Shameless self-promotion department, belated

I meant to post this a few days ago, but because I'm me I forgot. Anyway, my minific "The Villain Contest", which was originally published in the UK PonyCon 2016 con book, got a Highly Recommended from Present Perfect the other day! A nice surprise, and one that pleased me both because it was nice to have something in actual print, and because I still rather like the piece all these years on. :)

Ponyfic Roundup 463

Read it Later story count: 95 (+1)

Words read this week: 8,616

This week, in "Logan is not American, you know", a reminder that what I mean by "brackets" are these things: ( ). These – [ ] – are specifically "square brackets" to me. While we do use the term "parentheses", doing that in colloquial British English sounds overly formal and a little bit affected. And now on to more interesting matters. Three fics today, all of them pretty short as I'm not yet up to longer reads:

Heartstrings by evelili (review requested by author)
Amber Hearts by Blondlionezel
Sweetie Ban by Casketbase77

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

Looking back at Sunset's Sales Snag

This is an idea I nabbed from hawthornbunny. Well, I don't exactly expect Hawthorn is the only person to do this, but still. Pick a fic I wrote and write a little bit about it. I couldn't decide which story to choose, so I let the RNG take the strain. And the first on the block is... drumroll, maestro, please... Sunset's Sales Snag. Whew, an interesting one to start with!

SSS is one of my most poorly received fics, with a thumbscore of +18/-7 as I type this and a total of 446 views – not a high total for a story published more than seven years ago. Do I think it's that bad? Well, no. I wouldn't call it one of my finest achievements, but that's another matter. I'm fairly sure I know the biggest reason for all those downvotes, and I'll get back to that.

The fic was written, as it says in the longdesc, as a "bit of silly fluff for Sunset Shimmer Day". On those terms, I think it does all right. Sunset (the normal EqG version) is now 21 and in a dead-end sales job for a cake firm. This is just a convenient setup for some silly – and, by my standards, slightly innuendo-laden – dialogue between her and the slightly creepy man who answers the door.

It's a comedy of misunderstanding. The man believes that a young woman with a name like Sunset Shimmer must surely be involved in a rather... particular branch of the entertainment industry. When she reluctantly reveals she works for the Lyra Heartstrings Company the man feels vindicated. Sunset, meanwhile, is constantly having to bite back sarcastic responses.

What is bad about this fic is that it has a very, very weak ending. It's a one-line gag, and not even a particularly funny one-line gag. I've written feghoots with much better finishes. (As an early Fimfiction comment suggests, it wasn't even my first published version of said last line.) If that had been the reason for those downvotes, I could have had few complaints.

Sadly, the reason is duller: the [Sex] tag. These warning tags were new at the time, and I wasn't sure whether a fic with no actual sex but with significant innuendo needed one. I played it cautious and put one on the fic. Then, of course, a bunch of readers who'd loaded up SSS expecting hot Sunset clop action got annoyed when there wasn't any. I removed the tag, but too late. Oh well.

The humour in this story reminds me a bit of my earlier Kicking Back, which is probably a slightly better fic and is also probably the one to pick if you just want to read one of my stories in this mould. Still, reading the story again now, I still get a few smiles out of it. Even from the utterly shameless "Cakes. Why did it have to be cakes?" line I gave to Sunset

Meta post regarding Ponyfic Roundup

I'm finally recovering from Covid now, but I don't want to rush things. As such, I'll be splitting the next Roundup in two. I had planned to review five stories this week, as you can see at the end of the last PR, but that won't now happen. Instead I'll cover three, with another three next week. How does that work? Well, I have a story whose author requested a review,¹ and I'll cover that one this time with a couple of the original list. Then the rest of the list the week after.
¹ Heartstrings by evelili

This does mean I'm not going to manage the Nightmare Night themed Roundup I'd been vaguely thinking about, but such is life I'm afraid. I do still plan to get to the Thousand Words winners, though. Eventually...

Sethisto's EQD editorial on AI art

This turned out to be a very interesting read, which is why I'm writing about it here, albeit saddled with a ridiculously long headline, to wit: The Huge Struggle of Pony Posting in an Era of AI Art, Policing Fake "Artists", and Dealing With the POWER of DALL-E 3. Aaaand breathe. What's particularly interesting about the article is that it recognises just how much AI art has changed in the last year, showing some really quite startling examples. If you remember the Twilight Pokéball stuff from 2022, that's totally old hat now.

As Seth says, it's no longer possible just to assume that AI-created pieces will all have an instantly recognisable style or sheen to them. That was true in 2022: it isn't (at least, isn't necessarily) true any more. Many of the kinds of silly little mistakes it still produces are a) often skimmed over by viewers, and b) also quite often produced by human artists. Plus, as he also says, dishonesty exists in this fandom too: he says there's an AI-created piece posing as a human-created one in his inbox as he types.

The comments section on the EQD post is better than I'd expected too, with many posters coming to the conclusion that the time when you could realistically say, "AI must be kept out of art, full stop" might well already be over. As one person points out, Adobe is powering ahead with AI-enabling Photoshop, and it's not going to be the only graphics software package to do that. I assume, then, that soon just about everyone making computer art will be using AI somewhere along the way unless they put considerable effort into not doing so.

I'm too unwell still to add much of my own, but I did want to flag up the EQD piece as being something worth your time to read.

Thank you, Covid, thank you so very much

Apologies for this, but I'm afraid there's likely to be another delay in updates here for a while. I've acquired Covid, and while I don't feel impossibly ill I really am not currently in a fit state to do updates much longer than this one. I think the most likely thing is for me to delay everything by a week – so no Ponyfic Roundup this coming Wednesday, then the week after that I'll do the one I was hoping to do this time. It all depends on my state of health, of course. Really rather annoying that I get to stay at home but can't cope with using all that time to read!

Record charity total from UK PonyCon!

Per the UK PonyCon Discord, last-minute donations have increased the total raised for the RDA to...

£12,124

This is slightly more than last year, and in fact the highest one-year total ever raised by UKPC. Huzzah! :D

Ponyfic Roundup 462: Spotlight on A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies

Read it Later story count: 94 (-1)

Words read this week: 86,362*

As I trailed last week, this time I'm breaking my nearly absolute "no incomplete fics" rule to look at a story that's technically On Hiatus but which I'm not sure I really believe will ever be finished after a full decade without an update. Its writer is not new to Ponyfic Roundup, the highlight being Love on the Reef, which I gave four stars back in PR 196. This story, however, is something unlike anything else I have read on Fimfiction. Good thing? Bad thing? Read on...
* Word count excludes the 5,000+ words of "The Ending" blog post, although I have read that.

A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies by D G D Davidson
Other, Twilight and Mane Six
G1/G4; Dark/Adventure/Crossover/Human; 86k words; Dec 2012–Sep 2013; Teen

When the ponies decide to introduce themselves to Earth by entering a horse show, they call upon a legendary warrior from their distant past to get them ready. Featured on Equestria Daily!

You don't get many G1/G4 crossovers, but this fic really goes for that. The Mane Six have come to Earth as "ambassadors" and will publicly appear at a horse show (the how and why are vague). They need to be groomed, so who better than a young woman who has met talking ponies before? Megan Williams, or as Twilight Sparkle calls her, "Magog the Mighty" and her siblings "Danel" and "Moloch". What follows intersperses sections with them dealing with the G4 ponies and long sections showing what happened to the "Ponyland" of G1. It's not a story of sugar and spice, though those familiar with that gen won't be surprised. The author has clearly done a lot of research, bringing in not only screen characters like the Moochick but the G1 comics (remember the Jewel Wizard? You will...) and even stories from the toys' backcards. Whether you can stomach the harshness and (since there's no AU tag) reconcile it with canon... well, good question, but it's certainly a fascinating – if occasionally disturbing – attempt. Three stars because I'm glad I read it but I can't say I enjoyed it all. (Edit for clarity: Some I absolutely did, otherwise it wouldn't be a three!) ★★★

There will be, as ever with a Spotlight review, many spoilers beyond this point!

Happy 13th, Friendship is Magic!

"Make a Wish" (extended version)

 

That's right, today FiM enters its teenage years! It's been a long road to get to this point, but here we are with everyone's (okay, most people's) favourite My Little Pony cartoon turning thirteen. Have a good one, FiM!

Griffish Isles to remain at the Pendulum for 2024

I missed posting this earlier, but the Griffish Isles committee have put out an announcement saying that they "have decided the Pendulum remains the best location for next year" (11/12 May). This is the hotel in Manchester where GI has been held ever since the con resumed after the Covid break. The announcement also mentions that the vendor hall will be in a different, larger room for 2024. I expect that will go down well with vendors and attendees alike.

I've heard entirely unofficially in a "someone told me they'd been told" way that the GI folks did look at some venues in Liverpool (which would be a great city to have as a base) and also Birmingham (maybe slightly weird when there's already a Midlands con in UK PonyCon), and perhaps some alternatives in Manchester, but that none of them were better. Finding a convention venue is incredibly difficult, so I can see why change might not be workable.

That said, it's only fair to say that the Pendulum is not a venue that is universally loved. Some of the issues with it in its few years have been more significant than others, but certainly it's not a place that really appeals to me. If things are looking better financially by then I don't entirely rule out attending GI, perhaps just for the day, but the location announcement makes it unlikely. I nevertheless wish the con well and hope its 2024 iteration is a big success.

My Little Repeats 148: "Fluttershy Leans In"

Okay, guys, where are the Hard Hat/Wrangler shipfics, hmm?

S7E05: "Fluttershy Leans In"

6 May 2017

My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 6.8

The one with rabbit parkour

Thoughts: This was where Treehouse TV in Canada started airing episodes before Discovery Family did, something which caused various problems in the fandom. The episode itself is not the most popular (see that IMDb rating) but it does have its moments. The problem was that it didn't really do anything. The whole animal sanctuary thing is only just now revealed as a long-held dream for Fluttershy and it didn't become a big deal in the later series, so what really was the point? Okay, there's a whole lot of Fluttershy, and it's nice to see her confident and assertive – but beyond that? We don't even find out how she gets the predators not to, well, predate. Even Big Daddy McColt only seems to have been thrown in there because cameo. My original three-star rating was too generous; it's getting one of those stars knocked off. Not a poor episode, but in the end it's a tiny bit forgettable.

Choice quote: Fluttershy: "I don't love it."

New rating: ★★

Next up will be "Forever Filly", an episode of which I have only vague memories as things stand. It'll be interesting to see whether it catches my attention more on rewatch.

Ponyfic Roundup 461: New Blood Contest winners, part 2

Read it Later story count: 95 (+1)

Words read this week: 21,083

Fresh from my little excursion to UK PonyCon (it's a great convention; do attend next year if you can!) it's back to the everyday "job" as far as MLP is concerned, which is to say reading and writing about fanfic! Today I have the remaining New Blood Contest winners: two more Bonus Prize recipients and the four outright medallists (there was a tie for third place). Off we go...

A Modest Proposal by Jymbroni
A Lovestruck Folly by A whisky man
Pitfalls by heartlessons
One day I am gonna grow wings by TheInfamousFly
A Study in Chartreuse by Serketry
Sabot Élégant's Not So Savory Adventure by Chromentazol

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 3 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

UK PonyCon 2023 report

I know I'm really, really, really behind with My Little Repeats! All I can say there is: watch this space. ;) Anyway, to the main business of the post now, with rather more footnotes than I'd originally envisaged...

Not a Vodka McFlurry Heart. Probably.

It was a flying visit to UK PonyCon this year, so the report is just one (long) post, but off we go! Although there was a train strike on the Saturday, trains were running on Friday so I got to Birmingham by rail. Thence by pre-booked National Express coach to Derby -- I'm not that experienced with coaches, but this one was fine for an hour and a quarter. Stayed in the Derby Cricket Ground Travelodge, as last year. After check-in, I got the train to Nottingham – First Class, a very rare experience for me, as CrossCountry have cheap First tickets.¹ Well, when the trains run at all they do...
¹ And I really do mean cheap. It cost less to book specific First trains in both directions than to get a Standard Class flexible return.

Friday night is Roebuck night – the pub where the Worcester Shires and various friends traditionally have our pre-meet. It was pretty noisy this year (even more so than usual) but still a lot of fun. People came and went at different times, which I think helped stop conversation from getting repetitive. For me it was cider (Black Dragon, very nice), cod and chips, then ice cream. For some reason my two scoops came in two separate bowls! I left the pub a little before nine and got the tram back to Nottingham station – First Class again. Nice and quiet.

No trains on Saturday morning, so I was up before seven to check out and walk to Derby Bus Station to catch the 07:20 Red Arrow express bus to Nottingham. Thence to the Gooseberry Bush for a cheap breakfast.¹ I'd expected to be on my own, but Jowy wandered over and invited me to sit with his little group for a bit, so that was a really nice way to properly start convention day. It was only five minutes' walk to the venue, so I didn't leave until a bit after nine. The queue was already growing by then, so I'm glad I didn't wait any longer!
¹ I can't be expected to start a convention without bacon inside me.

The Elley-Ray Experience

QueueCon is usually good fun, and so it proved this time. Waving (and possibly jeering) at friends who had posh tickets and were in the priority queue happens every year, though weirdly the one passer-by who I noticed staring at us weird pony folks this time was wearing a Sonic the Hedgehog T-shirt. Mate, you have no business thinking people who like colourful talking animals are odd. :P Besides, I was standing next to Cheese Sandwich, which kind of made it impossible for it not to be fun. At ten (more or less) the doors opened and we were on our way through registration.

The opening ceremony was a little delayed but also pretty short, not consisting of much more than the usual welcome, theme reminder ("Generations", to mark the 40th anniversary of MLP¹), rules reminder and welcome for the Guests of Honour. Elley-Ray happened. Oh yes she did. In all honesty I think one or two people had hyped up her personality a little too much – she was indeed really nice and fun and warm and unpredictable, but not quite the utterly wild force of nature I'd been led to believe. (Though maybe that side of her came through more on the Sunday; I don't know.²)
¹ Kinda sorta ish.
² From things someone said after reading this, that was the case. But I wasn't there, so it doesn't count for this report. :P

Stalls shopping is usually a big thing at UK PonyCon and has been since the convention began as more of a collectors' fair back in 2004. (Yes, 2004. Not a typo.) I was so tight for cash this time round that I couldn't buy much at all, a real shame when there were over 70 stalls – certainly a UKPC record and I believe a record for any European MLP con, evarrrrr. Dying fandom, are we? Still, I was able to pick up this year's T-shirt, which has a nicely distinctive design¹ that I'm very pleased with. I shall be wearing it the next time I go to a Worcester meetup!
¹ The only pic I can find is on Facebook and doesn't seem to show up on mobile. Apologies for the awkwardness.

Yes, there was a G3 Alphabittle

Time for the first panel! I chose to go to the cinema room lecture theatre thing for Catchphrase, a ponified version of the hugely popular British TV game show.¹ The traditional computer glitches were overcome and the game worked very well on the room's big screens with teams using squeaky donuts and chickens to buzz. There were some inventive phrases,² and the use of multi-generational symbols/cutie marks to cover the image was inspired. This is definitely an event I'd be happy to attend again at a future UK PonyCon.
¹ Actually a US game show first, but the British one has been vastly more successful: 469 episodes and counting.
² Con mascot Britannia holding a bee with Rarity reflected in her eye? "Beauty is in the eye of the bee holder." :D

Next up was Jez's Spectacular G3.5 Panel, which was pretty much what it said on the tin. The actual panel ran rather short, possibly because of Jez's slightly grumpy-sounding and perhaps ill-considered "If I want audience participation I will ask for it" note on an early slide. You know better now! Still, there was some fun stuff and I'll even mostly forgive Jez for saying that he preferred the G3.5 movie¹ to the G4 one because "No Fluttershy". Mostly. We were left to watch said movie, but though it was quite fun it was abruptly stopped early to let the next people set up...
¹ Twinkle Wish Adventure, including Kelly Sheridan as Cheerilee. I have it on DVD! :D

...and hay, this was a convention so inevitably there was then a loooong gap when nothing happened at all! The next panel was in fact Transport Ponies, hosted by my friends Ace and Zenfox.¹ This is more of a general panel about how to travel effectively (including to conventions!) by rail, air, coach, ferry and teleportation. A nice relaxing hour, presented nicely as usual. For silly reasons there has been a running theme of cake in this panel over the last couple of years, and Culdee won a cake voucher for answering a question correctly near the end.
¹ Kind of an A to Z of Transport, then...

G3.5 Scootaloo is a bit of a brat :D

You know the 2 bit of the 6-2-1 rule? We-ell... I kind of skipped lunch this year, so I actually had time to wander around the stalls. (I did have a pasty on my way home. That counts as a meal, right?) Not to buy, but at least to admire the impressive range of stuff. One or two stallholders seemed to be pushing the limits of having mostly Pony items, but very few. Sewpoke's plushies stood out as usual – way beyond my budget, but lovely to see anyway. I'm irritated that I forgot to try the RDA charity tombola (cash only – see, you do still need it!) but hopefully next year.

And now it was time for my last event, which was the custom script reading with Kelly Sheridan and Elley-Ray doing so in character.¹ All good fun, with some particularly amusing lines from Starlight, followed by a very good and well managed Q&A session. No inappropriate questions, very few that rambled on and on in the way that a few did for Andrea Libman and Anneli Heed last year, and answers that were both entertaining and insightful. (Apparently you're well set up for VA jobs if you can belch on command...)
¹ Okay, characters.

And that was all. Because the con was still happening I wasn't able to say goodbye in person to as many people as I'd have liked, and I had to head out into the rain at six o'clock. The walk to the bus station was dreary and damp, the coach back to Birmingham was packed and not as nice as the outward one, and the train strike meant an almost interminable double-decker bus to Stourbridge for my taxi home. Not a good ending, but it had been a good con. A very pleasing £11,710 raised for the RDA as well. Thank you, UK PonyCon. Hopefully I'll be back properly in 2024!

The Mane Four. Apparently