UK PonyCon details announced!

This is a very brief post as I don't have time for a longer one, but the essential details are that UK PonyCon 2017 will take place on 22-23 October at the Exhibition and Conference Centre of the UWE in Bristol. Tickets are not yet on sale, but will be released on Saturday 6 May. Here's hoping the convention enjoys another excellent iteration!

Pony Music Library 41: "Someone Like Me"

Surprise! I haven't given up on the PML at all. I just haven't happened to have had a time when my being motivated to induct something coincides with the time I have to do so. Now I do, even if today's entry is one some of you will have been expecting me to post since the start...

( Text link )

What? "Someone Like Me"

Who? Aviators

Which? Original song

When? June 2013

Why? Oh, come on – who do you think's choosing these entries? A lovely ballad, set before the Mane Six become a thing. Fluttershy begins it with feelings of loneliness and frustration, but by the end she's both embraced her uniqueness and discovered true friendship. I'm a big Aviators fan anyway (what, you can tell?) but this is way up the list of his songs. It's gentle and warm and everything Fluttershy should be.

Text Review Roundup: "A Flurry of Emotions"

I have to admit to finding this particular shot adorable

Thank goodness it's a one-episode week this time! I suppose I'd better enjoy this relative peace, given what's coming up in the way of early Canadian releases. :P I can't find a review by Cuddlepug this time; there also isn't one by Thrond Media Pony Corner, or at least wasn't when I was writing this last night. On the plus side, the Super Mario blog has updated in time for TRR this week. (To bring you up to speed: they felt E01 was "incredible" but E02 was "meh".) Back to the Flurrysode!

ArthurCrane – mixed (has its moments and is quite cute, but "just doesn't have the same appeal" [as "Baby Cakes"])

Batbrony Reviews – extremely positive ("this episode was a blast ... immensely enjoyable")

Derpy News – fairly positive (graded B+; "good episode ... some issues")

Louder Yay – positive (three stars; "a solid-but-not-spectacular [episode]")

MLEEP Reviews – fairly positive (7.5/10; "managed to surprise me")

One Man's Pony Ramblings – fairly positive (fun fluff despite poor moral)

The Super Mario Brony Blog – very positive (four stars; "fantastic and memorable portrayals from Twilight and her niece")

Super Recaps – mixed ("plenty to like" but moral "depressingly simplistic and judgmental")

TheDragonWarlock – fairly positive (graded B; "good character developments for Twilight" but "minor annoyances")

And so, the first Flashfic 150 comes to an end

Text Review Roundup will appear tomorrow.

It's certainly been quite the learning experience for me! At first I wasn't sure whether anyone would be interested, then I had to keep up with queries and suggestions during the event itself, and finally I got myself into a little bit of a pickle over feedback (tl;dr version: some people weren't expecting so much of it, while others couldn't get enough).

Despite these little wrinkles, though, there does seem to be enough interest in the concept for me to keep running with it. I'll probably tweak one or two things next time – such as allowing people to state on their entries whether or not they want feedback – but the general format will remain the same. The 150-word limit is certainly staying, as it's something a bit different.

The winner was Pascoite, who submitted this lovely Celestia piece and now gets the chance to choose the prompt for the May contest. I hope the experience I've gained over the last few weeks will allow me to improve the way I handle forthcoming events. And of course, if anyone's reading this and is thinking of having a go: you'd be very welcome to join us!

Ponyfic Roundup 154: Spotlight on The Immortal Game

Two wins out of two for Worcestershire at the start of the County Championship season. Joe Leach's ten wickets against Northants is good and it's bad. He's a great bowler and seems to be a good captain, but he's also going to be a target for the posher clubs soon. Still, promotion does seem a possibility this year.

Read it Later story count: 447 (+1)

Remember me saying that I never DNF a story? Well, here's the proof! I began reading The Immortal Game as part of my ill-fated liveblogging experiment a couple of years ago. It really nagged at me that I hadn't finished it, so I resolved to do so. And eventually I did. This is a review I should really have written a long time ago, especially as it's of a much longer fic than I usually read. (For those who care, my next 300k story will be Through the Well of Pirene, but don't expect a review of that for many months to come.)

The Immortal Game by AestheticB
Celestia, Luna, Mane Six and OCs
Adventure/Dark; 297k words; Oct 2011–Jan 2013; Mature (Gore)

Princess Luna leads the Elements of Harmony against the corrupted Twilight Sparkle

This is one of those "an old enemy has awoken" stories – although in this case, it isn't just the one. This means a good deal of fighting – and be warned, that M rating is there for a reason. There are a lot of detailed, graphic fight scenes. Actually rather too many, I think. Most of the canon characters are pretty solid for the time they were written, although the OCs are rather variable and I find one or two of the backstories hard to credit. Technically, it starts iffy and gets better, like Fallout: Equestria does, so it's worth pushing through. There are niggles, but by the end nothing deal-breaking. It goes on a bit for my liking, but manages a three-star rating for being grimdark without being gratuitous. ★★★

I'll talk a little bit more, which means spoilers, after the break.

Some news from UK PonyCon

UK PonyCon comms supremo daisyd has posted this update on the convention's forum. It's not the announcement of any specific details, but it is (to my eyes, anyway) a reassuring and sensible piece. One major change from last year is that the con has moved to the limited company setup that several other events use. That's a sign of UK PonyCon's success, so it's a good thing! There's also a very reasonable reminder that, just because UKPC might have got a venue very fast last year, that doesn't mean it's always going to be that way.

I still very much want to go to the convention again, having had such a wonderful time there in the past, but I'm happy to wait and see what gets announced before making any firmer plans than that. Whatever the case, I wish UK PonyCon 2017 every success. They've earned it.

Episode review: S7E03: "A Flurry of Emotions"

It's looking as though we're in for another example of the US not getting an episode first. The UK doesn't have the honour this time, though: episode five will be shown in Canada next Sunday, the day after E04 and six days before it airs south of the border. EqD is now reporting that the same thing will happen with E06. I haven't yet decided what to do about review scheduling here.

"They'll be dancing on air when they meet you..."

Back to episode three now! I'll confess that I wasn't looking forward all that much to "A Flurry of Emotions". This was partly since I hadn't really warmed to Flurry herself and partly because I was fearful of a rehash of "Baby Cakes", one of my all-time least favourite episodes. We had new writers for this ep: Sammie Crowley and Whitney Wetta. They'd apparently worked together before on The Loud House, but that meant nothing to me. How did they do? Well...

EFNW Scribblefest, plus some future plans

Okay, remember that nice surprise I mentioned a few days ago? The one that greeted me on the fifth anniversary of my Fimfiction membership? It was this: The Book of Ended Lives won the Rarity Prize in this year's Everfree Northwest Scribblefest contest. This has nothing to do with Rarity-themed content: TBoEL doesn't feature her at all. It's given for "elegance in writing". I was completely blindsided by this, especially as the way Scribblefest works you don't enter for a specific prize, but I'm sure as hay not going to complain about it!

So, what next for prize-winning author Loganberry? (Look, I'm human. I want to use that phrase once, at least!) I'm tempted to spruce up some of my older stories. They can't be republished as new fics, of course, and hardly anyone reads really old fics so it would mostly be for my own satisfaction. But that's okay. This doesn't mean I won't be publishing anything new. I still have quite a few ideas that I'd like to commit to virtual paper before I end my ponyfic career – and I don't plan on that happening for some considerable time to come. If we don't get a mid-season hiatus, though, I may not have that much time. We'll see.

Text Review Roundup: "Celestial Advice" and "All Bottled Up"

In the end there were 18 entries for the inaugural Flashfic 150 non-prize contest. I'm pretty satisfied with that, given that I had no idea whether I'd have any interest at all. Now I have to judge them! I'll announce the winner on Tuesday.

This may be the most terrifying thing in either episode

It really has been a long time since I did a TRR post. The last one was for Legend of Everfree back in early November, so I hope I can remember how to do them! For those new to all this, my aim is to summarise the opinions of text-based reviewers other than those who write on Fimfiction. This is a smallish group and one that tends to get a bit sidelined, with Equestria Daily only really interested in video reviews and Fimfiction bloggers concentrating on other Fimf posts. If you know any other regular show reviewers, please do let me know!

I'm going to cover both opening episodes here, which isn't ideal but is really unavoidable given the calendar. If the reviewer covered both eps in one post, click on their name/title to go to their full review. If they split them, click on each episode's abbreviation instead. This is a rather ugly way of doing TRR, but unless there's another back-to-back airing like this it will be a one-off.

ArthurCrane – CA: broadly positive ("above average"); ABU: mixed (likes Starlight; doesn't like Trixie)

Batbrony Reviews – CA: positive ("important and needed [for Tia]"); ABU: very positive ("hilarious")

Cuddlepug – both episodes: negative (graded D; "little ... justification for why people should still be watching")

Derpy News – CA: extremely positive (graded A; "refreshing change of pace"); ABU: very positive (graded A; "another fun episode")

Louder Yay – CA: fairly positive (three stars; "a reasonable start"). ABU: a bit more positive ("top-end" three stars; "pretty funny")

MLEEP Reviews – CA: extremely positive (9.5/10; "truly radiant"); ABU: negative (5.5/10; "great on paper, shitty in execution")

One Man's Pony Ramblings – both episodes: rather negative ("45 minutes of blah" but points for Tia in CA, Trixie in ABU... and Carrot Top)

Super Recaps – CA: broadly positive ("perfectly fine"); ABU: broadly very positive (Star/Trix fantastic; Mane Six subplot blander)

TheDragonWarlock – CA: mixed (graded B-; "repetitive"); ABU: rather negative (graded C-; "pretty weak ... lousy song")

Thrond Media Pony Corner – CA: rather negative (50%; "lightweight" but credit for Tia); ABU: negative (38%; "obnoxious ... shortage of jokes" but moral and ending are good)

Episode review: S7E02: "All Bottled Up"

Yesterday marked the fifth anniversary of my Fimfiction account, and I got a rather pleasant surprise to mark the date. More on that in a couple of days, but my priority for now is getting last weekend's episode reviewing finished.

Starlight doesn't half go through manestyles :P

It really doesn't seem like a week since my last episode review post, does it? ;) Anyway, Season Seven's episode two is not just a continuation of episode one, although it does share the same writers and some of the same central characters. As with the previous review, this one will be fairly short, though that's partly because I'm short of time before the next ep appears! Not that my reviews are generally vastly detailed anyway, of course. Past the break for the low-down.

Episode review: S7E01: "Celestial Advice"

"You think this makes it more likely I'll get a real episode? Oh, Twilight..."

And we are go with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season Seven! Okay, okay, I know we were go some time ago, but I can't help it if I've been on holiday. Never mind nuclear confrontations in Korea or snap general elections in the UK, this is the big one. Since for the first time the two episodes weren't (entirely) two parts of the same story, you'll get two shortish reviews: the first today and the second tomorrow. Text Review Roundup will be squashed in at the weekend if I can find the time! Having Lewis and Songco on the case was a promising sign, but come past the break for the actual review of the S7 premiere.

Italics and quotes and suchlike

New Pony episode today! Woooooooo!

Also, Equestria Daily briefly carried a story yesterday stating that clips from the forthcoming movie were shown at a coin in Thailand. The article quickly disappeared, though. Maybe the information was wrong, maybe the piece was incorrectly scheduled, maybe someone from Hasbro had a quiet word. If the screening did happen, I imagine we'll hear about it from an attendee soon enough.

This is one of those silly little posts that I couldn't find anywhere else to place, so you're getting it on its own. You may be surprised by the revelation that I have something approaching a personal style guide for Louder Yay. It's changed and evolved a little over the years, but at the moment this is what I try to do:

I italicise the show's name: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The same holds for its various abbreviations, such as FiM. There's a difference between "the Pony world", which refers to canon, the fandom, etc, and "the pony world", which is the one Fluttershy lives in.

Episode names get quotes: "Hurricane Fluttershy". Episode numbers are in the form S5E01. I tend to write out "Season Seven" or whatever in full the first time, but I'm not all that strict about it and I may not continue with that in the long term.

Names: I use Minuette and Bulk Biceps, not Colgate and Snowflake. On the other hoof, I use Carrot Top and Derpy. Bon Bon/Sweetie Drops is a special case, as the right name may depend on context. In fanfic reviews, I'll use the name the author uses, even if that is "Golden Harvest" or "Bright Eyes".

I treat fanfics as books, so their names are italicised: Where They Understand You. Chapters within those fics get quotes: "Fast Times at Cloudsdale High".

Major fandom events are generally given their official styles: BronyCon, BUCK, UK PonyCon. Otherwise, I follow the common British convention of capping up only the first letter if the abbreviated form is pronounced as a word: Lego, Nato, etc. That's why I write "Fimfiction" and not "FiMFiction". I abbreviate to "Fimf" fairly often simply because I do so in real life, too.

Other major websites: I've recently switched back to using a lower-case q in EqD. I should have done that earlier. UK of Equestria is UK of E, not UKoE. Chris's site is OMPR. This site is LY, though I don't exactly need to abbreviate it very often!

I never capitalise "brony" – I don't see any reason that the word should be treated as a proper noun. I don't use it all that often anyway, though I don't object to being classed as one. I rarely use the word "pegasister" at all, but I don't see anything wrong with it beyond silliness – and why is that a bad thing anyway?

I try to avoid using numeric dates, in order to avoid confusing American readers. If I forget, then I'll be using the European standard of DD/MM/(YY)YY. And I may be a non-believer, but I still use the AD/BC I grew up with rather than CE/BCE. In the usual British way, I'm semi-metricated: temperatures will be in Celsius, but human heights will be in feet.

The best official promo since the Hub days?

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It's starting to look as though Hasbro High Command has decided that promotional activities need to be stepped up a gear or three. Perhaps the approach of the movie has something to do with that, but whatever the case: this is a wonderful official promo video, rapping Pinkie Pie and all. It's not spoilery either, so nobody needs to miss out on it. I'd love to see more promos along these lines as the season goes on.

Ponyfic Roundup 153: Coco Pommel Edition

There's nothing quite as guaranteed to make me feel intellectually inadequate as a Bad Horse blog post, even more so when I read the comments. They're good reading, but they do heat my brain up somewhat! This time I at least understand bits of his post, thanks to my long-standing interest in the Roman Empire and its decline (and, indeed, fall). If you don't already, give BH's long-form posts a look.

Read it Later story count: 446 (-6)

I laugh in the face of the Evil Corporations who insist we call her "Miss Pommel". Ha! to you! Ha! I say! Coco she is and Coco she e'er shall remain. (Except in one of the stories I review here...) There aren't a huge number of Coco-tagged stories on Fimfiction, and there are even fewer that I actually wanted to read, but I did manage to find five that looked potentially appealing. This week's fics are:

Miss Pommel (or Current Resident) by MythrilMoth
Those Below the Hoof by playnwin
Sweetie's Manehattan Birthday by Czar_Yoshi
My Nightmarish Heroine by Quillamore
The Midsummer Theater Revival by plumander

★: 0 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0

Ship names

Occurred: Americans seem to be much more exercised by the Oxford comma than anyone from Actual Oxford would be. Remember that Oakhurst Dairy news story? Over here, it made the rounds for one day and then everyone forgot about it. Yet I'm still occasionally coming across Americans who bring it up. Nobody really cares about the Oxford comma over here: if you can answer the question "Is your meaning clear?" with "Yes" then that's good enough and consistency be damned. Just thought it was interesting.

Anyway, the other day, I reviewed a Rainbow Dash/Moondancer shipfic and assumed that this ship would be known as RainDancer. To my surprise, nobody else – at least on Fimfiction – seems to have used the term. If I really am the first and anyone wants to use the name, they're very welcome to it! Some ship names amuse me more than others. FlashLight and SunLight are among the established ones that I find fun, but there are a few others I can think of that I'd rather like someone to write simply because of the names. For example:

SunnyDelight (Sunny Rays/G1 Apple Delight)
DiamondDust (Double Diamond/Lightning Dust)
LunaSea (Luna/Sea Swirl)
FireGuard (Firefly/Royal Guard)
SherbetLemon (G1 Sherbet/Lemon Hearts)
SunShine (Sunset Shimmer/Twinkleshine)

I'm sure there are more, but that's as many as I can be bothered to think of. Annoyingly, I don't think there's a canon pony whose name ends in "leader", since CheerLeader would be close to unbeatable!

RCL "Correct the Record"

The Royal Canterlot Library is running an event from now until 23 April, and it asks the following question:

Which RCL-featured authors do you think should be refeatured, to showcase a story better representative of their strengths?

All you need to do is to choose an eligible author and pick another story of theirs you think would fit best. Note that any fic that's either been featured by the Pony Fiction Vault or gained the old 6-Star rating on Equestria Daily is barred from consideration. (And any that are already in the RCL. Duh. :P )

I'm not altogether keen on the voting method – upvotes on story posts in the nomination thread. That seems a little too open to abuse for comfort, and I'd also guess that stories nominated in the middle of the period will be at a disadvantage. It does have the merit of simplicity, but I still think I'd have preferred a method which did not allow people to see running vote totals. There's also the question – already acknowledged by the curators – of how the RCL should approach the issue of refeaturing in the future. Personally, I hope it's kept to a minimum; I may expand on that at a later date.

Despite those reservations, I may nominate something. I don't intend to name a story here, or indeed anywhere other than in the nomination thread: urging people to vote for a specific story while signal-boosting this event is expressly prohibited. Also, note that you're supposed to say why you think the story you're nominating is a better fit for that author than their existing entry. "X is a great writer and deserves another feature" isn't the idea at all.

End of waffle. The RCL "Correct the Record" thread is here.

Shameless self-promotion time!

Yes, that blue spot is supposed to be there :P

Look, it's my blog. That's what it's for. :D Anyway, It Doesn't Matter Now has been accepted by Equestria Daily – and here's the feature to prove it. Old story it may be (published October 2014) but I've always been pretty happy with it and it's been well received by most readers, so I'm very pleased to see it up on EqD. My inner Fluttershy is doing the "yay" thing right now.

I'd like to thank Pascoite for encouraging me to submit IDMN, Pascoite (again) and Ferret for pre-reading suggestions, and the people – who prefer to remain in the shadows – who gave me feedback both before and after the story's initial publication. Also, of course, to everyone who's taken the time to read the fic over the years, regardless of what you thought of it. You're all great.

First movie trailer released!

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We have our first official look at the My Little Pony: The Movie style in motion! It's very much a teaser trailer, and it really doesn't spoil much if anything: there's no indication of the film's plot, there are no appearances by the major new characters we've been told about. There are very brief non-speaking appearances by a couple of ponies I don't recognise, but there's no indication as to who they might be. Unless you're a total and utter spoiler-phobe, you can probably get away with watching this one. Still, I've made sure that I used the video with a totally non-spoilery preview image!

Unfortunately, the look of the trailer isn't quite what it should be, with Rainbow Dash especially looking rather odd around the eyes. As art director Rebecca Dart explains, an error was made with rendering: "they didn't convert the 16 bit images to 8 bit properly and it crushed all the shadows". She is not at all happy with what happened, saying that she "never would have approved this". On the plus side, we now know that the finished article will be better. Since Ms Dart was also art director on Season Five of the show, she has reassuring form when it comes to Pony.

Ponyfic Roundup 152: The Native Hue of Resolution

Read it Later story count: 452 (-6)

Time for another bunch of stories featuring ponies. Yes, I know this will come as a shock to some of you, but I'm afraid I'm not going to budge where that's concerned. If you want to read about a cute family of aardvarks who accidentally discover something nasty in the termite mound then you're just going to have to do so elsewhere. There's a colourful theme to this week's titles:

The Star in Yellow by Blueshift
Pink Pegasus by AnnonyMouse
White Day by allykitty
What Happened to the Orange Frog? by LordSmokedMeatsandFishes
Blue by Pastel Pony

Legend of the Lavender Alicorn by Grenazers

★: 1 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0

Plans for the Easter period

Well, it looks as though one of my concerns about Flashfic 150 – that nobody would take any notice – has been laid to rest. 47 members at the last count and the inaugural contest has five entries already, which is nice given that there's over a fortnight to go. Naturally, there'll be no comments from me indicating any preference until I actually announce the results later in the month.

On to the main business of the day. I'll be away for a week or so over Easter (Thursday to Wednesday) and I will have only very limited internet access while I'm on holiday. That means there'll be a few departures from the normal Louder Yay schedule.

This week, things on the blog will continue as usual, with Ponyfic Roundup appearing tomorrow (5th) as you'd expect. I do have an EqD submission I want to get on with this week, but you shouldn't notice any difference from my usual approach to Louder Yay itself. Yes, that means Logan making up any old rubbish as he goes along. Hey, it's done the trick for me for four and a half years now!

Next week, there will be a Ponyfic Roundup as usual on the Wednesday (12th), but that will be the last new material to appear here for a little while – unless by some miracle I manage to schedule a post or two. I'll try to remember, but if everything goes quiet it doesn't mean that I've decided that Pony is not worth the candle and decided to take up the contrabassoon instead. Well, not necessarily.

After Easter, the most noticeable change will be that the S7 premiere review will be late. (Bolded because otherwise someone's bound to ask!) I'll get home on Wednesday (19th) and I very much intend to have the review up before episode three appears the following weekend. There will also be no Ponyfic Roundup that week as I just won't have time to fit one in.

Things should return to normal by the time episode 3 appears. At least, to whatever passes for normal in these parts. And PR that week will – I hope – be a Spotlight edition, focusing on a story I hope finally to have read by then.

Comic mini-review: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic #52

None of the covers particularly jumped out at me this time

The Shadow Lock (he does seem to have a two-word name) arc continues, and it does so in a pretty similar vein to the way it began. Our antagonist is taking forever and a day to get round to explaining himself, but by the end it does seem as though we're on the verge of an important reveal. I do want to give a special nod to Tony Fleecs this time: there are some dramatically drawn panels in here. The page design is nicely varied, too. There's a "cement horseshoes" joke that I'm not entirely sure is appropriate, but for the most part this is a case of "if you liked the last issue, this is more of the same". It therefore gets the same star rating! ★★★

"Imposing Sovereigns" competition results

Yeah, I know I never got round to mentioning FanOfMostEverything's "Imposing Sovereigns" competition here. My bad, though at least it's not as if it really needed more of a signal boost, considering how it caught people's attention anyway. And no, I didn't enter: I'm terrible at having ideas for these things at the right time, and I didn't. I have been keeping an eye on it, though, and FOME has now announced the winners!

I haven't actually read any of these stories yet, but there are six stories mentioned on the page I just linked to, so they'll make a nice Ponyfic Roundup post at some point in the not too distant future. Something that delights me is that three of the six authors are relatively little known, with fewer than 50 followers at the time of writing. Indeed, the writer who came second has twelve followers and only joined Fimfiction in August 2016.

The winner was someone who is well known – but Aragon's story seems to have picked up almost universal praise. It's also Comedy/Adventure, one of my favourite genre combos, so I'm looking forward to it a lot. Even if it is the longest of all six mentioned fics at over 18,000 words, you annoying author, you. :P

Bits and pieces

There's wall-to-wall Brexit over here at the moment, and even as a politics junkie it's getting a bit much for me. (For the record, I voted Remain and would do so again, but you can't win 'em all.) So it's time for some ponies.

The first – and hopefully not last! – Flashfic 150 contest is now open. Anyone with a Fimfiction account is welcome to join in before the contest (which, again, has no prize) closes in three weeks' time. Yes, that is a very relaxed schedule. This is deliberate. This month's prompt is "Getting Warmer".

Stable-Tec Studios have officially cancelled their Fallout: Equestria animation. I can't in all honesty say I'm surprised. From the outside, animation seems to me to be about the most demanding of all the various types of fandom project, and this particular one was huge. As of now, the SFM (which doesn't interest me) and radio play (which might) are still live. As of now.

Friends Forever #38 – the last in the series, focusing on Celestia and Luna – has been delayed. It should have appeared last Wednesday, but ComicList now has it as the dreaded "TBD". I am not pleased about this, and I will be even more not-pleased if the issue is cancelled. I was annoyed enough about Art Gallery II.

Also in comics, Bleeding Cool's Lauren Sisselman liked the "Deviations" issue, awarding it 8/10. I'm not entirely sure I agree with her suggestion that it would be a fun issue for non-regulars, though.