Ponyfic Roundup 542

Read it Later story count: 89 (-2)

Words read this week: 23,630

Before I forget again, I really must note that the excellent Thousand Words Contest is back for its fourth edition. Bicyclette and co have done a superb job in running this since its creation, and the sheer level of interest it's gained even in today's smaller fandom is testament to its popularity. And yes, I shall make every effort to ensure that I have a story in there somewhere! But talking of stories, here are five that I didn't write, and they're the subject of today's PR:

Love Defenestrates by Liquid Truth
Mistmane and the Torii of Time by Impossible Numbers
The Dangers Of Teleporting While Intoxicated by naturalbornderpy
Dinner with Rose by Admiral Biscuit
Reminiscing by Gleaming

★: 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. 90 to 86

It's time we paid another visit to the Equestrian Trot 100 chart for 2016 – though, as I noted last time, it's not quite the full calendar year as its voting period ran from December 2015 to November 2016. Close enough, though! Certainly the closest you're going to get in these parts. Here's the usual reminder of my 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. 

I was able to feature all five songs last week, and this time around I can do that again! This is always the best-case scenario, all the more so when – as has happened this week – all the songs remain on their creators' YouTubes and discoverable without much effort. The five this time are:

90: WeimTime – Rainbow Factory (orchestral arrangement)
89: StrachAttack – The Spectacle (remix)
88: OhPonyBoy – Mox Super Jupiter
87: Synthis – Hold Me Close
86: PON3 – Secrets

There we go; now you know what's on the way! Talking of which...

My Little Repeats 190: "Yakity-Sax"

Well, this isn't disturbing at all...

S8E18: "Yakity-Sax"

25 Aug 2018 (previewed by Discovery Family 20 Jul 2018)

My original rating: ★★
IMDb score: 5.3

The one with randomly Irish Lily Daisy

Thoughts: This ep was not in fact hated by everyone from the start. But it had a negative reception overall, sometimes very negative – and if anything it's got worse over time. A few nice touches, such as AJ's callback to "Horse Play". The way Pinkamena gradually gets greyer and greyer. I quite like the Pinkie Pie Appreciation Party, too. But. But. Here we have Pinkie valuing a hobby we've never seen before over her friends. Twilight making a mess of wording the "you're bad at this". Pinkie deciding the best response is to run away to Yakyakistan, saying that without the yovidaphone her life has no meaning. The Manes being unutterably thick about how they need to talk to Maud. And the rotten cherry on the whole stinking mess of a cake, the appalling moral. "Sod everyone else, Pinkie, your personal obsession beats their welfare any day!" So: don't be honest with your friends when they're keeping a whole town awake, just encourage them to annoy everyone even more! Besides, there is a canon silence spell ("Amending Fences") which Twi doesn't even mention. Use that, for Celestia's sake! There's actually a fun episode somewhere in this basic premise. The teeny, tiny snag? This ain't it.

Choice quote: Pinkie Pie: "Those apple turnovers aren't gonna apple themselves!"

New rating: ★

And breathe. Next time it'll be "Road to Friendship", which isn't a perfect episode by any means but is on another level to this. It's one of Josh Haber's most popular eps, helped by the chemistry of its principal characters and a very catchy song. I liked it a good deal in 2018, and I hope I'll like it a good deal again this year!

Ponyfic Roundup 541: Spotlight on Redheart's War

Read it Later story count: 90 (-1)

Words read this week: 46,081

I've been really looking forward to reading Redheart's War. It's had such a impressive reception, including from multiple reviewers I read and respect, and I've badly wanted to see whether it would hit the spot for me as well. For that reason, I accelerated its progress up my Read it Later queue. I can say right away that I didn't regret that decision. Here's the review!

Redheart's War by SockPuppet
Nurse Redheart, Shining Armor, Celestia, Cadance and Hippogriffs
G4; Adventure/Drama; 46k words; Jun 2020; Teen (Gore, Violence)

A nurse has seen it all. A combat medic has seen even more.

Although this can, as SockPuppet says, be read as a standalone, I strongly recommend having read A Story to Relate To (PR 507) and, especially, The Ponies in the Caves (PR 523) first as certain elements are referred to here. Anyway, this is Nurse Redheart's backstory as a member of Celestia's Own, Equestria's storied elite combat unit. The admittedly fairly thin domestic modern-day framing allows her to tell series of stories about her role, which show a mare of immense character who rises above her doubts to become a hero of her country. There's a lot of blood and guts here, but the emphasis is always on character rather than history, and that's a huge plus. It's an extremely exciting fic, with highs and lows of emotions – one particular very hard-to-read scene had me white with fury and in tears. Its flaws are few and minor, and vastly outweighed by the pluses. I'm not a huge war fic fan, but I now consider this essential, if not always easy, reading. ★★★★★

As usual, major spoilers lurk beyond this line!

Sounds of 2016, nos. 95 to 91

Ready to join me again on a trip into the dim and distant world of, er, nine years ago? At this point in 2016, the last two FiM episodes had been "A Hearth's Warming Tail" and "The Saddle Row Review", so there was a fair degree of optimism around regarding the show. It's the fandom music scene I'm interested in here, though. As usual, the ratings come from the Equestrian Trot 100 chart, whose voting period ran from December 2015 through to November 2016. Here's the usual reminder of my 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 week, I had to skip the very first song (ie no. 100) but the other four could be included. This week, on the other hoof, it's plain sailing all the way, since I can feature all five songs. Woo-hoo!

95: Synthis – Into the Everfree
94: WoodLore – Flowers
93: 4EverfreeBrony ft. Joaftheloaf & Relative1Pitch – Without Me
92: The Wasteland Wailers ft. Brittany Church – When the Sun Comes Back
91: Eurobeat Brony ft. Odyssey – Luna's Future (Euro Cast Mix)

As ever, that marks the end of the introductory waffle. Now it's on to the songs themselves. Woo-hoo again!

My Little Repeats 189: "The End in Friend"

Lyra and Bon-Bon's colour co-ordinated ice creams are a nice touch

S8E17: "The End in Friend"

18 Aug 2018

My original rating: ★★
IMDb score: 6.4

The one with an adorable tiny cloud

Thoughts: To my surprise, when I looked back I found that several prominent reviewers (notably Dark Qiviut) liked this episode in 2018. I wasn't thrilled by it, though, and I'm still not. Another ep with a good and quite rare team-up largely wasted. The setup grates: Gallus tells Rarity and Rainbow they have "nothing in common". Nah, apart from repeatedly saving Equestria together, nothing whatsoever. By the time we get to "banter" things look fairly bad. The story drags horribly to fill a full-length episode. It's contrived in the first place, and Twilight and the students being there as spectators is just weird. The Bufogren is pointless. Good things? Starlight had a pretty solid minor role, which helps. The visuals are excellent – I wonder who'd have believed in 2010 that Flash could look like this? The moral itself isn't too bad. But it takes forever to get there and the setup requires two good ponies to be dislikeable for most of the running time. A two-star rating like the last episode, but this one goes quite a bit lower in that band.
NB: One small and sadly (this being S8) almost certainly unintentional nice touch, pointed out by a friend: real-world horses cannot see reds, so actually magenta and blue gems would appear similar – though Rarity apparently can tell the difference.

Choice quote: Rainbow Dash: "Unless you like tripping with every step, heels on a horse are pretty useless."
Note she says "horse", not "pony". Hmm.

New rating: ★★

Not an unmitigated disaster, but not a great episode by any stretch of the imagination. It would be nice if I had an unquestioned classic with which to follow up, but sadly I haven't. Instead the next episode is "Yakity-Sax". Oh boy. Maybe it'll click with me this time. [Yeah, and maybe you'll win three lottery jackpots in a row —Ed.]

Ponyfic Roundup 540

Read it Later story count: 91 (-1)

Words read this week: 20,712

Not a lot for me to say in my introductory paragraph this week, so I won't bother! Thanks to the lower word count this week, I've been able to get back on track with PR's release date. Four very short fics and one just a bit longer this time around. Here's the list:

"Do wings turn you gay, Headmare Twilight?" by semillon
A Letter to Father by Silvermyr
The Roles We (Are Fated to) Play by AltruistArtist
Lumen de Lumine by Noriko Nakayama
The Only Way is Forwards by Once In A Blue Moon

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