Five years in the fandom, part 1: looking back

Five years ago this month, I did a "What pony are you?" meme. And yes, I came out as Fluttershy. Just after that, I finally succumbed to the pressure from various friends to watch the show. I zapped through the two seasons we then had available, and "A Canterlot Wedding" was the first episode for which I could read the hype as it was happening. I seem to remember some people being concerned that a wedding-based episode would see a reversion to G3 cutesiness. Heh.

In April 2012, I joined Fimfiction. It had been around for a while by then, but was still getting up to speed. Indeed, I started writing my first story (what would become The 20 Percent Solution) in GDocs. Fimf quickly took over, though. And the following month, I signed up on UK of Equestria. These were both good decisions, since the two sites have been at the core of my Pony fandom life ever since. This blog followed in December 2012.

More of this unfocused jabbering past the break! This time, it's not spoilery!

Another S7 clip

This news splurge is not helpful timing on the part of Discovery Family. I'm spending most of today and tomorrow at the Severn Valley Railway's Spring Steam Gala, so I don't have that much time to devote to ponies. Still... this second trailer is a bit more conventional in format than the first one, and has been given a non-spoilery thumbnail by EQD:

Quick thoughts past the break.

And finally we have a Season Seven teaser clip!

That's right: we have an official S7 teaser trailer! Now, in the normal scheme of things, I do not consider things like this to count as spoilers – so please be warned! However, on this specific occasion, even the thumbnail is sufficiently spoilery that I'm placing the trailer link after the break. A single glimpse of it will tell you something about the premiere, though I won't say up here how important it is.

After the break, I will also be discussing some episode details released by Discovery Family – and those include not only the premiere's synopsis, but also a few significant details about other episodes. Read on if you dare!

Ponyfic Roundup 149: If You Don't Want to Know the Results, Look Away Now

I'm planning a fairly substantial cull of my Read it Later list in the near future. Although I did just about succeed in keeping it below 500 fics and it's slowly been shrinking, it's still much larger than I'd like. That being so, I'm going to weed out stories I keep looking at and then passing over. What I'll end up with, I don't know, but I'll still add fics from time to time, so there'll always be plenty of stories in the queue!

Read it Later story count: 478 (-1)

We're back to the traditional mixed bag this week, and in keeping with this theme of being normal and unexciting, there are six stories under review and no five-star gems. Still, I did find a good bit of interest in some of the fics I looked at, so let's get on with it.

Promises by RaylanKrios
This Isn't War by KingMoriarty
Overlooked Relations by Calming Moon
Mare of Many Hats by Skywriter
Can Ya Fix Her? by LightningSword
All the Ways that Matter by RoyalBardOfCanterlot

★: 1 | ★★: 2 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0

Comic mini-review: Deviations

And another My Little Pony comic to review. And after this, there'll be another comic to buy this next week. As I said last time, I think IDW are overdoing it now. If they go on a splurge like this again, I'm going to be really tempted not to buy everything. And that's me saying that – someone who pre-ordered the box set of issue #1 in 2012 and owns at least one copy of every standard MLP comic IDW have ever put out.

Whinge over. Review starting.

Seriously, how could I possibly resist Cook's cover?

Another special issue this time, but this one doesn't tie in with a toy line – well, no more than usual. Katie Cook returns for the first time since the glorious main-series #42, and I'm pleased to say she's written another winner. This is a "what if?" comic, in which Celestia chose as her pupil not Twilight but Blueblood. You don't want to question certain aspects of continuity too hard, but if you can accept this as pure silliness it's great fun. Agnes Garbowska's style really works here, and Cook even gets away with a fourth-wall gag without its seeming too forced. You may even develop a sneaking sympathy for Nightmare Moon! There's also a four-page backup story drawn by Cook – remember when we used to get backups in regular issues? Despite my irritation with the avalanche of IDW comics, this one is worth the price of admission. ★★★★

What does the future hold for ponyfic?

I am really enjoying The Great War channel on YouTube. Indy Neidell's week-by-week videos are easily the most accessible WW1 stuff I've seen.

Okay, on to the meat of today's post. As you'll see, it's tagged "musing" rather than "essays", as I deliberately haven't made much effort to be comprehensive. This is just a "what's on my mind" post. Off we go!

Our fandom is becoming less active, certainly in terms of publishing fanfics. This is not the cheeriest way to begin a post, but the evidence does seem to point one way. Fimfiction's statistics page tells a pretty clear story: once the site had got up to speed, around the end of Season Two, submissions stayed at a fairly consistent level of around 2,000 a month until the end of S4.

Since then, numbers have fallen to around half that figure, although the decline was at its steepest – perhaps unsurprisingly – during the 11-month hiatus between S4 and S5. Yes, we had Rainbow Rocks to keep us going, but the show itself was away for a long, long time, and that does seem to have made a substantial impression on the number of people submitting fics to Fimf. Some came back, but not all.

More of this rambling after the break!

Comic review: Guardians of Harmony

Yet another comic from IDW now. I am just slightly wondering whether they're overdoing it a bit – it's starting to get expensive! – but this is a story I've been looking forward to ever since it was announced. Time to see whether the real thing matches up to my expectations. Not a mini review this time, as I'll be going through each chapter in turn in a spoiler-cut section after the main review.

Andy Price's main cover is, as expected, great

Guardians of Harmony ties in with the toy line of the same name, and is rather more transparently toyetic than usual. This isn't fatal in itself, and with one exception things don't look too out of place in Equestria. The comic is also a multi-creator deal, with six chapters, each from a different writer/artist pair. (Heather Breckel is the only colourist credited.) The story is inevitably episodic, and there's less smooth continuity than I'd have liked. There are also a couple of slightly irritating character decisions. The chapters themselves are of uneven quality, and there's not really enough action-adventure for the GoH brand, but they're generally at least decent. This is a good comic, but it blows its chance to be a great one. Considering the high cover price (it's marketed as an annual), I can't really award it more than ★★★.

Now, come with me past the break for some spoilery comments on each chapter.