Well I can rest easy now (and other things as of 9/2016) · 5:19am Sep 4th, 2016

So today's new episode, "Buckball Season," was a cute and fun one, but it doubly catches my attention, because as it happens, I've long had an idea for a fanfic that runs freakishly similar to it.

I had thought I had made mention to it's existence before way back in my early days on this site, but upon reviewing my archived blog posts, that clearly wasn't the case, so here's a quick run through:

Tentatively titled "Keep Your Eye On The Goalie" and originally devised to be set around seasons 2 or 3 of MLP, it features Rainbow Dash serving as team captain for Ponyville's local Pegasus Ball team for an upcoming match against the team from a rival town, and training is going good until the team's usual goalie is injured in an accident and can no longer play on short notice, leaving Rainbow to have to come up with a last minute replacement. She eventually discovers, to her surprise, that Fluttershy happens to have all the needed skills to be an uncanny goalie for the team, and talks her into playing. She agrees, but rapidly has a confidence problem hindering her ability to adequately play.

Sound familiar?

Things divert from the path the episode takes from there, though, as the rest of the plot was about how Pinkie lends Fluttershy what she claims to be a lucky rock, or the "luck-endowed intrusive igneous aggregate" according to my notes, which allows Fluttershy play much better, thinking she has luck on her side...until Fluttershy loses the rock in time for the big game. So Fluttershy has to learn to be able to still play her best without the lucky rock, and eventually succeeds, helping to win the game. The story then ended by revealing that the supposedly "lucky" rock was never actually the lucky rock after all; it had gotten mixed up with another more ordinary rock that happened to look similar by accident when it was handed over to Fluttershy to borrow in the first place, proving that Fluttershy's confidence problem had all been in her head anyway.

Nonetheless, the resemblance is clearly there--Buckball even works rather similarly to what I had devised for Pegasus Ball, except Pegasus Ball featured all-pegasi teams and had a bit more Quidditch/soccer-like elements in it--and it was a plotline I could always see MLP actually doing, hence my appeal in the tale, so it's fitting MLP eventually did do its own version with it.

I ended up never writing my version due to getting caught up in other projects and other real life concerns, but ultimately I'm glad that MLP beat me to the punch, because honestly I think they did it better. Not only do I like their given moral far better, they also had a more balanced cast featuring a more diverse number of characters by getting Pinkie and Applejack (the latter of whom was never really present in my version) into the mix. As well as Snails, who I loved his continuously chill persona throughout the episode.

Of course, I also liked Pinkie's hairdo she wore during the training sessions of Buckball...even though I was thinking the whole time of Izzie's Got The Frizzies:

Izzie's, Izzie's got the frizzies!
And now she's gonna tell you hoooooooow
Izzy's got the frizzies!
"It's because of the humidity!"

Anyway, since MLP beat me to the punch and I love what they did with the idea, I'm going to let this particular fanfic idea go. Though I still hope to maybe someday fit what I had devised of Pegasus Ball into some future fanfic.

Speaking of...

Might as well use this chance to update on where I stand on all that fanfic writing.

Well, to start off with, since I last spoke on the subject, "Artifice" got posted, which did mildly well. It never hit the feature box (that I know of) but according to my little brother, it did make the list of popular fanfics shown on the front page for a couple days, so that's something.

As for the others, the "Shadow of a Ghost" rewrite and the ever mysterious "swansong" fanfic I keep alluding to...surprisingly, progress continues on both of those, though it's slow going. Only really noteworthy thing to note here is that I estimate that I'm nearing the halfway point on the "Shadow of a Ghost" rewrite, so if you're waiting for that, that should please you to hear. Hopefully progress will keep moving forward on both of these projects and soon I'll have more reading material out for you guys that'll make it worth the wait, for which I again apologize.