BronyCon to call time after next year

At the end of this year's BronyCon, the organisers made a big announcement: the 2019 iteration will be the last. There are a few reasons in a short FAQ at the bottom of their official homepage, but the impression given is that with attendance on a downward slope, they want to call it a day before BronyCon turns into a shadow of its former self. They'll be aiming to go out with a bang in a four-day finale in early August next year.

I never made it to BronyCon and I never will (reasons are several, but include health issues) but this news still hit me. After all, for as long as I've been in this fandom – since spring 2012 ‒ BronyCon has been around, and its 2015 edition was the largest My Little Pony con ever held with just over 10,000 people attending. That is a record that will never be broken, so it will always be the largest convention in history for fans of talking pastel ponies.

This is not the end of the MLP fandom. It's not even the end of the brony fandom. I do think it may be one more tentative step on the road towards G4 becoming a part of the wider MLP fandom – which, after all, has been running since long before Twilight left Canterlot; the My Little Pony Fair in the USA and UK PonyCon over here started in 2004. But a show as popular and successful as Friendship is Magic doesn't just fade into nothingness. There will always be bronies.

Will there always be brony conventions? Well... "always" might be a hostage to fortune. But they're surely not all going to disappear in the next year. BABSCon has already said that it will continue while there are enough people going to make it viable, while Everfree Northwest and GalaCon in Germany have made similar comments. The likes of SEAPonyCon in southeast Asia show that you don't need to be in America to have a good time. Here in the UK, the year features three conventions for the first time since 2016, with UK PonyCon looking set to break its attendance record yet again.

Of course BronyCon will be missed when it's gone. How could an event like that not be? But please don't make the mistake of equating one convention, however large and star-studded, with the fandom as a whole. You know what is the fandom as a whole? All of us who are in it. Whether we run cons or attend meets, whether we draw fanart or write fics, whether we buy custom plushies or chat about Pony on social media...

As long as people are talking about MLP, our gloriously silly fandom lives on.

Let's keep it that way.

UK PonyCon in the mainstream media

In this weekend when about every second tweet reminds me that BronyCon and GalaCon are on and I'm not at either of them, I need things to take my mind elsewhere – but still keep it on ponies. Fortunately, I have two! One is that later today I'll be off for the Worcester meetup group's annual all-you-can-eat buffet lunch. If there's any pudding there which features custard, you can be sure I'll be all over it. (Well, not literally. Probably.)

The other is that UK PonyCon (which I do hope to be at) has had some mainstream media coverage, something much rarer for British conventions than for the big American ones. Nottingham Live's headline – "Thousands of My Little Pony fans are coming to Nottingham - and here's why" – is perhaps a little over the top, but the article itself is reasonably straightforward and accurate, even mentioning correctly that only Sunday tickets remain.

Pony Music Library 55: "Queen of Nightmares"

( Text link )

It's been more than a month since I added to the Pony Music Library, so let's induct a new song today! Well, not a new song, but you know what I mean. This is a track I didn't actually know anything about until I chanced upon it while flicking through the tracks I hadn't tried in My Little Karaoke some while back, but it really stuck in my head.

What? "Queen of Nightmares"

Who? Time Baby

Which? Original song

When? November 2013

Why? What drew me into this song was the long intro, with its deceptively twangy banjo. Then the main part of the song came in and I was truly hooked. You don't get many songs specifically about Nightmare Moon, but this one fixes that. The breathy vocals fit the subject really well, and the banjo (which almost sounds as if it's about to break into Journey of the Sorcerer) creates a fascinating contrast. There's a definite hint of Depeche Mode in there, though the bridge reminds me just a little of mid-era Talk Talk. The whole atmosphere is dark and unsettling, ideal for its subject. For this to have barely 5,000 views is a crying shame.

Text Review Roundup: "Yakity-Sax"

Well, it couldn't last, could it? After the simplicity of the pre-hiatus scheduling, Friendship is Magic is now airing episodes all over the place. As such, I'm afraid I can't promise when there'll next be a Text Review Roundup – especially as it looks as if three episodes will premiere while I'm away staying with family over the next week or so! Many regulars haven't reviewed this episode, so this is a smaller edition of TRR than sometimes.

The general reception was negative, with the episode's moral coming in for particular criticism. When did Derpy News, usually so positive, last grade an episode D? Even "Non-Compete Clause" got a C from them! Rainbine even gives us a new rating: "Gigantic Pile of Shit". My two-star rating for the episode looks really quite mild in comparison! There are reviewers who liked "Yakity-Sax", but they're in a clear minority.

Dark Qiviut – positive ("The moral is simple, but relatable and makes sense.")

Derpy News – negative (graded D; "needed to take a better tack [...] this was not a good episode")

JDPrime22 – generally negative (rated 5/10; "the moral of this episode is completely wack ... No. No, no, no. Bad writers")

Louder Yay – rather negative (2/5; "a very unsatisfactory moral ... a missed opportunity for a nostalgia trip")

MLEEP Reviews – wildly positive (rated 10/10; "practice truly does make perfect as 'Yakity-Sax' made for a truly perfect episode")

The Railfan Brony – negative (rated Bad; "[Pinkie] learns nothing, which leads ... the episode's intended message to fall flat on its face")

Rainbine – extremely negative (rated Gigantic Pile of Shit; "Pinkie was so annoying [...] a chore to sit through")

ShutterflyEQD – positive ("it left good vibes")

The Dragon Warlock – extremely negative (graded F; "manages to somehow do the unthinkable; make Pinkie not just bad, but despicable [...] The comedy is awful [...] the writing is atrocious [...] deplorable episode.")

Ponyfic Roundup 212: Letting your heart be your guide

Title explanation: Hasbro uploaded the G1 theme

Nothing to do with My Little Pony, but I was delighted recently to discover that you could finally get Beatles songs on YouTube from the official channel, ie one whose videos weren't going to be zapped by Apple. I've always been a big Beatles fan, though maybe not as hardcore as some (I just can't sit through Revolution 9), so this was big news for me.

Read it Later story count: 327 (+4)

Another five-fic week, which is pleasing given that our epochal heatwave is still going along. I know 30 °C isn't anything special for some of you, but weeks on end of it here most definitely is. Anyway, another interesting (to me; I can't speak for you!) collection of tales this time around. They are:

The Talk by The Descendant
Tough Little Pony by Isseus
Why We Dig by Starscribe
The Rainbow Factory? by Just Horsing Around
Somnambula's Legacy by Nyarlathi

★: 0 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0

Episode review: S8E18 (or 14, or whatever) : "Yakity-Sax"

Back in "Magic Duel" you could play ten instruments at once...

The release schedule for the next few episodes of Friendship is Magic is a complete mess, and since that period also coincides with a holiday week for me, I'm likely to be a bit behind with episode reviews once again. However, this time there's an early release. Equestria Daily calls this episode 18, while the MLP Wiki calls it episode 14. Whatever, it was written by the Fox Brothers, with whose episodes I have a fairly mixed relationship. After the break, a few thoughts...

Special mini-review: "Rollercoaster of Friendship"

Megan is now G4 canon! (In EqG, at least.)

Apologies for the lack of a full-length review for "Rollercoaster of Friendship", but with FiM apparently returning today it was either a mini-review now or a much longer delay. Anyway, Nick Confalone returned for a special that, though entertaining enough for the most part, fell a bit short of his earlier "Forgotten Friendship". It wasn't a disaster by any means, and most of the girls had at least the occasional good line or scene, but it didn't feel as enjoyable or important as the earlier special had.

There was certainly plenty for the RariJack shippers to enjoy, and AJ's reaction to Rarity getting an (apparently) plum job when she was rejected made good viewing. Mind you, much of the rest seemed a little by-the-numbers. Vignette made a decent and suitably unlikeable villain, despite her inevitable near-instant reformation at the end, though the "white room" reveal was just plain silly. The song ("Photo Booth") was not one of EqG's best, being rather generic and forgettable. The special itself was better than that, but even its best scenes lacked the emotional power of Sunset's return to Equestria in "FF".

Oh, and the ponying up at the end seemed a little pointless, but apparently this is Hasbro-mandated for financial reasons. A bit like Rainbow Power, I suppose. I went back and forth between a top-end two-star rating and a bare three a number of times while I was thinking about this review. In the end, it just about scrapes into the higher bracket, partly down to an amusing Rainbow/Fluttershy subplot involving a rather scary rollercoaster – and partly due to that little Megan Williams cameo! ★★★