My Little Repeats 18: "The Show Stoppers"

"Scootaloo, Best Comedy doesn't mean Best Dad Joke, so can it with that 'biggest fan' line."

S1E18: "The Show Stoppers"
Written by Cindy Morrow
4 Mar 2011

My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 6.6

The one with the giant squid.

Thoughts: One of only three S1 episodes that have IMDb ratings in the sixes, but I wouldn't rank this anywhere near the bottom of S1. It's a fun episode pretty much throughout, especially while the Crusaders are trying to prepare – "dumb fabric" indeed, Sweetie. The CMC treehouse makes its debut; I'd forgotten it wasn't actually made for them. Scootaloo's scootering sequence includes what turns out to be the start of a tiny side-story over the next few seasons involving Granny Smith. The CMC also get that fine instrumental for their montage. Kung fu is now canon as well as karate (see "Call of the Cutie"). The actual performance is enormous fun, and it's nice to see proper ponyish stomping applause from the watching ponies. At the end, the mares who turn up for the fillies are AJ for Apple Bloom, Rarity for Sweetie Belle... and Rainbow for Scootaloo. We'll be seeing that partnership again! Downsides? Not many. Twilight starting a sentence with "My Little Ponies" is intrusive, and a few of Spike's lines seem a little phoned in. On the whole, though, this is enjoyable stuff. Not a great classic, but for this storyline it didn't need to be. A fairly strong three. I do indeed disagree with the IMDb consensus, then!

Choice quote: Sweetie Belle, reading Scootaloo's attempt at song lyrics: "With our cutie marks we'll rock Equestria. We use our stomachs to digest-ia?"

New rating: ★★★

Next up is "A Dog and Pony Show", an episode which provokes quite mixed reactions. It's ages since I've seen it, so I'm really not sure what I'm going to think this time.

New committee for UK PonyCon 2020

This isn't the kind of news I'd always trouble to post about, since there aren't many changes in the line-up compared with the 2019 event's committee. But the 2020 committee lacks the name of Guiding Breeze, someone who I know moderately well and for whom I have a pretty high regard. She's been Treasurer for the past three years, as well as doing several other jobs more unofficially, and I can vouch for her commitment and workrate during convention weekends – and at other times of course, but we don't see her working then!

Hopefully Guiding Breeze will now be able to take a well-earned rest from the intensity of committee responsibilities and be able to enjoy things at her own pace a bit more. The new Treasurer is named simply Jez, and is someone I know nothing about – but the "Meet the Committee" page mentions that they're "relatively new to the fandom". I find that encouraging, actually – even now, when the show is over, people are still stepping up to take on the big roles. Clearly UK PonyCon is going nowhere just yet – and a good thing too!

My Little Repeats 17: "Stare Master"

All these years on, this remains one of the show's creepiest scenes

S1E17: "Stare Master"
Written by Chris Savino
25 Feb 2011

My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 7.5

The one with Opal and her claws.

Thoughts: Savino's second and last FiM episode, probably to Hasbro's relief these days. The CMC get their first starring role together here, and what an adventure they make of it! It's good to see how well they already mesh, though they're noticeably immature here – which is fine for this stage in the series. Fluttershy is absurdly cute if overconfident (yes, Fluttershy) as their babysitter, plus we get to hear her singing, albeit briefly before Sweetie takes over. We also discover The Stare – though at this point, 'Shy can't do it on demand. A nice touch: all the jobs the Crusaders mention start with C: creature catchers, carpenters, coal miners, carpet cleaners... anyway, the cockatrice is a really dangerous animal, and adds back a bit of the Everfree danger removed earlier by Twilight prattling on about going in there to pick up some tea. (I don't like their eventual return so much, but it'll be ages before we get to that.) Flutters is great at protecting the fillies and staring down the cockatrice; even by this stage, you should realise you do not mess with her! Downsides? Well, the "Scootachicken" thing started here, and that's long outstayed its welcome. The ep also wanders about a bit at times; this isn't exactly a laser-focused story. Overall, though, an entertaining episode and one that I still had a good time with.

Choice quote: Apple Bloom: "Maybe that's our special talent... arguing!"

New rating: ★★★

Next up is "The Show Stoppers", another CMC episode but one which the fandom has not really warmed to. I remember rather liking it, but let's see how things go.

Bits and pieces

On Fimfiction, I've been looking through the list of users with the most stories in preparation for the next Ponyfic Roundup. There are people in the top 100 I've never even heard of, but there are also some really prominent writers in there. It's certainly possible to be both very good and very prolific. As it happens, there's a run in the 50s of six authors whose works I've read at least a few of: RainbowBob, Pascoite, naturalbornderpy, PresentPerfect, Georg and BronyWriter. You could have a pretty reasonable time with an anthology of fics by that half-dozen.

On a more general fanfic note, remember that book I posted about a couple of days ago? Well, Cecilia Aragon of the University of Washington has published this article in Technology Review about her research into fanfic with Katie Davis and four students. The three fandoms they looked at were Harry Potter, Doctor Who... and MLP:FiM. The book they produced was actually published in July 2019 (Writers in the Secret Garden: Fanfiction, Youth and New Forms of Mentoring) but I don't recall hearing of it until now. The Technology Review article itself is thin on actual MLP coverage, unfortunately.

Finally, let me be parochial for a moment and say that the first Worcester Shires ponymeet of 2020 will take place in a week's time, on Saturday 11 January. I'm pleased to report that our little group is still going strong as we approach our seventh birthday in early May! Which seems like a nice place to end this miscellany. :)

State of the Unicorn, January 2020

I published this on Fimfiction on New Year's Day, and I thought I might as well copy it here, only very slightly edited. Given the platform, it's almost entirely about fanfic rather than any other aspect of my MLP fanship, but here we go anyway.

Into the unknown we go! Well, okay, that's true every day of our lives, to a greater or lesser extent. But this year is the first in Fimfiction's existence with no new Friendship is Magic. Curiously enough -- or perhaps not -- I feel more motivated to create Pony stuff now than I have done in a long time.

And since my art looks like the meanderings of a half-dead, half-drunk centipede and my singing is only permitted to be revealed in public at convention karaoke sessions, that means writing.

So what's happening with ponyfic as far as I'm concerned? Let's have a look...

• I'm writing a very silly fic about a strike on Equestrian Railways, which should be the next one I publish. That's in a fairly advanced draft state.
• I have about a third of a little fic centring on Twilight's life just after the S9 epilogue. It's about 50/50 to make it to publication.
• There's still that more serious fic I've been wanting to write since late S7. I would love to say it'll be out this year, but...
• Feghoots are fun, as I discovered in 2019 with I discovered in 2019 with Raising the Baa and The Shoreline Shape Up. You can probably expect at least one or two more of them.
• The Danger Within is still not something I want to officially cancel, but I'd be lying if I said it was likely to go anywhere any time soon.
• The Flashfic 150 contests seem to have overcome a very lean period and are now rolling along again quite nicely. I'll happily continue with those.
• I will be posting Ponyfic Roundup 278 on Wednesday 8th January. It still seems amazing to me that I've been doing these reviews for nearly six years now!

I'm not going anywhere. I'll die with the herd. I may not be the best or the most prolific or the most prominent of ponyfic people on Fimfiction, but not only the fandom but that site and its own community mean a lot to me, and I have absolutely no intention of letting that part of my life gurgle away down the plughole of despair. So there's my New Year's Resolution for this fandom for 2020: I will bloody well write more!

I hope all of you have a good year, especially those who are not having a good time right now. Happy 2020!

My Little Repeats 16: "Sonic Rainboom"

Seriously, did you think I'd use any other picture here? On this blog?

S1E16: "Sonic Rainboom"
Written by M. A. Larson
18 Feb 2011

My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 8.8

The one with the rainbow factory

Thoughts: The highest IMDb rating so far – though we'll go even higher before we reach the end of S1. This is a generally great episode, with only one real downside: Rarity. After being great two episodes ago, she's a major pain in the rump for large stretch of this one (plus not very grateful for sort-of beating Twilight to alicorn status!) and she's lucky to escape with her life as a result. I do like her recognising stage fright, but she goes downhill thereafter with her vanity and stupidity. Thankfully Rarity's Icarus act allows Rainbow Dash to be entirely awesome with her sonic rainboom to rescue her silly friend (and the Wonderbolts). We earlier learn that Rainbow has done a sonic rainboom – long ago. Soon we'll discover just how important that moment really was! Fluttershy's supporting role is great fun, and I like that she's able to be moderately assertive at times, especially in Cloudsdale. Talking of which, I really enjoyed seeing around that city. Pinkie's "You really need to get out more" to Twilight is great and – at this point – still fairly true. Rarity being so annoying hurts this episode a little, and the irritating stallions are just that, but it's still a very good watch, especially the thrilling rescue sequence. And yes, that cold open does have a bit of a bearing on my feelings about it too! :D

Choice quote: Fluttershy: "Rainbow Dash, you rock. Woo-hoo." (At least at one time, this was Andrea Libman's favourite Fluttershy line.)

New rating: ★★★★

Next up is "Stare Master", the first full CMC episode. I watched this fairly recently, as it happens, and quite enjoyed it. Let's see whether I do so this time, too.

Fanfic book I picked up cheap

Welcome to 2020! This will be first year for more than a decade with no new Friendship is Magic episodes. Talking of which, I plan on resuming the "My Little Repeats" S1 episode rewatches in the next day or two; the next ep is of course "Sonic Rainboom". For now, though, here's a slightly off-centre post, though as there's a reasonable amount of My Little Pony later in my post I haven't used the "non-pony" tag.

A little present I picked up for myself just before Christmas was the book you see above, Sheenagh Pugh's The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a literary context, which I noticed on sale for a quid in a WH Smith clearance section. At that price, it didn't seem much of a risk. I didn't know anything about Pugh, but she seems to have written quite a bit, mainly poetry. I've only just had the time to start reading the book, so this isn't a proper review, but I'm a few chapters in and enjoying the read rather a lot.

As its subtitle suggests, this is a book that doesn't look at fanfic from the perspective of sociology or women's studies or whatever, though those aspects do inevitably creep in around the edges. Instead, it looks as the actual writing in terms of narrative voices, character choices, genre selection and so on. It's aimed at a general audience, so there's little of the brain-melting erudition you might get from some of Bad Horse's really in-depth studies on Fimfiction, but it's not merely superficial.

The reason it was being remaindered was that it was published in 2005, an age ago where the internet is concerned. The book is full of references and footnotes, but the majority are now dead links, with only fanfiction.net really still prominent from the fanfic hosts of long ago. (Archive of Our Own didn't even exist when The Democratic Genre hit the shelves.) There's not a single mention in the index of Harry Potter, either, though that series was well established by then so I'd imagine that was a deliberate omission.

The book's choice of fandoms is interesting: Pugh consciously chose not to write yet another look into Star Trek fic, but instead to concentrate on British fandoms, some better known than others outside the UK. The fandoms she chooses are Jane Austen, The Bill, Blakes 7, Discworld and Hornblower – a reasonable mixture of book-based, TV-based and both-based worlds. Since Discworld is the only one of those I know well, I'm not sure how vigorous or otherwise the other fandoms may still be.

Of course, since this is Louder Yay I'll have to make the obvious point that My Little Pony doesn't get a mention either, though there was doubtless some ponyfic around back then. True, it's a non-British fandom and so wouldn't have been a primary focus even were Pugh's book more recent, but I suspect it might have got at least passing attention. Perhaps for the strikingly good design of Fimfiction, more likely for its being a fandom with a cast of strong female characters – Buffy does get noted by Pugh for just this reason.

I wonder if anyone has ever attempted any sort of history/assessment of the MLP (G4) fanfic world as a whole? Pugh isn't herself a fanfic author in any of the fandoms she covers, so inevitably a piece on ponyfic written by a fan would have a somewhat different texture. It would also ideally need that rare beast, a writer who has been both an active and an enthusiastic part of the ponyfic world from its early days to the present time. If anyone does know of anything like this, please do say so!