Ponyfic Roundup 562

Read it Later story count: 91 (+1)

Words read this week: 10,335

Back to the more common format of five short stories this week. The total word count is very low, which is fortunate as I've had a lot going on. Nothing especially thrilling, just time-consuming! Anyway, here's today's list:

Hey Jealousy by Ruirik
Luna takes a shower by LittleAngelStocking
Trixie defeats the entire Legion of Doom in a Waffle House. [sic] by TheMajorTechie
A Break in Apple Bucking Season by RenaissanceBrony
Diary of a Time Looper by Kodeake

★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 4 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

UK PonyCon report, part seven: The merch haul

As usual, click to see this at a larger size

I remember a friend a while back expressing the hope that this year's UK PonyCon report wouldn't take until December to get finished. At the time, we both found that an amusing joke – but Blogger had other ideas! Still, here we are at last. I usually prefer to take my merch photo outdoors, but the British weather had other ideas, so I had to do it on a small table in several goes. Here's the rather short key this year:

1: A4 sketch of Chrysalis and Flufflepuff in Sailor Moon style, 2014 picture by JowyB that I pulled in his £5 sketch lucky dip.
2: Sunny Starscout Pez dispenser, picked up from the freebies table.
3: Izzy and Sprout print by Imalou. Everyone seemed to love this.
4: My Bronze Sponsor badge and sponsor lanyard.
5: Unsigned A4 print of Sunset Shimmer, also by Jowy; this was the image Rebecca Shoichet had piles of to sign during her autograph sessions.
6: "Britannia's Adventures" postcard.
7: Badge showing Britannia exploring, provided in my sponsor pack.
8: Fluttershy and Scootaloo trading cards by Kayou.
9: UKPC 2025 T-shirt by Avui. It's a lighter and less "muddy" green in real life.
10: Sticker sheet, provided in my sponsor pack.
11: UKPC 2025 Con Book.

Despite the smaller venue, the Sunday hotel evacuation and so on, UK PonyCon 2025 was very enjoyable indeed. Pleasingly productive in terms of the con's long-running good cause, too, with the auction alone raising £7,575 for the RDA. I haven't seen a figure for the total amount raised for charity, but it's perfectly possible that I missed it given everything that's been going on this year.

Wheels are apparently already turning behind the scenes in terms of seeking out a venue for UK PonyCon 2026. All I can say there is: thank you, and roll on next year! 

Ponyfic Roundup 561: Spotlight on Discordant

Read it Later story count: 90 (nc)

Words read this week: 42,596

It's been a ridiculously long time, and I apologise to ezra09 on the off-chance that they're still around (last Fimfiction login: March 2024) but finally Ponyfic Roundup is up and running again! As you may remember me saying a billion years ago or so, it's Spotlight time, even if the story is only just over my rough 40k-word lower length limit for such fics. Enough babbling; off we go!

Discordant by ezra09
Scootaloo, Discord, Mane Six and CMCs
G4; Adventure; 43k words; Apr–Aug 2012; Everyone

When Discord finds a crack in his prison he begins whispering to a lonely Scootaloo.

As that publication date will tell you, this is pre-reformation Discord The fic is set in late S2, and Discord is very much at his manipulative best (or worst) here. In fact, the chief joy of this story is the well above average characterisation of the draconequus. There's a nicely restrained undercurrent of his playful needling of Chrysalis, too – Cadance's wedding is within the story's chronology. You have to accept pre-"Sleepless in Ponyville" Scootaloo, orphan and all, but it's not hammered home too much with one or two exceptions. There are some parallels with "The Return of Harmony", but this Discord is clever enough not to try the same thing again. A good, readable story that, while it shows its age, is still recommended particularly for Scootafans. Top-end three. ★★★

As you'd expect, beyond here thou shalt find spoilers galore!

Logan returns!

Well, that took longer than I'd expected – or indeed hoped – but it seems that we're up and running again! So, first up: Ponyfic Roundup will be back on Friday. And barring any further messing about from the Blogger side of things, that is a firm date. I'll also be bringing you the long-delayed final part of my UK PonyCon 2025 roundup, which is simply the smallish merch haul I acquired this time. And then, if you're really lucky, you may even be getting the "Best Gift Ever" rewatch as well! Truly, the Hearth's Warming season brings good cheer. :D

Back soon I hope

Blogger has been unusable for a little while, but it's slooooowly coming back. Not good enough for proper posts yet, but yes I am alive and intending to return!

UK PonyCon 2025 report, part six: Monday

Sunny ponders where the Maretime Bay Development Corporation went wrong

All good things must come to an end, and so it was with UK PonyCon 2025. This had been an extremely enjoyable convention for me. Not devoid of issues, of course, most of them connected either with the limited size of the venue or the completely unforeseeable fire that caused the hotel evacuation on the Sunday morning. Still, everyone seemed to pull together, and I think I'll remember this UKPC as having a particularly nice atmosphere once things got going.

After a nice sleep, I made sure of a long and soothing shower – if I'm going to shell out for a posher hotel room than usual, I'm damn well going to make the most of it! Then it was downstairs to meet a few friends for breakfast. Surprisingly and a little disappointingly, I found the Premier Inn brekky to be less good than the Travelodge one. Running out of blueberry muffins – and not replenishing them – was a definite black mark. I've never had that happen at any PI before. Still, the chat and friendship mattered more.

Hawthorn has ended up being the person who organises the farewell coffee meets after UKPC. I'm not sure even he knows quite how that happened, but everyone seems to be happy with the situation. We'd chosen the Pret on the concourse of New Street station, right by Ozzy the mechanical bull, for our meet this time around. It was certainly very convenient for those travelling by train, but it turned out to have the drawback of there being insufficient space inside.

Seriously, there were dozens of these packs being handed out!

That meant we all stood around just outside the Pret instead, albeit sometimes wandering in to buy a takeaway-but-not-really coffee. Now, standing around and looking awkward is a special talent most of us have, so other than being a little hard on the hooves it worked out all right. James arrived and threw even more packs of Kayou cards at us until we agreed to accept them. I picked up three, one of which was to give to a friend. I think there were probably about twenty of us there in total, albeit not all at once. We should probably find somewhere we can sit down next year, though!

After we'd broken up, as it was a nice day I had a quick poke around a couple of shops in Birmingham city centre before heading home. I managed to sneak in my first proper muffin of the entire convention (though I'd had a savoury breakfast muffin on the Sunday morning) thanks to a quick trip to Greggs. Apparently several Pony people hung around in town for quite a bit longer, Mike for example, but I didn't see any of them before I arrived back at Moor Street station.

And that was pretty much that! Moor Street is a pleasant enough place to be on a sunny lunchtime, and the train was on time, so I simply whiled away the time on the Worcester Shires Discord group and listening to fandom music on my earbuds. (Aviators. Ponyphonic. Replacer. Look, you know my music tastes by now, surely? And yes, "Sounds of 2017" is coming at some point. You're just not getting a more specific timeframe just yet!)

I always did say MLP needed a wider platform

Emerging from that very long parenthesis, I found myself back at Kidderminster. Pity. Still, I was ready to go home. UK PonyCon is never a cheap weekend, even with my Saturday night saver, but I'd got a lot out of it this year. You know what they say friendship is. Well, it's true.

Next time: the merch haul!

Apologies

Yeah, I know, again. Another example of multiple things converging. This year has been truly ridiculous for that. All you need to know is that none of them are things you really need to worry about. I'll put up the review of Discordant next Wednesday, ie 19th November. I won't promise anything at all beyond that! My UK PonyCon write-up is already drafted, so I hope to get it out to you on Sunday anyway.