Ponyfic Roundup 398

Read it Later story count: 87 (nc)

Another very busy week for me, so only one of the four fics I read this week was longer than 2,000 words. "But Logan," I hear you cry, "there are only three in the list!" Indeed so. Sadly, the fourth story (The Fire from memphisgurl) turns out to have been plagiarised: it's almost word for word the same as this story on Wattpad by TheLilSarah.¹ This wasn't the only such case, either. memphisgurl was banned from Fimfiction for that years ago, but since I found the story via search I hadn't realised that fact at first. Naturally, I cannot review it as if it had been honestly written, so this week I'm afraid you only get the three.
¹ The original's not bad, either. Worth a look if you don't mind the lack of ponies

On the Rocks by iisaw
Twilight Has Grey Hair by Fort Impression
Autophobia by BlabideeblahMLP

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

Coming up on this 'ere blog...

Obviously I'll do my usual look back at the FiM season just rewatched, but before I move on to S6 I may take a little time to consider a couple of other things. In particular, I'd like to have a serious watch of Jenny Nicholson's "The Last BronyCon: A Fandom Autopsy", Yes, I know it's now nearly two years old, and in fact I have looked through it already – just not in the way one does when preparing to write about it in public. It's probably about time I gave it a full-on look.

It has almost four million views on YouTube now, which is enormous for a Pony video these days – although clearly a large chunk of those are people who know Nicholson from her other work and (in some cases, at least) know next to nothing about this fandom. I know from my casual watching of the video that I'll find some parts of it more irritating than others, but again I'm not really up to writing about that until I rewatch it with proper concentration.

It's always interesting watching this stuff from outside the US, too. A kind-of comparison just popped into my head: recently I rewatched Monsters, Inc. and its later prequel Monsters University. The first film is a cast-iron classic I would quite happily watch again right now. The second, though entertaining, isn't in the same league, and I think it's partly the setup. Fraternities are so American; they just don't exist here, so they're not relatable for me in the way kids having nightmares are.

Anyway, before all that, there'll be the usual Ponyfic Roundup on Wednesday. For what it's worth, while I'm here: yes, I am still watching Tell Your Tale, and I'll probably continue to do that given how short the episodes are. The things really don't have to be that good to be worthy of five minutes of my time per week. They're generally in one ear and out the other stuff, though. I'm not bothering with the IDW comics, just reading all Silver Quill's spoilery analyses. :P

My Little Repeats 117: "The Cutie Re-Mark, part 2"

"TV-Y show and we still get killed on-screen, and they wonder why we're angry..."

S5E26: "The Cutie Re-Mark, part 2"

28 Nov 2015

My original rating: ★★★★ (for the whole two-parter)
IMDb score: 8.4

The one with furry dice

Thoughts: This isn't as good as part 1. Not a controversial statement, I know, but it isn't. This is where Packed With Stuff does detract from the quality. And, yeah, Starlight's reason for her ending up running Our Town is rather weak,* though I'm not quite as hard on that aspect of the writing as some: it wasn't just that Sunburst got his cutie mark first, as is occasionally stated, it was that he instantly went away and Starlight never saw him again, implying he didn't even come to say goodbye. Speaking as someone with social anxiety, that's not some minor thing you'd lightly brush off. Okay, becoming an evil cult leader is seriously overdoing it, but it's not just the "friend gets cutie mark first" aspect. The episode as a whole is action-packed and at times really pretty exciting, with Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis both charismatic villains still—but you don't want to look at it too hard, as is often the case with finales. Twilight being the single most important figure in existence† is frankly irritating, and I like Twilight. Still, the "wasteland world" has stuck in a lot of people's memories, including mine. I can't find this outright bad, as it's just too entertaining, but it's clearly worse than part 1. The pacing doesn't help: it rattles along nicely for two acts, but then it's as though they realised about eight minutes from the end how much still had to be squashed in. Oh, and the song is really not very memorable. Dropping the episode's rating to three stars, albeit a high three. (Edit: this episode. The finale as a whole still rates four.)
* Even so, "It's Maud's fault" (which as we'll see later, is partially true!) would be even sillier
† And her friends, as iisaw points out in the comments. Sloppy there from me

Choice quote: Starlight to Twilight: "Spare me your overblown ego."

New rating: ★★★

And finally that's all for Season 5! As I did after S4, I'll make one or two season wrap-up posts before I move on to Season 6.

Ponyfic Roundup 397

Read it Later story count: 87 (-2)

It hasn't escaped my notice that I am rapidly approaching Ponyfic Roundup 400. For once I do have an idea about what to do with that, though it may well turn out to be a stupid idea. We shall see, and of course so shall you. Well, unless I get cold hooves and decide it's so stupid that I'm going to do something else instead or run away to sea. Ahem. I've been busy this week, so all four stories this time are shorts:

Ich Steh' Mit Einem Huf Im Grabe by axxuy
Someone Steals Rainbow Dash's NFTs by PresentPerfect
Princess Celestia and the Laser Pointer by SirNinji
Two-Player Game by mushroompone

★: 1 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

Make Your Mark extended theme

MLP G5 – Let's Make Our Mark Together

Okay, this isn't all that new, but I wanted to post something here. For various reasons I haven't had the time to rewatch and write up S5E26 yet as I'd originally planned – hopefully Thursday now – and the whole Funko NFT crap is just too depressing for words. (When MLP Merch is unenthusiastic about MLP merch, you know something's up.) So instead you're getting this, the full-length version of the Make Your Mark theme song. And you know, it's actually pretty darn catchy. Apologies if I've earwormed any of you by posting it!

My Little Repeats 116: "The Cutie Re-Mark, part 1"

Great little touches here: the graffiti, the patched bags, the sky, the lighting, the posters

S5E25: "The Cutie Re-Mark, part 1"

28 Nov 2015

My original rating: ★★★★ (for the whole two-parter)
IMDb score: 8.6

The one with mind-control helmets

Thoughts: War! What is it good for? As it turns out, a really rather interesting episode. Starlight returns (of course) and again shows what a properly dangerous villain she once was. Her trying to stop the rainboom provides a nice time-travel setup, while the way she manipulates Twilight into briefly implying to the Cloudsdale fillies that bullying is good shows her cunning. We get time travel, we get filly flashbacks, we get Fluttershy brandishing a spear, we get so many things. Yes, it's Packed With Stuff in the manner of many FiM season finales, but this first half is actually exciting more than confusing. As for that war world... the limitations of a TV-Y show mean it can't be that violent, but that just makes Dash's metal wing all the more startling. It was a huge talking point on this episode's release. Some nice animation touches also, such as the uncomfortably washed lighting in that world's semi-deserted Ponyville. Nice music in this ep, too. Twi could do with remembering Spike can't (yet!) fly rather more often, though... that gag really didn't merit two goes. But oh, how I wish this episode had had a proper cliffhanger break as S6's finale (albeit accidentally) did. So much speculation we never got to have. Anyway, this episode is great. I'm tempted to give it the full five, but it's not that great. Happy to give it a very easy four, though. I could watch this again with no problem at all.

Choice quote: AU Applejack: "Who in tarnation are Pinkiebow and Flutterdash?" [Nah, I can't quite justify putting Spike's "Well, that didn't work" here. Darn it.]

New rating: ★★★★

Next up is "The Cutie Re-Mark, part 2", surprisingly enough. It's common for people to see that as less successful than this first part. Me? Well, we'll see.

A few thoughts on Offprint

For those of us interested in ponyfic, Fimfiction is generally where it's at. It's by far the largest archive of MLP fanfiction, it has a mostly pleasant and easy to use interface, it's vastly nicer to look at than the ugly Archive of Our Own and the "it's still 1999, right?" fanfiction.net – and, bluntly, Fimf has eBay Syndrome in that it's where everyone goes, so it's where everything gets published, so it's where everyone goes, so...

But it's not the only place. I recently discovered Offprint. This site's front page will look strangely familiar to everyone familiar with Fimfiction – which is probably all of you. Indeed, although it's currently a relatively tiny site, MLP:FiM is by some distance the most-used fanwork tag. I say "fanwork" because Offprint hosts not only multiple fandoms' fics but original fiction as well, something unusual for a fic archive.

Navigation is clunky compared with Fimfiction – for example, while clicking a title card's MLP:FiM button filters the display to only ponyfic, clicking a genre tag makes the button move but does precisely nothing. I can't filter to just original fics, either. There doesn't seem to be any way to download fics as EPUB (a near-dealbreaker for me). What's been implemented works, but Offprint is officially still in alpha (after two years...) and it feels like it, too.

Looking at the Pony section, there are a few names I immediately recognise: Admiral Biscuit, iisaw, bats, Mockingbirb. Not enough really to appeal, though: for all its ugliness, I'd rather use AO3 to access the Alicorn Adventures now they've (mostly) left Fimfic, since AO3 does allow you to download as EPUB. [Does that mean you'll get around to On the Rocks this side of the heat death of the universe, then? —Ed.]

And now I get to one thing I thoroughly approve of. As regular readers of this blog will know, I despise foalcon. Fimfiction's continued refusal to provide even a filter for that stuff, despite having a bunch of filters for narcotics, profanity and so on, is pathetic. Offprint bans foalcon outright, together with its equivalents in other fandoms and original fiction. Ten billion points for that, Offprint.

That point notwithstanding, I don't expect to spend any significant time reading on Offprint, certainly not until and unless it advances considerably from its current state. However, it's probably worth reminding everyone at this point that, although Ponyfic Roundup overwhelmingly features stories from Fimfiction, that is not a requirement. If you see something great on Offprint that isn't available on Fimf, by all means recommend it!

Ponyfic Roundup 396

Read it Later story count: 89 (+3)

We seem to be having summer in these parts now. The forecast suggests it may even last as long as Friday. Naturally, therefore, I'm sitting at the PC typing up a set of ponyfic reviews! Four stories as usual, and this is the list today:

Author, Author! by Pascoite
The Hanging of Twilight Sparkle by The Pink Mugsy
That time Carrot Top fell into a rut by Hemlock conium
Secrets & Truths by Mistyshadowz

★: 1 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

Mike's review of Make Your Mark is worthwhile, but the latest Tell Your Tale...

Over on Fimfiction, Mike Cartoon Pony has written this very detailed review of Make Your Mark. It's fair to say he's clearly more negative about it overall than I was, but it's no hatchet job: he does explain why he's unhappy with various aspects, and if I'm honest it's hard for me to disagree with most of them. I suspect I'm just a bit more inclined to be forgiving of significantly flawed material "because Pony" than Mike is; the same is true of the final seasons of Friendship is Magic.

One thing in particular from Mike's review that really does resonate: I'm not at all sure how much rewatch value Make Your Mark will have. As I'm finding right now, I can rewatch the great majority of FiM episodes with no trouble at all, even those which have clear flaws. They're still fun, for the most part. But will MYM prove to be a rather empty vessel? I fear it might. As things stand I'm still more positively inclined to it than Mike is, but his review has given me something to think about.

Still, however much Make Your Mark may irritate me in the future, I doubt it will be as off-putting as episode 13 of Tell Your Tale was. Fair to say "Dumpster Diving" has clunked to the bottom of my TYT ranking so far, and it's done so with some considerable ease. Probably the most off-putting characterisation of Izzy I've seen in any official media so far. I've actually enjoyed a fair bit of this series (for what it is), but not this episode. So, episode with fan-favourite character being obnoxious but a catchy song? Sounds familiar... though this is worse than that was.

Ponyfic Roundup 395: Spotlight on Oversaturation

Read it Later story count: 86 (-5)

The Platinum Jubilee weekend had a lot of things to offer, many of them great fun and even some of the others (such as the occasionally iffy weather) suitably British. Somehow I found time between all the street parties and pageants and purple steam engines and tins of commemorative shortbread to read a long enough fic for a Spotlight here. I've read a few stories by FanOfMostEverything, most recently the delightful Trade of the Trix (PR 382) but a longer tale is something rarer. So here we go!

Oversaturation by FanOfMostEverything
Sunset Shimmer, Mane Seven, Discord and Other
Adventure; 37k words; Aug–Oct 2015; Teen

Too much of a good thing is filling the human universe, and Sunset Shimmer is the only one who can solve the problem before it annihilates her new home.

Set during S5 of FiM and largely written before Friendship Games appeared, this is a look at what might happen if magic started... leaking from Equestria and... infecting, for want of a better word, the human (as in Canterlot High) world. Ponying up is happening more often, and that's only the start. There's some really good character work in here, with Sunset Shimmer at the centre. The other Manes spark off each other nicely, and Twilight (as in Sci-Twi, mostly, ish) turns out to be more important than you'd think. She's not the only one either, but hay, spoilers. Some fun little deviations to see why such-and-such happened in canon – a late scene with Blueblood complaining that Twilight got a castle amused me greatly, too. This is definitely a fic where things escalate, as the description up there makes clear, and since my personal preference is for more grounded magic (so to speak) that wasn't quite so much to my own taste. There's one very convenient setup near the start, while not all the weird and wonderful stuff thrown at the wall quite sticks—but a pretty high proportion does. A top-end three for me, but those more into EqG and/or more receptive to... let's say Tree of Harmony-style stuff, best I can do without loadsaspoilers, might well see it as a four. If Oversaturation appeals to you, the story has spawned a whole bunch of side-stories by various authors. ★★★

That's the spoiler-free version. You'll find more of my waffling, but with spoilers, if you continue past this point.

My Little Repeats 115: "The Mane Attraction"

"Logan's actually watched this at last? No way!"

S5E24: "The Mane Attraction"

21 Nov 2015

My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 8.6

The one with pedal-powered apple preparation

Thoughts: Remember when I said I wanted to do these rewatches fairly quickfire fashion? [Nope, I'm not that old. —Ed.] Anyway, this was Amy Keating Rogers' final episode of FiM, and fortunately it was a solid one. Lena Hall's guest turn as Colaratura/Rara worked very well – I didn't like this much first time around, but I now love that "The Spectacle" is full of artificiality, with that brilliant little touch of unicorn-induced autotune. Contrastingly, Rara's triumphant rendition of "The Magic Inside" has a few minor imperfections left in, just as a live stage performance would. It's so much more genuine. Hall also clearly enjoyed herself: witness her adorable episode reaction. On the other side of things, there's Svengallop, one of the few antagonists in FiM with really no redeeming features whatsoever. Awful stallion who I'm glad to see the back of. This is a really good episode for Applejack, of course, and Pinkie also puts in a good innings, even if she does have a hard time of it in places. Rarity is a little irritating occasionally, but not horribly so. It's a simple story, set entirely in Ponyville and with half the Mane Six barely used, one that in a way harks back to the show's earlier days. I found "The Mane Attraction" slightly lightweight in 2015, but I now find that simplicity rather charming. As such, it's being bumped up a star. A nice send-off for one of FiM's best episode writers.

Choice quote: Pinkie Pie: "I call this straw... Fernando."

New rating: ★★★★

Next up is "The Cutie Re-Mark", at which point S5 is finally done! This has long been a finale that attracts very mixed reviews. I liked it quite a lot in 2015. I don't have much of a feel for how well it will hold up, so we shall see...

New story by me: Echoes of a Song

Echoes of a Song by Loganberry
Fluttershy and Rarity
Sad/Slice of Life; 1k words; May 2022; Everyone

Fluttershy is renowned for her kindness, but that doesn't mean she's always done the right thing. Over tea with Rarity, she finally lets her friend know how cruel she once could be.

An entry for Bicyclette's A Thousand Words Contest.

Yes, the impossible has happened: Logan has actually written something (a bit) longer than a flashfic! Precisely one day before I'd have gone a year without a standalone story on Fimfiction, I got this one published. Woo-hoo. I should note that it was written for a currently active contest (it's now in the judging phase) so I won't say a lot about the fic itself here. I will say that, considering I've generally written short one-shots anyway, it was a surprisingly difficult challenge to get the thing down to exactly 1,000 words while retaining the essence of the story.

Ponyfic Roundup 394

Read it Later story count: 91 (+2)

I've just realised that I completely forgot to inflict a post about my latest little story upon you all. That can come tomorrow, though as it was written for a contest that's still under way I'm not intending to ramble on too much about it just yet. As far as PR goes, though, it's time to take a look at four more fics. Here they are:

What About Twilight? by alarajrogers
Consider the Coconut by PropMaster
Garden of Memories by oop
The Sanctuary in the Orchard by seaponytearsandprovalone

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.