Sounds of 2016, nos. 50 to 46

We're into the top half of the chart, yay! The Equestrian Trot 100 for 2016 has already thrown up plenty of interest, so I'm looking forward – as I hope are you – to finding out what we'll get this week. Here's the usual reminder of my inclusion rules:

Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original 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. 

I had to skip one track last week – and I'm sorry to have to say that I had to do the same this week. It's frustrating, but what can you do? Here are the four songs I am able to feature today:

50: PrinceWhateverer ft. Wubcake & NRGPony – So Long
49: The Wasteland Wailers – Broken Wing Recital
48: oodorato2 – トワイライト Sunshine Remix
47: PrinceWhateverer ft. Milkymomo – Frailty
46: skipped

I missed out on the waffle here last time, so I'm going to indulge myself a little bit more this week. I really do think the music scene for this fandom should be more appreciated outside it than it is. While plenty of fandoms have a few great songs created by fans, this fandom has well over a decade of them. That's quite remarkable. Anyway, let's continue...

My Little Repeats 195: "Sounds of Silence"

At this point, the Phantom's outfit parts to reveal... Pinkie Pie

S8E23: "Sounds of Silence"

29 Sep 2018

My original rating: ★★★★

IMDb score: 9.1

The one with sudoku

Thoughts: Kirin time! Now, to me kirin are a bit like Luna. (Stay with me on this.) I like them, but I don't share the utter adulation for them that half the fandom seems to. Fortunately, their big episode here – Gregory Bonsignore's only FiM writing credit – is a good one. The kirin/nirik¹ have an interesting concept and design. Applejack and Fluttershy make a good Map team, though Twilight's excitement about their being the first repeat Map team is never followed up. Autumn Blaze (voiced by Rachel Bloom) is a nice character and her song is plenty of fun. The moral is surprisingly solid for this late in the show's run. The crazy ticket office clerk is amusing. Downsides: Flutters insisting the kirin needed to be eternally silent isn't great. The plot is a tad predictable, and the story itself is actually not that packed with action. But I enjoyed the watch a lot. I think, as with "What Lies Beneath", it still just about scrapes a four. But no, I'm still not obsessed with kirin. Sorry!
¹ Fans often give the plural form as "nirik" too, but in the episode both that and "niriks" are used, more than once each. 

Choice quote: Twilight: "Sorry, Fluttershy – flanks don't lie." [Cringey, but funny with it.]

New rating:★★★★

The next episode is "Father Knows Beast" – and if I give that four stars, scraped or otherwise, you can probably safely assume that Logan has been quietly replaced by... dunno, really. But by something. From here, it's definitely a "get this one out of the way" episode. But I will give it a fair chance!

Ponyfic Roundup 548: Spotlight on The Witch of the Everfree

Read it Later story count: 90 (-2)

Words read this week: 56,028

Let's just ignore Muggins here having everything ready to go and not clicking the mouse button hard enough late on Wednesday night and not checking the next morning, shall we? Good. Time for another look at a longer ponyfic today! This is a tale that I'd never even heard of until recently, despite its nearly 40,000 views – but the author has a decent record and "alternative Sunset history" fics can often be interesting. This one has a notable difference from many, as I'll get to in a minute...

The Witch of the Everfree by MagnetBolt
Sunset Shimmer, Mane Six and Celestia
G4 AU; Slice of Life; 56k words; Mar 2015; Teen

My name is Sunset Shimmer. I am the strongest unicorn in all of Equestria, and my life is over. I'm in hiding and on the run, and I have no idea where to start putting things back together.

The difference I alluded to above? In this AU fic, which begins a short series, Sunset never went through the mirror. She's hiding from Celestia in Equestria itself. Along the way she interacts with the Mane Six, including a particularly interesting experience with Twilight. She meets Zecora in the Everfree Forest. And that's not the last of it. Sunset narrates herself, and so you do have to question narrative reliability – which is fine, considering just who is narrating. The chronology is grounded in the fact that the original sonic rainboom happens quite early in the story, meaning that the Mane Six are fillies just beginning to make their own way. But this is Sunset's tale – pony Sunset, remember – and her characterisation and development are satisfying pretty much all through. Even though it's an AU, you feel a clear link with the canon Equestria Girls character, but changed by her environment, which is as it should be. We even find out where that leather jacket comes from in this universe! There are some quibbles, such as Zecora's dialogue being a bit ropey sometimes, and the occasional meta can threaten to get in the way although it never quite does. I liked this a good deal, more than I thought I would to be honest, and it shades into the fours as a result. ★★★★

As usual, major spoilers lurk beyond this line!

UK PonyCon is (very nearly) completely sold out!

Yeah, I know Ponyfic Roundup still awaits, and it will be here tomorrow – but this news has taken precedence. UK PonyCon is very nearly completely sold out, a mere twelve days after tickets went on sale! As I write this on Thursday evening, All Weekend, Saturday and Sunday tickets are now sold. The only ones left on sale are purely for the music event on Friday night. If you want to be part of UKPC 2025, that really is now your only remaining option. At £15, the tickets aren't going to break the bank, either.

Why has the convention sold out in record-breaking time? I think it's a combination of several reasons. The largest is surely the significantly reduced capacity of this year's venue over the (unavailable) Nottingham one. The fact that tickets didn't go on sale until 12th July gave people time to save up, so more bought instantly than usual. A new venue adds a frisson of excitement. We're just starting to see G6 hints appearing. But mostly I think it's that reduced capacity. But even so, twelve days. Wow. 

Sounds of 2016, nos. 55 to 51

Some big news from UK PonyCon: Weekend and Saturday tickets are sold out already! The lower capacity of this year's venue (which was not the con's first choice) has been a major factor. Sadly the early sell-out of full-weekend tickets (not since 2018 has this happened in July) has caught out a couple of my friends, who just weren't able to buy in time. As I type, Friday-only and Sunday-only tickets are still on sale, but even they probably won't last that much longer.

Returning to music, today we round off the lower half of the Equestrian Trot 100 chart for 2016. As usual, I'll give a quick reminder of my inclusion criteria, of which Rule 1 is always the most important:

Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original 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. 

Last week I was able to feature everything. Not this time, sadly.

55: Foozogz – Acceptance
54: The Wasteland Wailers – Dare Master
53: skipped
52: JoinedTheHerd – Out On My Own (remix)
51: Metajoker & Respin – Become

You know what? No waffle here this time. Music awaits!

UK PonyCon tickets selling fast. Very fast

You know how I often mention that UK PonyCon has maintained serious popularity for so many years? And I mean many – it's the world's longest-running MLP convention, after all! Well, yesterday UKPC put out this blog post, noting that although the Birmingham Conference and Events Centre has its bonuses, one compromise that's had to be made is on total capacity. I don't think the number has been officially published, but most people I speak to expect attendance this year to be around 1,000 rather than the 1,300 of 2024. Anyway, I'll quote the part that stood out to many of us:

For Friday we have sold 55% of our available tickets

For Saturday we have sold 73% of our available tickets

For Sunday we have sold 59% of our available tickets

That's a whole lot of tickets! In fact, it suggests pretty strongly that if you want to attend on Saturday, which of course includes wanting to be there all weekend, you're going to have to get your skates on. (Or roller skates, if you're Hip-Hop, Jazzie or Melody.) Selling out early is not unprecedented – in fact, in 2018 UKPC sold out of everything but Sunday-only tickets in July. But in recent years they've been available almost until the day of the con.

Not this time, methinks! Remember, those percentages were before the flurry of sales that I know the announcement caused. I was one of those, by the way: I took the announcement to heart and bought my own ticket (Bronze sponsor) yesterday, almost as soon as I learnt about the official blog post. I'm very glad I did, because waiting much longer might have ended up turning into waiting for next year!

Ponyfic Roundup 547: Serious Edition

Read it Later story count: 92 (+4)

Words read this week: 24,863

Thanks to Blogger being a bit of a pain, Ponyfic Roundup is slightly late this week. For once it's not my own fault, at least! Anyway, as I noted last month, I once had an edition of PR wherein all the fics had the word "silly" (or variations thereof) in their titles. That being so, I thought, why not have an edition from the other end of the spectrum? And here we are!

Potions Are Serious Business by Rough_Draft
Twilight Sparkle Marries a Book (Seriously, Twilight?!) by ThePinkedWonder
Are. You. SERIOUS?!?!?! by SomeGenericPonyNameHere
Serious about Silly by Grey Faerie
Apples Are Serious Business by housedoc

★: 1 | ★★: 3 | ★★★: 1 | ★★★★: 0 | ★★★★★: 0
Note: I use a skewed rating system. A fic I enjoy an average amount scores two stars.