Pony is intelligent, insightful, and demands reader investment.  At its worst, it's an interminable muddle which seems to aspire to nothing more than finding a way to make in 20,000 words a point which it made in 500 in a previous chapter.  Still, even the muddle is usually interesting in its own right.

Recommendation:  This isn't a story for readers who aren't willing to make a serious time commitment  obviously.  Readers with a low tolerance for lethargic pacing and tone shifts will probably lose interest in this after a few chapters, and anyone who needs a "happily ever after" to complete their pony stories will be sorely disappointed.  But those looking for an immersive journal experience, an intriguing hook, and plenty of food for thought should give this fic a try.

Next time:  The Immortal Game, by AestheticB

Yeah, I'm not diving from one 500,000-word behemoth straight into another.  Instead, let's go pick up a few 6-star stories and sequels which have completed since I passed by them the first time, starting with...

The Vinyl Scratch Tapes (Season Two), by Corey W. Williams