In memory of Entei-rah

You may wonder why I haven't posted anything here for nearly a week. The answer, I'm afraid, is a sad one. Entei-rah, a wonderful friend who I'd known for well over 20 years, succumbed to his cancer on Saturday, and I've been knocked sideways by the news. I'd known the destination was inevitable for some while now, I just hate so much that the end came so quickly. I'm going to miss him terribly, indeed I already do, but I'll always remember him as one of the absolute Good Guys.

Although furry was the place where Ent was most active, he was also a quiet but dedicated supporter of the MLP fandom. He was a regular presence with his wife at UK PonyCon each year, and he attended quite a few Worcester ponymeets – the last of these as recently as December. By that time we knew he was seriously ill and I suspect he found travelling down from Stockport tougher than he let on, but being Ent he was more concerned with making sure we all had a fun, light-hearted meet as usual.

Entei-rah and I first met way, way back in the Watership Down fandom in the very early 2000s, in the days when Yahoo Groups were still a thing. From there he moved into the furry fandom, and in the last decade he took more of an interest in Pony as well and supported that with the same energy and enthusiasm he put into all the many things he loved. As he said in his Twitter and then Bluesky profile, "Luna is best something something..."

Farewell, my friend.

I'm back in PC World!

It's taken considerably longer than I would have liked, but I have finally returned to the land of the keyboard and mouse. For those who like to know these things, my newly acquired PC is an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF, which although hardly cutting-edge is a considerable upgrade on the last one.¹ I've now got an i5-7500 with 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB NVMe SSD. It may not (officially) be good enough to run Windows 11, but as I'm typing this on Linux Mint 21.3 Edge why should I care about that? :P Early days, but so far so good!
¹ Even when it was working. :P

The more interesting thing, though, is that this means I will be able to resume several features I'd had to neglect when all I had was a phone and a slightly crotchety Bluetooth keyboard. For a start, My Little Repeats will return soon – that means within a week of now. I'll also be able to get under way with Sounds of 2015, something I'm really looking forward to. Plus the Officially Uploaded episode list will stop languishing in a several-months-old slough of despond. Or possibly a despond of Slough. Who knows?

Thank you for bearing with me throughout all this, and I very much look forward to writing more here again – starting with Ponyfic Roundup, which will be up as expected by the end of tomorrow. :)

UK PonyCon 2024 report, part one: Friday

My second train, arriving at Smethwick Galton Bridge station.

Welcome at last to the first part of my report on UK PonyCon 2024. Even though I have to do this in a slightly kludgey way while I don't have a proper computer available, I hope these blogs won't look too terrible! Before I go any further, though, I'll say that I had a great time at the convention and that even though I will mention a few grumbles along the way, I thought it was a roaring success overall.

Unlike last year, this time around I was fortunate enough to be able to attend for the full long weekend, ie travelling up on Friday and returning on Monday. Better yet, for the first time in three years there were no public transport strikes to contend with!¹ TrainCon was happening again. As I usually do, I wore last year's UKPC T-shirt on the trip, but I noticed nobody who was certainly going my way.
¹ At one point the Nottingham trams were on strike, but the dispute was resolved before UKPC weekend.

Given the sometimes ridiculous prices of Nottingham hotels during the weekend of both UK PonyCon and the Goose Fair (listed in order of importance, yes) I'd again chosen to base myself in Derby. I'd done this twice before, so I knew exactly what I was doing. [That'd be a first, then! —Ed] Normally Travelodge has a 3pm check-in, but I found it well worth paying the extra tenner to check in at midday.

My luxurious room in the Travelodge. Isn't it fancy?

Having done the minimum of unpacking and had a quick splash under the shower, I walked back to the station I'd just left. Derby's road system includes an enormous roundabout in an awkward place for pedestrians, but oh well. Many of the Worcester Shires people who attend UKPC, plus a few guests, gather on the Friday evening in the Roebuck Inn pub in central Nottingham, and I wasn't going to miss that.

But first, something new: pre-registration! Last year there were enormous queues for registration on Saturday morning, and with an even bigger attendance expected this time it was clear something had to be done. So, anyone with a ticket valid for Saturday could grab their badges in advance at the Hilton. Me being me, I walked straight past it, but fortunately Frost was passing and told me where to go.¹
¹ In a manner of speaking.

Pre-reg itself was very efficient – I was in and out in less than ten minutes – and I hope it's retained in future. With my Bronze Sponsor badge around my neck, something of a strange experience on a Friday, I headed across the city centre to the Roebuck. Last year we'd had to squash into rather cramped and very noisy booths upstairs, so I'd had the bright idea of getting to the pub early to grab a better space.

The first hour of the Roebuck pre-meet. Not shown: cider.

This was a good plan in theory. In practice, I got there way too early and ended up sitting alone for well over an hour, with only a pint of cider to console me. It was probably the least enjoyable period of my entire con weekend, and I certainly won't be doing it this way again if I come to UKPC next year! I'll probably revert to what I did in 2022 and have a coffee somewhere first.

Still, eventually a few people did start trickling in, and from then on things improved significantly, apart from a bizarre interlude when a guy started loudly preaching by the bar and had to be escorted out. The space I'd chosen was not in fact ideal, as it had two tables with a large gap between them, meaning it was very hard to speak to anyone at the other one. My fish and chips (with baked beans, since the Roebuck had contrived to run out of mushy peas...) was perfectly okay, at least.

Despite the pre-meet's slightly iffy beginnings, I did get a few hours of nice conviviality. I didn't know everyone there particularly well, but the majority were long-standing friends. I think I probably left about nine in order to board the tram back to the station. As regular readers know, Nottingham at night isn't always my favourite place, but I had no issues and I was back at the hotel in Derby by a bit after ten.

Next time: Saturday part one, featuring (happy) tears, Meegan and toast.

Well, that's annoying

Barring a last-minute miracle, I'm not going to be entering this year's Thousand Words Contest, which closes at 23:59 UTC tomorrow. I had intended to, but a couple of awkwardly timed hospital appointments meant that I really needed any ideas to work out first time – and the one I'd settled on just didn't. I might have another go outside the time constraints of the contest, or I might just stick a snippet in Little Bits and chat briefly about what I was hoping for.

Still, it does look like the contest will be a success, with the story count running into three figures once again. I do intend to continue my past practice and review the winners here at some point not too distant from the results announcement. For me, though, thank Celestia I did get a Dialogue Only Contest in, otherwise I probably would have gone a full year without a published ponyfic.

New story by me: Take a Bow

Actually I published this a few days ago, but I wanted to wait until after the contest it was written for (the Dialogue Only Contest) had passed its closing date and I was therefore definitely not going to edit it any further. Now it has, so:

Take a Bow by Loganberry
Fluttershy, Applejack, Rainbow Dash and OC
G4; Adventure/Drama; 1k words; Teen (Violence)

Fluttershy and Applejack arrive in the nick of time to rescue their friend from a potentially terrible fate. The way it happens might be considered shocking – it certainly startles AJ – but as ever in Equestria there's a story behind it...

An entry for the Dialogue Only Contest.

Yeah, I know it's not a great longdesc, but I'm as rusty on those as I am on various other aspects of ponyfic writing and I was getting close to the deadline. Still, I am mightily relieved to have published my first full-length story since July. I don't intend to leave it another 11 months, as the Thousand Words Contest III is also something I want to enter. As the bottom line of that longdesc suggests, this contest required you to use only dialogue to tell a story. I found it very hard work, but also pretty interesting.

abrony-mouse reviews We Are the Everfree

Over on Fimfiction, abrony-mouse (who I mentioned the other day) has done me the kindness of giving a more detailed review to one of my fics, We Are the Everfree. This story, as some of you may remember, was the one I produced for Mockingbirb's "Arboreal Yearnings" contest, in which characters had to want to be, pretend to be, actually be, etc trees. And no, they didn't have to be Fluttershy. They're not here.

There, abrony-mouse goes into quite some detail about my story, and there was definitely food for thought. There's also a small Q&A with me at the end, which is an honour I've very rarely had – it was fun to answer. I don't necessarily agree with everything abrony-mouse said in the review (surely woodenness is kind of a given with a treefic ;) ) but I'm very grateful for said reviewer's thoughts and good nature.

Read the deep-dive review on Fimfiction!

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!

My most prized Pony possession? Maybe this

On Friday, I asked you fine people what your most prized Pony possession – excluding plushies – might be. I also said that I would reveal my own answer before long. Well, here goes! This wasn't actually the easiest choice for me, partly since I'm not that big on merch and partly since a couple of options had very specific personal significance that wouldn't make much sense to most people. This item, though, is one I do like a lot:

Back in 2012, I was in my first year in the My Little Pony fandom and I very much got caught up in the hype about the then-imminent release of the IDW comics series. So much so that I spent more time in comic shops as a result than I'd done in my entire life up to that point! I went with a great friend to purchase issue #1 in Nostalgia and Comics in Birmingham on release day. That alone would give the IDW series a special place in my heart.

This first edition, though, had a lot of variant covers, more than 20 in the end. I bought a few myself over the next few months, and this is perhaps the most special to me. The Hastings Comics variant of that first issue, signed by artist Andy Price, writer Katie Cook and cover artist Amy Mebberson. I don't care about commercial value (fortunately, as I like reading the comic!) but I am very happy every time I see it on my shelf. So I'll pick this.

Looking back at Ever Let the Fancy Roam

Previously in this series: Sunset's Sales Snag.

It's a month and a half since I last did this, so let's bring up another of my stories for me to yatter on about. Take it away, RNG, please! And... okay, it looks like today I'll be talking about Ever Let the Fancy Roam. This actually won the "Making the Most of the Mundane" contest, which admittedly only had three entries. With a +34/-0 thumbscore as I type, this story has had a rather better reception than Sunset's Sales Snag. Well, mostly it has, and that's where I'll start this ramble.

You see, this comment was the first feedback I got after publishing it way back in February 2015. It's fair to say it wasn't the most complimentary note I've ever received. The writer suggested that I didn't care about Fancy Pants, that the characters spoke in clichés and lacked meaningful voices, that it was "a pastiche of weak "British" stereotypes¹ [that] drools out of the writing like cottage cheese."
¹ Dash it all, I am a weak British stereotype!

The weird thing is that this comment wasn't accompanied by a downvote. Since the writer wasn't personally offensive I did respond in some detail. That seemed to end the interaction, and the comment writer hasn't done much on Fimfiction – though they did apparently log in as recently as April this year. I feel I handled it reasonably well, though it wasn't the nicest way to start!

Fortunately, subsequent comments were nicer – not devoid of criticism, but that's no problem. The thing is, this story was a bit of an "I just want to write a Fancy Pants fic" deal rather than anything more considered. He clearly needed someone to interact with who wasn't Fleur, and so I gave him the kind of long-serving butler in Silver Cloud who I felt wouldn't be entirely a pushover.

Some of you may have twigged why I named him Silver Cloud already, but in case not: first, it's a good pegasus name and flight is clearly useful when working around a rambling old stately home. Second, it's the name of a classic Rolls-Royce model from the 1950s and '60s. Old-fashioned now but still well thought of. Could do worse for such a stallion, don't you think?

As for the plot of the story... given the contest it was entered for, it couldn't be too exciting, so it features Fancy and Silver making preparations for a little "At Home" soirée to which (due to unfortunate Canterlot social obligations) they have to invite Jet Set and Upper Crust. This is very much the "Sweet and Elite" Fancy Pants, by the way: I dislike how he was characterised in some later episodes.

As Present Perfect noted, Fancy is deliberately written with a few contradictions. He'll happily subvert some of the protocol and traditions, but there is still a line that should not be crossed between master and servant, as he makes clear to Silver at one point. Fancy's liking for backgammon is also deliberate, though here there's not a lot more to it than that I rather like backgammon.

The ending to Ever Let the Fancy Roam is its weakest part. I don't think it's terrible, but it is a little bit lacking in impact – and here I can't just point to the contest theme since there are various ways it could have been made better. My problem really is that I like feeble jokes, and so too often I end stories on them. Note to self: not every kind of fic works like a feghoot!

One commenter asked me if I was considering writing any more Fancy and Silver stories. I never have, but I do confess that I rather like the way they play off each other and so I won't entirely rule it out. (I will rule out ever making them a romantic couple, by the way. I just don't want to go down that route.) Also, it was nice to use "foalish" in a story. Stupid horse puns are important.

Shameless self-promotion department, belated

I meant to post this a few days ago, but because I'm me I forgot. Anyway, my minific "The Villain Contest", which was originally published in the UK PonyCon 2016 con book, got a Highly Recommended from Present Perfect the other day! A nice surprise, and one that pleased me both because it was nice to have something in actual print, and because I still rather like the piece all these years on. :)

Looking back at Sunset's Sales Snag

This is an idea I nabbed from hawthornbunny. Well, I don't exactly expect Hawthorn is the only person to do this, but still. Pick a fic I wrote and write a little bit about it. I couldn't decide which story to choose, so I let the RNG take the strain. And the first on the block is... drumroll, maestro, please... Sunset's Sales Snag. Whew, an interesting one to start with!

SSS is one of my most poorly received fics, with a thumbscore of +18/-7 as I type this and a total of 446 views – not a high total for a story published more than seven years ago. Do I think it's that bad? Well, no. I wouldn't call it one of my finest achievements, but that's another matter. I'm fairly sure I know the biggest reason for all those downvotes, and I'll get back to that.

The fic was written, as it says in the longdesc, as a "bit of silly fluff for Sunset Shimmer Day". On those terms, I think it does all right. Sunset (the normal EqG version) is now 21 and in a dead-end sales job for a cake firm. This is just a convenient setup for some silly – and, by my standards, slightly innuendo-laden – dialogue between her and the slightly creepy man who answers the door.

It's a comedy of misunderstanding. The man believes that a young woman with a name like Sunset Shimmer must surely be involved in a rather... particular branch of the entertainment industry. When she reluctantly reveals she works for the Lyra Heartstrings Company the man feels vindicated. Sunset, meanwhile, is constantly having to bite back sarcastic responses.

What is bad about this fic is that it has a very, very weak ending. It's a one-line gag, and not even a particularly funny one-line gag. I've written feghoots with much better finishes. (As an early Fimfiction comment suggests, it wasn't even my first published version of said last line.) If that had been the reason for those downvotes, I could have had few complaints.

Sadly, the reason is duller: the [Sex] tag. These warning tags were new at the time, and I wasn't sure whether a fic with no actual sex but with significant innuendo needed one. I played it cautious and put one on the fic. Then, of course, a bunch of readers who'd loaded up SSS expecting hot Sunset clop action got annoyed when there wasn't any. I removed the tag, but too late. Oh well.

The humour in this story reminds me a bit of my earlier Kicking Back, which is probably a slightly better fic and is also probably the one to pick if you just want to read one of my stories in this mould. Still, reading the story again now, I still get a few smiles out of it. Even from the utterly shameless "Cakes. Why did it have to be cakes?" line I gave to Sunset

Thank you, Covid, thank you so very much

Apologies for this, but I'm afraid there's likely to be another delay in updates here for a while. I've acquired Covid, and while I don't feel impossibly ill I really am not currently in a fit state to do updates much longer than this one. I think the most likely thing is for me to delay everything by a week – so no Ponyfic Roundup this coming Wednesday, then the week after that I'll do the one I was hoping to do this time. It all depends on my state of health, of course. Really rather annoying that I get to stay at home but can't cope with using all that time to read!

I am back

Hello again, everyone. I'm back from the Scottish Highlands. It's been an eventful week. Good thing: the first four days were spectacular, with glorious weather. Bad thing: I was then in a car crash in a car also containing my parents. Good thing: the safety devices did their thing and everyone is physically okay. Bad thing: the car is too badly damaged to repair and will need to be replaced. Good thing: everybody (five of us) on the holiday is now safe at their homes.

I've put the "meta" tag on this post because the echoes from what happened may mean I have to change my posting schedule here. It all depends how I feel as time goes on. I can only suggest you all keep an eye for posts as and when they come. I will be writing about ponyfic, since reading that is calming as it's about a different world without cars. (So don't expect as many EqG fic reviews for a while.) I shall stop waffling now!

Away for a short time

Because of a holiday, I'll be away from Louder Yay for a week or so now. I haven't scheduled anything to go up in my absence, so you can all have a nice rest from my meandering blathering. :D See you all later!

Curses – foiled again!

The results for the Arboreal Yearnings Contest are now out, and as I'd expected We Are the Everfree didn't get anywhere. Well, okay – in the interests of strict honesty, I thought it maybe had a very outside chance on account of being more tree than some of the entries – but though I'm happy to have finally turned that long-standing idea of mine into a story, and although it's had a good if limited reception from readers, I'm not going to pretend I think my effort has been robbed of its rightful recognition as an utterly outstanding piece of ponyfic.

There were 18 entries for the contest, all of them short, which is the kind of thing that makes me interested in reading and reviewing the lot of them for Ponyfic Roundup, as I did with the Thousand Words Contest a while ago. Watch this space!

New story by me: We Are the Everfree

I hope to post the next FiM rewatch video this weekend. Sorry it's taken so long!

For the first time since 2019 (eek) I have two ponyfics up in the same year! This time, it's two in the same month. Here's the new one:

Background: Everfree Forest Clearing by 90Sigma.

We Are the Everfree by Loganberry
OCs and Other
G4; Sad/Tragedy; 1k words; Apr 2023; Teen

In a place as strange as the Everfree Forest, is it really so surprising that its Trees should communicate? They have, after all, been there for a long, long time. Even so, that doesn't mean that nothing ever changes in the woods, or that the Trees have always been that way...

An entry for Mockingbirb's Arboreal Yearnings Contest.

Not my usual combination of genre tags, I'm aware! But this is based on an idea that I've been vaguely thinking about for half a decade or so. Of course it's evolved somewhat since my first thoughts, but after so long it's nice to get it published. The "Arboreal Yearnings Contest" is inspired by Fluttershy's "I'd like to be a tree" comment, and requires stories to have one or more creatures "wanting to be a tree, becoming a tree, pretending to be a tree, or actually being a tree". Trees of the Everfree, of course, are not like other trees...

New story by me: This Lonesome Cattle Call

Happy Easter! I'm not sure which other countries do the big chocolate egg thing as much as we do, but if you do (and you eat them, and indeed you do Easter at all) I hope you have an eggcellent time with them. Anyway, some news. First of all, I hope to post the rewatch for "Top Bolt" tomorrow. About time, you may say, and you would be right! Also, there's this:

This Lonesome Cattle Call by Loganberry

The Critter Concert Classic is coming up, and who better to organise it for Fluttershy than Twilight? But there's a big problem: a distinct lack of performers. Can Applejack ride to the rescue?

Gentle fluff.

So to my great relief, I have managed to get a fic out less than a year after the last one. I wouldn't go expecting any great things from this one, as it's really just a bit of fun I kind of had to bash out after a particular line got stuck in my head. But it seems to have given some people some enjoyment, and frankly there's not much more I can ask for as a writer than that. :)

The fandom and me in 2023

Which kinda sorta rhymes woo. Anyway, I've been idly musing on how I relate to the MLP fandom these days. I think it would be silly to pretend that I have the intensely excited relationship with it that I did a decade ago. The fact that there are no longer any new episodes of Friendship is Magic has a fair bit to do with that, plus of course it's inevitably no longer fresh and new.

That said, my interest in Pony hasn't faded as much as it clearly has for some people. I'm still maintaining Louder Yay, after all! I'm still reading a ton of fanfic. I'm even (dun dun dun) writing ponyfic again, though so far at least nothing more than a couple of silly small one-shots that aren't likely to blow anyone away. And I'd still call MLP my number one fandom, even now.

What I think I may be starting to cool on, just very slightly, is going to conventions like UKPC. They're getting more and more expensive (and maybe just a little samey¹) and I'm starting to reflect on what else I could be spending with the same money. Set against that, I get to see friends I don't meet any other time. But that's above it being because these are Pony events specifically.
¹ Apparently a Briticism. I had no idea!

However, that does not mean that the MLP angle is no longer a big deal for me in the social fandom. For meets, even though they're vastly less expensive, it still really matters to me that they're Pony-centric. I'd still go to some if they'd turned into just a bunch of friends talking generally, but I seriously doubt I'd attend as many as I do at the moment. So yeah, Pony still matters a lot there.

So... yeah, I wouldn't deny that I've cooled on My Little Pony since 2013 or so. But I was starting from such a high temperature, so to speak, that I'm still a long way above lukewarm. I think I'll consider myself an MLP fan, and quite a serious one, for a very long time yet – quite possibly forever. It just doesn't entirely dominate my online life the way it did a decade ago, that's all.

UK PonyCon 2023 dates and venue announced

UK PonyCon announced the first details of this year's convention on its website yesterday. One of the answers we now have was no surprise at all, the other perhaps a slight one. The first is that the con will, for the fifth year in succession, be held at Nottingham Trent University. The venue seems to suit everyone reasonably well, so I'd have been quite startled had it been changed. The con weekend, however, will be slightly earlier in the autumn than we've become used to: 30th Sep/1st Oct. That won't make much difference in terms of weather etc, but I suppose it might be slightly warmer!

As to whether I will be going... same answer as every year: I don't know, and I won't know for months yet. Looking up hotel prices just now has not been an especially cheering experience, though: we all know high inflation is a thing, but seeing it so starkly is sobering. Want three nights at the "con hotel", the Premier Inn in Goldsmith Street? Right now on a Flex tariff that'll set you back £319. The word "ouch" comes to mind – it's very nearly as much as I paid for hotel and travel and meals and merch last year Yes, PI will let you can cancel and rebook later, but I do wonder whether that particular price is going to go down much, if at all.

If I go, I'm already almost certain I'll be staying out of town again. The ever-inflating hit to my bank balance is just getting harder and harder for me to justify, and that's the only way I think I still have a fighting chance of coming down on the "yes" side. Everyone here knows how much I like UK PonyCon, but that doesn't change the fact that cons are very expensive long weekends and getting ever more so. If I lived closer, I'm fairly sure I'd be commuting this year and accepting missing out on late nights. Since that's not a realistic option, it's going to need some hard thinking. It's a good job there's plenty of time for me to do that!

So, about that "28 Pranks Later" rewatch

It seems to have been fairly obvious that this rewatch wasn't my finest piece of writing about Friendship is Magic. In truth it was probably a stupid decision for me to write a rewatch at that precise moment. Yesterday was a significant anniversary of the worst day of my life. A few of you reading this may know what I mean, but I'm not going to go into details in public. Suffice it to say that I am just not up to editing the rewatch post or responding to very long comments. They've been read and all those disagreements noted, but I am not in a happy mood at the moment and I think I need to draw a line under that post. I'll get to the next episode when I can. Thank you for reading this boring ramble.