Ponyfic Roundup 456

Read it Later story count: 91 (-2)

Words read this week: 34,327

As summer gets close to its end, the weather is the usual infuriating British mixture of warm sunshine and drizzle. Sometimes at the same time; I blame the weather pegasi. Not that we have weather pegasi on Earth, or indeed any ponies of the Equestrian persuasion... although that isn't the case in one of today's fics. Here's the list:

Forsaken Shores by garatheauthor
The Great And Powerful Trixie Falls In Love With A Pine Cone by angelofrombelow
Nosflutteratu by Charcoal Quill
In the Sun's Shadow by Rare80
Parsnip by Admiral Biscuit

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 2 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

My Little Repeats 146: "A Flurry of Emotions"

That middle filly who's realised this means time off school...

S7E03: "A Flurry of Emotions"

22 Apr 2017

My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.2

The one with the all-black painting

Thoughts: It's been a while, hasn't it? Fortunately, a gentle reminder from a certain ghostly presence has led me to sort that out – and so here we go! Let's be honest, Flurry Heart isn't exactly universally loved, and I remember being concerned (as were several) that this would be a reheated "Baby Cakes". In the event I enjoyed it more, both then and now, than I did that episode. It's not bad. Nice visually, some genuinely cute stuff with Flurry, Spike having one of his better "voice of reason" Twi-nudging roles, a solidly written Pinkie cameo, Spearhead's amusingly overblown art show... and even that first-for-G4 callback to Grogar. Little did we know...! On the negative side, Twilight herself was rather irritatingly full of herself about her "Best Aunt Ever" status, Flurry still isn't interesting enough to be an ep-long central figure, plus the episode's moral was a bit clunky. I think it still manages a three, but it's a fairly low one now. The ep doesn't have enough staying power for more than that.

Choice quote: Cheerilee: "Great! Now I'll just write it up again... with my mouth."

New rating: ★★★

Next up, we have "Rock Solid Friendship". This episode has a pretty good reputation in the fandom, so I was mildly surprised looking back to find I'd "only" given it an upper three-star rating in 2017. It'll be interesting to see whether I stick with that this time.

Ponyfic Roundup 455

Read it Later story count: 93 (-1)

Words read this week: 30,857

Plenty of things going on at the moment, but almost none of them remotely interesting. My life in a nutshell! So, let's move on to ponyfic, eh? And huzzah, I've kept my word count above 30,000! Admittedly almost half of that is taken up with one story, but I'll take it! As usual, there are five stories on the desk this time around. Here they are:

Muffins' Angel by Short-tale
Midnight Bloo by Impossible Numbers
Pipp of Theseus by Casketbase77
Let the Weather In by gloamish
A Love So Strong by MissytheAngle

★: 0 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 1
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Hasbro, if you like how G5 is going for you, then where are the toys?

I've seen a few people now saying that Hasbro is very happy with G5 in how well it reaches the target audience. (Which is to say, not us.) Even to the extent that it's done better than G4 in that regard. If that's so, then I do wonder why the selection of G5 toys – here in the UK, at least – is so underwhelming. Okay, G4 didn't dash out of the blocks either; in spring 2012 when I joined the MLP fandom it was still hard to get much on this side of the Atlantic. Even so, when even toy shops in the UK have a couple of small shelves of G5 if you're lucky, you do have to wonder...

Ponyfic Roundup 454 Spotlight on Sorry We Missed You

Read it Later story count: 94 (nc)

Words read this week: 40,516

Not much to say about my day-to-day life up here, other than that the blackberry crop on the local hedgerows doesn't seem especially good this year. I blame the miserably wet July. So on to ponyfic we go. Back to Spotlight territory this week, with a story that doesn't have an especially unusual thumbscore (+226/-14) but which has provoked a good deal of discussion since its appearance around a year ago.

Sorry We Missed You by Starswirl the Beardless
Rainbow Dash
G4; Drama/Mystery/Sad; 41k words; Jul–Sep 2022; Everyone

Rainbow Dash slept in on the day the world ended.

That shortdesc caught my attention – more, to be frank, than the longdesc did. Rainbow wakes up one day and gradually realises that she is alone in the world. She travels from place to place, ever more desperately seeking her friends, Princess Celestia, anypony really. What I was hoping for was a look at the emotional effects on Dash, and of course an eventual explanation of what was going on. While there is some of that later on, it's a slow exploration of Rainbow's plight. There's also a bizarre and confusing refusal on the author's part to use her name at all outside direct speech – she's almost always "the mare", which really grates after a while. The later part that has some interesting psychology and reminds me of an old show episode, but for me Sorry We Missed You just takes way too long to get to the point. I might well have enjoyed this more than the highish two-star rating it gets at two-thirds or even half the length, so please bear that in mind when setting against your personal preferences. ★★

It is only fair to point out that the author wrote a very long (around 8,700 words) commentary on the story after reading some of the reactions to it. I have read that in full, but for the most part this review is based simply on my experiences reading the fic itself – largely because I doubt many other readers will go through such a long commentary, and in the end I am here first and foremost to serve readers.

If you read past this line, please be prepared for lots of spoilers...

My Little Repeats 145: "All Bottled Up"

"Trixie, did you even read the 'No food or drink' sign?"

S7E02: "All Bottled Up"

15 Apr 2017

My original rating: ★★★
IMDb score: 7.7

The one with teacup poodle

Thoughts: Broadcast on the same day as "Celestial Advice", both episodes had mixed receptions from the fandom. "All Bottled Up" managed the rare feat of being seriously criticised by the usually sunny reviewer MLEEP, but I was (and remain) a little more positive. Starlight and Trixie are usually fun together, and so it proves this time. Okay, parts of their story are a bit contrived (especially Starlight's "storm cloud" thing) but at least we got – for a while, at least – canon support for teleportation being hard. The secondary plot with the Mane Six doing the escape room was filler, but it was quite entertaining filler. I like the song more than I initially did, too. Bulk "I wear many hats" Biceps appealed more than sometimes. Nice dialogue, though Trixie is maybe a tad too obnoxious even for her at times. It's a few niggles away from being a really good episode, but it's entertaining and I'm happy for it to keep the solid three-star rating I originally gave it.

Choice quote: Trixie: "Teach away, mini-Twilight."

New rating: ★★★

Next up, a Flurry Heart episode. Be still my beating heart. Okay, I'll be fair: "A Flurry of Emotions" doesn't really stick in my mind for bad reasons, though nor does it for great ones. I remember having rather mixed views on it.

Ponyfic Roundup 453

Read it Later story count: 94 (+1)

Words read this week: 35,971

A bit of a jump in the weekly word count this time around, although more than two thirds of that total is accounted for by a single story. I'd be lying if I said my time pressures had completely settled down, and in all honesty I don't think they're likely to do that until perhaps mid-autumn. But at least now I'm no longer worrying about whether I can get a PR out at all! Here are today's fics:

Twilight Sparkle Kills Equestria by Codex Ex Equus
Rainbow Dash's Super-Awesome Self-Insert Figures Out If It Would Matter by  ponichaeism
Aletheia by Foehn
There Goes the Neighborhood by Georg
Tea Time by SweetStrokesStudios

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

Little meta update

Thanks to Blogger being a pain this afternoon, Ponyfic Roundup will now appear at 8pm BST tomorrow rather than 8am. Twelve hours later than planned, but still on the same day! I doubt I'll get the S7E02 rewatch up before Sunday or Monday, though. Busy week, you know how it is.

Happy to see Ghost Mike get a little appreciation

I'm very pleased to see that Pascoite chose Ghost Mike (previously Mike Cartoon Pony) for his latest Underappreciated Author Spotlight. Those who read this blog should already be familiar with Mike's detailed and interesting observations on episodes, and his often fascinating sidenotes on what went on behind the scenes as they were being made. He's also a great asset to our small community of still-active ponyfic reviewers, of course.

But there's also Mike's own fiction: I reviewed his enjoyable The Endeavor Within in PR 440, and like Pascoite I found the characterisation satisfying. He's published a few other short fics, and I intend to get to at least some of those in due course. I would have done so already had I not until recently been iffy about reviewing fics by personal friends. I can certainly vouch for the fact that Mike cares about his stories and puts a lot of work into them.

Well done, Mike. Deserved recognition!

How many big-name ponyfic authors are still really active?

I'm not asking for specifics here, hence this having the "musing" tag and not the "questions" one, but I've been vaguely wondering lately how many of ponyfic's big-name authors are still active. With only a couple of significant exceptions, that will mean on Fimfiction. I'm loath to define "active" too exactly, though I think I mean still active writing fics as opposed to posting blogs.

 So, for example, I think I'd consider Cold in Gardez to be in the "inactive" box, since he hasn't published a fic since Refraction's Edge a year and a half ago, and his blog post a few weeks back doesn't change my view of that. On the other hoof, Admiral Biscuit goes in "active", given a latest fic (Candy Apples' Cooking Channel) coming out just a few weeks ago. You get the idea.

Of course, this isn't especially scientific, as writers can sometimes go long periods without a new fic but never consider themselves inactive. I'm not a big-name author of course, but when I published On the Wrong Track in 2021, it was my first non-flashfic story for almost two years – yet I never thought of myself as being completely away from Fimfiction itself.

So there's what I'm musing on: which of the major authors in our fandom are either still putting out stories or are actively still intending to do so? I really don't know how one would go about measuring this, to be honest. I just wonder.

Ponyfic Roundup 452

Read it Later story count: 93 (nc)

Words read this week: 25,257

What a fine Ashes series, marred only by the rain in Manchester. I really do think England could have won 3-2 had it not been for that draw, but 2-2 is pretty satisfying after losing the first two Tests. My goodness we're going to miss Stuart Broad, though. For those of you not into cricket (you strange, strange people), we now move to small horse stories. Here's what I've been reading this week:

Good Enough by Kegisak
Rocinante, Pony of La Manecha by Charliemane
Nowhere to Hide by MasterZen
The forgotten soldier by Thebomb
Solace by ViTheDeer

★: 2 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.