UK PonyCon completes the Manes (kind of)

 UK PonyCon has announced guests for this year's convention at the end of October: both Andrea Libman, who has been at UKPC before, and Tabitha St. Germain, who hasn't. The latter was announced in the past but had to pull out due to work commitments. Let's hope lightning doesn't strike twice where that is concerned! Unsurprisingly, there was a great deal of excitement when the identities of the guests were concerned. Very impressive work by the UK PonyCon team!

As for my title? Well, if Tabitha St. Germain does indeed make it, she adds Rarity to the existing UKPC alumni: Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie (Andrea Libman), Applejack and Rainbow Dash (Ashleigh Ball), and Twilight (Rebecca Shoichet). Six out of six! And as Ghost Mike pointed out, you can also add Spike owing to Tabitha St. Germain voicing him in Pony Life. A full house!

My Little Repeats 204: "Sparkle's Seven"

Rarity may actually look more concerning than Rainbow here...

S9E04: "Sparkle's Seven"

20 April 2019

My original rating: ★★★★

IMDb score: 8.6

The one with geese

Thoughts: The 200th episode of FiM was a great success at the time. Even Ghost Mike loved it, which is pretty rare for this late in the series. Certainly it's a good deal better than a lot of eps in Seasons 8 and 9, even if it can't match the utter hilarity of the 100th episode. "Sparkle's Seven" does well by the titular group of friends, it's solidly paced and it looks great. I particularly note its good dialogue, too: this isn't always the later show's strongest suit. I still don't much like the meme faces (Dr Ian Malcolm applies) and the Sibling Supreme stuff was a tiny bit forced, even if it did a job. The floor trap was somewhat mean-spirited, but it did give us that lovely (if short) Fluttershy and Spike chat. Zephyr was funny in his appalling way. But this ep was just nice, as well as being one of Spike's best episodes. I'm probably being overly generous here, but I'm just about letting "Sparkle's Seven" keep its four.

Choice quote: Spike: "You've been practising that speech, haven't you?"

New rating: ★★★★

Next up will be "The Point of No Return". Again, I don't care what Wikipedia says on the matter, that is not episode 200, but ep 201. I wasn't particularly impressed by it back in 2019, but I'll go in with the usual open mind.

UK PonyCon: Tabitha St. Germain out, Kelly Sheridan in

As reported by the official UKPC blog recently, there has been a significant development in terms of this year's convention guests. Bad news first: because of work commitments, Tabitha St. Germain has had to pull out of attending. Good news second: the con has been able to welcome Kelly Sheridan instead. She was originally announced for the cancelled 2020 UKPC and then had to pull out in 2022, so this will certainly be good news for those who really wanted to meet her!

This kind of thing does happen with conventions, since quite understandably when there's a clash, professional VAs have to prioritise their actual day jobs over travelling to see fans. Daniel Ingram, for example, was originally announced for BUCK 2016 but had to pull out for similar reasons to Tabitha St. Germain. He never did make it to any UK MLP convention (he did get to GalaCon, but that really isn't the same!) so let's hope that Tabitha can make it over to UKPC in the future.

I won't lie, among people I know Tabitha St. Germain's original announcement was a huge deal and there is a lot of disappointment at this turn of events. It's not really fair on Kelly Sheridan and a shame, really: had she been announced as a guest of honour in the first place, I think everyone would have been delighted. But even now in 2023, there is something extra special about a Mane Six guest, as we saw last year when Andrea Libman graced UKPC with her presence.

Still, up until very recently UK PonyCon didn't have show guests at all, and it was still a great convention. I hope the 2023 edition will be that too. I'm increasingly unlikely to be able to attend myself this year for a variety of reasons (some involve other people, so I have to remain vague) but if you are going then with Kelly Sheridan (and of course the irrepressible Elley-Ray!) and everything else that comes with UKPC, I'm sure you'll have a truly brilliant time.

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.

Episode review: S9E04: "Sparkle's Seven"

Don't tell me you wouldn't watch this series

NB: this episode was originally advertised as "Twilight's Seven".

Fourscore and seven years ago, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic reached episode one hundred with the wildly over-the-top "Slice of Life". Here we are in 2019 and it's time for episode two hundred. While E100 was a thank you to the fans, E200 was trailed as being a thank you to the main voice actors, and indeed the Mane Six's and Spike's VAs were given "Story by" credits for this episode. How did it fare? Past the break, I'll have a look at just that.