Fandom Classics Part 218: Luna, There's a Sentient Race Inside Your Mane

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

I guess Australia is airing episodes in advance now?  Nutters, I'd just last week caught up with everyone who doesn't follow the US release schedule!  Oh well, it was nice being able to interact with the fandom on equal footing for a few days, at least.  Back to not knowing what everyone else is talking about.

But hey, one nice things about fanfics from 2012: they never surprise you with new-to-you canon.  Check out my review of boardgamebrony's Luna, There' s a Sentient Race Inside Your Mane, below the break.


Impressions before reading:  The length (about 1500 words), title, and this line from the description--"A random short story I made to help bring the smiles"--don't have me expecting a lot.  On the other hand, none of them make this story sound bad, particularly; just silly and shallow, which is usually a recipe for a low star rating and a "fine for what it is, but not more than a transient pleasure" around these parts.  Still, I've been surprised by shallow-looking stuff that's got more to it than meets the eye before, so I'll stay hopeful going in.

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  It is pointed out to Luna that a spacefaring peoples have declared intergalactic war within the confines of her mane--a development she's less than pleased to learn about.

Thoughts after reading:  I did not know this until after I read the fic and saw it mentioned in the comments underneath, but apparently Luna, There's a Sentient Race Inside Your Mane was one of the fanfics that was on the reading list of that Princeton course on fanfiction from a few years back.  And it was probably a good choice for such a course, insofar as this is very much a "typical piece of fanfiction."

As it turns out, my pre-reading expectations were almost perfectly met: this is a silly little piece, which mostly mines humor from Luna's histrionics and the tracking of the space-race's progress.  Logic is thrown out the window from the start (for an example that's literally "from the start," there's no explanation for how Luna failed to notice the tiny ships darting around her hair for... years?  Decades?  Centuries?), but this isn't a flaw so much as it is a fact of the style: there's no logic to things, there's no ridiculous anti-logic, there's simply some things that happen in sequence, which are individually funny.

Eventually, the story runs out of jokes (or rather, silliness; though there's plenty of amusing reactions here, actual jokes are rare) and ends.  Or at least, stops; there being no particular arc to the story, and no attempt to tie things together into a proper conclusion, it's hard to call it an ending proper.  This is best viewed as a goofy scene, rather than an actual story.  And with that said, it feels like there's little else to add: this is what it is, and while it's not bad by any stretch, it's also not something that holds up to (or for that matter, benefits from) any sort of examination.

Star rating:

  ★☆☆☆☆ (what does this mean?)

This is not a good story, and anyone who approaches it looking for the hallmarks of a good story--or heck, of a story, period--will be disappointed.  With that said, I think it's perfectly fine for what it is: a goofy scene, meant to be chortled over by a reader with no expectations other than to reap a little amusement from Luna referring to her tail as "the Southern Universe."

Recommendation:  And in that spirit, I recommend this to anyone looking for a quick bit of mindless absurdity.  Readers looking for anything else--literally, anything--from their reading material should avoid.

Next time:  Keeping Your Hooves On The Ground, by InsertAuthorHere