Ponyfic Roundup 176: All Bound for Morningtown

PSA: I am less likely to review your story if you're using a seasonal username at the time, as it's a real pain for a reviewer's record-keeping. (This is one reason I never change my own username.) Feel free to exploit this information as you wish. :P

Read it Later story count: 399 (+2)

Another three-short-fic week, something you probably won't be too surprised to see. What you may be surprised to see is the nature of a couple of the stories under review. Let's just say that in one case, I didn't want to wait any longer, and in the other, I was dared to review something of that nature. Name withheld to protect the guilty. :P My RiL list has expanded slightly, too, as was probably inevitable after several weeks of limited time to read and review. Anyway, today we have:

A White Hearth's Warming by Chris
Skintight Payback by Aspirant
A Tea Party by Maniac92

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

Well now, this is an interesting development

Yup – I'm going to see My Little Pony: The Movie early! :D After I said I didn't want to go on my own, OilyValves kindly offered to join me, so we'll be seeing the film at Showcase Cinema de Lux Leicester at lunchtime on Saturday. This showing is actually the only one of the three that day I can easily make, as the 10am one is just too early (given I need to travel for two hours to get to Leicester) and I need to be home later in the evening, so I'd be in too much of a rush if I waited for the 3pm screening.

And yes, I will still be going to the already announced movie meet in Worcester on the 28th. This is an extra. :)

If anyone else reading this will also be at the 12:30 Showcase Leicester showing, leave a comment!

Early movie releases... in England! *UPDATED*

Awooga! Awooga! Pastel alert!

Big news if, like me, you live in the UK outside Scotland and are counting the days until the film's release on the 20th... there now seems to be a limited early release in England too. I don't know how many cinemas will be involved, as the numbers seem to have gradually increased during the Scottish previews, but so far I've found:

Brighton: Cineworld
Showing at 10:30, 13:10 and 15:30
Tickets: £11.30 Sat/Sun, £9.80 weekdays
Online booking fee: 70p
Book tickets here

Brighton: Odeon
Showing at 11:50 and 14:20
Tickets: £11.25 every day
Online booking fee: included
Book tickets here

Leicester: Showcase Cinema de Lux
Showing at 10:00, 12:30 and 15:00
Tickets: £9.90 Sat/Sun, £7.95 weekdays
Online booking fee: 60p
Book tickets here

Leicester: Odeon
Showing at 10:15 (Sat-Thu only), 12:45 and 15:15
Tickets: £11.00 Fri-Tue, £8.75 Wed-Thu
Online booking fee: included
Book tickets here

Loughborough: Odeon
Showing at 10:45, 13:15 and 15:45 (not Sat)
Tickets: £4.75 every day
Online booking fee: included
Book tickets here

Thanks to mlpbronypony on UK of Equestria for the initial heads-up.

Episode review: S7E22: "Once Upon a Zeppelin"

That was about my reaction too to that mask, Shiny

For what it's worth, I will now be sticking to the Discovery Family schedule for episode reviews as much as UK PonyCon allows. This week we had "Once Upon a Zeppelin", by a new writer to the show, Brittany Jo Flores. It really had been quite a while since we'd got a Twilight-focused episode where she didn't share the spotlight with Starlight (so many lights!), and I was interested to see what we'd get out of it.

Tips for UK PonyCon-goers 8: Have a go!

What with all the movie-related news in recent weeks, it's been too long since the last one of these. So...

Tip 8: Take part in the fun

One of the unique things about a convention is that it gives you the chance to be part of the action in a way that you can't do on your own, or even at a regular meet. This does not mean that you need to go up on stage in front of everyone; there are plenty of ways you can take an active part in UK PonyCon even if you find actually "performing" too stressful to manage.

Bidding in the charity auction is participating. Joining in one of the singalongs is participating. Entering for "Destroy a Fakie" is participating. Chatting to a stallholder (when they're not busy!) is participating. Letting someone on their own join your group is participating. Having a bite at the café or a drink at the bar is participating. Directing someone at the station to the venue is participating...

...you get the idea. Of course, if you do have the ability and desire to do so, by all means get in touch with the UKPC staff about volunteering – they're always grateful for more help and will welcome you with open hooves! But for those of us for whom that's impossible for health or other reasons, we can still be more than simply passive consumers. And really, at a con, everyone can be part of the show!

CinemaScore for the movie is out!

As with the Rotten Tomatoes post, I'm marking this as spoilery beyond the cut, even though it really isn't. As with that earlier post, this is just a case of talking briefly about a grade. There are no spoilers for the plot of the movie whatsoever in the post itself.

Logan rates Logan

A little while ago, Chris did a post in which he compared how Fimfiction users ranked his published stories to how he personally would rank them. He took this concept from horizon, who took it from Estee. And now I'm taking it from Chris! I've made very few changes to his format, since it seems to work.

At the time of writing, there were 23 eligible stories – Little Bits and Friendship is Poetry are open-ended and/or incomplete. Just for the hay of it, I'm going to list them in reverse order. Here, then, is how I rank each story, along with a brief explanation of why. It's quite long, so I've used a page break.