This piece of Pony history's been gone a while now, but it's still rather sad

Rainbow Rocks trailer, 13 Feb 2014

No, not the Rainbow Rocks trailer embedded above, which as you see is still there, but the YouTube comments that once went along with it. It's something that saddens me about the whole "YouTube Kids" change that took effect quite some while ago now: any video that's been deemed as such loses all its comments. I know there are other places you can see RR hot takes, but for all their drawbacks YouTube comments do have an immediacy that few other places do.

While I'm here, I'll use the opportunity to say that I'm having a brief break from the rewatch series, so there won't be anything up this weekend. However, I may try to get the pre-Rainbow Rocks shorts watched over the coming week so that I can do a summary post next weekend. Then it'll be on to the film itself – which will of course get a full write-up – and after that, I will do another summary post for the musical shorts from April 2015. And then it'll be S5 of FiM.

Pre-2017 Unlisted YouTube videos will become inaccessible next month

(Via EqD.) YouTube has announced that, as of 23rd July, all Unlisted videos that were uploaded before 1st January 2017 will be set to Private. In other words, they will become completely inaccessible to anyone but the uploader, regardless of whether or not you have the direct link. As far as I can see, the only exceptions will be where the channel owner personally opts out between now and then. If they don't do that, then kaboom: no more public access.

It's hardly news that, when MLP creators moved away from the fandom over the years, some of them preferred not to leave their Pony videos public for a variety of reasons. However, quite a few did set said videos to Unlisted instead of Private, thereby allowing access if you had the direct link. This often happened if the artist was okay with access from within the fandom but not with people stumbling on their old MLP videos accidentally.

Needless to say, this news has caused a bit of a stir. There are a heck of a lot of Unlisted videos in the fandom, some of them pretty big. "Flutterwonder" was Unlisted for quite a while, for example, although it's been Public again for a long time now. And a number of channels are now unattended and inactive, so the chances of their creators logging back in to opt out are very low. In under a month, those videos will be no more as far as the fandom is concerned.

Sure, archive channels exist, but those are morally ambiguous in that you don't have the same confidence that the creator is okay with fandom access that you do when they've kept a video Unlisted on their own channel. A link from an old EqD post that points to the creator's own now-Unlisted upload will also not tell you where to find the same video in an archive. Plus archives quite often overlook more obscure and/or specialised works.

Some things will be saved. Perhaps quite a lot, given this fandom's continuing size and activity levels. But quite a bit of fandom history will disappear forever on 23rd July. Regardless of YouTube's reasons for making this change (which seem to be to do with the security of Unlisted links) it's certainly going to be a rather sad day.

My audio review of Season 9 of FiM

There will be no post tomorrow. I hope to have a "Sounds of 2012" instalment for you on Boxing Day, and then Ponyfic Roundup 277 will appear on Friday 27th December. Note that there will not be a PR the week after that; all being well it will return on 8th January 2020. Now, on to today's business...

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Here's your Christmas treat! (Or possibly Christmas trick, depending.) My review of Season 9 of Friendship is Magic, touching briefly on the usual stuff: which episodes I liked, which I didn't, how Fluttershy got on... you get the idea. The video takes a little under a quarter of an hour all told. It was recorded on my phone and only given very basic editing, so I do ask for your indulgence there. Even so, I hope you will find at least some of it interesting.

For those who find it easier or preferable to read, the script I used when making the video is given past the cut. Happy Hearth's Warming!

S9 audio review coming soon...ish!

A friend asked me a little while ago whether I was going to do a Season 9 review in the same way I did one for Season 8. I thought about it briefly and decided that yes, I would. At the time I was asked, the online world was still swirling with rumours and counter-rumours about the future of YouTube creativity, but now that that's died down a bit I've decided to make the piece anyway.

I've done the basic recording, and the raw file comes to about 15 minutes, which I think is reasonable. It will take me a little while to edit, though I'm not going to do that to pro standards by any means, and then I'll upload it. Hopefully it'll be before Hearth's Warming, at least. I also intend to provide a text transcript for those who find audio a problem or would simply prefer to read.

Please note that this is a season review, not a show review. I may eventually do a piece that encompasses the entirety of Friendship is Magic, but you really shouldn't hold your breath for that. What you'll be getting here is the usual stuff: best and worst episodes, a quick look at the songs, how Fluttershy did, that kind of thing. I've also stuck in a brief section on Rainbow Roadtrip.

The future of "Sounds of 2012"

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few weeks, and possibly even if you have, you'll probably have heard about YouTube creators' concerns regarding new rules. The signal:noise ratio has been quite poor, but the thing is now starting to have tangible effects for our community – for example, Sim Gretina briefly made all their videos private. Though that decision has now been reversed, it may only be a temporary stay of execution, depending on how things pan out in practice.

Although it's hardly the most important bit of fallout, it does have a bearing on "Sounds of 2012", since the vast majority of songs I feature are found on YouTube. True, some of them are also available on artists' Bandcamps or similar, but a lot are not – and for all the reasons I've mentioned before, I'm not usually keen on embedding videos from third-party re-uploaders unless I'm fairly confident they have the original artist's blessing. (Or unless they're stupidly famous.)

I'll keep a watching brief for now and see how many YouTubers do decide to blank out their channels. I suspect it won't actually be a huge number, but I do think it may include some big names – as we're seeing here. I also suspect that the implementation of the new rules in practice won't quite be as terrifying as some are suggesting. I mean, how many people actually take much notice of the penalties listed in the type of software EULA that's existed for decades?

Of course, that the obvious way to make sure you keep access to these videos is to download them from YouTube while they're still there – something that is itself in breach of YouTube's existing regulations, even though nearly everyone does it. Why does life have to be so ironic?

Signal Boost: Mike Cartoon Pony

This post is a very slightly edited version of one that's already appeared on my Fimfiction account.

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Do you like reading blog posts in which people talk about MLP? Well, you're reading mine, so there must be a chance that you do. That being so, give Mike Cartoon Pony's Fimfiction blogs a look. He's still quite new to this Pony game, being that fairly unusual creature: someone who was brought into the fandom because of the 2017 movie. His two main posts on Fimf so far are a review of "Best Gift Ever" (pretty positive) and some detailed thoughts on the movie score album (ditto). That latter post is almost 3,000 words long, and has a 2,000-word followup, so I really meant it when I said "detailed"!

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Mike – that rare thing, an Irish Pony fan – came to MLP through his long-standing interest in animation, and he has a YouTube channel called "Cartoon Karma" where you can find a fun two-part analysis of the film (embedded in this post). There's a fair amount of nit-picking, but it's done with good humour which always helps a lot. And as he points out himself, this movie is what got him into the series itself (and watching the whole lot in 51 days!) so it can't be all bad. If you want to keep up with his blog posts, though, make sure you follow him on Fimfiction as well. And who knows, maybe one day he'll write a ponyfic of his own!

Audio/Text: Logan Reviews: MLP:FiM Season 8 (and the special)

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I've done this from time to time in the past, but here's my YouTube audio piece in which I briefly review Friendship is Magic's eighth season. For those who prefer to read, the script I used is pasted below the page break as plain text. The whole review lasts just 11 minutes 30 seconds, so obviously it's just a summary; I intend to keep this blog as my main home for reviews and suchlike. Still, I hope some people enjoy this departure from my usual format. :)

Them's Writin' Words

A few months ago, Scribbler uploaded the first edition of a new podcast, Them's Writin' Words, to her YouTube channel. In this, she was joined by Goombasa, Neighrator Pony, Thornquill and Luna Farrowes to discuss billymorph's fic A World Without Kindness. They went into a lot of detail, enough that this 17k-word story was discussed for well over an hour – and, unlike in many long podcasts, this didn't mean 2% discussion and 98% pub banter. Also, because these are high quality readers, you can actually hear what they're saying.

I must admit that I didn't listen to the entire podcast: while I have read A World Without Kindness (PR 54), I neither loved it nor hated it enough to want to listen to over 100 minutes of discussion of it. However, earlier this month, Scribbler released episode 2 of the podcast, and I thought I'd listen to it right through. Same cast, but minus Luna Farrowes. The subject this time was TheGreyPotter's Body of Work, which I knew nothing about, so I wanted to see whether the podcast could hold my attention.

And yes. Yes, it could. It helped that the reviewers didn't all have the same opinion: Scribbler didn't really like it, and she wasn't shy about saying so. As I mentioned above, once again the banter didn't overwhelm the actual discussion. Nor was it full of swearing: unsurprisingly Scribbler's language in particular wasn't entirely TV-Y but it was hardly unreasonable for a podcast like this. I'm not sure I personally want to listen to an hour-plus of talk about a single story very often, but for those who do want that level of detail, I think the series could fill a niche nicely.