The future for Louder Yay

That title is carefully chosen. If I'd written "The future of..." then it might have come across as implying that this blog was on its way out. I'd like to make it clear that this is not the case. I am still very much enjoying MLP and its fandom, and I don't intend to stop Louder Yay any time soon, or to repurpose it as something entirely different. With that out of the way, here's what's in my thoughts at the moment.

Right now, I'm doing my "Sounds of 2011" posts about what was popular in brony music in the first full year of the fandom. I can't imagine these have enormously wide appeal these days, and I'm conscious of the fact that they take up a lot of the blog. Nevertheless, I do enjoy writing them and I intend to carry on (with one tweak, which I'll explain tomorrow) until the chart is complete. If I do 2012 and 2013, and it is an if, I'll probably adopt a more concise format.

At some point I'll do a post-season review, in which I'll touch on topics such as the Student Six's introduction, my favourite and least favourite episodes, how S8's new writers have performed... and, as always, I'll assess how the season treated Fluttershy. I'd quite like to make this an audio review (in which case I'll stick a title card on it and put it on YouTube), but there'll be a text version here too.

It's widely believed, including by me, that S9 will be the final season of Friendship is Magic. While nothing is certain until publicly confirmed by Hasbro, I would be very surprised indeed if S10 became a thing. I do think it's more than possible that S9 may be followed by a 44-minute post-season special in order to wrap the whole series up in a reasonably unhurried way, but that's as far as it goes.

Once the show is over and done with for good, there'll be no new episodes for me to review. My current plan is to fill this gap by rewatching FiM in its entirety and giving my thoughts on each episode in turn. This will not take the form of a full-length review of each ep, as that would be just too much work. Instead, I'll probably write a paragraph for each one, pointing out whatever catches my attention.

If I do this marathon rewatch as I currently plan, it will be done at a reasonable pace. My current thinking is to watch two or three episodes a week. I would certainly include FiM specials and the movie. I might also add Equestria Girls movies and specials, but I'm unlikely to include the EqG shorts; there are too many and most of them don't interest me enough. At a guess, the whole thing might take me a couple of years.

One current feature I intend to carry on with is Ponyfic Roundup. There aren't many of us regular fanfic reviewers still standing, and the stuff still interests me enough that I'm willing to read at least a few fics each week and write about them. Even though Fimfiction has steadily fewer new non-Mature stories submitted each month, there are still more than enough from the past seven years that I haven't read.

And then there's G5. Rumours and leaks aside, we know more or less nothing about G5. I intend to give it a chance, and I think my slightly broadening MLP horizons since I started watching G1 from time to time may help this. I no longer feel that FiM is the only Pony with any merit at all. I'm not sure how much I'll cover G5 as a show and any films it might produce, but that's a wait-and-see thing for now.

If UK PonyCon continues and if I continue to attend, I'll still write about that. The same goes for any other cons that may still spring up. G4 merch is likely to be sold for some time after the end of FiM – it was still fairly easy to find G3 merch in UK shops in late 2012 – so that's another possibility. I'll probably continue to avoid all that much coverage of Fandom Drama™, though. It's rarely interested me greatly.

So, there you have it. Louder Yay will continue, subject to anything in my life making it impossible for that to happen. I can't promise that I won't leave the fandom entirely, but what I know about myself suggests that it's unlikely. I strongly suspect that I'll be a My Little Pony fan in some way for the rest of my life. If there's anything you'd especially like to see me cover after S9, please let me know in the comments!