Sounds of 2014: Nos. 85 to 81

Guess what, folks, it's time for another peek into the songs that were shaking the fandom a decade ago. That's right, we're back with the 2014 edition of the Equestrian Top 100. First up, the usual reminder of my criteria for inclusion in this series:

Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original artist.
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this.
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out.
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion.

The first three editions of "Sounds of 2014" had no skipped entries at all. This time, we're not so lucky. I did have to think about one song before deciding it justified a Rule 3 application, as you'll read below. The final entry, though, I felt fell the wrong side of the line, so it's not here. Sorry! Here's the list:

85: General Mumble – Couldn't You Just Simply Die?
84: Forest Rain – Nightmare Night
83: Sim Gretina, EileMonty & Copper – Moving On (cover)
82: Turquoise Splash & Megaphoric ft. Joaftheloaf – The Twilight Will Rise
81: skipped

As usual, if you come with me beyond the jump break, you'll get a YouTube embed of the relevant songs, together with a paragraph of my comments and thoughts about each of them.

New reviewer: abrony-mouse

Years and years ago, I remember a poster called abrony-mouse was very active on the late lamented UK of Equestria forums. They've had a Fimfiction account for longer than I have, but it hasn't been very active for years.

Well... they're back! And not only that, but they're doing ponyfic reviews! Well, more of a recommendations series (as with TCC56) than a review one as such, and with a deliberately short'n'snappy format. The first two are here and here. I always love to see new reviewers, given how few of us there are these days, so yay for abrony-mouse!

Edit: and a mini-review of my very own We Are the Everfree is right here!

Ponyfic Roundup 487: Spotlight on How We Met

Read it Later story count: 94 (nc)

Words read this week: 49,651

Well look at that, it's Spotlight time again! No 300,000-word behemoth this time, though, but instead a story that clocks in at just under the 50k-word mark. I've read and liked some other Rated Ponystar fics – for example, Treating Her Right (PR 371). How We Met is an old story, something I did bear in mind, but I'm obviously a sucker for Fluttershy/Rainbow backstory or I wouldn't have written Where They Understand You myself all those years ago! Anyway, let's see how this one does.

How We Met by Rated Ponystar
Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash
G4; Romance/Slice of Life; 50k words; Feb–Oct 2012; Everyone

A story of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash's relationship from their first meeting to their end

You can probably tell where this is going by the combination of the title, the shortdesc and those genre tags – and you'd be right. This is a story which starts with the two as fillies, although the bulk of the action takes place after they've grown up, got their cutie marks and moved to Ponyville. There are some cute moments and even the mid-story shift from friendshipping to plain shipping isn't too clunky. The writing is generally serviceable but isn't going to win any awards for style, and there are too many typos, awkwardly constructed sentences etc. Also, as PaulAsaran noted, the as-it-was-being-written Author's Notes every chapter irritate more than they illuminate. Not a bad story, but very predictable indeed in its progression. Its age and the author's relative inexperience in 2012 do show and do cost it a bit. ★★

You'll doubtless know this by now, but, expect spoilers beyond this point!

My Little Repeats 161: "Daring Done?"

They do the sand dance, don't you know?

S7E18: "Daring Done?"

9 Sep 2017

My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.2

The one with hotel mini muffins

Thoughts: This is a G. M. Berrow episode, so you know what to expect, and for the most part you get it. This isn't one for those who want perfectly crafted writing, but it does have some nice world-building with the (admittedly shaky) Somnambula legend. A special note too for the visuals and even more so the music, which really is nice. Characterisation is pretty variable: A. K. Yearling not being a flawless hero is good and I rather like Pinkie Pie here, but I'm not so impressed by Rainbow Dash – you know you can fly to escape Caballeron's henchponies, girl? Talking of which, the "hah, no flying here!" thing is a bit irritating, though I don't object to it as much as some fans apparently do. But the worst thing is that (as I said in 2017) the air-vent solution to save Rainbow is absurdly out-of-nowhere, right down there at bunyip levels of eye-rollingness. The main reason I'm downgrading this from a three-star episode to a two is that it's so frustrating: it does well for the first two-thirds, but then it falls apart. So, so much more could have been done with the third act. Oh well, on we go.

Choice quote: A. K. Yearling: "They don't sell my books in southern Equestria." [Er... why not?]

New rating: ★★

Next time around, we'll reach "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You". This is an episode which tends to split those irritated by overly convenient plot hoof-waving and those who just want to kick back and relax with the ponies. I tend to be in camp two by this point in FiM's run, so I quite liked it.

Hoping to post a bit more

Mildly ironic that I'm posting this at a time when I'm not posting more, but that's simply because I am extremely busy this week. You'll have noticed that last week I had a run of seven successive days of posts. That was fun, but in truth is not where I expect to end up – rather somewhere in between, yes. The "Daring Done?" rewatch should be along early next week, and with that, "Sounds of 2014" and Ponyfic Roundup there'll be at least three updates before the following weekend. Hooves crossed!

Ponyfic Roundup 486

Read it Later story count: 94 (-1)

Words read this week: 34,257

In this week's intro, Logan will not be talking about 1960s pop groups. Sorry! Instead, he will mention that he has finally got hold of a £1 charity shop DVD of Titanic. The 1997 blockbuster, not the one with the rapping dog. No, it's not exactly difficult to find, but while I wanted to watch the film (I've never seen it!) I wasn't prepared to pay Amazon or Disney+ subscription prices to do so. Also, this way it's mine. I may report back when I've seen it, but more likely I'll forget. Anyway, today's fics are:

Ambulance Inspection Rejection by SockPuppet
Little Muffin Stand of Horrors by sister_mike
Above All Else by 8686
Sight by Slywolf930
Pieces of Me by DwarvishPony

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

Sounds of 2014: Nos. 90 to 86

Welcome back to our canter through the Equestrian Trot 100 chart of the most popular My Little Pony fandom songs of 2014. As a reminder, a track doesn't have to have been released in that year, just to have been popular enough to make the chart. As usual, I'll remind everyone of the criteria I use to decide whether a song should be included:

Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original artist.
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this.
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out.
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion.

Third time lucky today, in that once again in the 2014 series I'm not having to skip a song. At one point I thought I would, but... well, that's explained below. Here's what we have:

90: d.notive – Loveless Lovechild
89: Forest Rain et al – On Our Way
88: PsychGoth ft. Rina-Chan – Lulamoon
87: Aviators – Crash
86: Vylet Pony – Twilight's Kingdom (parts 1 & 2)

You probably know this by now, but beyond the jump break you'll find a little waffling about each of the five songs and YouTube videos to match. Onward!

Looking back at Kicking Back

Previously in this series: Sunset's Sales Snag, Ever Let the Fancy Roam

It's been several months since I posted anything in this series, so let's alter that! As before, I've let a random number generator pick which story I'm going to feature, and it's come back with Kicking Back. This is a fic which I wrote as a bit of silly fun but which did slightly better than anticipated. Not the most overperforming story I've had, but even now it's still mentioned occasionally.

This is a Cloud Kicker story, inspired by her personality in the first chapter of Chengar Qordath's highly popular The Life and Times of a Winning Pony. The reason I emphasise first chapter is that it's all I knew of at the time: in that fic Cloudy's story becomes deeper later on, but to start with she's seen as not that much more than a sex-obsessed airhead. That was what I found amusing to pick up on.

While Kicking Back isn't even remotely close to M-rated territory, it does go a little more down the innuendo route than I generally prefer. My usual complaint when stories do that is that there's no particular reason for it, but here it seemed integral to Cloud Kicker's personality, or at least the part of it I was using here. I tried to keep the tone light and fun, and I think I did fairly well there.

You see, in this story Cloud Kicker's reputation is not justified, and she's getting seriously tired of it. She even goes to the extent of hiring an image consultant. It... ah... doesn't go quite as she'd planned. I still smile at some of my descriptions of her sometimes physical rages when something goes horribly wrong – and so I think I got the humour level pretty much where I wanted it.

Would I have changed much? In all honesty, no, not really. Kicking Back isn't some great piece of ponyfic for the ages, but then it wasn't written to be one. I think it stands up quite nicely as what it is: a tea-break fic for those looking to, well, kick back and relax for a few minutes with perhaps a few laughs along the way. All the more so if you enjoy a little humorous wordplay.

One thing I will say is that you'll probably get more out of this if you have read at least the odd bit of Winningverse fiction. On the other hoof, you may for the same reason find it irritating and a bit one-notey. Maybe the ideal audience is the one I was part of when writing it: someone who knows about Cloud Kicker's reputation but hasn't yet read on to the other 300,000 words of Winning Pony!

Ponyfic Roundup 485

Read it Later story count: 95 (nc)

Words read this week: 34,262

This is apropos of not a lot, and not remotely related to ponyfic, but I have been listening to and greatly enjoying songs by The Seekers, especially those from their 1960s heyday. In my view, Judith Durham had one of the finest voices ever to grace the charts. My own pick would be "The Carnival is Over", a huge hit internationally (except in the USA) that was so popular in the UK that it kept The Who's "My Generation" off the top of the charts in 1965. That band never did have a British number one. All right, now it's time for ponyfic!

Labors at Sunrise by NaiadSagaIotaOar
A Tryst at Midnight by Cosmonaut
How the Foundation Ruined Nightmare Night by Drefsab
flith2 by Fluttergail
White Out by the dobermans

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

Sounds of 2014: Nos. 95 to 91

Ah, it really is fun to be doing these again! Much as ponyfic will probably always be my first love when it comes to Pony fandom creativity, I am glad to be back with a regular series on music for the first time in several years. As a reminder, for 2014 I'm using the Equestrian Trot 100 chart – and this chart is for songs that were popular in that year, not limited to those released then, as we'll see this week... As another reminder, my criteria for including a song here are as follows:

Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original artist.
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this.
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out.
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion.

As with my first post, I'll be featuring five tracks today. No skips needed once again, yay!

95: Ponyphonic – Love is in Bloom (cover)
94: General Mumble – Devil in Me
93: Canapplejack ft. Pencil Eraser – Pieces of Me
92: Aviators – Between Fairytales and Happy Endings (remix)
91: PrinceWhateverer – Promises (2013)

As before, after the jump break you get a YouTube video of the relevant song, plus some waffling from me, including where possible a link to Bandcamp or similar to allow you to obtain the track in high quality.

My Little Repeats 160: "To Change a Changeling"

Feelings... nothing more than feelings

S7E17: "To Change a Changeling"

2 Sep 2017

My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.5

The one with changeling nymphs

Thoughts: The IMDb ratings for the last few episodes are similarly middling, but I rather like this one. Kevin Lappin's second and last Friendship is Magic ep (after "Honest Apple") is a rare episode (the first in the show's run?) with none of the Mane Six even on screen. It's enjoyable, and Pharynx is an interesting character. I've seen it mentioned by a few people that he's somewhat in the role of a demobbed soldier who finds adjusting to civilian life hard. This is one of Thorax's best episodes, especially when he shows the assertiveness he learnt from Ember. Trixie and Starlight are really getting into the groove now as a team, and they have some fun, snappy dialogue. The Feelings Forum is amusing, especially the bit with the soup. It's a shame that the Maulwurf is such an uninteresting monster, otherwise this might just have had a shot at a four-star rating. Even as it is, it retains its 2017 three-star score with ease and is on the high side of that band.

Choice quote: Pharynx: "I look better with holes."

New rating: ★★★

Next time around, it'll be "Daring Done?", an episode which prompted mixed reactions from both me and the fandom on first appearance. Now? Well, you know the form... we'll see!

Claude 3 Sonnet writes more (and better?) ponyfic

Don't worry, this isn't going to take over the blog! I won't be writing about AI things on here for a while now. I was, however, interested to see that a slight tweak to the prompt gave what I think is a more interesting attempt at ponyfic (albeit still with a hopeless title). This time I allowed Claude 3 Sonnet to use up two responses to write its story, prompting it with "More" to get the second one. This time the prompt was:

Please write a My Little Pony story (with a suitable title) 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. The audience is very familiar with the characters already.

I think adding that last sentence has helped, but see what you think. Beyond the break, AI adventurers!

Claude 3 Sonnet writes ponyfic

It's time for more adventures with AI! In the past I've asked an earlier version of ChatGPT, then GPT-4 and Claude+, then finally Bing Chat, to produce a short MLP fanfic based on a moderately simple prompt written by me. I feel freer to experiment with this stuff here than on Fimfiction, given the latter's strict rule (which I support) that stories posted there have to be written by humans. I find it interesting, though, and since I have this blog I shall use it!

This time around I'm sticking with Anthropic's Claude series, but using the more advanced Claude 3 Sonnet model. This is not the top version of Claude, but it is the top version available (albeit for a limited number of messages) without the need for a subscription. Much as this stuff interests me, it doesn't interest me enough to pay £18 a month for!

The prompt is as before, with a single note added in brackets to remind the AI to include a title:

Please write a My Little Pony story (with a suitable title) 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.

I'll put the result after the cut. I was amused to see that these things are still pretty damn useless at titles!

Ponyfic Roundup 484

Read it Later story count: 95 (nc)

Words read this week: 30,367

By some miracle, both Saturday and Monday of the Easter long weekend were nice days, with pleasant mildness and even a decent amount of sunshine. Actually better than the forecast, which doesn't seem to happen too often lately! Anyway, back to a world where ponies themselves can (sometimes) control the weather. After the excitement of The Silver Standard and its five shiny stars, it's back to much shorter stories in this week's Ponyfic Roundup. Here's the run-down:

Applejack's Hobby by TheLegendaryBillCipher
Covering for a Magician by Chromentazol (review requested by author)
Twilight is Annoyed by Protopony350
Maniacal by ColdGoldLazarus
Piano Lessons by gapty

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

BABSCon to end after the 2025 con

Video by Herbie Hopps

 

 Some big news out of California: BABSCon, one of the giants of the My Little Pony convention scene and a stalwart of the calendar for ten years now, is nearing the end of its run. The decision to end after the 2025 convention was made public on stage, as you can see in the video above. No reason was given, but there are some suggestions as to possible factors in the description text of that video: Covid fallout, attendance drops, financial worries.

Of course, running a convention is a massive amount of work. I hope I've made that clear over my decade and more of writing about cons on here and elsewhere. Please don't assume I don't think about such things, as that just isn't true. It may simply be that as well as the issues already mentioned above, too many of the staff are getting burned out and/or want to do something else with their lives. You can't really blame them if that's the case.

Whatever the reason(s), and regardless of the fact that I've never been to BabsCon and won't be doing so next year either, two points to end on. One, it absolutely will be sad to see such a long-running and popular event cease to exist other than in people's memories. Two, it absolutely will not be the end of the fandom or of Pony conventions, any more than it was when BronyCon ended five years ago now. I wish BabsCon well for a successful finale next year!

Sounds of 2014: Nos. 100 to 96

Okay folks, here we go! As I've said before, since the Everfree Radio Top 100 ended with 2013, I'm moving to the Equestrian Trot 100 chart this time. This ran until the end of 2019, although "[2014] is the only year in which this countdown is based on inverse rank points as opposed to points earned in each week," apparently. I'm not sure exactly what that means, so let's move on!

I'm going to stick with the rules I worked by for the previous editions of "Sounds of". These are designed to respect artists who for whatever reason have decided they no longer want to be associated with their MLP songs, while also recognising the reality that the most famous tracks are not going to simply disappear whatever the case. Here's the list:

Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original artist.
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this.
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out.
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion.

Let's get galloping! Here's the run-down of the tracks to be featured this time, and happily there's no need to skip any of them:

100: Glaze – Energy Sway
99: Rarity ft. EileMonty – I Will Always Miss Us
98: EileMonty & Austin Hull – Inside
97: MandoPony & Silva Hound – Wild Fire
96: 4everfreebrony ft. ElectroBLITZ – Lost

Past the jump break, you'll find embedded YouTube videos of the songs featured, links to HQ versions where available and a little bit of waffling from me about each track!