The Colour of Vinyl

As you'll have seen from my latest Ponyfic Roundup, I read BillyColt's story This Nearly Was Mine recently. Vinyl Scratch is a major character in this fic, and early in the story she is described as "very pale yellow". Although I didn't note that in the review, it seemed an odd choice to me, and indeed several Fimfiction commenters brought it up, saying she wasn't yellow.

In an idle moment, I poked about a bit online, and on Vinyl's mlp.fandom.com page I found this:

a layout artist on the show noted that the character model's coat color is actually a very pale yellow, specifically the 24-bit hex triplet #FEFDE7.^[3]

The citation given is to a locally archived copy of a discussion from way back in April 2011 from the old Allspark forums (slow-loading PDF) featuring a poster called Nayuki who was a layout artist on Friendship is Magic. Another forum member asks Nayuki, "I've heard [Vinyl] was really supposed to be a kind of very pale yellow or off-white. Is that true?" To which the reply is:

Short answer: Yes
Long answer: Yes, she's off-white
Awesome answer: #FEFDE7

Look up #FEFDE7 on various quickly Googleable sites and you get a variety of text interpretations or none at all. These include yellowish white, cosmic latte (I love that one!) and light grayish yellow. I'm not qualified to say which is right, or how approximate those text names may be, so I'll stick with the actual show staffer's description of "off-white".

Still, it does seem Vinyl's coat colour description could be a little less clear-cut than "not yellow in any way, don't be silly", which is what I would have thought earlier.

Bits and pieces

On Fimfiction, I've been looking through the list of users with the most stories in preparation for the next Ponyfic Roundup. There are people in the top 100 I've never even heard of, but there are also some really prominent writers in there. It's certainly possible to be both very good and very prolific. As it happens, there's a run in the 50s of six authors whose works I've read at least a few of: RainbowBob, Pascoite, naturalbornderpy, PresentPerfect, Georg and BronyWriter. You could have a pretty reasonable time with an anthology of fics by that half-dozen.

On a more general fanfic note, remember that book I posted about a couple of days ago? Well, Cecilia Aragon of the University of Washington has published this article in Technology Review about her research into fanfic with Katie Davis and four students. The three fandoms they looked at were Harry Potter, Doctor Who... and MLP:FiM. The book they produced was actually published in July 2019 (Writers in the Secret Garden: Fanfiction, Youth and New Forms of Mentoring) but I don't recall hearing of it until now. The Technology Review article itself is thin on actual MLP coverage, unfortunately.

Finally, let me be parochial for a moment and say that the first Worcester Shires ponymeet of 2020 will take place in a week's time, on Saturday 11 January. I'm pleased to report that our little group is still going strong as we approach our seventh birthday in early May! Which seems like a nice place to end this miscellany. :)

Words, words, words

This post is not actually about fanfic. It's about why I prefer to do the bulk of my fandom interacting in spaces like forums and blogs. Although I use Twitter a good deal, I don't even have a Facebook account, and I find FB's insistence on covering half the page with a banner even after you click "Not Now" to be intensely, intensely obnoxious. It's the kind of behaviour you might expect from a particularly childish middle-schooler.

But, as so often, I digress. I am a regular attendee at the twice-monthly Worcester meets. It's quite a small group, but we have a nice time. These are planned in this thread on the UK of Equestria forums, and they always have been. I am extremely happy about this state of affairs, and there are reasons for that which go beyond simple convenience. (My usual disclaimer here: I am a long-standing member and moderator on UK of E.)

A really important factor is openness. I have nothing to hide about being an MLP fan, and I find it very pleasing that UK of E has no hidden forums for members only. (There's of necessity a little bit of staff-only discussion, but that's all.) Anyone, whether logged in or not, can browse the forums and see what we all talk about. Anyone, whether a member or not, can read about our planning for the Worcester meets, including the venue.

I would be significantly less comfortable if these meets were planned on a closed Facebook group, even if I had a Facebook account. While I've been around the internet long enough that silly insults of the "you're all insert-slur-here" type rarely bother me, I do think it's a huge plus point that we can invite literally anyone to share in our thoughts and comments about the fandom. This is also one reason I'm glad our meets take place in public.

Blogs and forums are also more permanent than social media, making it easier to refer back to what you or someone else said on a topic. This isn't an entirely unmixed blessing, of course, but I think the pros outweigh the cons. You get time to consider your comments. And of course, you get a lot more words to play with. Even 280 characters isn't very much if you want to expand on why Scootaloo is Best CMC or whatever.

As I said, I use Twitter a lot these days, so I'm certainly not in the "social media is evil" camp. But blogs and forums suit my writing style better; maybe it's also one reason I'm quite happy on Fimfiction, with its excellent forum-style discussion format and 1,000-word minimum. Fimf, too, is a public place, which again I think is a good thing. We all know that our fandom isn't a front for anything sinister, but being open helps us demonstrate that.

I Aten't Dead

The lack of updates doesn't mean anything terrible. I've just had a great deal to do lately. I spent nearly all of Friday and Saturday at the local steam railway's spring gala, for a start. (Well, I say "spring", and on Friday it did feel that way, but it snowed quite a bit yesterday.) I'll be back to posting Pony soon, and I certainly intend to resume episode reviews when the time comes.

Happy Hearth's Warming Eve!

I'll be away over most of the post-Christmas and New Year period, but I may have a couple of pre-scheduled posts ready. I say "may" because... well, you know why. That cold again. Still, I'll try to have something new before the end of the year.

In the meantime, I wish all of you a very happy Hearth's Warming, and I'll see you back here in January as we wait to see what 2018 will bring.

Twilight's Ultimate Guide to the MLP Fandom

I can't remember how I found Twilight's Ultimate Guide to the MLP Fandom the other day, but I'm glad I did. It's a text-heavy page that tries to give a potted introduction to our weird and wonderful fandom, written by someone called Ajedi32 – here's the original Reddit post it's linked from, though I didn't find it from there.

There are sections covering animations, games, music and so on, but of course I was most interested in the fanfic section. Sadly Ajedi32 doesn't seem to be much into ponyfic, but there's a list of ten twelve stories they've had recommended to them. I've read them all apart from Through the Well of Pirene, and I'm now starting to read that one!

The Reddit post was made earlier this year, which means it's more up to date than some of the similar guides we see around the net, though perhaps not that up to date – it generally seems to cover up to around S5. One oddity is that it tries to avoid the most unavoidable spoiler in the fandom by referring to, eg, the "[Redacted] Twilight Orchestral Suite"!

Also oddly, the list of books includes Journal of the Two Sisters but not the Elements of Harmony guidebooks. The chapter book list is complete up to Starlight Glimmer and the Secret Suite but doesn't feature Trixie's book. Still, none of this stops the guide being a pretty good example of its type if you don't need pictures and videos every paragraph.

Italics and quotes and suchlike

New Pony episode today! Woooooooo!

Also, Equestria Daily briefly carried a story yesterday stating that clips from the forthcoming movie were shown at a coin in Thailand. The article quickly disappeared, though. Maybe the information was wrong, maybe the piece was incorrectly scheduled, maybe someone from Hasbro had a quiet word. If the screening did happen, I imagine we'll hear about it from an attendee soon enough.

This is one of those silly little posts that I couldn't find anywhere else to place, so you're getting it on its own. You may be surprised by the revelation that I have something approaching a personal style guide for Louder Yay. It's changed and evolved a little over the years, but at the moment this is what I try to do:

I italicise the show's name: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The same holds for its various abbreviations, such as FiM. There's a difference between "the Pony world", which refers to canon, the fandom, etc, and "the pony world", which is the one Fluttershy lives in.

Episode names get quotes: "Hurricane Fluttershy". Episode numbers are in the form S5E01. I tend to write out "Season Seven" or whatever in full the first time, but I'm not all that strict about it and I may not continue with that in the long term.

Names: I use Minuette and Bulk Biceps, not Colgate and Snowflake. On the other hoof, I use Carrot Top and Derpy. Bon Bon/Sweetie Drops is a special case, as the right name may depend on context. In fanfic reviews, I'll use the name the author uses, even if that is "Golden Harvest" or "Bright Eyes".

I treat fanfics as books, so their names are italicised: Where They Understand You. Chapters within those fics get quotes: "Fast Times at Cloudsdale High".

Major fandom events are generally given their official styles: BronyCon, BUCK, UK PonyCon. Otherwise, I follow the common British convention of capping up only the first letter if the abbreviated form is pronounced as a word: Lego, Nato, etc. That's why I write "Fimfiction" and not "FiMFiction". I abbreviate to "Fimf" fairly often simply because I do so in real life, too.

Other major websites: I've recently switched back to using a lower-case q in EqD. I should have done that earlier. UK of Equestria is UK of E, not UKoE. Chris's site is OMPR. This site is LY, though I don't exactly need to abbreviate it very often!

I never capitalise "brony" – I don't see any reason that the word should be treated as a proper noun. I don't use it all that often anyway, though I don't object to being classed as one. I rarely use the word "pegasister" at all, but I don't see anything wrong with it beyond silliness – and why is that a bad thing anyway?

I try to avoid using numeric dates, in order to avoid confusing American readers. If I forget, then I'll be using the European standard of DD/MM/(YY)YY. And I may be a non-believer, but I still use the AD/BC I grew up with rather than CE/BCE. In the usual British way, I'm semi-metricated: temperatures will be in Celsius, but human heights will be in feet.

Pony Music Library 37: "Summer Sun Celebration"

Time we had another one of these. This week's entry may not be on everyone's list of favourites, but it is on mine, so here it is.

( Text link )

What? "Summer Sun Celebration"

Who? Chief Doggingfood

Which? YTPMV, I suppose, but I just listen to the music

When? August 2013

Why? Because it's quite stupidly catchy. That's about the size of it! Okay, the second half of the song isn't quite as good as the first half, but it's still one that gets stuck in my head for extended periods of time. In spite of its release date, this is entirely based on S1, indeed mostly on the very first episode. It's originally a YTPMV, and the glitchy bits will put off some people – but I've come to enjoy it very much simply to listen to in its own right, so in it goes.

Note: through my own stupidity, I accidentally deleted the comments to this entry. They were: 1) Oilyvalves pointing out I'd got the wrong video embedded to start with (fixed now) and 2) xjuggernaughtx saying he loved the song, though thought it could really have done with a second verse. Apologies to both!

Brief update

I'm back from UK PonyCon. Had a fantastic time. Report coming soonish. And an episode review for the S6 finale. Plus, eventually and if I remember, TRR for the finale and Legend of Everfree. No Ponyfic Roundup this week, though. Probably for the best.

Patreon? No. Requests? Maybe!

I was surprised to be asked recently whether I had a Patreon. The answer is no, and the answer will remain no. There are several reasons for this, but one is what now seems to be considered a slightly old-fashioned attitude in some quarters: I'm uncomfortable with the idea of money changing hands for fanfic. I'm not even sure I'd feel happy about being commissioned. This is a pretty silly attitude given that I have no similar reservations about fanart, and generally I think authors get a fraction of the attention of artists of similar skill. Nevertheless, the feeling is there.

Of course, this has never gone beyond a passing thought, for the very good reason that I'm not a good enough writer to deserve payment for my ponyfic. I'm not terrible, and I've written some good stories, but there are others out there who've written amazing stories. Still, even if I were on that level, I think I'd still shy away from Patreon. I love the relaxed feeling that this isn't a job in any way, but purely a hobby. I have no ambitions to write stories professionally, and I think it might actually lessen my enjoyment if I started thinking about satisfying "paying customers". So there you are: no Patreon here...

...though I am open to requests in terms of reviewing stories, or conceivably even doing audio readings thereof. You're more likely to be bumped up my Ponyfics to Review list if your story is short, and even more so if you're not already horsewords famous. I'll consider looking at Mature stuff if it's not plain clop/gore (though foalcon is an absolute no-no). However, E- and T-rated fics are much more likely to get my attention. Contact me (Loganberry) via Fimfiction PM if for some odd reason you're interested in this.

Reduced activity for a week or so

I missed the fact last week that A Diamond and a Tether had been added to the Royal Canterlot Library. In fact, I only realised this when I was looking through the RCL archives and thinking about which of their inductees I might review in the near future. As you may recall from ADaaT's review last week (PR 53), I wasn't quite as impressed by it as the RCL judges were, but I think that's largely down to personal taste; I make no pretence that Ponyfic Roundup reviews are based on anything other than how much I enjoyed a story. I haven't come across an RCL inductee yet that I actively disliked.

Anyway, on to the meat of this post. I may not be quite as active as usual around here, or indeed the fandom in general, for a little while owing to Thursday's general election. Not that going out to vote is going to take up too much of my day, but I spend a faintly ridiculous amount of time reading various political geekery sites, worrying about the result (it's expected to be close), wondering whether the candidate I end up voting for – there are six standing in my constituency – has any sort of chance and so on and so forth. As such, I may not be spending quite as much time on pony-related stuff as usual.

Which all reminds me that I haven't really read a party-political MLP fic that's blown me away yet. I use that particular adjective because Moonlight Palaver (PR 28) is clearly based around politics, just not electoral politics. Actually, I haven't even read much featuring Mayor Mare at all, although I do have Thornwing's The Old Gray Mare fairly high up my RiL list. Slightly off to one side, I'm aware of GhostOfHeraclitus's Whom the Princesses Would Destroy, but the footnotes are a complete and utter pain on an e-reader, so I keep on putting that one off.

Also, going back to the RCL thing a minute, I am repeatedly impressed by how much thought the authors of inducted works put into their interviews. When I did mine, I just rambled on in my usual fashion, and compared to some of these guys it really shows. Ah well, it's something to learn from, and as a writer you always want to be learning so that you can improve. I suspect that the point at which you lose your thirst for learning is the point at which people might as well stop reading your stories, and that would never do!

Richie Benaud

This post has nothing to do with MLP at all, but I beg your indulgence just this once. As those who know me well will know, I am very much into cricket, and tonight we've been told of the death of Richie Benaud. Like most fans of the sport, I grew up with Benaud's commentary being the "voice of cricket", though I'm too young to remember his equally impressive career as an all-rounder for Australia. There'll never be another Richie. RIP.

Terry Pratchett

I would love to have some wonderful thought to place here, but sadly I don't. All I'll say, as a writer on a much lower plane myself, is that Sir Pterry helped to convince many, many people of the power of storytelling. Even had he done nothing else, for that alone he would have been a great man.

Wait for it...!

As one or two of you noticed, I accidentally posted the opening section of Ponyfic Roundup 45 a little while ago. Just an error on my part: I'll be putting the complete set of reviews up at 8 am (UK time) on Wednesday as usual.

Hearth's Warming Special?

I'm considering what to do about Hearth's Warming this year, as far as this blog is concerned. If I do a Ponyfic Roundup on a Wednesday as usual, that will be Christmas Eve. I tend to avoid the internet for the most part on Christmas Day, so I might make any extra post a Boxing Day special. At the moment, I'm thinking about reviewing the Daring Do Adventure Collection, since I've got that sitting next to me as I type. But that's not final, and it's possible I may do something else entirely. Or nothing. Because I'm annoying like that. :P

Happy Hearth's Warming to you all!

Festive Fluttershy 3 by tall-guy-2552. Dec 2013. CC by-nc-nd 3.0

Yes indeed, it's that time of the year again! It's really crept up on us this time around, but Fluttershy never misses an opportunity to be kind. I don't know what's in that tiny present she's giving to her songbird friends, but I'm sure it's something that they've always wanted. As for me: amazingly, Louder Yay has now been running for over a year. It's been fun, and a big thank you to everyone who's read any of my ramblings. I certainly hope to continue with this for some time to come. In the meantime, have a very Merry Christmas (or Hearth's Warming!) and I'll be back after the festivities are over. Yay!

Hello to my readers!

Thanks to events this weekend, I now know that I have at least two. Woo! ;) And yes, I am making this post just so that something goes up rather than there being a huge blank space. I do have a review to post in the near future, but it may be a few days yet. Or not. Who knows? :P

It was three years ago today...

...Lauren Faust began to feed us hay. *cough* Anyway, thank you so much, everyone involved with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. You have made a lot of people all over the world very happy with your show and the fandom it's spawned. Whether we've been there since the start, whether (like me) you joined the fun a little late, or whether you're only now seeing what all the fuss is about, it's been a wonderful ride — and one that I hope won't be ending any time soon. As Fluttershy would say... you rock! (Woo-hoo.)

Running of the Leaves Day?

I don't keep up as much as some with all the fandom-decided dates, but as it's the autumn equinox here in the northern hemisphere, it seems as good a day as ever to celebrate RotL Day! And, of course, have a watch of "Fall Weather Friends". A really nice episode, that one, and to me the ep that truly marks the advent of FiM's mature phase. The CMC having been introduced in the previous episode, all the major characters are now there and the writers can get on with just giving us an enjoyable show. "Fall Weather Friends" is a very good start, as it is indeed a lot of fun. (Oh, and yes, one day I will go back to doing Classic Episode Reviews on this blog. I just never seem to have the time!)

Why capitalise "brony"?

Otherwise known as an "it's Saturday; Logan's too lazy to make a proper post" post. But still... I have to admit that "Brony" looks rather weird to me. I can't decide whether those who do it as a form of empowerment (as some people write Black) or by analogy with other fan descriptors like Trekkie. The latter approach falls down, though, in that Star Trek is clearly a proper noun, so it's reasonable to maintain the capitalisation for "Trekkie" — whereas "brony" is entirely fandom-created and is not a proper noun, so makes more sense in lower case.

The only place I've actually seen this subject discussed is here on MLP Forums, and the associated poll came out roughly 60/40 in favour of the lower-cased spelling. Not, of course, that this actually matters all that much (or indeed at all) but as I said, I can't be bothered to think up anything more significant for today's ramblings. For what it's worth, I always write the word with a lower-case b, and I can't see any reason to change. This post was brought to you by the letter X, because I'm contrary like that.