Ponyfic Roundup 314: Spotlight on Drifting Down the Lazy River

Read it Later story count: 187 (-1) 

A week late, but at last here is another Spotlight edition of Ponyfic Roundup! I can't even remember when I last did one of these, though with luck the wait before the next one won't be quite so absurd. Off we go:

Drifting Down the Lazy River by Georg
OC, Seaponies, Celestia and Luna
Romance/Adventure; 99k words; Feb 2017; Everyone

A frustrated young orphan with a talent for painting attempts to run away from his rural village and escape to Baltimare on a raft, only to find out that the river Fen holds an unexpected answer to his problem: Seaponies

This is the sequel to The One Who Got Away (PR 233), and it definitely helps to have read the original although I'd suggest it's not strictly necessary. This fic, which has significant and deliberate echoes of Huckleberry Finn, is both longer and better than the first. Our hero this time is not Baron Gaberdine, though both he and young seapony Ripple are major supporting characters. It's an orphan named Turpentine who is deeply set on being an artist. His devotion to that shines through all the way through the fic, and though very occasionally I wondered whether he was sounding a bit adult for a ten-year-old colt, Turpentine's unhappy foalhood has reasonably made him old beyond his years in some ways. I was pleased to see that his orphanage wasn't a place of terror and misery, which makes a change in fiction! PaulAsaran says, "The pacing is perfect, the plot moves from point to point with enviable smoothness, the characters are endearing," and I can't improve on that summary. Recommended! ★★★★

There's a bit more comment – spoilery comment! – after the break.

And yet more delays :(

The manifold glories of the year we call 2020 have struck again. Twice. Not only do I feel rather unwell today (no, it's not the dreaded lurgy) but some other stuff has come up that can't be delayed. Nothing horrendous, just home maintenance stuff, but it's time consuming and needs attention straight away. As a result:

There will be no Ponyfic Roundup this Wednesday. Drifting Down the Lazy River will now be reviewed on 7th October. No other fics will be reviewed until DDtLR has been.

My apologies to everyone, but especially to Georg. He's waited a very long time for this review and I'm sorry he's going to have to wait another week.

My Little Repeats 53: "The Crystal Empire, part 1"

The shadows in this early scene were really remarked upon back then

S3E01: "The Crystal Empire, part 1"
Written by Meghan McCarthy
10 Nov 2012

My original rating: N/A
IMDb score: 8.4

The one with Pinkie's Fluttershy costume

Thoughts: Here we go with Season 3! This is a premiere that's had a slightly indifferent reception in some quarters, but which seems to have been rehabilitated a bit in the fandom in recent years. It certainly has its good points: for one, it's visually pretty lush, and I remember the feeling that it was a step up from S2 in that regard being noted at the time. Sombra's first appearance is genuinely frightening, especially given he manages to cripple Shining's horn, and the flashback to him overseeing his chained slaves is quite shudder-inducing too. At this point you really do have hope he'll be one of the best villains ever. Shame it doesn't quite work out that way. Dark magic gets the first of only a very few outings in FiM, and it's quite a shock to see Celestia wield it. A couple of songs, neither in the very top tier overall but both pretty decent. Spike gets to sing for the first time, too! There are certainly a few weak points here, such as Twilight just happening to fail to notice a very obvious missing page. Celestia's vagueness about Twi's test and Luna's unexplained frowns are a little annoying, too. Still, overall it's good entertainment, with not merely Pinkie but Rarity providing many of the laughs, and the cliffhanger at the end is pretty nail-biting as these things go. I don't think it does quite enough for a four, especially as it's a little disjointed, but I certainly place it in the upper reaches of the threes.

Choice quote: Cadance: "One of these days we need to get together when the fate of Equestria isn't hanging in the balance."

New rating: ★★★

Next up is, of course, "The Crystal Empire, part 2". We'll see how Sombra's plans work out (or not) and whether I still think the episode was something of a missed opportunity.

Ponyfic Roundup 313

Read it Later story count: 188 (+1)

Well, if real life isn't coming back for six months, then made-up life will have to fill in the gap. That at least is nothing to fear in the wonderful world of ponyfic! Three more stories under the somewhat battered magnifying glass this week:

Empty Nest by The Descendant
Future Considerations by Chris
Mise en Abyme by Slavoj Zizek

★: 0 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 2 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I find average scores two stars.

Sounds of 2013, Nos. 24 to 20

After rather a long break, it's time to return to Everfree Radio's 2013 list of the fans' favourite 100 tracks. The usual refresher on the criteria for inclusion – to get in, a song has to satisfy at least one of the following rules:

Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the artist
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion

Here are this week's five songs. The run of skipless instalments has been broken, but oh well.

24: skipped
23: Replacer and &I feat. Feather – Until the Sun
22: David Larsen ft. MandoPony – Double Rainboom
21: DJ Pon-3 – Vinylicious
20: Forest Rain – A Summer in the Stars

As ever, there are YouTube embeds of the featured songs after the break, along with a few details about each one.

Griffish Isles 2020 cancelled; GI 2021 scheduled for November

Twitter thread here announcing the news.

Officially this is being called a postponement, and I understand why the Griffish Isles people have used that term – but in the everyday world away from careful contractual language it's a cancellation. Though frankly one pretty much everybody I know was expecting. GI 2020 had been scheduled for October, and the situation in the UK is such that a convention in October is very much in "not happening" territory.

The Twitter thread does state that GI's new venue "could have accommodated us within government social distancing rules" – though I must admit I'm at a loss as to how any indoor gathering of several hundred people would have been permitted in Manchester. Maybe they were planning on having it all in the hotel car park with one person per alternate space! Okay, not a serious suggestion.

GI have said that they're now going for the weekend of 21st and 22nd November 2021 for their con. The May date used in previous years isn't practical as UK PonyCon 2021 will be then... if that can go ahead, which of course is itself up in the air right now. (For what it's worth, I think UKPC is a possible if a lot of things go right in the next few months, but it's well short of being a surefire bet.)

The dates GI have chosen is roughly the time the now-no-more BronyScot convention used to happen, so people in the UK are used to doing cons in November. The venue has agreed to the new date, as have the guests. So we'll see how it goes. I enjoyed my half-day at GI in 2019, so I may be open to attending this. If and only if, of course, I consider that it's sensible for me to do so. 

One other point: unlike many other conventions, Griffish Isles have chosen not to do an online version of their event. There isn't really a reason given for this beyond "we are interested in providing an in person event" – which is a bit of a non-answer really, as they're not mutually exclusive. But as I said the other day, maybe the online con field is a bit saturated by now anyway.

This blog isn't really the place for me to go into detail about my views on the wider health, societal and political issues connected with Covid-19, but I think it's fair to say that November 2021 is so far off right now that nobody but a fool would claim certainty about what that date will bring. It'll be great if the con can go ahead in recognisable form. I do have hope that it will. But as ever, time will tell.

PonyFest 4.0 today!

 The fourth iteration of the original MLP online convention happens today. It's sticking with its usual one-day format, and to be honest there aren't a huge number of things on the schedule that really grab me this time around. No unmissable musical acts, only a couple of panels... to be honest, I may well not take so much interest in most future online cons, with the big exception of UK PonyConline in October. I think I've almost had enough of them now.

However, there's no doubt that real-world developments here in the UK recently mean that many people could badly do with a distraction and a trip to Equestria. As such, I think I will still pop into PonyFest for a bit of fuf from time to time. For anyone considering attending, head to ponyfest.horse for the schedule, the vendor list and the various other things you expect of an online con. Things kick off at 3pm UK time.