Ponyfic Roundup 549

Read it Later story count: 90 (nc)

Words read this week: 25,278

Well, would you look at that? A Ponyfic Roundup actually going up on the correct day! Here's to hoping this will happen again next week – although I wouldn't advise holding your breath on that score. Here's today's slate of stories. And yes, there's one story I've had to rate "N/A" this week, for reasons I'll explain when I get there.

The Princess and the Reaper by DrakeyC
Rot by Mister E
My house, My say by Felfox
After Glow by TheDriderPony
No Need For Words by Whirring Gears

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

Sounds of 2016, nos. 50 to 46

We're into the top half of the chart, yay! The Equestrian Trot 100 for 2016 has already thrown up plenty of interest, so I'm looking forward – as I hope are you – to finding out what we'll get this week. Here's the usual reminder of my inclusion rules:

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. 

I had to skip one track last week – and I'm sorry to have to say that I had to do the same this week. It's frustrating, but what can you do? Here are the four songs I am able to feature today:

50: PrinceWhateverer ft. Wubcake & NRGPony – So Long
49: The Wasteland Wailers – Broken Wing Recital
48: oodorato2 – トワイライト Sunshine Remix
47: PrinceWhateverer ft. Milkymomo – Frailty
46: skipped

I missed out on the waffle here last time, so I'm going to indulge myself a little bit more this week. I really do think the music scene for this fandom should be more appreciated outside it than it is. While plenty of fandoms have a few great songs created by fans, this fandom has well over a decade of them. That's quite remarkable. Anyway, let's continue...

My Little Repeats 195: "Sounds of Silence"

At this point, the Phantom's outfit parts to reveal... Pinkie Pie

S8E23: "Sounds of Silence"

29 Sep 2018

My original rating: ★★★★

IMDb score: 9.1

The one with sudoku

Thoughts: Kirin time! Now, to me kirin are a bit like Luna. (Stay with me on this.) I like them, but I don't share the utter adulation for them that half the fandom seems to. Fortunately, their big episode here – Gregory Bonsignore's only FiM writing credit – is a good one. The kirin/nirik¹ have an interesting concept and design. Applejack and Fluttershy make a good Map team, though Twilight's excitement about their being the first repeat Map team is never followed up. Autumn Blaze (voiced by Rachel Bloom) is a nice character and her song is plenty of fun. The moral is surprisingly solid for this late in the show's run. The crazy ticket office clerk is amusing. Downsides: Flutters insisting the kirin needed to be eternally silent isn't great. The plot is a tad predictable, and the story itself is actually not that packed with action. But I enjoyed the watch a lot. I think, as with "What Lies Beneath", it still just about scrapes a four. But no, I'm still not obsessed with kirin. Sorry!
¹ Fans often give the plural form as "nirik" too, but in the episode both that and "niriks" are used, more than once each. 

Choice quote: Twilight: "Sorry, Fluttershy – flanks don't lie." [Cringey, but funny with it.]

New rating:★★★★

The next episode is "Father Knows Beast" – and if I give that four stars, scraped or otherwise, you can probably safely assume that Logan has been quietly replaced by... dunno, really. But by something. From here, it's definitely a "get this one out of the way" episode. But I will give it a fair chance!

Ponyfic Roundup 548: Spotlight on The Witch of the Everfree

Read it Later story count: 90 (-2)

Words read this week: 56,028

Let's just ignore Muggins here having everything ready to go and not clicking the mouse button hard enough late on Wednesday night and not checking the next morning, shall we? Good. Time for another look at a longer ponyfic today! This is a tale that I'd never even heard of until recently, despite its nearly 40,000 views – but the author has a decent record and "alternative Sunset history" fics can often be interesting. This one has a notable difference from many, as I'll get to in a minute...

The Witch of the Everfree by MagnetBolt
Sunset Shimmer, Mane Six and Celestia
G4 AU; Slice of Life; 56k words; Mar 2015; Teen

My name is Sunset Shimmer. I am the strongest unicorn in all of Equestria, and my life is over. I'm in hiding and on the run, and I have no idea where to start putting things back together.

The difference I alluded to above? In this AU fic, which begins a short series, Sunset never went through the mirror. She's hiding from Celestia in Equestria itself. Along the way she interacts with the Mane Six, including a particularly interesting experience with Twilight. She meets Zecora in the Everfree Forest. And that's not the last of it. Sunset narrates herself, and so you do have to question narrative reliability – which is fine, considering just who is narrating. The chronology is grounded in the fact that the original sonic rainboom happens quite early in the story, meaning that the Mane Six are fillies just beginning to make their own way. But this is Sunset's tale – pony Sunset, remember – and her characterisation and development are satisfying pretty much all through. Even though it's an AU, you feel a clear link with the canon Equestria Girls character, but changed by her environment, which is as it should be. We even find out where that leather jacket comes from in this universe! There are some quibbles, such as Zecora's dialogue being a bit ropey sometimes, and the occasional meta can threaten to get in the way although it never quite does. I liked this a good deal, more than I thought I would to be honest, and it shades into the fours as a result. ★★★★

As usual, major spoilers lurk beyond this line!

UK PonyCon is (very nearly) completely sold out!

Yeah, I know Ponyfic Roundup still awaits, and it will be here tomorrow – but this news has taken precedence. UK PonyCon is very nearly completely sold out, a mere twelve days after tickets went on sale! As I write this on Thursday evening, All Weekend, Saturday and Sunday tickets are now sold. The only ones left on sale are purely for the music event on Friday night. If you want to be part of UKPC 2025, that really is now your only remaining option. At £15, the tickets aren't going to break the bank, either.

Why has the convention sold out in record-breaking time? I think it's a combination of several reasons. The largest is surely the significantly reduced capacity of this year's venue over the (unavailable) Nottingham one. The fact that tickets didn't go on sale until 12th July gave people time to save up, so more bought instantly than usual. A new venue adds a frisson of excitement. We're just starting to see G6 hints appearing. But mostly I think it's that reduced capacity. But even so, twelve days. Wow. 

Sounds of 2016, nos. 55 to 51

Some big news from UK PonyCon: Weekend and Saturday tickets are sold out already! The lower capacity of this year's venue (which was not the con's first choice) has been a major factor. Sadly the early sell-out of full-weekend tickets (not since 2018 has this happened in July) has caught out a couple of my friends, who just weren't able to buy in time. As I type, Friday-only and Sunday-only tickets are still on sale, but even they probably won't last that much longer.

Returning to music, today we round off the lower half of the Equestrian Trot 100 chart for 2016. As usual, I'll give a quick reminder of my inclusion criteria, of which Rule 1 is always the most important:

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. 

Last week I was able to feature everything. Not this time, sadly.

55: Foozogz – Acceptance
54: The Wasteland Wailers – Dare Master
53: skipped
52: JoinedTheHerd – Out On My Own (remix)
51: Metajoker & Respin – Become

You know what? No waffle here this time. Music awaits!

UK PonyCon tickets selling fast. Very fast

You know how I often mention that UK PonyCon has maintained serious popularity for so many years? And I mean many – it's the world's longest-running MLP convention, after all! Well, yesterday UKPC put out this blog post, noting that although the Birmingham Conference and Events Centre has its bonuses, one compromise that's had to be made is on total capacity. I don't think the number has been officially published, but most people I speak to expect attendance this year to be around 1,000 rather than the 1,300 of 2024. Anyway, I'll quote the part that stood out to many of us:

For Friday we have sold 55% of our available tickets

For Saturday we have sold 73% of our available tickets

For Sunday we have sold 59% of our available tickets

That's a whole lot of tickets! In fact, it suggests pretty strongly that if you want to attend on Saturday, which of course includes wanting to be there all weekend, you're going to have to get your skates on. (Or roller skates, if you're Hip-Hop, Jazzie or Melody.) Selling out early is not unprecedented – in fact, in 2018 UKPC sold out of everything but Sunday-only tickets in July. But in recent years they've been available almost until the day of the con.

Not this time, methinks! Remember, those percentages were before the flurry of sales that I know the announcement caused. I was one of those, by the way: I took the announcement to heart and bought my own ticket (Bronze sponsor) yesterday, almost as soon as I learnt about the official blog post. I'm very glad I did, because waiting much longer might have ended up turning into waiting for next year!

Ponyfic Roundup 547: Serious Edition

Read it Later story count: 92 (+4)

Words read this week: 24,863

Thanks to Blogger being a bit of a pain, Ponyfic Roundup is slightly late this week. For once it's not my own fault, at least! Anyway, as I noted last month, I once had an edition of PR wherein all the fics had the word "silly" (or variations thereof) in their titles. That being so, I thought, why not have an edition from the other end of the spectrum? And here we are!

Potions Are Serious Business by Rough_Draft
Twilight Sparkle Marries a Book (Seriously, Twilight?!) by ThePinkedWonder
Are. You. SERIOUS?!?!?! by SomeGenericPonyNameHere
Serious about Silly by Grey Faerie
Apples Are Serious Business by housedoc

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

Apologies

Blogger won't post anything with links or formatting in, so PR can't get through. It won't post long stuff or let me use tags either. I've had this before and it's only lasted a day, so hopefully tomorrow! Frustrating when I *didn't* have to delay it for other reasons!

Sounds of 2016, nos. 60 to 56

The heatwave I mentioned last week did come to pass, peaking at 34 °C in my neck of the woods (in Worcestershire). Things have now cooled off significantly, with a high today of just 18 °C; and as I look out of the window a few hours before this post goes up, it's overcast and lightly raining. A good day for sitting indoors and listening to Pony music, therefore. The inclusion rules:

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. 

Last week I could only feature four of the five charting tracks. No such problems this week, and all five are present and correct. They are:

60: 4EverfreeBrony – Bound with Time
59: µThunder & FritzyBeat – Luna's Swing
58: Jyc Row ft. Aloma Steele – Luna's Future (remix)
57: YourEnigma ft. EileMonty – Are We Insane?
56: Pinkie Rose et al – Friendship Through the Ages (cover)

Okay, now that you know what you're facing this week, let's get moving to the tracks themselves. As ever, YouTube embeds here where possible.

My Little Repeats 194: "What Lies Beneath"

"You really wouldn't like to be a tree, whatever Professor Fluttershy says."

S8E22: "What Lies Beneath"

22 Sep 2018

My original rating: ★★★★

IMDb score: 8.3

The one with plumbing diagrams

Thoughts: Not everyone agrees with me on this, but I generally find Mike Vogel to be among the most reliable writers of the later seasons of Friendship is Magic. He largely hits the mark again with "What Lies Beneath", an episode which was extremely popular at the time and which prompted a lot of discussion at the time and probably only faded a bit because of its misfortune in being immediately followed by "Sounds of Silence" and the fandom's kirin obsession. "What Lies Beneath" shows us that the Tree of Harmony is a complete sociopath very powerful indeed, scarily so really. As has often been noted, Smolder faces the terror of being cute at tea parties, while Gallus faces the terror of being crushed to death by rocks. Silverstream and Ocellus's past traumas are more directly addressed than ever before (or since) – though "tell[ing] him exactly what you think of him" prooobably wouldn't defeat the real Storm King. Yona is cute as ever and commands a mighty spider army. Sandbar... well, he's a bit dense, but quite appealing anyway. Cozy Glow's manipulative behaviour is considerably creepier from a post-S9 viewpoint. The (other) students support each other, and that I was very pleased with. In 2018, I thought this was four/five-star boundary. I no longer think it's that good, but it's still highly watchable, even if the Tree is weird. (Mind you, it's not a pony, so why should it think like one...?) Take a star off and it becomes a top-end three, but I'm going to creep it over the line to a low-end four. The students' character moments, their care and compassion for each other, is what does that.

Choice quote: Cozy Glow, to the non-pony students: "Golly, it's so inspiring how relaxed you all are about studying friendship, considering your disadvantage." [Creepy in 2018. Even more so in 2025.]

New rating:★★★★

Next time, it is of course "Sounds of Silence". I am not someone who thinks kirin are the greatest things since sliced bread, so don't expect me to rave on and give it an easy five-star rating. It does have a reasonable amount of Fluttershy in it, however, which is rarely a bad thing. We shall see!

Ponyfic Roundup 546

Read it Later story count: 88 (+1)

Words read this week: 25,683

The news from UK PonyCon has quietened down a little over the last few days, and so this edition of PR is going out on the usual day. Not a lot else for me to say, which is normal. I'm not going to ramble too much, which is less normal. Here's the slate:

Schadenfreude by Daemon McRae
Carry Me Home by PropMaster
Jade's Adventure by Ni-kun
Backstage by Noriko Nakayama
Derpy Explodes at the End of This Story by Brony_Fife

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

Sounds of 2016, nos. 65 to 61

We seem to be facing another heatwave here in Britain – which, don't laugh if you're from Miami or somewhere, means temperatures nudging into the low 30s °C. I'm not really looking forward to it, especially not the warm nights that are humid and uncomfortable for sleeping. (Only about 5% of British homes have air-con.) What I am looking forward to is bringing you all a bit more of the Equestrian Trot 100 chart from 2016! Here's the usual refresher regarding inclusion rules:

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. 

For two weeks now, I've been able to feature all five of the tracks in the relevant segment of the chart. I'm sorry to have to tell you that I can't make it three weeks on the trot. Ah well. Here's what I do have:

65: Aurelleah – Harmony
64: Vylet Pony – Little Dreams
63: skipped
62: Eurobeat Brony – Discord 2015
61: Silva Hound & UndreamedPanic ft. Synthis – The Storm

Time for us to get on to the part of this post that, I suspect, quite a lot of you scroll straight forward to anyway: the music itself!

Ponyfic Roundup 545

Read it Later story count: 87 (nc)

Words read this week: 25,724

As you'll have noticed, the UK PonyCon news coming out a few days ago meant that I just couldn't find the time to finish writing up my PR 545 post and so there was a blank week. I hope you'll appreciate, though, that UKPC stuff is about the biggest deal there is for fans over here, at least when it comes to the social side of the fandom. I'm back with ponyfic today, though! The stories under review are as follows:

A Chat Between a King and a Prince by PoisonClaw
Oh, For The Love Of... by StoryEdge
The Price of a Smile by Trick Question
According to Plan by Vic Fontaine
Her Best Behavior by Fervidor

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

Sounds of 2016, nos. 70 to 66

Welcome to July, everypony. It's been quite warm and summery here in ol' Blighty, although as I type this the weather has gone cloudy and muggy, which isn't my favourite kind of weather. Anyway, it's time once more to see what the Equestrian Trot 100 chart brought back in 2016. Remember, these are songs that were popular that year; they don't necessarily have to have been first released then. Inclusion criteria:

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. 

Last time, I was able to feature all five of the featured tracks. Same again this week! I love it when a plan comes together.

70: 174UDSI – Sweeeeeep (remix)
69: Archie – Back Again
68: 4EverfreeBrony – Stay
67: OhPonyBoy – The Blob Pad !
66: Aurelleah  ft. Joan Silentio – My Wings Aria

There we go, then. It's about time we moved on to the important part of this post: the songs themselves. Onward!