UK PonyCon ticket details announced!

Yesterday, the UK PonyCon staff announced the big detail we'd all been waiting for: tickets will go on sale at midday UK time on Saturday 13th April. Although you can't yet actually buy tickets, the actual tickets page has now been updated with 2019's details. There's one major change to the ticketing structure this year and the expected price rises, the most important of which I'll try to summarise below.

A Standard Adult Weekend ticket will cost £37. This is a £2 increase since last year, a little lower than I would have guessed. If you want a Supporter ticket (with your name in the con book, an exclusive badge and an extra donation to long-standing con charity the RDA), you'll pay a £10 premium, so your total cost will be £47. Again, that's just £2 up on 2018. Keeping these rises to a minimum may have been possible because of a large hike in the VIP ticket price, which now carries a £60 premium over Standard and is now a hefty £97, up £27 since last year. As VIP tickets sold out in 26 minutes in 2018, this is perhaps not surprising!

The VIP package has changed slightly for 2019, with the return of a con-exclusive plushie as part of the goodie pack the Britannia Seapony. The site doesn't say who made her; I'll try to remember to ask the UKPC people when I have the time. You'll also get the usual VIP bonuses: free con T-shirt and goodie bag, exclusive lanyard and badge (and maybe more), priority entry on both days, name in the con book, and so on and so forth.

The one notable change this year is the introduction of a Saturday Evening ticket. This allows access only to the evening entertainment (so last year that was EileMonty and co) and costs a flat £8. This is an interesting innovation and may appeal to people who are working during the day on Saturday so can't justify the £25 for a one-day ticket. (Sunday-only is £20.) If you're considering this ticket, bear in mind that the vendor stalls will be closed.

As usual, there are lower rates for children and saver rates for families – this is no surprise, but I think it's especially important for this convention, as it's the most family-friendly of the lot and needs to stay that way. For myself, although I had a VIP ticket last year I think it fairly unlikely I'll get one this time. Money is likely to be a bit tighter, especially if I choose to go to Griffish Isles too. The Supporter tier seems likely to be my choice in the end.

As always, pleased remember that this con has sold out for the last four years, often months in advance. That means you cannot buy a ticket on the door. I know this looks strange to many American readers, but believe me, the way US cons work really does not fully translate to the UK. Am I going? Well, yes, unless I really can't manage it at all. This is UK PonyCon. How could I not go? :)

I am victorious!

You play as one of the Young Six

This is a most unaccustomed feeling for me. I never complete games. I'm renowned for being a really, really useless gamer. Yet here I am, receiving the congratulations of Princess Twilight Sparkle herself. I have to say, I've had more fun with Pocket Ponies than with any mobile game for a long time. Even the required grinding (assuming you don't want to pay) isn't as ridiculous as with most similar titles.

It's possible I'll get round to writing a proper (albeit probably quite short) review of Pocket Ponies at some point, but for now you just get me bouncing around with happiness. I'm still playing, though, as I still haven't managed to get Fluttershy as one of my mystery box ponies!

Ponyfic Roundup 242: The Citadel of Chaos

I have before me a paperback called Reach for Tomorrow; it's a 1974 reissue of a 1956 collection of early Arthur C Clarke short stories. In his preface, Clarke says, "I wrote these stories to entertain one person—myself. It still seems a remarkable piece of good luck that other people have been entertained as well." Words to live by.

Read it Later story count: 265 (-3)

Another small collection of ponyfics today. Without further ado, adieu or even Agadoo, here they are:

Dragon Lord Ember Skips Work for an Hour by The Cloptimist
Twilight Discovers Literary Analysis by Amit
Late Fees by MrNumbers

★: 0 | ★★: 1 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

"Young Six" it is, then

No, no, this was a totally random choice...

I've been playing the Pocket Ponies game on my phone quite a bit, now it's finally appeared on Android. It's freemium, but not (yet?) as onboxiously so as the Gameloft MLP game. It takes a lot of grinding to buy powerful ponies, but the numbers aren't completely impossible. The art style is really pretty cute, which helps. (See picture above.) I expect I'll get bored with it eventually, but that hasn't happened yet.

The other point of this post is that the game uses the term "Young 6" to refer to the students. I don't quite know why it's with the numeral, given that the same game uses "Mane Six" with the number written out as a word. With that in mind, though, I'm going to shift over from "Student Six" to "Young Six" from now on. It's not actually show canon (yet?) but it's clearly now extended canon. Not using the numeral, though!

I ATEN'T DEAD

Just exhausted. I've spent the last two days rushing around looking at (and travelling on!) steam trains, one day with friends and one day on my own. Very enjoyable, but it's surprisingly tiring. Hence no Pony content today... unless you count this. Big Mac admiring a big engine. Specifically, Gordon – named after General Gordon, not the Thomas the Tank Engine character! :P

Sounds of 2011: Nos. 6 to 4

Here we are at the antepenultimate post in this long, long series! Not a lot to say in this intro today, so let's get right on with the music. A quick reminder for anyone just joining us: this countdown comes from Everfree Radio's brony-voted Top 100 songs of 2011, the first full year of the show and its fandom.

6: FraGmenTd – Balloons In My Basket

At first I thought I'd have to invoke Inclusion Criterion 3 on this track, that being "songs that are just too significant to leave out". After all, everyone knew this song in the old days. However, although the artist is long gone from YouTube, he does still have an active Soundcloud, including this song – so Criterion 1 applies, ie "still available from the artist somewhere". As is obvious, this is a Pinkie Pie song. I don't know for sure, but I suspect the title comes from the scene in "Lesson Zero" where Pinkie brings a picnic basket, which immediately floats away. Other than a couple of slightly odd (but short) rap sections, this is a rather nice, light'n'bouncy track, told from Pinkie's point of view, explaining how she sees the world. There are only a few show samples, but they fit quite well. FraGmenTd does still have a Bandcamp, and though you can't get this version of the song there, you can purchase (for $1) a dance remix.

5: The Living Tombstone – September

We're back in the land of The Living Tombstone now, for the last time in 2011, though many will know it from the 2012 BronyDanceParty video. This is a pretty dark song, in which a pony wakes to find the land ruined and ponies dead, with no memory of "what happened in September". As the track progresses, he gradually recalls more and more – until, right at the end, things take a shocking twist. Well, shocking the first time you hear it, at least. I quite like the structure and melody of this one, but it's another where the strength of Tombstone's accent gets in the way a bit. There's a 320k MP3 download in the video description.

4: Eurobeat Brony – Luna (DREAM MODE)

Here's another song from the very early days: 20 May 2011. It's not quite the oldest brony song that's still popular, being a few weeks younger than "For the New Lunar Republic" (no. 20), but it's close. It sounds as you'd expect an Odyssey Eurobeat track to, albeit with rather more basic production values than his later Pony works. It's about a character who is experiencing a similar situation to Luna; as the artist emphasises, it's not sung from Celestia's point of view. There's the odd awkward lyric ("infinite despise" doesn't really mean anything) but this still deserves its classic status. Get the HQ version for whatever you like on Odyssey's Bandcamp.

Next time: two of the top three are revealed, and one track's popularity has endured significantly better than that of the other.

Ponyfic Roundup 241: Unobtainium

I did have a vaguely interesting intro this week, but I helpfully forgot to include it and left the intro from last week's PR as a placeholder. So it'll have to wait another week!

Read it Later story count: 268 (nc)

Just two stories today. There should have been three, but one had gone by the time I reached today. This seems to be happening more often than it used to, perhaps because of the relative ease of nuking Fimfiction accounts now. It's a shame, but there it is. Anyway, today's pair are:

The Life of a Quill: The Taste of Cold Steel by Quillian Inkheart
Twilight Spun... by Starscribe

★: 1 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.