Ponyfic Roundup 574

Read it Later story count: 89 (nc)

Words read this week: 14,693

Time for another Ponyfic Roundup, which brings us to the magical land of Equestria, a place which increasingly looks like a nicer option, given... let's just say, given everything. So yes, a better spot for one to live in. Except for the monsters, I suppose. And the corrupting. And the thousand-year exiles. And the cult leaders. And... oh, you get the idea. Anyway, here are today's five stories:

The Lizard of Ot by Baal Bunny
The One Who Wasn't Meant to Die by Sir Hat
Catching Fluttershy by Jubilancy
What Could've Been by Boltstrike58
Shadow Pasts and Shining Futures by TheAspiringWriter93

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

Yes, another delay, hey ho

I had a huge train delay earlier, and something else has come up this evening (not at all terrible, but fairly urgent and time-consuming) and so I will be again delaying Ponyfic Roundup. It will be up on Friday, since I'll be out tomorrow. Thank you for indulging my repeated failures to keep to schedule!

UK PonyCon 2026 prices announced!

There isn't a formal post about this on the UK PonyCon website, but the Tickets page has now been updated with 2026 ticket tiers and prices! As I usually do on these occasions, I'm going to go through each tier and see how it compares to last year. In fact, there isn't a lot of change – but there is some, so keep reading.

First, the tickets go on sale at 18:00 on Saturday 18th April. That time is BST. Unlike last year, we get plenty of notice! It's very nice to have time to think once more. 

As for those all-important prices, for 2026 we have:

Standard: £75 (held at 2025 price) – entrance to all days of the convention (including the Friday night music), con book, basic blue lanyard. You can have a personalised con badge if you book by 1st August.

Bronze: £99 (held at 2025 price) – nicer lanyard, Bronze sponsor badge, name in con book (if you want it), Bronze button badge, sponsor-exclusive magnet, £5 donation to UKPC's long-standing charity, the RDA. As with last year, you get the option to purchase (for £60) the sponsor hoodie. As far as I can see at a glance, the one change is the replacement of the sticker sheet with the magnet.

Silver: £220 (+5%) – priority queue, silver sponsor badge, messenger bag, Silver/Gold sponsor-exclusive T-shirt or long-sleeve shirt, beanie, sticker collecting book, vinyl stickers, enamel pin, two autograph/photo tokens, one photo print if relevant, £10 RDA donation. Several changes here, for example the art print and water bottle have gone but the beanie and sticker book are new. We're also back to messenger bags after last year's drawstring variety. There will be 75 Silver tickets.

Gold: £525 (held at 2025 price) – all the Silver perks and sponsor hoodie, Britannia plushie, top-table seating at Afternoon Tea, personalised welcome letter, four autograph/photo tokens, £20 RDA donation. That hand-made Britannia plushie with themed accessory, which this year will come from Noxi Plushies, is probably the stand-out among the various exclusive merch. There will be five Gold tickets.

Platinum: £950 (new!) – this is a brand new tier which consists largely of the UKPC folks throwing¹ everything they can think of at you. As well as the Gold perks, some of what you get here is admission for a plus one, being the very first person through the doors, £50 RDA donation, eight autograph/photo credits, a 3D printed figure of Britannia and your OC, five mass-produced Britannia plushies, a blanket, and one of all the other new pieces of merch not already mentioned. You also have a chance to go up on stage at the opening and closing ceremonies, and to participate in a UKPC-hosted² event. Phew! There will be one Platinum ticket. Yes, one.
¹ Not literally! Health & Safety is a thing at cons, you know...
² One hosted by the con itself, not by an attendee submitting an event.

So, thoughts? Well, most of the prices being held at 2025 levels is a nice touch and very welcome. I'm pleased the UKPC folks have managed to do that, especially keeping Bronze below that psychologically important £100 barrier!

Mind you, putting only the Silver of the main four tiers up, and then by only a tenner, seems a little on the bizarre side. It would have been fantastic PR to keep them all at last year's cost, and the maximum the increase can additionally raise is £750 – a fraction of the running costs of a convention UKPC's size. So this one stumps me a bit.

As for the Platinum ticket? I don't know, really, as it's entirely irrelevant to most of us! In any case, it's only the same few people each year who tended to get Gold, so presumably one of them will get Platinum. As such, I'm going to largely ignore it now I've mentioned it for completeness here.

Will I be attending this year? Same answer as every year! I hope so, but I can't yet be certain. Let's hope for a great attendance for this perennially great convention, though!

Ponyfic Roundup 573

Read it Later story count: 89 (-2)

Words read this week: 17,052

All right, off we go again! I hope you all appreciated my last post being something other than a Ponyfic Roundup. You see, I can still do it! In a couple of weeks' time I shall say goodbye for a bit for Easter, but I'm here for now. Anyway, without further adieu [sic] I shall provide you with the slate for today:

Luck of the Lyrish by Timaeus
A Lesson Never Learned by Workard
Just Look at This Baby by FrontSevens
My Lil Scoots by Hawaiian Summer Splash
There's Something in the Woods by HoofBitingActionOverload

★: 0 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

My Little Repeats 200.5: the post-S8 shorts

Yes, this is just an excuse to post a pic featuring a hedgehog

Post-S8 FiM shorts

11 Dec 2019 to 26 Feb 2019

My original rating: N/A

IMDb score: N/A

The one(s) with Twilight's fear of ladybirds

Thoughts: At a suggestion from Ghost Mike, herewith a very brief look at the eight shorts that filled the S8-S9 hiatus. In order, we have: "Triple Pony Dare", which is fairly amusing but suffers a bit from shrill Pinkie. "The Great Escape Room", which is less fun and inventive than it ought to have been. "Mystery Voice", which is entertaining but relies on an out-of-nowhere AJ ability. "Rarity's Biggest Fan", which has the unicorn rather exploiting Spike. "Ail-icorn", which is silly but funny, with a worrying ending! "Teacher of the Month", which is full of Best Pony and so glorious almost by definition. "Starlight the Hypnotist", which doesn't do much beyond that sudden ladybird/bug fear. And "Sundae, Sundae, Sundae", which suits Pinkie better and has a cameo from Minty! Overall? At 2-3 minutes, they're quick fun, and although variable in quality they did keep the FiM train ticking over.

Choice quote: Fluttershy: "I don't know. Not even I speak sound effect."

New rating: ★★★ (just)

And now we really are finished with S8! Next time, it will be – quite literally – "The Beginning of the End". Or at least the first half of it...

Ponyfic Roundup 572

Read it Later story count: 91 (nc)

Words read this week: 21,226

Just to let everyone know, if – if – all goes well I will be restarting "My Little Repeats" at some point during the next week. I've decided to write a single post covering the shorts that appeared between S8 and S9 of Friendship is Magic, at least if I can find them all in good nick online. After that it will be back to the main business of the final season of the show. As for today? The slate is:

Only Now by LunaUsesCaps
Applemania by Leafdoggy
Thank You, Doctor by The Wizard of Words
The Jerk That Time Forgot by King of Beggars
Singing to the Moon by uSea

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

Ponyfic Roundup 571

Read it Later story count: 91 (nc)

Words read this week: 6,782

Here we go again with another phenomenal five-fic festival. As I trailed last week, these are all very short as I didn't have a whole week to get through them. And you know what else is very short? This introduction! The stories are:

Friends Forever by Wrangle Wolfe
Mercy by TheNocturnalLoner
There Are Many Gravities by shortskirtsandexplosions
Thankful by LadyKimba
One Night by Mirta

★: 0 | ★★: 4 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.

Ponyfic Roundup 570: Spotlight on Mothering, Someday

Read it Later story count: 91 (-1)

Words read this week: 47,674

All right, two days late I know, but at least I've recovered enough to actually write this review now! These things are always easier if I like the fic, since then I only have the problem of not letting the review run away from me. This is shaping up to be an exceptionally boring intro para, so let's move on...

Mothering, Someday by Impossible Numbers
Twilight Velvet and Derpy
G4; Drama/Slice of Life; 48k words; May 2020; Everyone

Mare's Day, a tribute to motherhood. Twilight Velvet is the ordinary mother of an extraordinary family; Derpy is the opposite. They normally wouldn't cross paths, but in a town where an outsider can become Princess of Friendship, anything's possible.

Twilight Velvet is off to Ponyville to see her daughter, but she's nervous. She hasn't seen Twily since her coronation, and for reasons she's arranged to take flowers that her daughter will then give to her for Mare's Day. But before that, she encounters a certain wall-eyed grey mare, who she is desperate to avoid telling she's the princess's mother. The two talk and bond and feel their way and learn and don't learn and hint and infer and... well, and eventually they meet Derpy's daughters, who are very different indeed. From each other, and from their mum. This is a story all about insecurities, but despite that it's written in an assured way that isn't afraid to dwell on apparently small domesticities. My favourite thing here, though, is how Derpy is written: I hate the "Derpy is dim" approach, and IN absolutely does not fall into that trap. An excellent, if sometimes deliberately awkward, read about families and their rough edges. A very solid four. ★★★★

As you'd expect, spoilers lie in wait beyond this point!

Delay

I'm not well at the moment, so (trusting that it's a 1-2 day bug) I'll be posting Ponyfic Roundup on Friday. What I will give away is that I liked Impossible Numbers' story.

My Little Repeats 200: "Spring Breakdown"

EqG Special: "Spring Breakdown"

30 Mar 2019

My original rating: ★★

IMDb score: 6.7

The one with Applejack being seasick a lot

Thoughts: I can put it off no longer. Herewith a thankfully short rewatch review of possibly the most tedious piece of animation ever released in the G4 era. For a start, Ragamuffin. Yes, I know we eventually found out his accent was a put-on, but my how we suffered before then. A potentially fun story about a storm and a tropical island and Equestria became an utter chore. Basically nothing happened for the first half, beyond Rainbow Dash being annoying, and then only little things happened for the second half. Trixie was amusing, the parrot was fun, and er... The ending might have been interesting, but we now know that it never went anywhere. It avoids a one-star rating simply because "All Good" is a pretty solid song. A huge disappointment from Nick Confalone.

Choice quote: Fluttershy: Is the sea monster okay in the story?

New rating: ★★ (just)

Ah, thank Celestia that's over. Next up, it's back to Friendship is Magic and the very last season of the show. "The Beginning of the End, part 1" will be the first rewatch in that sub-series, and I hope it won't be almost two months until I get there this time!

Ponyfic Roundup 569: Shining Armor Edition

Read it Later story count: 92 (nc)

Words read this week: 19,001

I do intend to post things that aren't Ponyfic Roundup soon, honest! For now, though: I thought I'd try something a little bit different this week and concentrate on a single character rather than a genre. Shining Armor came out of the hat, so to speak, and so he's the one who gets the spotlight shone on him today. Will the stories be as shiny as Shiny? Let's see.

Ménage à - Quoi?! by Noir de Plume
The Phoenix Festival by Trick Question
This Love is Forever by RachWrites
'Til Touchdown Brings Me Down Again by Petrichord
The First Death of Twilight Sparkle by naturalbornderpy

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

Ponyfic Roundup 568: Horror Edition

Read it Later story count: 92 (+1)

Words read this week: 19,470

This week's edition of Ponyfic Roundup is a bit of a horror story. Well, to be precise, five [Horror] stories! I don't have a lot to say up here today, which is probably the opposite of horror for most of you, so let's get to the fic list:

The Well by BlueColton
We Three Kings by journeyman
Attachment by marmalado
Help by Dominion of Decay
The Thing Behind My Eyes by Ltreaxiose

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

Ponyfic Roundup 567: Drama Edition

Read it Later story count: 91 (nc)

Words read this week: 24,585

After the detour away from MLP a few days ago, it's back to ponyfic now. Today I'm reviewing five stories which have the [Drama] genre tag. All of them short, because that's just what I've got time for mostly, but at least my weekly word count total looks a bit more reasonable than it usually has of late. I'm writing this info before having read the fics, so I'm working in the dark as much as anyone else at this point! Anyway, here we go:

No Pony Else Was In The Room Where It Happened. . . by Matthias Unidostres
Everyone Lives by Lets Do This
More Precious Than Silver or Gold by Georg
Red Apples by billymorph
Rehearsal by Petrichord

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

Last Horse on the Left II: Non-Pony Edition

Earlier this month I made this post about the necessity of sometimes allowing uncomfortable questions. Since then, a couple of people have contacted me privately asking about the framing I used, which dealt with Sandra Peabody's abuse on the set of the 1972 horror film The Last House on the Left. I'm now making one of my very rare non-Pony posts on this blog to explain myself.

Fair warning: This is an upsetting and anger-inducing story. I won't be including specific details of the abuse in this post, but I will be linking at the foot of the post to somewhere you can read about it if you do want to. That image at the head of this post will give you a clue.

Anyway, for a little while now I've been researching what happened – or, to a large extent, what people say happened, as there's often no corroboration. In short? Sandra Peabody was apparently victimised in real life, just as her character Mari was in the film. Not in terms of the physical torture that Mari endured, but psychologically and emotionally Peabody seems to have been put through hell.

What's really striking about this case is that the large majority of the evidence comes from the men who did it. And Exhibit A here is a DVD/Blu-ray commentary track from around 2002 (still available on the current Arrow disc) featuring the three male villain actors: David Hess, Marc Sheffler and Fred Lincoln. On this track they quite openly chat about what they did to prompt/coerce the reaction they wanted (fear, usually) from Peabody for the film. Her co-star Lucy Grantham, who played Phyllis, may have been a victim of one of the incidents, too.

As I said, I won't give graphic details of what's on that commentary track here, but I will link at the bottom. Suffice to say for this post that the men claim, among other things, that they threatened Peabody with bodily harm – and we're not talking just slapping her face here. There is absolutely no indication on the commentary track from these men, who by the time they went into the commentary booth were in their fifties and sixties, that they felt remorse or shame for what they did.

What's become clearer and clearer as I've looked into this is the near-total collapse of any kind of accountability or speaking truth to power. None of the men ever seem to have been challenged by the horror or cinema media. Neither does the director, Wes Craven. The studio's legal team signed off on this. The distributors judged it fit for release. DVD/Blu-ray reviewers mention this very track but omit the graphic details. It goes on and on and on.

So in the end, I got fed up and started to mention it myself. Review comments on Letterboxd, answers to Quora questions, you get the idea. Never just copy/paste jobs, but actual human-written answers. Always aiming to put Sandra Peabody first and never speak for her. There's no point in attempting to grant her peace by simply keeping quiet, because the (wrong) usual story that she was just overwhelmed and unable to cope with difficult material is already loud.

I spoke up on Reddit the other day, picking the r/horror subreddit to make my post. I thought one of three things would likely happen. One, my post would be ignored and get maybe two upvotes and one comment before disappearing. Two, my post would get downvoted to hell by defensive fans of David Hess and (especially) Wes Craven. Three, the post would get deleted altogether for breaking some obscure sub rule by a mod who was feeling grumpy that day.

What actually happened was, as you'll see when I link in a moment, completely different. Over 900 upvotes. Over 400 shares. And, the one that really took me aback: 96.9% upvote percentage. It turned out that "Here's what these men said, this is really disturbing" wasn't really controversial at all. People just hadn't seen it before – because most people now watch on streaming, and even most people who buy physical media don't slog through all the extras.

The comments section bore this out. The usual couple of idiots, but overwhelmingly thoughtful, interesting and supportive. Near-universal agreement that what the male actors said was done to Sandra Peabody was abuse. Quite a few "I like Wes Craven's films, but this is not okay" comments. And one person who'd met Hess at a con in 2010, found he was still glorying in terrifying his co-star after almost 40 years, and to this day – they now work in the industry – finds that encounter "seared into [their] mind" and when they think of it it prompts them to go and check the women on set are okay.

There are still a hell of a lot of questions that need asking, and who knows how many of them are actually ever going to be answered? Especially with so much of the cast and crew now dead and Peabody herself having given only one interview about the movie in fifty years and spending her time in more productive pursuits, like making children's TV on minuscule budgets or teaching young actors the Meisner technique she learned from the man himself as a student.

Here's my Reddit post. Again, be warned that what it describes is disturbing. 

Ponyfic Roundup 566: Comedy Edition

Read it Later story count: 91 (nc)

Words read this week: 11,646

Before anyone asks – if they're strange enough to be waiting for it – no, I haven't forgotten that I need to watch "Spring Breakdown" before too much longer. I wish I could! For now, though, it's (I hope) time to have a good laugh! Five fics with the [Comedy] genre tag on the block today, and here they are:

Twilight's Almost Last Nightmare Night by Anotherrandom
Chaos Theory by cerealkiller78
Spring Fever by Takarashi282
We Learned Something Obsolete by Lise
Hungry Games by lunabrony

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

Ponyfic Roundup 565

Read it Later story count: 90 (-1)

Words read this week: 20,155

After yesterday's exciting UK PonyCon news, it's time to get back to the ponyfic world, so here's number 565 in a series of 565... so far! I wish I could think of something interesting about that number, but "it's a palindrome" is really pretty dull and I can't do any better. So let's move on to the story list:

The Dusty Trail by unicorncob
Breezing to New Heights by Shaslan
Father's Pride in a Daughter's Stride by sweeT2010Tooth
Thanks, Mom by Oroboro
Chapter One by Estee

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

UK PonyCon 2026 venue and dates announced!

Hah, the world really does not want me to have a quiet time, does it? The one week I actually have Ponyfic Roundup ready to post, and it's trumped by something that has to take priority! So, without further ado: last night UK PonyCon announced:

Host city: Leicester
Venue: The Venue@DMU (yes, the venue is The Venue...)
Dates: Fri 30/10 to Sun 1/11
Theme: Trick vs. Treat

I must admit I didn't see Leicester coming! I thought it was pretty likely UKPC would remain in the Midlands, since this year there'll be a con in the north of England (Griffish Isles), one in the south (Festival of Friendship) and one in Scotland (BronyScot). But Leicester wasn't on my very short list of guesses.

No real complaints, though! It's easy to get to and I've been there before: UKPC 2014 and 2015 were in Leicester, albeit at a different venue. This year's location isn't quite as ultra-convenient as that one was, but it's good enough. A considerably higher capacity venue than in Brum, which is a huge plus. Hotels are obviously in shorter supply than they were in Birmingham in 2025, but I already have a couple of options in that regard.

The choice of Halloween weekend is interesting. That's several weeks later than UKPC has been most years in the past. Obviously events don't get a totally free choice of dates as (for some reason) Pony isn't given total priority over everything else. It does mean it'll be colder and darker in the evenings – clocks go back the previous weekend – but that shouldn't make an enormous difference.

As for the theme? We've had similar themes in the past, notably "The Gothic" in 2022 and the cancelled 2020 "SpookyCon", but it seems a perfectly decent choice to me. Let's hope the spider-tossing game (that we never managed to find in Nottingham) returns this year! Every year I debate with myself whether I'm actually going to cosplay for once, and every year I chicken out. So expect the same in 2026. :P

Further details still to come: prices are obviously going to be a major point of interest, but I'll also be very interested to know whether catering will still be the minimal offering we've had for the past few years, as this venue isn't absolutely surrounded by eating places, although walking 10-15 minutes gets you into the city centre proper where there are tons.

Still, knowing the venue and the dates means planning in earnest can begin. Huzzah for the UKPC team!

Last Horse on the Left: When uncomfortable questions are needed but it's difficult to ask them

Some of you who know me beyond My Little Pony will know that last year, to my enormous surprise, I found myself immersed in what I discovered were the deeply abusive production conditions of a fifty-year-old horror film. I'd never watched The Last House on the Left (1972) until then, never even wanted to watch it – but I saw a thread, pulled it, and ended up down a rabbit hole. Mixed metaphor I know, but there is a link with MLP here, so bear with me.

I won't go into great detail, but the bare facts are these: Last House was a low-budget horror feature, the first such film made by Wes Craven. It's often talked about by horror fans in terms of Craven's career or its influence on the rape-revenge genre or whatever. It's much less commonly discussed that one of its stars, Sandra Peabody,¹ was severely psychologically abused by certain co-stars during production. I get the feeling many people who watch the film don't even know about this.
¹ Credited as Sandra Cassel.

And a big reason for this is that people haven't asked questions, at least not enough. The late David Hess kept being invited to conventions even after he'd admitted in Vanity Fair – not some ultra-obscure fanzine – that he'd used coercion and threats to Peabody on a level that today we'd consider horrifying. As far as I can tell, the horror and cinema media didn't really talk about it beyond trivia spots. Craven – then still alive and active – didn't speak out and wasn't publicly challenged about his set management.

This is where My Little Pony fandom comes into the picture. I think we all know by now that back in the earlier days of our community, the phrase "love and tolerate" was too often seen as an absolute – meaning that a small but ethically significant number of the people who were welcomed in should not have been. In fact, should have been told, "No. Get out and stay out." We also know that this took far, far too long to be acknowledged, and that people were hurt as a result. That is to our shame.

But where can people raise these questions in the mid-2020s? They can do it on a small scale by talking to friends and contacts on Discord servers or whatever, but only a few people see that. The days of mass-usage forums and message boards are over. Social media has been degraded and politicised to the point where it's often useless except for chatting to people who already agree with you. Many websites have either instituted heavy moderation for comments or dropped the ability altogether. And so on.

That leaves large in-person gatherings, which in the MLP world essentially means conventions. But questions at cons are moderated. If someone had attended a horror con's Q&A session in 2008, when the Vanity Fair piece was published, and said they wanted to say, "David Hess, by your own admission you're an abusive shit" then it would likely have been shut down. Similarly, if someone had stood up in a large Pony panel and said, "Look, this guy on the stage has admitted inappropriate contact with minors; why the hell's he here?" the same would likely have applied.

Conventions and similar events are essentially celebratory spaces, and the feeling of "getting away from it all" is important to a large number of attendees, absolutely including me. It's only honest to say that I wouldn't pay to go to a Pony convention where serious/political issues dominated. But asking the questions I mentioned in those specific cases would have been not only reasonable, but at least arguably morally necessary and better respecting of survivors than leaving everything to "lore'n'listicles".

Connoisseurs of fright the big horror media outlets may be, but rocking the boat that contains Wes Craven's beautifully preserved legacy seems to be too scary a prospect. In Pony we don't have such things. Equestria Daily was perhaps that place for a few years, but even EQD has declined very noticeably in reach since the halcyon days of a decade ago. So for more than half a dozen people to see what you ask, you need a mass, in-person space: a convention. We're back where we started.

In a fragmented online culture, almost everywhere has evolved rules against, essentially, making too much of a fuss. We seem to have created – even if with good intentions – an environment where, #MeToo notwithstanding, speaking out about abusers within has become more difficult. That's really not good, especially for a fandom like ours in Pony where we know predators have got in and harmed people because of insufficient scrutiny.

Knowing where to draw the boundary is extremely difficult. I can't say I'd be confident of getting it right, especially as there's an undeniable risk of false or even malicious accusations. But the principle remains: just occasionally we really do need public uncomfortable questions to be, if not loved, then at least tolerated.

Ponyfic Roundup 564B: Spotlight on Nine Days Down, part two

Okay, as you'll have noticed I took a little bit longer getting over my bug than I'd hoped to do, but here I am again with a few spoilery thoughts on Nine Days Down, which I awarded five stars to last time out. First, though, here's the slate for next time and I'm going to be having a quiet week with a fairly low word count:

The Dusty Trail by unicorncob
Breezing to New Heights by Shaslan
Father's Pride in a Daughter's Stride by sweeT2010Tooth
Thanks, Mom by Oroboro
Chapter One by Estee

Okay, past the jump break (if you're reading the desktop site, anyway) come a few spoilery thoughts about Nine Days Down.

Ponyfic Roundup 564: Spotlight on Nine Days Down, part one

I'm not feeling well at the moment, but I'm damned if I'm going to have another blank Wednesday when I should be reviewing, so here's what I'll do. Today I'll post the non-spoilery summary of this fic, complete with star rating. When I feel better, perhaps at the weekend, I'll add the waffly, spoilery discussion and finish off with next week's slate. Not ideal, but better than nothing! Here we go:

Nine Days Down by JoeShogun
Twilight and Celestia
G4; Dark/Adventure; 143k words; Mar–Apr 2023 [but see below]; Teen (Violence)

A routine rescue from a no-name villain goes wildly awry as Celestia is flung into the lethal, living nightmare that is Tartarus. No great problem for an immortal, but to Celestia's absolute horror, Twilight has followed her in.

This RCL-inducted fic is not a 2023 story. It was published nearly a decade earlier – though Twilight is an alicorn – but then nuked when JoeShogun deleted his old account. Now it's back, and I'm very pleased as this is a great adventure story. We knew very little about Tartarus when this was written, which gave the author lots of freedom. It's used excitingly and variedly; indeed, the world-building is the fic's greatest joy. That's not to say the characterisation is of low quality – it's anything but. I really felt what happened to them, and I suspect you will too, even little spiders. Especially little spiders. This feels like a truly populated... "world", for want of a better phrase, though as you'll find out that's too simple a term for what Tartarus is. I suppose if I were being ultra-critical I could say that one character I was invested in got a slightly underwhelming ending, but I'm having to reach here. I think there's enough for a five. It's that rich a story. ★★★★★