Comic review: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic issue #24

"It's all chaosy-waosy, really..."

Apologies for this review being quite so late: for some reason (I don't know what it was) IDW failed to get its My Little Pony comics to UK distributors until a full week after they were released in the US. This happened once before, in the comic's early days, but it's always a pain and I hope it was just a blip. Happily, Level Seven Comics really pushed the boat out to get it to me as fast as possible. Anyway, this month we saw the first collaboration between writer Jeremy Whitley and artist Brenda Hickey. With stalwart Heather Breckel doing the colouring, would issue #24 prove a hit?

Ponyfic Roundup 26: Outside Insight finalists, 2/4

Here's my second batch of reviews of the 22 (other) finalists in this summer's EqD "Outside Insight" contest. I'm discussing six stories this time round and, once again, there's quite a range in scores. I'm fairly sure about my choice for this week's Pick, but it wasn't the supremely obvious decision that I was able to make last time round.

Pick of the fics

Rise by Blueshift
Breezies, Apple Bloom and Twilight
Adventure; 15K words; Aug 2014; Everyone
To the Breezies, ponies are the enemy: agents of summer shutdown and even death. Young Misty's coming-of-age Quest may change that. My liking for Adventure fics is well known, and this one also has some brilliant world-building. There are also moments of heart-rending emotion: I found myself impressively offended by some elements of Breezie culture. Mostly wonderfully paced, and this was heading for a 9+ rating for a while, but the story only just slipped inside both time and word-count limits, and that does show a little in the slightly-too-quick resolution. 8.5/10

Other stories

I Am Demon by Aquaman
Characters
OCs and Others; 16K words; Aug 2014; Teen
This fic won the EqD contest outright. It doesn't win mine! Don't get me wrong: it's a superb feat of imaginative writing in terms of showing ponies (Clover the Clever especially) from a truly different perspective. However, the gimmick of using colours to represent Demon's emotions becomes increasingly trying as the number of those emotions increases: I simply can't fully enjoy a story that's as hard on my eyes as this. Immensely clever, but I can't help feeling dialling down on that a bit might actually have made this story even more impressive. 8/10

The Last Trumpet's Call by Cold in Gardez
OCs
Adventure; 15K words; Aug 2014; Teen
A gryphon [sic] goes to Cloudsdale to talk to his dead army friend's (Cirrus) family. This is one of my favourite genres, written by one of the best writers in the fandom. It shines brilliantly in terms of imagery, and I loved discovering how vital a weather pegasus could be for the military. So why doesn't it win for me? Partly, it has the same problem Pride did: I just don't really like militaristic gryphons, so the enjoyment factor is inevitably slightly limited. Cirrus's fate was a tad predictable, too. A truly wonderful last line, though. 8/10

Little Apple by Oroboro
Winona, Apple Bloom and CMC
Slice of Life; 4K words; Aug 2014; Everyone
This tale of Winona's relationship with (mostly) Apple Bloom is a good example of a solid story that didn't really grab me. Maybe I just don't find Winona a massively engaging protagonist, though Skywriter's Sun Princess (PR 6) got a decent enough score. Returning to this story, it has a slightly gimmicky style involving the use of bold: I actually thought this might have been too restrained, so much so that it didn't contribute much to my enjoyment. The climax is quite involving, but nothing made me go "Wow!" 6.5/10

What Do Ponies Call Stockholm Syndrome? by CogWing
Discord and Fluttershy
Comedy/Random; 2K words; Jul 2014; Everyone
"You can't write speech like this." I said. "Really, you can't." I continued. Ahem... I often like this pairing, but this story just didn't work for me, even aside from the aforementioned technical issue. I found Discord far more annoying than engaging, and Fluttershy rather forgettable. Apart from one hilarious phrase consisting of the same word five times running (seriously, it works) I was never caught by this fic. Also, if you're going to use the word "Brony" in a ponyfic for any reason at all, you need to make that story amazingly good. 4/10

Wisp by rockyrobben
OC, Twilight, Celestia, Blueblood and Fancy Pants
Slice of Life; 12K words; Aug 2014; Teen
My goodness, this one could have done with better proofreading. "Pegasi" in the singular? "Filly's" for "fillies"? There were more. The idea of using a... consciousness as POV character was one I found absolutely intriguing, and I was really interested by the concept of The Well. However, it's not exactly a rollicking ride and I did find my attention wandering several times, notably in chapter two. I wasn't massively taken with the Twilight stuff, either. Thanks partly to the poor editing, 6/10.

UK PonyCon 2014 report

My haul of ponyana from the con. Not bad for one day!

Well, things didn't go quite to plan as far as UK PonyCon was concerned. Ill health meant that I was only able to attend on the Saturday, but I still had a very good time. I'd go so far as to say that it might even have been more enjoyable than BUCK – and that takes some doing! Certainly, if this convention is held somewhere I can easily get to next year, there's a very good chance that I'll try to get myself there.

The venue for this con was the Mercure "The Grand" Hotel in the middle of Leicester. I hugely prefer city-centre locations, as being able to walk from the station, or nip out to the pub for lunch is great. (On that last note, "The Last Plantagenet" was about 50 yards away. Perfect!) The venue was really nice, a posh four-star Victorian place with a sense of character and presence sorely lacking in the big boxy exhibition hall that was Manchester Central.

As an all-gens affair with a strong base of collectors, unsurprisingly there were a lot of vendor stalls. The range was much wider than at BUCK, and prices were generally quite reasonable by con standards. The main hall was home to both the vendors and the main stage, so it did get very crowded on occasion, most notably during the cosplay catwalk. For the most part, though, I thought it was nice that the vendors weren't tucked away from the main con action.

The atmosphere was lovely. Seriously, I was blown away by it. Immensely friendly, warm, welcoming and inclusive. A huge range of attendees, from little kids with their parents right up to pensioners. The bronies, collectors and families all rubbed along well, and I didn't hear one single complaint from one group about another the entire day. It may have been slightly understaffed, but despite this the con people remained unfailingly helpful and polite.

This year's theme was "Ponies Rock!" and live music was provided by The Rainbooms, an (actually rather good) rock band formed by several of the staff members. We had the FiM theme, "Sweet Music" from G1 Tales, "Babs Seed" and the inevitable (though still welcome!) "Helping Twilight Win the Crown". There was maybe a little too much recorded music at other times, though, which did make one or two conversations with stall-holders awkward.

I only attended one panel, "G1 for Bronies, G4 for Oldies", but that was very well presented: the person doing it was easily heard and seen even at the back of the room. She also very calmly and pleasantly nipped in the bud a potentially tiresome and rather esoteric discussion between two audience members about IP. I didn't actually go to the karaoke, though, as they hadn't really got their mics and speakers working well.

The only real criticism I'd make, other than the crowding, was that some people paying cash on the day seemed to be allowed to go in before those of us who'd pre-booked tickets. We'd been told this wouldn't happen, and it was disappointing. But otherwise, UK PonyCon 2014 was a really excellent convention. An easy 9/10 and I would love to have been able to have stayed for the whole weekend. Maybe next time!

Almost time for UK PonyCon!

I'll be spending this weekend in Leicester for UK PonyCon. It'll be something new for me, in that it will be the first event I've been to that's aimed at fans and collectors of all generations of My Little Pony. I really don't know quite what to expect, but it helps that I will know some of my fellow attendees from elsewhere, either BUCK or regular meetups. I won't be doing the photojournalism bit this time, but there will be some sort of text-based report when I get back. :)

Ponyfic Roundup 25: Outside Insight finalists, 1/4

As I said quite a while ago, I'm reading all the finalists in the EqD "Outside Insight" contest that was held in the summer. I'll be posting my thoughts on them here, in the usual Ponyfic Roundup format, then re-assessing before producing a final ranking. There were 22 fics in the final (not including mine!) so I'll do four special PRs, covering five or six stories each time. As always, enjoyment is my primary criterion for a good score: a wonderfully-written piece that leaves me cold will do less well than one with a few mistakes that captures my heart. Here's the first batch.

Pick of the fics

Queen of Queens by JawJoe
Chrysalis and Changelings
Dark; 15K words; Aug 2014; Teen
This first-person look at Chrysalis's life was one of the (surprisingly few) stories where I had a "This is great" feeling all the way through, despite the (deliberately) basic style of the opening section. The world-building is superb for such a short story, the characters are utterly convincing and the author has the confidence to leave certain things unexplained and assume (correctly) that we'll understand it's not just an oversight on their part. Why not a 10/10? Two reasons: one, those song lyrics. Even from this good a writer, one line in particular felt shoe-horned in. Two, not enough actual ponies. Even so, essential reading and 9/10.

Other stories

Au Naturalligator by TantiMount
Gummy, Pinkie Pie and Other
Adventure; 6K words; Aug 2014; Everyone
Writing a Gummy-centric story is not taking the easy path. I didn't really have an idea of what the alligator's narrative style would be, so (to my surprise) I found myself not worrying about whether it fitted with the show Gummy. There are some oddities (since when did going from Ponyville to Manehattan involve customs duties?), the odd word choice is iffy and I wasn't entirely convinced by some aspects of the underground section. The story could also do with sharper pace early on, though the ending was extremely cute. 5.5/10

Let Them Eat Grass by Cloudhammer
OCs
Comedy/Slice of Life; 2K words; Aug 2014; Everyone
You'd think sheep would be ill-suited to a really short story, and you'd be... well, half-right. Set in the time of Applejack's parents, as far as we can tell, this is the story of the great ovine revolution... that wasn't. It's amusing and light, which made a nice change of pace from some of the serious-minded fics in the list. Not a great deal to it, though, and I found the ending a little on the dull side. As such, 6.5/10.

Old Friends by Bad Horse
Philomena and Celestia
Slice of Life; 2K words; Aug 2014; Teen
Whether you like this tale of the Princess's phoenix trying to understand how death and rebirth apply to ponies depends to a great extent on whether you can cope with the (deliberately) simplistic language. I couldn't, not really. It's clever, but I felt that the style got in the way of the story to such an extent that it really didn't work. Some of the phrasing is memorable ("smells like thunder and lonely") but it doesn't all work ("Hot light is hot" – memetastic). Interesting, but hard going to read, so I didn't like it that much. 5/10

Pride by InquisitorM
OCs
Tragedy/Dark; 13K words; Aug 2014; Teen
The protagonist here is Osvald the griffin (so spelt), who finds his life spared after a failed raid on ponies' farmland: the setting certainly is a long way from the cosiness of Ponyville. This is Equestria under a harsh, unflinching gaze that shows us some things most of the country's inhabitants would probably rather not think about. It's very well written and (to use one of Osvald's favourite words) interesting in that the author refuses to do the readers' thinking for them: the question "Is Osvald the good guy?" simply doesn't have a Yes/No answer. I applaud that, but sadly I just didn't like Osvald or (most of) the ponies all that much and, as such, I admired this fic rather more than I enjoyed it. 7.5/10

Comic review: My Little Pony Annual 2014

I can't help thinking the Pharaoh looks a bit like Sombra...

This year's My Little Pony Annual, which is a Power Ponies special, has been rather overshadowed by the brouhaha surrounding Ted Anderson's position at IDW, still unresolved at the time of going to press. This review isn't going to say anything more about that, but will simply concentrate on assessing the comic itself. As well as Anderson's writing, we also get Ben Bates' swansong as an illustrator before he moves to pastures new, and good old Heather Breckel doing the colours. Past the break for more!

Ponyfic Roundup 24: Special Edition

As advertised, here's this week's special edition of PR. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm going to be talking about a much longer story than the little one-shots I generally cover here. It's not, perhaps, one of the most well-known ponyfics around, though a view count north of 12,000 on FimFiction makes it extremely successful by any standards. It's also something I'd like to see more of: an out-and-out Adventure-tagged fic. So, then:

Integration by Raugos
Caramel, Chrysalis and Changelings
Adventure; 119K words; Feb 2014; Teen
I don't often find a really good story starring one of the side or background characters from the show: Caramel, for example. This is the story of how he came to be in Chrysalis's hive (after the events of the S2 finale), told in two surprisingly effective jump timelines converging on the point of "Integration". It has some brilliant world-building in the first half especially, and I liked the way Chrysalis was portrayed. More typos creep in later and the ending is a bit uninspired, but the journey to get there is interesting until close to the finish. Certainly worth a read. 8/10

Okay, that's the summary review. After the break, I'll waffle on in a bit more detail about what I did and didn't like about this story. If you go beyond this point, then here be spoilers. You have been warned!