Hey, remember when I once tried themed character weeks? Yeah, me neither: it had four attempts early on*, but they were more just fics matching the chosen theme then forming a statement. About time for a better revival, I say. How’s about a quintet of Cadance fics, all adding up to something to properly say about her?
And, here’s December. Christmas is approaching again fast. So much to do, not enough time. Got gifts to decide on and buy, a Jinglemas entry to write, other fics to at least not fully pause work on, plus video games to play and Ponyfics to write and review. A ghost’s work never dies, you might say. 
But, you know, I’m okay with it. I like being busy enough to not be lazy, without being so busy it gets to be too much. If that makes sense. I’ve at least already read and prepped
Nice advantage of a Bank Holiday Monday is I don’t have to have Monday MusingsTM ready to go on Sunday night, owing to not working up to nearly posting time of 6PM UTC (distinct from GMT, which doesn’t account for time zones). Meaning I can, and am, throwing this together shortly before pressing submit instead. Not a bad side bonus to national holidays always giving the following Monday off. 
I don’t know about America, but the price of travelling is going up more and more here. Just got booked in for UK PonyCon in October, nearly six whole months ahead, yet the hotel (same as last year) wasn’t even £10 less despite getting there two months earlier. Not even offsetting the £8 increase in ticket price. Then there’s the flights and if train prices will be different by then… yep, the worldwide travelling cost spike in the wake of COVID sure isn’t slowing down!
It’s probably not a surprise I don’t play party multiplayer games much. What I have said in here has probably spelt out that I prefer games with clear, linear objectives with definitive ends, and while I’m all for playing with friends, in person or online, doing the same against strangers runs its course once I’m used to the game. So it was certainly an experience last Friday when I found myself playing that (by now ancient 
) early lockdown hit, Fall Guys.
Anyone else ever remember giving something up for Lent when they were young? Even though it hasn’t been a thing in close to two decades for me, I’m reminded of it by two people in the house doing it for the first time in donkey’s years. Okay, one person, my mom to combat her sweet tooth: my brother is merely relaxing on the soft drinks outside of before and after sports training/matches. But that’s still 1.5 more than usual.
Just before Christmas, something interesting came up. Completely breaking major company convention, Netflix has released viewing hours for the period of January-June 2023 for every title that had at least 50,000 watch hours. Which is over 18,000 titles. Several of which are a property to do with colourful pastel magical equines.
Devil Rarity: "Now that we’ve got an audience hook, line and sinker with these Ponyfic reviews, it’s time for Phase 2 of the Grand Master Plan: Influencer Imprintation!"
Pinkie Pie: "Really?"
You know, after a holiday season where I let a lot that had happened throughout the year get to me, and keep me not quite as relaxed and joyous as I could or should have been, I think I’m feeling more at ease with things. Deliberately taking a week off not just from the more high-maintenance hobbies (fic writing, etc.), but from even thinking about them, did me some good.
End of the month, author spotlight time. We got us another new-ish* author that’s amassed a decent following in their time here with a body of work that’s been acclaimed by quite a large handful of folks as largely reliable and consistent, with a chunk of reasonable yet disposable stories, yet when there’s a knockout, there’s really a knockout. That being mushroompone. Don’t worry, they’re not the toxic variety of fungi.
Fifteen weeks strikes me as a reasonable break between Author Spotlights. And with the end of the year upon us, let’s look at an author whose work nearly always makes me laugh and/or smile. Not that this guy needs the promotion, with nearly 2,800 followers to his name (it’d be even more were it not for that immortal enemy Real Life™ – more on that later), but round here, what the ghost says goes. Thus, I give you Aragon.
Yes, I have seen Make Your Mark. No, I won’t be discussing it here – I learnt my lesson from my review of A New Generation on rushing out clunky reviews that I end up largely revising and redoing later. A lesson you’d think I’d have learnt from years of animation YouTubing… Expect something on it round the week’s end, or on the weekend.
Got some opening blurbs planned for the next while. Let’s lead off with a big one: 2023 for Monday Musings in review! A more sensible soul would probably make a separate blog for this, but I can’t always be sensible, can I? 
And sure, if there are souls reading this who can’t stand statistical quirks, well, there’s always scrolling until the first cover art to bypass the blurb. Which some may do already, come to think. 
One major advantage of having a hefty backlog of publishable reviews (if obviously nothing like the several months and million-odd words that PaulAsaran stockpiles), is that it gives me the bandwidth to do other Fimfiction things. Ideally writing my own stuff, though there’s no accounting for having the optimal drive all the time. More obviously, it also means I can pitch with others. The odd bout of pre-reading or editing, for sure. But also contest judging. Evidently FoME has a screw loose,
Very much a throwback this week, which feels appropriate for the first set in Year 2 of these Ponyfic reviews; not only is this a week of just short one-shots akin to when I started out, but I’m finally back to doing Author Spotlights again (the Ninjadeabeard one being a special and timed feature). This week, it’s Tinybit92.
And so the catchup of missed Author Spotlights concludes on the same month that marks a full year’s worth of them. Which is a good time to put them on ice, least as far as being regular features goes. Enough of them were strains to assemble that it’s better to do them when they come going forward. But if they are to finish now, I could hardly think of a better author to do so with than Impossible Numbers.
Giving the themed week thing another whirl today. This one has been in the planning for much longer than Cadance’s outing, mind, all the way back to January, if you can believe it. Which feels fitting for background pony Berry Punch, more often than not portrayed as a barpony, that it would gestate until the time is right.
Due to the eternal conundrum that is air travel, next week’s Monday Musings will go up late, as I will still be airborne on the way back from UK PonyCon at the usual time of 18:00 BST. It’ll still go up before midnight, as I’ll have it ready to go before departing on Friday, give or take a one-paragrapher on how it went to add before hitting Post; you can’t get me to miss a day that easily! 👻
Hopefully you’re not tiring of these Author Spotlights yet, because today's an absolute doozy. After a few weeks of picking authors I just happened to have some stockpiled reviews of and picking others to fill up a week, we’re back to specifically selecting someone and their stories for this from the get-go. My friends, today we're spotlighting the one and only Chris.
And finally, time for the last batch of entries for the Ancestral Tribute contest. Been quite a ride, and in a sense, the best came last; the winner is in this last batch, and these eight have the highest overall rating of the four weeks, with all fics getting a positive rating. Not to say there weren’t great entries along the way in the prior weeks, there were for sure, but it’s still somewhat telling, no? When in
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