Non-Pony: More His Dark Materials reread coming up on my Dreamwidth

Yes, I've finally got to the point where I have enough time to start on The Subtle Knife, book two of Philip Pullman's trilogy. I'm not going to go on about it here, but as with book one I'll be doing a chapter-by-chapter blog on my Dreamwidth. I hope to match the two-chapters-per-week pace of Northern Lights. Anyone interested can follow along by using the "hdm reread" tag I'm using for all such posts. Indeed, if you want to read back to my Northern Lights posts, you can use the tag for that too. As before, comments will be enabled even for non-Dreamwidth members.

Non-Pony: I've started that His Dark Materials reread blog

 I'm not going to make a habit of posting non-MLP stuff here, but I did say that I'd give a heads-up when I started this, so here it is. It's on my Dreamwidth and you can use this DW tag to see all the relevant entries. As I've only just started Northern Lights, which is the first book of the trilogy, there aren't many just yet!

Non-Pony: I'll be doing a His Dark Materials reread blog soon

Those of you who read either my Fimfiction blog or my Dreamwidth will already know about this, but just to complete the set: the recent BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman's classic fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials has really got me interested in rereading the books. So I thought about doing that, and then I thought, why don't I do that as a blog that people can follow along with if they wish?

After putting out a couple of feelers, it seems that there's at least a little interest in reading my ramblings on such a thing. As such, it's happening. (You'll have to imagine the accompanying GIF.) I don't yet have an exact date but I hope to get going this month. Not on Louder Yay, of course, but on my Dreamwidth. Posts will be public, so you won't need to have a DW account to read or comment.

I think two chapters a week, with one post for each, is a pace I can keep up pretty well over a fairly long period. They'll be fairly short: think my FiM rewatches rather than my reviews of new episodes. That's all for the moment. If you're interested, please keep an eye out on DW. I'll try to remember to give an update here when the reread is ready to start, but you know what I'm like!

The Queen

A rare non-Pony post, so I'll keep it short. Suffice to say the Queen's death is a very big deal for many of us in the UK, even for those who aren't ardent monarchists. There are going to be quite a few distractions over the next couple of weeks. I'll try to keep things here on an even keel, but please don't be surprised if schedules do slip a little bit.

One small note: although the plan for how this event would be dealt with is generally referred to as Operation London Bridge, because the Queen died in Scotland it was a specific part known as Operation Unicorn that was put into effect.

That's all. You'll have visit my Dreamwidth if you want more of my thoughts on this.

Back to ponies next time.

A straw in the wind?

I notice that NordicFuzzCon 2021, a Swedish furry convention scheduled for next February, will not take place as planned. Although this isn't a Pony convention, it is the first one I've personally noticed in a reasonably similar fandom to be called off that was scheduled for next year. The organisers say in the linked announcement that they are keeping their options open as to what to do, since "[t]he world is too unpredictable for us to be able to make any promises or to give any dates at this time".

This suggests to me that right now, in August, time is already running short for cons in the early months of next year. I suspect some organisers are already deep into negotiations with venues about postponements. I wish I could be more optimistic about this, but I suspect that the resumption of large fandom gatherings may well be further off than any of us would like to think. (I think some kind of MLP con did happen in China recently, but I'm essentially talking about Europe and North America here.)

Pandemics are generally long hauls. This one doesn't look like it's going to be very different in that regard, and I would not be especially surprised if there were no more than a handful of full-scale Pony conventions in 2021. I would absolutely love to be proved wrong on this one. As ever, we'll see.

In which Logan rambles a lot

Have you ever read Jetfire2012's ponyfic It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door? Quite possibly you have, as it's long been considered one of the early classics. Indeed, I gave it a positive review years ago. If you go to the page I linked to now, though, you'll see that comments have been disabled. His profile has done the same thing. Why am I mentioning Jetfire2012 now? Because I'm semi-detached from the fandom as usual and didn't quite grasp that I should have talked about this earlier. Read on:

Here's a blog by Cynewulf, one of the fandom's outstanding authors. In it, she mentions that an image showing a person "chasing unarmed protestors with a bladed weapon before being forcibly disarmed" featured Jetfire2012. As the heroic disarmer? No. As the person with the weapon. Cynewulf's post is long and I don't want to do it injustice by summarising it glibly, but suffice to say here that she pinpoints 4chan's /pol/ board as a major root cause, especially the April Fool's Day joke where it was briefly merged with the /mlp/ board. Some in the comments and elsewhere consider this an oversimplification, I should note.

And here's a blog by MrNumbers, in which he talks about the Jetfire2012 incident, placing it in a wider context in the MLP fandom. In his words: "It's the hate and racism I saw emerge in support of him that's disgusted me." MrNumbers also mentions an incident where he contacted the Fimfiction staff over a PM and was told that he was trying to "shut down free speech". (For clarity, I'm not sure from context whether or not that was a direct quote from the staff member[s] in question.)

As an aside here, I have long had a problem with Fimfiction's tolerance of intolerable content. I've always tended to assume that my feelings at least in part have to do with the fact that I'm not from the US and so don't see free speech as the absolute good that many Americans do, some of those in a frankly creepy quasi-religious manner. Regular readers of this blog will know that foalcon is the thing I tend to get exercised about – I think it should be not only prohibited but a straight-up bannable offence – but that's not for this blog post.

So instead I'll move on to something relevant: here's FanOfMostEverything being absolutely furious. You don't see that every day, and when it happens you sit up and take notice of it. I'll hop back to MrNumbers now and note that he did make a follow-up post the following day in which he said (I paraphrase) that he felt heartened by how many people weren't ignoring that these problems existed, but rather that they did understand and so made active efforts to keep such things and such people out of their own personal communities.

Returning to Cynewulf's post, she makes the case that the "new normal" that seemed to be genuinely there to build in the early years of our fandom (perhaps up until about 2012) was not the normal that would reassert itself if we relaxed and did nothing, and that we as a fandom misunderstood that. To quote her again: "The 'normies' aren’t the SJWs you think are coming for your show and your fan art and your memes. The normies are the LARPers with Wehrmacht profile pics in your threads." And too many of us tolerated (if not loved) it. Too much and for too long. I am not innocent of this.

Is this fandom a good place? Well, of course there are plenty of places which are still true to the original, positive spirit of the fandom – stemming from the spirit of the show itself. Nobody is trying to say that there is not plenty of good to be found here. There certainly is. I wouldn't still be a part of it otherwise, and I don't intend to be leaving any time soon. But that's a different thing, and in any case "Is the fandom a good place?" is really not the correct question to be asking. The correct question is whether it's good enough. And the blunt answer to that question is no.

It doesn't take much in the way of guts to make a post on a small blog that few people read, but it's still been too much for me, apparently. Not good enough, Logan. Not good enough. So, long overdue though it is, let me say this very clearly: if you're a Nazi or a fascist or a sexist or a racist or a homophobe or a transphobe then get out of here. I want those people to be in no doubt: you are not welcome here. I do believe people can change. So go away and change. Change properly. Then we'll welcome you back with open arms. Then.

That is on you.

Cleaning up our fandom is on us.

Let's do this.

Sorry, no Ponyfic Roundup this week

Applejack Pie by Tsitra360
( CC by-nc-nd 3.0 )

More flooding in my area being the reason, and the river level is higher than it has been for almost 20 years. I don't live in a directly affected part of town, but it's causing considerable concern and various problems with transport etc even so. I expect to bring back PR next week, but it's not happening today, I'm afraid. Instead, you get a picture of Applejack.

Unavoidable (but I hope short) delay

There's always something, isn't there? In this case, it's these floods. While I don't live by the river myself, I do live in an affected town (it's the worst flooding here for almost 20 years) and do know people who are at risk of being flooded. As such, I really haven't had the time to spend on Pony that I normally would. I hope I can get Ponyfic Roundup posted tomorrow or Friday, but things are moving fast around here and so I may have to scratch this edition entirely and wait until next week. Apologies for the inconvenience.

His Dark Materials

I haven't forgotten about the final part of my UK PonyCon report, but as that will take the form of a (moderately) thoughtful summing up, I want to take my time a little and get it to say what I want it to say. Unless anything comes up, though, I will have it up on the blog at some point this week. I'll also have a mini-review of Holidays Unwrapped, though it's not much of a spoiler to say now that it didn't exactly blow me away.

And now for something completely different. Last night, I watched episode one of the BBC/HBO adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Well, all right, episode one of the first series, which will cover Northern Lights (US: The Golden Compass). I am a big fan of HDM, so I was nervous. I'm happy to report that I was very pleased. Not everything was perfect, but I definitely feel the makers get this world. So yes, recommended!

A few more specific thoughts now, with spoilers – though many probably won't make sense unless you've read the books, in which case they won't be spoilers!

Meltinggggg

The UK recorded its hottest ever July day, and second-hottest on record, yesterday, with Cambridge hitting 38.1 °C. That's 100.6 °F for those of you who still work in Fahrenheit – only the second time hitting three figures has happened, too. And remember, home AC is barely used in this country, so the day was pretty hard going for many of us. Admittedly it reached a mere 32.5 °C (90.5 °F) in my neck of the woods, but even that was the highest I'd recorded for three years.

For this reason, I haven't had the energy to do any work on this blog, so all you're getting today is a note to the effect that the Pocket Ponies mobile game has received an update. I haven't had the chance to play the new levels yet, but I understand Fluttershy plays a significant role. This is a Good Thing.

Cricket and other updates

First, cricket: England are World Champions! This is the first time we've ever won the men's World Cup (the women's team are the current holders) and it was an absolutely thrilling match. I watched pretty much all of it on TV, and I was absolutely drained by the end. England and New Zealand were absolutely evenly matched, and we were frankly a bit fortunate. But I'll take it! The tennis wasn't exactly boring, either, though that sport does rank a bit below cricket in my affections.

In actual My Little Pony news, your host here has actually done some damn writing for once. I really am out of practice, and things aren't flowing in the way they did a few years ago, but if I can just get back to writing at least a little something every day then maybe I can haul myself back up to where I used to be. I won't go into great deal here about exactly what I've been writing, as I'd like to save that for a separate post at some point. You can always wander over to Fimfiction and see for yourself.

On which note, The Danger Within remains "On Hiatus" rather than "Cancelled", and that's a deliberate decision. Every so often I consider that status, and each time I decide that I'd be sad to abandon the story entirely. Similarly, a story I've had in mind since late Season 7 remains on my to-do list – and unlike some other things on that list, I expect that eventually it will actually get done. Finally, you may start to see me writing for the Flashfic 150 prompts again. Obviously as the judge I can't win, but I'd be doing it for fun.

Just three weeks until the (US) hiatus ends and we embark on the last leg of the Friendship is Magic ride we will ever have – at least as far as official TV episodes are concerned. Hardly a startling or original thing to say, but I do hope the show will go out on a high.

Non-pony: Watership Down (BBC/Netflix)

Just before I shut up shop for a few days over Hearth's Warming, have one of my very occasional non-Pony posts. In this case, it's indirectly linked with MLP anyway, as joining the Watership Down fandom back around 2002 started the process that eventually led to my becoming a brony. So, past the cut you can have a brief, scattergun and very spoilery review of this adaptation of WD.

Twitter, escapism, mental health and ponies

Some of you may follow, or at least occasionally glance at, my Twitter account: @louderyay. Not everyone now realises this, but I actually set that up in April 2013 specifically to go with this blog and intended it to be mostly used for MLP stuff. That's why the names match! This is relevant to what follows.

Last weekend, I took a semi-holiday from Twitter. By that I mean that I didn't avoid it altogether, but that I used it only for a few things – updates on the Worcester ponymeet on Saturday, talking about a walk I took, etc. I took a conscious decision not to post anything really serious for those two days.

And it helped. It helped a lot. It also made me think about some changes I need to make.

This is a long post, so I'll put it under a break, but I hope at least some of you will feel like reading it. If you do, comments are open, but please read all of this post before you make them.

What Logan is reading away from the world of colourful ponies

Time for a little non-Pony post. After years and years of being told I should read it, I've finally started on The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius. In translation, I'm afraid! I've got through the first four so far (Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula) and it's not a bad read. It's not quite the non-stop gossipfest some people make it out to be, as there's a lot of stuff about military campaigns and family backgrounds in there. Still, it does have plenty of entertaining/horrifying parts, so I'll keep going.

I'm also having another go at Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss. This is an oldish-school (1960) science fiction novel which appeals to me, partly because it's shorter than the bloated novels that blight the shelves these days. Also, though, because I like the setup: in the far future on a huge spacecraft, tribes roam the corridors looking for the mythical Forwards. (This isn't a very accurate summary, but it's good enough.) So far it's very readable, which isn't always the case for old-fashioned SF.

Finally, there's another SF novel. The Ennead. Yes, spelt like that. This is a young-adult book by Jan Mark; I'm not sure how well known she is outside the UK, but there was a time when she was everywhere in school libraries. She won the Carnegie Medal, the premier British prize for children's fiction, twice and was runner-up once, though not for The Ennead. This is set on a dying planet where refugees from Earth have settled. Only just started, so can't say much about it yet.

New keyboard!

Yes, it's wired. I prefer that for simplicity's sake

A couple of months ago, I upgraded from a truly dire keyboard to a Microsoft Wired 600 – here's my post about it. That keyboard still works pretty well and I'm certainly not throwing it out, but it's now become my reserve unit. That's because I've decided to go up another notch and move to a Cherry Stream 3.0, which currently retails at around £20 from Amazon UK.

The Cherry uses scissor switches, which is the technology that laptop keyboards use, and indeed typing on it does feel rather like typing on a good quality laptop – something like a Thinkpad. It's pretty slim, which does take a bit of getting used to, but it's also quite heavy – around 900 grams – thanks to a slice of metal in the base which gives the keyboard a nice, sturdy feel.

In use, it's nice and quiet (which I prefer) and easy to type fast and accurately on. "Fast" here is a relative term: I'm not a touch typist, and I'd find it hard to keep up more than 50 words per minute for any length of time. The keyboard has the usual 105-key UK layout, and it's large enough that I don't find myself pressing down two keys at once. I haven't bothered with the multimedia keys.

So far, I'm very pleased, and my hands have remained comfortable after typing some fairly long documents. My one slight concern is longevity: a minority of German-language reviews I've read have suggested that the laser-etched keytops aren't as long-lasting as they really ought to be. But right now, I'd say this was a good buy, and a noticeable step up from High Street keyboards.

Argos keyboard offer

The Calculator button even works in Linux :P

I recently became fed up with the awful quality of my HP K45 keyboard (looks like this, but isn't). It might be okay for people who occasionally press the odd button, but for actual typing it's terrible – it's much too light, has poor feedback and feels like something from Poundland. Actually, I wouldn't recommend it even at a quid, it's that bad.

Since I don't have the cash sloshing around to buy a really nice keyboard – and don't think I could bear the noise of a mechanical one anyway – I needed a cheap replacement. But what? I hadn't been impressed by the Logitech K120, or those Trust keyboards you see in places like Wilko. The HP was so bad that I needed something right now.

And look what Argos have right now: the venerable Microsoft Wired 600 for a mere £7.49! (It was actually £7.99 when I bought it. Huh.) The offer only applies to the white version – they don't even stock the black one – and a few stores are running low on supplies. Nevertheless, my local Argos had one so I snapped it up immediately.

In use, it's very much a budget keyboard, with slightly wobbly keys and the occasional very quiet squeak, but it's approximately a million times nicer to type on than the HP. The keys are a little soft, but they're reasonably responsive and pretty quiet. The small Esc and function keys are a bit of a shame, but it's by no means a deal-breaker.

The keyboard is very slightly concave, with the lowest row of letters and space bar tilted slightly away. I got used to this very quickly, but then I'm not a touch typist. And to set minds at rest, the one Argos sell is the UK layout: big return key, double-quote on the two and all. The picture that heads this post is of the one I bought!

It's odd, but MS have made decent cheap peripherals most of the time, even when their operating systems were terrible. The 600 continues the line. My personal view is that at the price Argos are asking, it destroys anything else available. You'd probably have to spend three times the amount to get anything appreciably better.

Non-ponyfic book reviews

I don't intend to make this into a general-purpose blog, but I thought some people might find it interesting occasionally to know what I've been reading away from Pony. While for ponyfic I read one story at a time, generally I have several books on the go at once and bounce between them. That's the case now. So, here are a few of my recent reads, complete with Amazon links and – just for the hay of it – star ratings too:

The Little Wonder: The Remarkable History of Wisden by Robert Winder
As a cricket fan, Wisden Cricketers' Almanack is an essential read, especially now the quality of its writing is higher than it was 20 years ago. Winder is an amiable enough guide, and there are plenty of good anecdotes, but he does have a tendency to ramble; I do feel that the book would have benefited from some slightly sharper editing and about a 10% reduction in  length. ★★★

The Giver by Lois Lowry
This isn't nearly as famous in the UK as it is in America, and I hadn't read it at all until a friend gave me a copy a while back. Reading it again, I'd class it as "pretty good and haunting in places, but also slightly unsatisfying". I don't want to spoil things, though probably everyone reading this knows the twist, but let's say that certain aspects of the world depicted stretch my suspension of disbelief a bit. ★★★

Made in America: An Informal History of American English by Bill Bryson
Not a new book to me by any means, but it's still an enjoyable one to dip in and out of. It's not one to treat as a textbook, as I'm not sure everything in it is accurate, but for informal entertainment it's well worth a look. One thing it isn't, despite the quote on the back of my edition, is funny. Mildly amusing occasionally, but not even close to Bryson's best travel books in that respect. ★★★

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
If you ask me, you can't beat mid-period Pratchett. The early books are a bit hit-and-miss, the later ones are a tad too serious-minded for my liking, and Raising Steam is simply rather sad. Men at Arms, however, is fantastic: the Watch characters are now established, the wordplay is brilliant, Ankh-Morpork is still at its pre-moveable type best and the plot is solid. This is my latest "pure relaxation" read. ★★★★★

Carthage Must Be Destroyed: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Civilization by Richard Miles
This has generally excellent reviews, but in spite of my long-term interest in all things Roman I just couldn't get into it. It's frustrating, since seeing the Romans from outside is always interesting, but I found this much denser than I'd hoped. It's not quite at textbook levels, but it's close, with a huge references section. (Endnotes, as usual. Footnotes are so much easier to refer to!) Possibly it just caught me at a bad time, but I'm disappointed. ★★