Sorry everyone, fanfic's over now, the AI has spoken

Me: If Applejack and Rainbow Dash got married, what would happen?

ChatGPT: It is not appropriate to speculate on the actions or relationships of fictional characters.

Well, blast it.

Ponyfic Confessions

This is just me being silly because it's hot (for England) and I don't have much else to write about. Yes, I am still going to watch that Jenny Nicholson video, but I've been kind of distracted by real-world events in this country lately. So, in the time-honoured fashion of journalists who've run out of ideas, I'm going to ask my readers to do my work for me and ask if they have anything they'd care to confess.

I have something, which I'm not proud of and which will eventually be fixed, but:

I've never read The Enchanted Library. Not one single solitary chapter.

This is the story by Monochromatic that basically everyone says is absolutely brilliant. The trouble is that it's 337,000 words long, and an Alternate Universe fic, and the first in a series that still isn't even close to finished seven years after it started. None of those things tend to heighten my motivation.¹ But even so, people rave about it so much that I really should have seen what all the fuss was about. I haven't, though.
¹ See also the Austraeoh saga, though I probably won't ever return to that as it didn't grab me enough

So, once you've all picked your jaws up off the floor, and/or finished throwing things at me, do any of you fine people have any ponyficcy shames that you'd like to confess? Keep 'em at least moderately SFW, if you would...

In the national interest

Given the confused result of the general election, I can certainly get behind asking a noted author of My Little Pony fanfiction to govern the United Kingdom. The guy's studied in the UK after all, so would probably pass as a genuine British human being more easily than, say, Theresa May. Of course, I'm happy for the Cabinet to consist of various other ponyfic writers, noted or otherwise. As long as I get to be Secretary of State for Scootaloo, since that's nicely alliterative.

Okay, okay, it's a TV review from the Guardian.

Ship names

Occurred: Americans seem to be much more exercised by the Oxford comma than anyone from Actual Oxford would be. Remember that Oakhurst Dairy news story? Over here, it made the rounds for one day and then everyone forgot about it. Yet I'm still occasionally coming across Americans who bring it up. Nobody really cares about the Oxford comma over here: if you can answer the question "Is your meaning clear?" with "Yes" then that's good enough and consistency be damned. Just thought it was interesting.

Anyway, the other day, I reviewed a Rainbow Dash/Moondancer shipfic and assumed that this ship would be known as RainDancer. To my surprise, nobody else – at least on Fimfiction – seems to have used the term. If I really am the first and anyone wants to use the name, they're very welcome to it! Some ship names amuse me more than others. FlashLight and SunLight are among the established ones that I find fun, but there are a few others I can think of that I'd rather like someone to write simply because of the names. For example:

SunnyDelight (Sunny Rays/G1 Apple Delight)
DiamondDust (Double Diamond/Lightning Dust)
LunaSea (Luna/Sea Swirl)
FireGuard (Firefly/Royal Guard)
SherbetLemon (G1 Sherbet/Lemon Hearts)
SunShine (Sunset Shimmer/Twinkleshine)

I'm sure there are more, but that's as many as I can be bothered to think of. Annoyingly, I don't think there's a canon pony whose name ends in "leader", since CheerLeader would be close to unbeatable!

Ponies Around the World!

There's just today and tomorrow left to enter Equestria Daily's Ponies Around the World event. Sorry for the late notice, but I didn't realise it was on myself until recently! Anyway, the idea of PAtW is that you take a photo of a pony toy of some description in front of a landmark of your choosing, then submit that according to the instructions on the EqD page I linked to. Unfortunately the weather hasn't always been kind of late, but here are my two entries anyway.

The first photo shows Twilight in front of the recently opened Library of Birmingham, the largest public library in Europe. (No wonder Twi is gazing longingly at the place!) The second picture was taken nearby, and shows Octavia posing in front of Symphony Hall, the home of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and one of the foremost concert venues in the world. Maybe she'll play there herself one day!

Woo-hoo! I'm top of the Google hit list!

I think that's the first time it's happened for. Sadly, it's for the phrase pastel lanterns for sale, but you can't have everything! (And yes, there'll be a proper post along in the next couple of days.)

Oi, EqD, get orf my land!

I see that the mighty Equestria Daily is currently running a masthead with the tagline "All the pony that's fit to print". Now, they might have six hundred billion readers every day, as opposed to this 'ere blog's three and a half, but I would remind them that my own tagline has been "Some of the pony that might possibly be fit to print" for quite some while. I was here first, mateys. :P

The New York Times? What's The New York Times?