Pony Music Library 50: "My Little Pony Theme (Extended Version)"

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PML is 50 not out! I wasn't really expecting to get this far in the series when I started it back in April 2016, but here we are – and I suspect some of you guessed what I'd be featuring to mark the occasion.

What? "My Little Pony Theme (Extended Version)"

Who? Daniel Ingram, Lauren Faust, Anna Bryant, Clifford "Ford" Kinder and Barry Harman

Which? Extended version of FiM opening theme

When? February 2012

Why? Although the video for this says "Leaked", it was officially released that same month as an extra on The Friendship Express DVD. The show theme itself is something many of us skip these days (although not usually me) but it's also a hugely important part of Friendship is Magic. It's barely changed since S1, and though people sometimes complain about that I'm glad. This extended version adds some really nice extra lines about each of the Mane Six, and "We'll make it special every time" is one of my favourite lyrics in any My Little Pony song. The video is also very much in the style of early-fandom PMVs.

In February 2014, Hasbro uploaded a new version to its official account, but in usual Hasbro "music video" style its visuals vary substantially from the original. Besides, it doesn't have the nostalgia value that the original does – after all, that one was only a few weeks old when I came into the fandom. Love it, hate it or somewhere in between, the show theme is at the very core of FiM; after all, the tune's beginning (both here and in the short show version) seems to be hinting at a continuation of G3-style Pony but it then goes far more upbeat and marks a clear break with the former style. As such, it seems an entirely appropriate song to induct on this particular occasion.

And here we go with The Danger Within

Yes! That's right! Logan has actually managed to publish something. It's not going to set the world on fire, or even make it smoulder slightly, but right now I don't care. Right now I'm just so happy that I've got a new bit of ponyfic out there in the big wide world (aka Fimfiction), and that it hasn't instantly attracted 109 downvotes and no likes at all. As I've said there, it will doubtless have its fair share of problems, but I hope it will at least give some of its readers a bit of enjoyment.

This is going to be a longer fic than is usual from me. Well, since I've only ever written one multi-chapter story (Where They Understand You) it doesn't take very much to do that. But The Danger Within will go on for quite some time. And yes, I know there are plenty of downsides to posting the first chapter of a fic before you've actually finished writing it. Tough. The way things were going, it was either do it this way or continue the dry spell for months more. I wasn't prepared to do that.

The Danger Within by Loganberry
Fancy Pants, Fluttershy and Rarity
Adventure; ongoing; started Jan 2018; Teen

A magical accident at a castle garden party leaves Fancy Pants, Rarity and Fluttershy apparently alone in the middle of... somewhere. But where, and how will they make it home?

Yes, it really does have that unoriginal a setup. Again, it was part of the price I had to pay to get myself writing anything again. After all, if I write nothing at all, the probability of ever coming up with something good is zero. As such, no regrets. Join me for... Adventure! With Ponies!

Ponyfic Roundup 186: Spotlight on The Skyla Pseudonym

I'd enjoyed the first three parts of iisaw's rip-roaring adventure series: The Celestia Code (PR 59), The Luna Cypher (PR 72) and The Twilight Enigma (PR 118), so this fourth instalment was always going to attract my attention. A little later than planned, here are my rambly thoughts on the fic.

Read it Later story count: 378 (+4)

The Skyla Pseudonym by iisaw
Twilight, Flurry Heart and OCs
Adventure; 90k words; Feb–Aug 2017; Teen

Young Flurry Heart has no interest at all in being a prim and proper princess, and would much rather have wild and dangerous adventures like her Aunt Twilight.

This is the best Flurry Heart story I have read. That's rather faint praise I know, but happily in this case it's proper praise too. If you're like me and love the airship pirate bits of iisaw's earlier books, you're in luck as there's plenty of that. However, the world Flurry – now a teenager – and Twilight fetch up in is one which nicely blunts Twi's magical ability and gives a fresh feel to the derring-do. There are several memorable new OCs to savour, too, and the writing is really good in giving a sense of adventure. I'm still not a huge fan of the really wide canvas (to say more would be spoilery!) and the ending feels slightly abrupt, but on the whole it's as epic as I'd hoped. You probably could jump straight in here, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to spend the time wondering why the hay there's a kirin on board and what the deal is with Twilight's appearance. Besides, you'd be missing out. It's very very good, and be it understood, you should put it in your queue! ★★★★

I'll expand on this below, although you should expect a lot of spoilers there, so don't proceed unless you've either already read the fic or don't mind reading quite a bit of what happens.

Adventure! With Ponies!

A few days too late, really, but over the last week I've been watching the 1984 BBC adaptation of The Box of Delights. Not just because the railway scenes were filmed down the road from me, either! Obviously the effects are showing their age (though they were almost cutting-edge at the time) and John Masefield should be ashamed of himself for the final scene, but the whole thing has such a seasonal atmosphere to it.

Anyway, on to the main topic of this post:

I am damned if I am going to go a year without publishing anything on Fimfiction, so I am going to write a story. I was originally going to push myself into something and just keep it for myself, but a couple of friends convinced me that someone might enjoy my even-worse-than-usual ramblings, so it'll be published for the world to see and frighten their kids with. (Even if they don't have kids, yes. Don't argue.)

This won't work like an ordinary story. Even mine usually get looked at a bit by other people before they go up, but this is going out as quickly as I can get it down. We're not talking Austraeoh pace or anything, but still, pretty fast. I think I can trust myself not to write anything that actually breaks Fimfiction rules, but this does obviously open me up to the risk of making silly blunders with the story itself. Worth the risk.

Because I couldn't bear the thought of saving a document called Unsaved Document 1,* the story file was first called Adventure! With Ponies!, but a quick skim through a few possibilities to see whether they'd been used for ponyfic before and I settled on The Danger Within. There is a reason, which I'll keep quiet for now. As that title suggests, it will be an adventure story, and one of the old school: a small group of characters making their way through—well, that bit I will also leave unexplained for a while.

* Turns out I'd misremembered and that LibreOffice would have called it Untitled Document 1, which may or may not be any better.

Oh, and the main protagonist will be Fancy Pants. Why? Because I like him and enjoyed writing him in Ever Let the Fancy Roam. Don't worry, he'll have a few other ponies with him so it won't be a monologue. Actually, in keeping with the old-fashioned approach, it will use that somewhat antiquated device known as third-person narration. It won't use coloured text, either, or be written in iambic trimeter. Sorry.

The Danger Within may well be a total mess. But if it's a total mess that gets me writing again and leads to my producing something down the road that's not a total disaster, I think it will be a decent trade-off.

PMV: "Jump Up Super Star"

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I was a bit down recently when HN reported that PinkiePieSwear's PMVs had been made inaccessible. Not just unlisted as they were for a while, but entirely gone from public access. Admittedly "Flutterwonder" is hardly going to disappear from the internet, but not everything is that lucky. There's so much history bound up with them that's gone now, perhaps for good.

So, the appearance of the PMV above, created by Foxy Lee, came as a real tonic. Apart from its subject matter (the movie) this feels like something that could have been made five years ago – and that's a compliment. It harks back to simpler times when PMVs were rather more about having a good time than about spectacular technical achievement. She clearly had fun with this, and so did I.

As it happens, Foxy Lee has also moved her older PMVs away from her main channel, but she's set up the Foxy Archive channel instead. I'm grateful to her for taking the trouble to do that – although it still means the years of old comments are no more (not always a bad thing on YouTube, admittedly), at least those who want a nostalgia hit can still get it.

Fandom events and personal safety

A few days ago, horizon made a blog post over on Fimfiction entitled "The elephant in the equine room", in which he told an alarming tale involving women having their drinks spiked at a BronyCon 2017 room party – with what is mentioned in the comments as being rohypnol. And yes, in this case it really was. Thankfully horizon and others acted swiftly to make sure everyone was safe, but that might not have been the case. Please read that post, in full, before continuing here.

This being Fimfiction, the comments section on horizon's post has been a mixture of serious contributions and, frankly, politically-motivated point-scoring (though horizon has been managing this pretty well), but let's be blunt here:

Our fandom is not magically immune from bad people who want to do bad things. As such, good people need to step up sometimes.

This is a long post, so cut coming up.

No Ponyfic Roundup today

However, there will be one next Wednesday – when, all being well, I shall be turning the spotlight on iisaw's The Skyla Pseudonym, the fourth in the adventure series that began with The Celestia Code. You're getting no clues now as to what I thought of it; you'll just have to wait another week for that!