New story by me: Custard Repeatedly Teleports into Starlight

Custard Repeatedly Teleports into Starlight by Loganberry
Starlight Glimmer, Twilight, Spike and OC
Comedy/Random/Slice of Life; 1k words; Aug 2018; Teen

Starlight's magic is growing stronger. So is her attraction to custard.

Starlight Glimmer's teleportation skills have improved to the extent that she can now travel around Equestria without landing in somepony's dessert. Unfortunately, her determination never to face such a fate again, combined with her predilection for using magic as the solution to pretty much any problem, means she's now lying in acute discomfort in Twilight's castle.

This is a Custardverse story, a sequel to the equally ridiculous Starlight Repeatedly Teleports into Custard from 2016. It only barely passes a thousand words, and it's no great work of literature. However, it is the first time I've been able to slap a "Complete" tag on anything at all since The Book of Ended Lives in February 2017, and for that reason alone I'm immensely relieved to have got it written. TBoEL is the better story by a very substantial margin, but that isn't the point here.

Ponyfic Roundup 216: Cleeton St Mary

Title explanation: Shropshire village

No episode review this week, since Discovery Family is just re-running "Yakity-Sax", which I've already seen. You can see my thoughts about that episode over here. I'll be reviewing "On the Road to Friendship" next week.

Read it Later story count: 323 (+2)

Another very busy week for me has meant a mere three fics reviewed once again. As has been the case for a long time now, I do want to get back to the point at which five stories is the minimum you can expect. That's not likely to happen until well into the autumn, though. Today's trio are:

Endless Gifts by Jenova2
Falling Leaves of Oak by Georg
Slipping Through My Hooves by Awesomo3000

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

Fanfic Reading: We Who with Songs Beguile

 ( Text link )

I felt it was about time I did another fanfic reading – so here one is! This is a story I've always been rather pleased with, especially given how it fits with some pretty tiny pieces of canon, and I have happy memories of it from the EqD Outside Insight contest all those years ago. (Not only did it make the final, but Inquisitor M gave it quite a nice review.) However, I did want to give a better idea of how Mazarine sounded in my head, and what better way than actually reading the fic aloud? Note that the story is set in the second half of Season 3, so Twilight is not an alicorn at this point.

We Who with Songs Beguile by Loganberry

OC, Fluttershy and Rarity

Comedy/Slice of Life; 3k words; Aug 2014; Teen

Fluttershy's songbird choir is renowned throughout Equestria, in demand by ponies everywhere. Looked at from the other side of the perch, though, it's not always the life it's cracked up to be. If you want to hear the real story, straight from the bird's beak, Mazarine is your jay. Though you may have to set aside most of an afternoon...

The BronyCon Bookstore and selling fanfic

An interesting initiative here: Aquaman is proposing a bookshop at the final BronyCon next year. This means an actual, physical place selling actual, physical books. I have no idea whether it will work out, but the comments contain an impressive number of high-powered ponyfic people, so it seems to have a fair chance. If you want to know all the ins and outs and whys and wherefores, read the Aquaman blog I linked to. It's long, but it's readable enough for that not to be a big problem.

This really underlines how much of a gulf there is between drawing and writing in terms of artists/authors selling their stuff. There are probably thousands of visual artists who at least make the occasional few quid through PayPal. The number of writers who do the same is tiny, restricted to a few good enough to charge for commissions or editing work and an overlapping few good enough for it to be worth their making Lulu (or whatever) editions.

Now, if this BronyCon Bookstore idea ends up bringing a gigantic C&D down on Fimfiction, it will go down as one of the fandom's legendary self-inflicted disasters. Some people might now be jaded or cynical enough not to care, but many, many more still do. But it won't. As pointed out in the blog, if that was going to happen it would have done so long since, and I'd add especially given some of the things that Fimfiction allows in stories hosted there. So I wish it all the best.

For what it's worth, I have no problem at all with ponyfic authors selling books of their work. Given that I have a folder full of fan art purchased at conventions, plus several non-licensed plushies, I'd be a hypocrite if I said anything else. It's never been relevant to me: even if I were good enough, I wouldn't do it myself, as I don't want to make any money from my ponyfic – I decided way back in 2012 that I would opt out of any AdSense-type programmes Fimfiction might introduce in the future. But if others do, then in a world of paid-for fan art and plushies I don't see why not.

On a slightly wider topic, here's a paraphrased comment I saw very recently, making a suggestion as to an additional reason why fanfic doesn't generally sell: "Fan art prints are generally cheaper than non-fandom art prints. Fan books are generally more expensive than non-fandom books." There are exceptions to all of those, but I thought it was quite perceptive: here in the UK, you wouldn't expect a good-quality paperback novel to cost more than £10. A ponyfic self-print will, so it's more of a luxury investment, whereas a fan art print at a fiver is not.

Text Review Roundup: "The End in Friend"

Honestly, folks, this isn't only a review blog – but the way things have been going recently, it's only the reviews I've had time to write! I do actually want to write some posts that aren't reviews in due course. I just don't know when I'll get the time to do so. (The same applies for some mini-reviews of actual, physical products I have lying around.)

Dark Qiviut did a blog post for this one, so they're back on the list this week. Yay! Also, why is the Derpy News website so slow on initial loading? It's fine once you're flicking between pages within the site, but the initial getting there is treacly.

"The End in Friend" got a very mixed reaction, though there were few reviewers who either adored or detested it. I find myself at the lower end of the scale again, which surprised me a bit.

Cuddlepug – positive (graded B; "More than many episodes in years, “The End in Friend” feels like a Season 1 episode – a quality that I appreciate")

Dark Qiviut – very positive ("This quest humbled [Dash and Rarity] without humiliating them [...] The moral taught (and how) is incredibly important.")

Derpy News – positive (graded B+; "could well have been a recycle of a Season One episode [...] but it’s saved by the fact that it is wrapped around teaching a lesson to the Young Six")

The Dragon Warlock – rather negative (graded C+; "At best, the episode is mediocre and watchable. At worst, it's just an insufferable bore.")

JDPrime22 – positive (rated 8/10; "The one where "Non-Compete Clause" was done right [...] Really good lesson [though didn't like] how childish Rarity and Rainbow were acting at the start")

Louder Yay – rather negative (rated 2/5; "a somewhat lacklustre episode that rather wasted its rare pairing and never felt truly convincing")

Mega Sean 45 – positive ("kinda similar to Non-Compete Clause, but it was much better executed!")

MLEEP Reviews – negative (rated 4/10; "continuity [and] lore [but the plot was] clichéd and recycled [...] nothing new or original")

The Railfan Brony – negative (rated Bad; "painfully mediocre all the way through")

Rainbine – slightly negative (rated 3/5; "Besides the counseling scene and the frog scene, the episode was a gigantic bore [...] It's not bad, but it's nothing special. It's something that can be forgotten very easily")

Episode review: S8E17: "The End in Friend"

Gems have got a lot easier to find since S1!

My real-life concerns (to put it as vaguely as possible) continue and won't end for a while, so this is going to be a very short episode review. However, I prefer to do things this way than to wait until I'm back on an even keel – partly because I currently don't know when that will be. Anyway, "The End in Friend" was a G. M. (Gillian) Berrow episode, her first since the amusing "Grannies Gone Wild" 12 episodes ago. Past the break we go!

Ponyfic Roundup 215: Blue Minty Gel

Title explanation: famous 1980s Colgate advert

Read it Later story count: 321 (+2)

I've had very little time to spend reading recently, but I did manage to squeeze in a bit of ponyfic on my phone. I couldn't make it up to five stories this time, but at least I got to read both the fics trailed last week, plus one other. Today we have:

Brotherly Bond by Crash Jet
Apple Knots by BlazzingInferno
Leave All The Lights On by FamousLastWords

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