UK PonyCon announces Tabitha St. Germain and Elley-Ray Hennessy

I'm several days late posting this, so apologies! But here's the official confirmation that UK PonyCon 2023 will have a Mane Six VA for the second year running, with the voice of Rarity (and a whole host of others) appearing in person after Andrea Libman's visit last year – and also a second show guest, in the shape of the legendary Elley-Ray Hennessy. You have to hoof it to UKPC: they have really done the trick here, with two extremely popular guests.

Ponyfic Roundup 439

Read it Later story count: 93 (-3)

Words read this week: 24,360

My lowest weekly word count for quite some while today, though I do still have the usual five fics. Don't read anything in particular into that low total: the stories just fell that way this Roundup. If you look down the bottom of this post, you'll be able to check for yourself (if you really find that a good use of your time :P ) that next week's word count will rise again. Anyway, on we go...

Sixty-Eight Reasons to Switch Placebos This Summer by TheMessenger
A Day for Mommy by Hivemind
Good Enough by cloudedguardian
Garland Graveyard Shift by Ninjadeadbeard
Forty-Two Troublesome Trixies by Darth Link 22

★: 0 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

My Little Repeats 142: "To Where and Back Again, part 1"

"A changeling can change. But we haven't."

S6E25: "To Where and Back Again, part 1"

6 Oct 2016 (Tiny Pop; 22 Oct on Discovery Family)

My original rating: ★★★★ (for both parts)
IMDb score: 8.4

The one with Thorax's glittery wings

Thoughts: Tiny Pop being Tiny Pop, this episode was shown before "Top Bolt". This is, as Discord says, "quite the combination of secondary characters" – but for the most part, it really works. It doesn't hurt that the best villain in the show is back, although Chrysalis only shows up a fair way in. We get another excellent double act with Starlight and Trixie, while Glimmy herself is a more appealing character for her insecurities. (Her magic is again a bit OP, though...) The Changeling!Mane Six aren't the most convincing replacements in the world: you'd think Chrysalis could have managed better! This episode was shown at UK PonyCon 2016 (on the date of the US showing, so many of us had already seen it) and I remember the general reaction being very positive. I do have a small sigh for the Princesses getting easily captured, not for the first or last time, but oh well. This is quality entertainment. Despite a few flaws, it can keep its four.

Choice quote: Luna: "I see much of myself in you, Starlight Glimmer."

New rating: ★★★★

Tiny Pop showed E25 and E26 a day apart, so for once we had a proper cliffhanger, and I adored that. You get a longer one here for free, though! Next time, it's "To Where and Back Again, part 2", and then I'll finally be done with S6.

New story by me: We Are the Everfree

I hope to post the next FiM rewatch video this weekend. Sorry it's taken so long!

For the first time since 2019 (eek) I have two ponyfics up in the same year! This time, it's two in the same month. Here's the new one:

Background: Everfree Forest Clearing by 90Sigma.

We Are the Everfree by Loganberry
OCs and Other
G4; Sad/Tragedy; 1k words; Apr 2023; Teen

In a place as strange as the Everfree Forest, is it really so surprising that its Trees should communicate? They have, after all, been there for a long, long time. Even so, that doesn't mean that nothing ever changes in the woods, or that the Trees have always been that way...

An entry for Mockingbirb's Arboreal Yearnings Contest.

Not my usual combination of genre tags, I'm aware! But this is based on an idea that I've been vaguely thinking about for half a decade or so. Of course it's evolved somewhat since my first thoughts, but after so long it's nice to get it published. The "Arboreal Yearnings Contest" is inspired by Fluttershy's "I'd like to be a tree" comment, and requires stories to have one or more creatures "wanting to be a tree, becoming a tree, pretending to be a tree, or actually being a tree". Trees of the Everfree, of course, are not like other trees...

Ponyfic Roundup 438: Spotlight on Synchronicity

Read it Later story count: 96 (-2)

Words read this week: 82,654

Here's a longer fic that I've known about for something like a decade, and even read the first few pages of from time to time – but until now I'd never read it right through. As far as I can tell, no significant reviewer has covered Synchronicity before. It's not one of the star stories on Fimfiction, being currently rated just outside the top 5,000 with 7.6k views, and it's the only one of Sev's three fics that is neither M-rated nor incomplete. Let's see where it takes us...

Synchronicity by Sev
Mane Six, OC, Celestia, Luna and Fancy Pants
G4; Adventure/Comedy; 83k words; Dec 2011–Aug 2013; Teen (Sex)

Old grudges lead to shaky alliances when the lands outside Equestria unite against a common foe

This is a sea pony story, of a sort – in that a major OC is a kelpie, who after a strange introduction is a rather appealing character. Her people have kidnapped Celestia and want serious action from Equestria or... well. Meanwhile, a threat to both peoples is growing fast, and Twilight and the Mane Six need to work out what to do. She finds a magical resonance with Rarity lets them share certain thoughts, and this gives them both more of an insight. Though the fic shares the [Adventure] and [Comedy] tags, the comedy is concentrated in the early chapters – which are sometimes rather shakily written – and later on the adventure mostly takes over. There's some sweeping world-building here, enabled by the story's earlyish date. The innuendo mentioned in the longdesc (we're talking stuff like what Twilight really keeps hidden under her bed) likewise calms down a lot after the first third. I think this improves the fic. For the first few chapters this was a two-star story, but a substantial improvement in the writing and a genuinely exciting (if rather long) climactic chapter bring it up to a three. ★★★

After this point, you should only continue reading if you're okay with major spoilers.

Okay, what's the deal with "Carl Cornejo"?

I agree with Mr. Frog

The screenshot above was taken from Equestria Daily the other day, more specifically from the comments on the "What is the Best Pony Fan Theory You've Heard?" thread. And as you can see, Carl Cornejo has commented in the way he/they/it usually does. As Mr. Frog points out, this is CC's unvarying style of reply. Each and every time, whoever the reply is to, and on a huge range of posts.

What's going on? I have no more idea than Mr. Frog does, to be honest. This has gone on for years, and it's way, way, way past the point of being even remotely interesting or amusing. Yes, you can block a poster, but this kind of stuff is frankly at least borderline spam, and most of the time spammers are zapped pretty quickly. They come back, sure, but they're not left to go on and on and on first.

If Carl Cornejo is AI-generated, then the progress of AI in the years since he started commenting makes this kind of thing seem extremely old-fashioned and boring and I wish it was stopped. If he's a real person doing this, then it's less old-fashioned but equally boring and I wish he'd stop. While it's not a massive deal, for me at least it does make the EQD comments just a little bit tedious.

End of an era: UK of Equestria is no more

UK of Equestria is not allowed to see you again

Pretty much since the start of my time in the My Little Pony fandom in spring 2012, UK of Equestria was my go-to website. A year or so later, I was taken on as a moderator there, a role which for a while was a fairly busy one. But then social media really got going, and fewer and fewer people wanted to spend their time on a traditional forum-based website with longer-form posts. I did, and indeed one of my more pointless claims to horse fame¹ is that I have the highest post count on UK of E, but increasing numbers didn't. The site became ever quieter, though it was still there for anyone who wanted it... until now.
¹ I guess that covers all claims to horse fame, really!

Technically, UK of Equestria lives on, since as the goodbye page mentions its Discord server remains active. But, in truth, that is not at all the same thing. In particular, it lacks something that especially in the early days I really liked about UK of E: it was public. Not only could anyone making a sneering "And what do you really talk about?" simply be pointed to a link, but passers-by who might be uncertain could browse quietly and have a look. Discord has plenty of points in its favour, but as it's now walled off from casual glances it's certainly not the same UK of E any more.

Indeed, I haven't even joined the UK of Equestria Discord. I'm already a member of BritBronies, the UK PonyCon server and a small server of a couple of dozen friends, and apart from the last I don't use them much except on specific occasions such as conventions. Without a specific personal link or a binding event such as UKPC, a service like Discord simply doesn't appeal to me in the way that blog/forum-style posting does. So, after more than a decade, I am finally saying goodbye to UK of Equestria for the very last time.

I feel rather as I did a few years ago when Yahoo Groups finally closed down, and the Watership Down Yahoo Group that was in fact my first ever online fan community went with it. In that case, too, I hadn't really been active there for several years, but it was still a real wrench to see it go and to lose the archive of posts that I'd made or interacted with over the years. Still, without that, leading to furry, leading to Pony, the blog you're reading right now would never have existed either.

Goodbye, UK of Equestria, and thank you. I'll miss you.