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For personal reasons, I haven't been able to get all this week's Ponyfic Roundup reviews written up in time, so this edition will appear on Friday. That's all!

My Little Repeats 150: "Parental Glideance"

"Logan's actually finished this?"

S7E07: "Parental Glideance"

20 May 2017

My original rating: ★★★★
IMDb score: 7.7

The one with Rainbow Dash's linen closet

Thoughts: I am a huge fan of Scootaloo,¹ so I'm delighted to have a Scootasode to mark the 150th MLR. I really liked it in 2017, and I still really like it now. Her utter hero-worship of anything Dash is both cute and funny, and Rainbow's parents are entertaining too – I'm glad they weren't recurring characters, mind, as they'd have been a bit much. We get a gut-punch moment (even more so now) about how Scoot's parents weren't that supportive, and a heartbreaking little sideshow moment for Derpy. The Wonderbolts are very solid, too, with a great sense of camaraderie. Josh Hamilton's MLP writing debut was easily the best of his four episodes; it's a shame he couldn't match this. I still feel Dash's parents get off a tad lightly for what really was excessive behaviour, but I still love this ep and the large amounts of ecstatic Scootaloo we get, and it still gets a four.
¹ Less of a fan of huge Scootaloo, but we'll get to that in two seasons' time...

Choice quote: Bow Hot Hoof: "Great timing." Scootaloo: "Great door!"

New rating: ★★★★

Next on the list is "Hard to Say Anything", the slightly strange episode that introduced SugarMac to the fandom. I didn't like it all that much first time round, and I can't say I'm hugely optimistic of a massive about-turn. Though who can say?

Ponyfic Roundup 467

Read it Later story count: 97 (nc)

Words read this week: 27,532

Hello again, everyone. I am well aware – painfully well aware – that I have posted nothing on this blog since last week's Roundup. Believe me, this state of affairs will not continue. For one thing, I really want to rewatch "Parental Glideance"! However, for now it's ponyfic once more. As I trailed last week, I'm having a week off Thousand Words Contest II fics to fit in a standard edition. That means five stories:

The Return of Sunset by Ninjadeadbeard
What it Means to Rule by Boltstrike58
Chances of Fire by yodajax10 (review requested by author)
The Empress and the Goose-Girl by Shaslan
Twilight Seeks Help by TheOtakuX

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

Ponyfic Roundup 466: Thousand Words Contest II winners, part 2 of 4

Read it Later story count: 97 (-2)

Words read this week: 10,000

Something I've noticed: my EPUB reader program does not seem to respect Fimfiction spoiler cuts, so I see everything that is in the long descriptions whether the author wants me to or not. I try not to spoil myself, but...! Anyway, more Thousand Words Contest II prize-winners this time. This week I'll be considering ten of the fifteen that garnered a Judge's Prize. Here's the list:

Cart Before the Horse by The Red Parade
Long Way Forward by Not That Anon
A Foal's Errand by ScarredVirtue
One on One by Muramasa
Trixie Bombs by danatron1
Hyperesthesia by gapty
Outsmarted! by 6-D Pegasus
Breakfast for Dinner by The Red Parade
Daybreak Will Set Us Free by Pascoite
The Enlightenment of Sonata Dusk by Mockingbirb

★: 0 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 6 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

My Little Repeats 149: "Forever Filly"

"Aww, I remember when CheeriMac was a thing, too."

S7E06: "Forever Filly"

13 May 2017

My original rating: ★★
IMDb score: 7.5

The one with extremely small ice creams

Thoughts: I did not have a great experience with this episode in 2017, finding it tedious viewing at times. Now? Now I feel I was rather harsh on it. Sweetie Belle clearly does have a point that she's still being treated like a little filly when she's (more or less) a teenager, and Rarity is being somewhat dense about this. The ep isn't perfectly paced, with the parallel Zipporwhill plot having that pony being at least as slow to grasp the point as Rarity is. I'm also a bit iffy about the CMC: I get that they're best as a threesome, but surely AB and Scoot could have had more ideas even as a two. Still, Sweetie's attempt to be polite while not quite being able to cover up her boredom is actually fairly well portrayed. Maybe I was just in a  grumpy mood six years ago. This episode is getting bumped up a star.

Choice quote: Chip Cutter: "When I look at my sandwich, it's like it's just asking me to turn it into a dragon."

New rating: ★★★

Next up will be the 150th My Little Repeats, which will look at "Parental Glideance". An episode I really did enjoy a lot first time around and have watched again for fun since. I fully expect to have a good time with it again now.

Bing Chat writes ponyfic

It would be interesting if someone produced a writing-centric AI whose learning material was entirely out-of-copyright work. In the UK at least, that would still allow the likes of Orwell and Wells. I wonder if anyone's done it? Anyway, some months ago, I posted about what happened when I asked GPT-4 and Claude+ to write ponyfic based on a prompt I'd thought up. Yesterday, I thought I'd give the same task to Bing Chat. I told it to be creative in its writing style and then offered the same prompt I'd given before, to wit:

Please write a My Little Pony story in which Fluttershy and Rarity discuss a sensitive issue over a cup of tea. The two ponies are very long-standing friends and trust each other completely. Both of them are quiet conversationalists, so the conversation should have a restrained emotional tone. However, the much brasher Rainbow Dash barges into the cottage halfway through.

Beyond the page break you can see what Bing Chat came up with. As usual in my experience of AI writing, it's useless at titles, but oh well. I recommend you read right to the end, though, as there's a fun twist waiting!

Ponyfic Roundup 465: Thousand Words Contest II winners, part 1 of 4

Read it Later story count: 99 (nc)

Words read this week: 9,000

A very low word count, but that's by design rather than because of illness this time, as I'm starting on my reviews of fics from the Thousand Words Contest II. Not all of them, as there were 168 – a staggering tally for a ponyfic contest in any year, let alone one in 2023. As it happens, there were nine stories that received an honourable mention, so that's where I'm beginning this survey.

Allegiance by Moproblems Moharmoney
Peanut Gallery by TheDriderPony
Lake Day by GrangeDisplay
Twilight Makes Coffee by Kodeake
Mortissimo by Incandesca
The Good Art by TCC56
Thus Testifies Twilight by Accurate Balance
Canon Perpetuus, Canon Perpetuus, Canon Perpetuus by JimmySlimmy
Dis/0rd3R by TheInfamousFly

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 6 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Well enough to start catching up

Covid takes a while to properly loosen its grip, but I think I've reached the point at which I can start to move back towards running this blog in the way I did before. Ponyfic Roundup is pretty much back now, so the next big deal will be going back to episode rewatches. "Forever Filly" is the next one of those, and I'm tentatively planning to watch that on Sunday and have a post up a week today. Also, back on the ponyfic front, I'll be catching up with notifying authors whose fics I've reviewed, since I fell behind on that as well during my illness. Hooves crossed!

Ponyfic Roundup 464

Read it Later story count: 99 (+4)

Words read this week: 25,555

You can blame certain people at the last Worcester meet for my RiL list heading perilously close to three figures again! Admittedly, it would help if I'd been able to review the normal number of stories over the last few weeks, but there we are. Anyway, I hope this will be the last three-fic edition of Ponyfic Roundup for quite some time. Today's trio are as follows:

In Creeping Twilight by Shilic
The Iridescent Iron Rat by horizon
The Third Alicorn Conspiracy by starfox64x

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