S6 coming this spring! Oh, and about that royal foal...

Yes, it's happening. Equestria Daily reports that Season Six of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic will be with us this spring. not in autumn as some of us had imagined/feared. We don't know when in spring it will be – presumably not before Easter – but it's still a great piece of news to see. It also means I can start using my "season 6" post tag a bit more often. Spoilers about the royal foal after the break, including her name if you haven't seen that yet. (And even if you have, I suppose.)

Ponyfic Roundup 92: Like a Mighty Cannonball He Seems to Fly

Slightly to my surprise, To Be the Candle got a Recommended from Present Perfect the other day. Maybe I should actually do something about the couple of other [Dark] story ideas I have bouncing around in my head. As it happens, I have one of PP's own stories in this week's selection of six, though that's pure coincidence. A mixed bag this week, so let's get on with it.

The Wind Changed by DaeCat
Dinky's First Kill by PresentPerfect
Bomb-Bomb Cake by Garnot
The Coronation of the Reluctant Princess Fluttershy by A British Gentleman
The Haunting in Ponyville by JasonTheHuman
Sweetie Brick by shortskirtsandexplosions

Checking back

Back in December 2014, at the point when It Doesn't Matter Now became the very last story to be featured by Twilight's Library, I made a blog post here in which I "set a few goals of varying importance and likelihood" for my ponyfic writing. I meant to revisit that post after a year, but I forgot about it. Here we go, then:

1) Actually win a writing contest of some sort
Done! My little Fancy Pants story, Ever Let the Fancy Roam, won the "Making the Most of the Mundane" contest.

2) Get 1,000 views on a single story
Done! Both It Doesn't Matter Now and This Fragment of Life have reached four figures.

3) Reach 100 followers
Done! I have exactly 150 at the time of posting.

4) Have a story of mine be another reviewer's equivalent of a "Pick of the fics"
Not done, although I don't do "Pick of the Fics" any more anyway. I've had some nice reviews, but I can't think of any roundups where a story I wrote was the standout.

5) Publish a [Dark]-tagged story
Done! That'll be To Be the Candle

6) Write a Watership Down crossover that actually works
Not done, and I haven't even written one that doesn't work.

7) Get Friendship is Poetry going again
Not really done – I've only added one poem (the William McGonagall homage) since December 2014.

8) Finish Where They Understand You
Done!

9) Write something in second-person, just to see if I can
Not done, and may never be. Unless I'm feeling stupid, anyway.

10) Never, ever, under any circumstances, make the feature box
Done! I'm proud of maintaining a clean record here.

BUCK 2016 guests: Daniel Ingram out, Peter New and Nicole Martel in

Some big news on guests for this year's BUCK – some good, some bad. Let's get the bad out of the way first: Daniel Ingram will not now be able to attend, owing to pressure of work. Let's not beat about the bush: this is a big disappointment. In fact, if I'd still been thinking of going to BUCK this year, Mr Ingram's attendance would have been the single biggest draw. The announcement post does slightly slip in the bad news (it's not mentioned at all in the threadline) but it's not as if people are going to miss a change like that.

Happily, there is good news as well on the guests front. Two new names have been announced, the first of whom is Peter New. He has a superb reputation as a con guest, and I'm sure that BUCK will benefit immensely from his presence. The second new guest is a name many may not know: Nicole Martel. She works as layout designer for several big-name cartoons, among them Friendship is Magic. She'll be presenting a workshop, a format which worked very well last year with the likes of Heather Breckel. It's a very interesting choice of invitee.

Ponyfic Roundup Extra: Desert Island Ponyfics 2015

Having rashly told a friend that I was going to write a post like this, I suppose I'd better get on and do it! Before I begin, I should mention that this is not simply a list of the eight highest-rated fanfics I reviewed in 2015. (They didn't have to be written that year.) There are several entries here which didn't get five-star ratings at all, but which stayed with me for other reasons.

Why eight? Because castaways on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs get to choose eight records to take with them, so it seemed a suitable number. It also forces me to make some hard choices, but doesn't restrict me so much that I'm limited to one or two types of fic. I've made no attempt to pick an outright winner, so the stories are listed in alphabetical order:

Bubbles by anonymous (PR 45)
It may be almost five years old now, but this is still one of the most affecting portraits of Derpy I've read anywhere.

The Celestia Code by iisaw (PR 59)
This story goes all-out in showing us Awesome!Twilight, without the irritating (to me) romantic angle of its sequel.

Cutie Mark Crisscross by Everyday (PR 44)
A notably high-class debut fic, with plenty to entertain and featuring some truly adorable Rarity/Sweetie scenes.

Flash Fog by Kwakerjak (PR 62)
This features mainly for its excellent Fluttershy, but also for its well realised main OC and a more than averagely interesting Lyra/Bon-Bon subplot.

Home by RBDash47 (PR 77)
A wonderful short character piece centring on Applejack. Utterly believable and deeply touching.

Lost Cities by Cold in Gardez (PR 76)
The progenitor of a small subgenre of its own, and a masterpiece of imaginative writing. No dialogue, no action, no dialogue – but all fascinating.

Pirates for a Day by DawnFade (PR 85)
Unbearably adorable, this is the story that melted my heart the most last year. It demanded inclusion here.

Riverdream at Sunset: a Manuscript by GroaningGreyAgony (PR 70)
It's [Adventure]/[Crossover]/[Human]. It's written in a flowery, wordy style. And yet it's absolutely magical.

Georgia Ball and the problems with the Rarity/Gilda Friends Forever

(Thanks to moody magpie on UK of Equestria for the heads-up on this.)

A few days ago, I reviewed Friends Forever #24, which I didn't find a particularly brilliant comic. Part of that was because I find American football boring, but part was because I was unimpressed with the use of characters (eg Greta) who looked absolutely nothing like their on-screen equivalents. Well, it turns out that I wasn't the only one.

It's not often that I link to a Horse News article, but this one is worth reading. Remember that I complained about the new cover design that makes the creators' names tiny? On top of that, Georgia Ball's name was misspelt as "Bell" – there and in the inside-cover credits. She wasn't very happy about that, nor about the off-model character designs, and rightly so.

And Ball isn't planning on pitching anything else for Pony, as this Twitter conversation reveals. It's also pretty clear that she is not desperately happy with Jay Fosgitt's lack of research, and I can't blame her. I like Fosgitt's style – the Dash/'Shy FF was wonderful – but this really isn't on. We're talking about basic research.

I go back and read the early MLP comics occasionally, and while I don't think the fall in average quality is as bad as 4chan likes to make out, the fact is that the gems are rarer than they were. Will we ever get another arc that produces non-stop laughs in the way "Zen and the Art of Gazebo Maintenance" or the Rarity micro did?

This franchise needs some TLC, and it needs it now. Over to you, Bobby Curnow.

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Ponyfic Roundup 91: Beats All the Lies You Can Invent

We've actually had a bit of seasonal weather recently. Of course, this is Worcestershire seasonal weather, which means temperatures of a few degrees above freezing and the occasional shower. No actual snow, as usual. Unexciting as that sounds, though, it's still a huge improvement on the torrential rain and widespread flooding so much of the country endured in December. Back to ponyfic, though, and this week's six fics are:

Rebirth by ObeySaturnGod
Changelings, Changelings Everywhere by Benman
Fine Print by nucnik
Dressing Room by GaPJaxie
Life is a Lemon by Blueshift
An Unfinished World by WorldWalker128