Quick meta update

I have now started watching "The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy" and I'd originally hoped to post my thoughts tomorrow or Monday. That's now not going to happen, because it's taking far longer than I had expected – Jenny Nicholson's thoughts have turned out to be packed with stuff I want to comment on, and I'm not even a quarter of the way through yet. Suffice it to say that I will get to the end and I will write the piece I mentioned.

However, I am going to drop my original intention to do this before I got going on my rewatch of Season 6 of Friendship is Magic. It's well over a month now since I watched "The Cutie Re-Mark, part 2", and that's more than long enough. With that in mind, I will be setting off on S6 later this week, probably on Friday, with "The Crystalling, part 1". The next edition of Ponyfic Roundup will be out on Wednesday as expected. The Jenny Nicholson video piece will go up when I can manage it.

Ponyfic Roundup 402: A Thousand Words Contest fics – Part Two: Bronze Medallists (1/2)

Read it Later story count: 89 (nc) 

Bicyclette's "A Thousand Words Contest" really did produce a lot of interesting entries. Here I look at the first five of the ten Bronze Medallists. You'll note that two of them are by the same author – the rules allowed you to enter a maximum of one fic in each of the five possible categories (Fluff, Angst, Humo(u)r, Grim and Experimental) if you wished, and some authors took advantage of this. A pretty solid week, I'm happy to say. Can't really quibble with the judges here.

Everybody Knows by The Red Parade
How to throw yourself at the ground and miss by Axolotl222
A Stitch (Or Nine) Saves Thine by TheDriderPony
Exploiting Equestrian Generosity Through Unlimited Cupcakes by Gallus T. Griffon by Meteor_Mirage
Per My Last Email by The Red Parade

★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 2 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Are there any character moments you refuse to accept as canon?

Filling in time a bit here before the next Ponyfic Roundup, so I'm going to take a classic approach of asking my readers to do all the work. Simple question, really, but one which came up in the EQD comments recently.

In Friendship is Magic itself, is there an example where you feel somepony* was so poorly written as to be in direct contradiction to their core character?
* Doesn't have to be an actual pony

To clarify this a bit, if someone is just being flanderised in a "Twilight freaks out all the time" way, that's not what I mean. I'm talking about something so egregious that you simply refuse to accept it as canon despite its inclusion in the show. If there's more than one, then pick the one that grates on you the most.

My choice? It won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, but it's Fluttershy cajoling predators to be vegetarian in "She Talks to Angel". I quite like that episode on the whole, but that particular scene is awful. It seems to me to fly in the face of everything Fluttershy's vocation represents. We see her feeding fish to otters in S1, in any case. It's dreadful and I just plain ignore it when writing Fluttershy.

What about you?

Ponyfic Roundup 401: A Thousand Words Contest fics – Part One: Honourable Mentions

Remember when I said the other day that the UK might reach 38 °C? Well, I was nearly right. The top temperature was 40.3 °C, which is 104.5 °F for those of you in Unmetricland. An all-time UK record, and by a degree and a half (Celsius) at that. With almost nobody having home AC, remember. In my neck of the woods it was a mere 35 °C (95 °F) but after two days of heat I was seriously happy to wake to a typically English summer's morning of cloud and coolness! Anyway...

Read it Later story count: 89 (+5) 

Bicyclette's extremely popular "A Thousand Words Contest", which challenged writers to submit fics of exactly 1,000 words (by Fimfiction's count), produced more than a hundred entries. Of those, 29 received some kind of recognition in the results post. With one rather obvious exception, I shall aim to review all of those stories in the weeks that follow. Today, the eight review-eligible fics of the nine Honourable Mentions. As always, the ratings simply reflect my personal enjoyment.

Something Stays by Str8aura
Iridium by Odd_Shot
Over It by delusionalism
I Live With a Monster by daOtterGuy
The Same Mistake You're Making by EileenSaysHi
Should Something Be Missing? by RDT
Free Moon by Shrink Laureate
Starry Darling by Climaclysm

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 5 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Kelly Sheridan no longer able to attend UK PonyCon

A hugely disappointing announcement from UK PonyCon earlier today: owing to continuing problems with international travel, guest of honour Kelly Sheridan can no longer attend. She was originally hoping to come to UKPC 2020, but that was cancelled for obvious reasons, so everyone was delighted when she was announced this time – she was (in 2020, and still now) the first show guest UK PonyCon had ever announced.

The official statement is pretty terse, so we don't know exactly what "disruption" refers to. Canada has generally maintained a harder line on Covid restrictions than most of Europe, so that could be an issue; or it could be related to the more general problems that have hit airports like Heathrow. There's little point in speculating further, since it's not really any of our business beyond the simple fact of a big-name guest not attending.

UK PonyCon's statement does say the con is "exploring alternative special guests", and I'm sure they'll do their very best as they've always worked extremely hard to put on a great convention (and succeeded in that). Still, Kelly Sheridan having to cancel barely 11 weeks from the con is not something I can sugar-coat as anything but a major disappointment. Here's hoping the next time I write about UKPC it will be to report some much more pleasant news!

Edit: I have been reminded that Anneli Heed, aka "Swedish Spitfire" (although she's done plenty more) is still coming as far as any of us know. So that's definitely something to look forward to. :)

Ponyfic Roundup will appear on Friday due to the heatwave

As some of you may have seen, the Met Office here has a red warning out for extreme heat for the next couple of days. In UK terms that means temperatures probably somewhere around 38 °C (100 °F) on both days. Since almost nobody has air conditioning at home here, it's going to be tough. I really don't think I'm going to be up to getting PR ready in time for Wednesday now.

However! There is a compensation for those of you who've read far enough. The extra couple of days' wait means that I will have time to read and write reviews all of the eight Honourable Mentions in the Thousand Words Contest, instead of only covering four as was my original plan. That means you'll get a bumper edition of PR. And now I'm off to drink 267 litres of chilled water...

Ponyfic Roundup 400: A New Generation

Read it Later story count: 84 (+2)

As you may have guessed from that subject line (or alternatively from actually having read the footnote to PR 399!) this week for the very first time I will be reviewing G5 stories. To mark the occasion, and I suppose also partly to make up for only doing three the other week, I have five fics under the magnifying glass this week. Here we go...

When Magic Returns by Lets Do This
If It's Glowing, Don't Touch It by BikerPon3
DUDE. by Masterweaver
Izzy and the Moonlit Garden by Sledge115
Movie Night: Judgement Neigh by milesprower06

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

Well, that's rather nice

Early warning that things may get a bit slow around here shortly, as I'm under an amber extreme heat warning for the weekend. The numbers probably won't look that high to many of you, but bear in mind almost nobody has home AC here. It will not be easy to concentrate if it does come off.

I received some pleasant news yesterday. My entry for Bicyclette's "A Thousand Words Contest", Echoes of a Song, has been awarded an Honourable Mention. It's the first story featured on the results page, along with some very kind words from FanOfMostEverything. Considering the number of entries this contest had, and especially the calibre of so many of the authors involved, I was not expecting this and I am absolutely delighted. Who knows, I may even write something else inside the next year now! ;)

On a related note, I absolutely do intend to go through a bunch of contest fics for Ponyfic Roundup in the not-too-distant future. I'm not sure exactly how many I'll cover – there were over 100 entries, so reviewing all of them might be tough going – but I'm currently inclined to write about the Gold, Silver, Bronze and Hon Mensh stories. There were 29 of those, so subtracting mine that makes 28 reviews. Depending on how I divided them up, that would probably take about a month. No promises at this stage, however.

Finally: the challenge of making a story exactly a thousand words long (999 wouldn't have been accepted by Fimfiction, and 1,001 wouldn't have been a valid entry) was a lot more interesting than I initially thought it would be, and I don't seem to have been the only entrant who felt this way. If Bike felt like running this contest again at some point, say next year, I suspect plenty of people would respond. But for now to her and all the judges I merely say a big thank you.

Ponyfic Confessions

This is just me being silly because it's hot (for England) and I don't have much else to write about. Yes, I am still going to watch that Jenny Nicholson video, but I've been kind of distracted by real-world events in this country lately. So, in the time-honoured fashion of journalists who've run out of ideas, I'm going to ask my readers to do my work for me and ask if they have anything they'd care to confess.

I have something, which I'm not proud of and which will eventually be fixed, but:

I've never read The Enchanted Library. Not one single solitary chapter.

This is the story by Monochromatic that basically everyone says is absolutely brilliant. The trouble is that it's 337,000 words long, and an Alternate Universe fic, and the first in a series that still isn't even close to finished seven years after it started. None of those things tend to heighten my motivation.¹ But even so, people rave about it so much that I really should have seen what all the fuss was about. I haven't, though.
¹ See also the Austraeoh saga, though I probably won't ever return to that as it didn't grab me enough

So, once you've all picked your jaws up off the floor, and/or finished throwing things at me, do any of you fine people have any ponyficcy shames that you'd like to confess? Keep 'em at least moderately SFW, if you would...

Ponyfic Roundup 399

Read it Later story count: 82 (-5)

The road goes ever on and on, and so does Ponyfic Roundup. This week I'm pleased to say that I'm back up to my usual four stories. I haven't got much else to say here, though, so I'll just add: marmalade. Look, I like marmalade, all right? So does Paddington, after all. And the Queen, so I'm in good company. Anyway, on to the fics:

What Cats Know by Daedalus Aegle
Cheerilee's Worst Day Ever by Sailor_Pluto
Rocket to Insanity by Scherzo
dead butterflies (One of Them Will Destroy the Other) by The Red Parade

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

Comparing my S5 rankings with UK of Equestria's from 2015

Long ago, back when forums were more of a thing for the Pony fandom than social media was, I was a moderator and very frequent poster over on UK of Equestria.¹ One of the things I started doing about halfway through FiM's run was to handle an annual spreadsheet of people's opinions on the seasons. We asked people to rate the season from first to last (no ties permitted) with double episodes counted as one.
¹ Technically I still am a mod there, but the place is close to tumbleweed status these days, sadly.

I won't repeat the whole of S5's ranking list here, as you can read it in my original blog post. In this post I was just going to remark on one or two things that caught my eye from almost seven years later – but in truth, there isn't much in there that's dated particularly badly. Possibly "The Cutie Map" was a little on the underrated side at the time: I think that episode's reputation has grown over the years. "Appleoosa's Most Wanted" seems a bit harshly treated, too.

As for overrated episodes... again, there aren't many in there, not really. I personally wouldn't rank "Bloom & Gloom" that high, but I certainly know people who would. I'm actually weirdly proud of the fact that our silly band of forum-goers (17 voted that year) had what in retrospect still seems like a pretty solid view of what was and wasn't a good S5 episode. :)

My Little Repeats: Reflections on Season 5

Official Season 5 trailer

This one's been a long old ride, seeing as I posted my rewatch article about "The Cutie Map, part 1" way back on 13th November. Once again I have failed to stick to this series' original plan of rewatching an episode every few days and posting sketch-type thoughts rather than taking ages and trying to give a mention to every little thing. You never know, I might get that back on track for S6. I mean, stranger things have happened. Probably.

Looking at my average star ratings for the five seasons up to this point, here's the ranking:

1. Season 4: 3.42
2= Season 1: 3.38
2= Season 2: 3.38
4. Season 5: 3.27
5. Season 3: 2.92

Given that S5 is often seen as being amongst the very best seasons, I was mildly surprised by this result. I think it's largely that this season is more inconsistent, with some soaring highs but also a couple of really unimpressive episodes. Anyway, more waffle past the cut!