Flashfic 150 gets under way tomorrow

I really wasn't sure when I announced Flashfic 150 what sort of a response I'd get. I did wonder, in the back of my mind, whether 2017 might be too late in the day for something like this to work. Frankly, it wouldn't altogether have shocked me if I'd had three people join the group and then none of them actually write anything. The second part is still possible, but as I type membership stands at 41, a figure I'm pretty satisfied with.

We've had a practice thread going for a little while, but the first actual contest will start tomorrow. I have a prompt in mind, but since the "prize" is choosing the following month's prompt I have no idea what will appear in the future. I'd like nothing so much as if someone with no record on Fimfiction had a go at Flashfic 150, got the taste for writing ponyfic, and then started putting out stories of their own. That really would be wonderful.

Tomorrow, I'll update the group front page and start the April contest thread. I'm actually looking forward to this tremendously. With a little trepidation, since I'm bound to have overlooked something important, but looking forward to it nevertheless.

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.

Ponyfic Roundup 151: Ooh, I Could Crush a Grape

I stumbled across an odd conversation on Twitter the other day: two non-native English speakers were discussing English usage, and one stated that British English speakers usually made a distinction between "toward" (used adverbially) and "towards" (used adjectivally). This is not the case, at least not in anything resembling the real world. Both forms are correct in BrEng, but in practice we use "towards" most of the time. Thrilling, eh?

Read it Later story count: 458 (-8)

It's mixed bag time again this week, and all the five stories are short as I haven't had a great deal of spare time. Yes, I am aware that I don't have to post a PR every single Wednesday! I just like to if I possibly can. A bit of a mixed experience for me this week, but with luck some of you will have your interest piqued by something you read here. To the starting blocks!

Conscientious Objector by Inspector Brown
An Apple Comes Our of the Cellar by Seether00
Final Say by Glen Gorewood
Just Give Me a Reason by SleepIsForTheWeak
The Path I Tread by Smaug the golden

★: 1 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 1

Fimfiction story rankings

After reading PresentPerfect's Fimfiction post, I wandered off to my own story list to see if there were any round numbers in their current rankings. Answer: no. But then I thought I'd see how my various fics compared to each other. Unsurprisingly, I have nothing in the top thousand and nothing right down the bottom. But for my 23 completed stories (the other two are anthologies), this is how they shape up.

I'm well aware that the Fimfiction rating algorithm is far from being a properly reliable measure of stories' relative quality. I'm also well aware that taking any of this stuff too seriously is a bad idea. Rest assured that I'm not! So take my mini-analyses with plenty of salt. Here we go:

1st: It Doesn't Matter Now (3,237). No surprise there, given that it's my RCL entry.
2nd: Shining Armor's Amour's Armour (7,326). Really? Really? Dearie dearie me.
3rd: We Who with Songs Beguile (11,341). This one makes a bit more sense, frankly.
4th: The Unbearable Lightness of Bucking (12,619). I'm actually rather happy with that!
5th: Where They Understand You (16,166). This was a pleasant surprise as well.

6th: For an Angel to Pass (17,117). I think this one is a little overrated.
7th: Starlight Repeatedly Teleports into Custard (21,047). Huzzah! :D
8th: Like a Flower to the World (23,817). Not critically acclaimed, but fairly popular.
9th: This Fragment of Life (27,861). Shows the power of utter idiocy, I suppose.
10th: One Hell of a Party (28,107). Seems about right, considering.

11th=: To Be the Candle (28,877). I wish this was a couple of places higher.
11th=: Ever Let the Fancy Roam (28,877). This too. Yes, the same rating as TBtC!
13th: Kicking Back (29,563). A really silly story. Fairly placed, I think.
14th: The Light that Ignites in the Dark (30,328). I have affection for it. but fair.
15th: The Book of Ended Lives (32,091). I did think this fic would do better.

16th: By the Seashore (37,160). My lowest fic to get an R from PP. :P
17th: More than Alive (39,043). Not too bad for such a niche-appeal story!
18th: Clouded Minds (44,786). A concept I still like, despite the iffy writing.
19th: So Many Different Ways to Prey (49,395). Newborn Cuties crossover in top 50k!
20th: The 20 Percent Solution (55,122). My first ponyfic, and you can tell.

21st: Ra Ra Raspberry (55,766). Joke relies on knowledge of a specific song.
22nd: The Ballad of Wyvern's Rock (82,333). Mediocre epic poetry, so fine.
23rd: Sunset's Sales Snag (85,308). Boo! This is not that bad a silly fic!

Playing Tails of Equestria

Sadly the art inside is just stock vectors and show screenshots

On Saturday, I went to the twice-monthly Worcester meet. Patrick had brought along his copy of the newish Tails of Equestria RPG, and four of us (three players and Patrick as GM) created characters and started out on the sample adventure in the book. Apparently character creation was supposed to take about half an hour. This is where anyone who's ever played an RPG does the hollow laughter thing. (But not the hollow voice thing. "Plugh" doesn't work here!)

My character, Ripple, has a special talent for finding water but a "quirk" of short-sightedness. This means that in the wilds, I may well find water by falling into it! I'm a unicorn, and so my Mind attribute is slightly enhanced; the other two are Body and Charm. Earth ponies get a slight Body advantage; pegasi don't get a Charm advantage but of course they can fly. And no, you are absolutely not allowed to play an alicorn character!

Anyway, I won't spoil the adventure's plot in case any of you might play it sometime, but it's fair to say it was far more fun than I was expecting – even if I did roll 1 suspiciously often when trying to achieve some useful task. Admittedly much of the amusement was provided by our earth pony character, whose main trait was a feeling that every problem could be solved by kicking it. We also had a pegasus in the party, so we hoped the balance would work.

As I write this, we're about halfway through the adventure after an hour or so's play, and we're intending to complete it at the next meet in a fortnight. I'm not sure I'd want to play ToE at every meet – there are almost too many gaming meets already – but I think I'd be up for occasional sessions in the future, as Patrick suggested. At any rate, if you can find the set for a reasonable price, and as long as you have a few like-minded friends, I think I'd recommend it. :)

Five years in the fandom, part 2: looking ahead

Yes, I know about the Brony Dance Party situation. Can't think of anything much to say about it now, though, so I'll wait to see what transpires. On to the promised forward-looking and generally quite optimistic post. :)

Not so long ago, I made this post which mentioned some of the things that I'd experienced during my five years in the My Little Pony fandom. In today's post, I'm going to look into my Mystical Orb of Fate's Destiny and talk about where I see the fandom going from here. I'll be concentrating on stuff that affects me, so there won't be a lot about gaming or plushie making.

You may have noticed that I've added the "uk-specific" tag this time round. That's because there are several areas where the American experience is not fully shared by those of us on this side of the Atlantic. Conventions being the obvious example, but there are several more that I'll touch on. Not in huge detail, as I don't want to drag on, but as always comments are welcome!

More past the break; this one will be longer than last week's. It remains spoiler-free, however!

Sex ratios in Equestria

Scootaloo beat that damn Harshwhinny mare (22-18) in #MareMadness. There is justice in this world! :D

As reported on this Equestria Daily page, a guy named Thomas has looked at every pony seen in the show and classified them by age, sex and tribe. There seem to be a couple of errors in his summaries (eg rounding 461:428 to 2:1), but I'm going to assume that the underlying data is accurate. Here is the measure that stood out to me most:

Female:male ratio by tribe
Earth: 461:428 = 1.08:1
Pegasus: 186:120 = 1.55:1
Unicorn: 199:115 = 1.73:1

I haven't done any proper statistical analysis (who do you think I am, Bad Horse?) but the gap between the number for earth ponies and that for the other two tribes really stands out. We think of Equestria as female-dominated, and indeed it is – all the more so if you look at which ponies hold positions of real power. But for earth ponies, it's not far off equality in the population as a whole.

Any in-universe ideas as to why this might be the case?