October Updates and Plans

Hey, everyone. It’s been a long time since you’ve seen “Updates and Goals” in the title of this blog, huh? Two and a half years ago, this was a common kind of post, talking about all the things I was aiming to do within the month and beyond (regardless if they ever got done or not). But as anybody who’s followed me since March 2022 knows, my mother passed away from cancer at a (relatively) young age, and it threw both my family and myself into turmoil. Aside from a single contest and that year’s Jinglemas, I largely took a sabbatical from pony writing and writing in general in 2022 and just tried to adjust to this new reality I found myself in.

When 2023 came along, productivity in regards to ponyfics wasn’t all that much better, with only 2 stories from me coming out that year (one for the Summer Sin Celebration, the other another Jinglemas tale). However, in the four years since I’d released my first pony short story collection, Endings, I’d managed to write enough stories to cobble together another short story collection titled Winter Dreams, Summer Reminisces. The book was dedicated to my mother, and when it was offered at Twilight’s Book Nook in the 2023 and 2024 Everfree Northwest, I donated half of the proceeds to the Foundation for Women’s Cancer. Not only did the book support a good cause, but it was a sort of therapy for myself that helped me focus my energy on something other than moping.

It was actually the most recent Everfree Northwest that prompted me to get back into pony writing. Winter Dreams actually sold out this year (in contrast to last year, where only one copy sold), likely because I advertised the charity aspect more clearly this year. It made me realize that my writing can make a difference, however small, and the fairly consistent comments on my stories proved that people actually wanted to read what I wrote. I also started feeling like I needed to write again; not wanted (I always want to write), but needed to create new stories. Everybody talks about creating art, but it’s the ones who actually do it that can call themselves artists. So I knew I needed to move forward with my ideas if they were to ever come alive the way they were inside my mind, and so I could say that, however silly or terrible the ideas may turn out to be, at least I put them to paper and found out if they could work.

I’ve also been very encouraged by the response from several of you here on FimFiction. Despite the stereotype of rampant negativity flowing through this fandom (Twitter especially seems to be up in arms now), I’ve experienced little of it and only experienced support from the FimFic community. Fan of Most Everything, one of the site’s biggest personalities, has popped up frequently in my comment sections and read my works, often leaving positive reviews. Miller Minus left encouraging words when my life seemed to be spiraling out of control all those years ago. Several others have left private messages with encouraging words, whether they follow me or not. So thank you to all of you who said something or just stuck around while I figured my life out. Kind words really are small, but they can help a lot over time.

So now is the time to write, and as such, I would like to list out my goals for the near future. As I said way back when, many of these goals are just as much reminders for me as it is announcements for all of you. Most of them are continuations from the last Update and Goal post I did all the way back in March 2022, but there will be a few new things. Not all of them will be completed by the times written here, but the aim is to provoke me to actually start them.

STORIES TO BE WRITTEN THIS MONTH

· Cozy Glow Story: The Cozy Glow Group has hosted a Cozy Glow Contest consistently for the last five years. I’ve always wanted to submit a story to them, but just never really got around to it. However, I’m pushing myself to submit a story this year, as I promised that in the initial query they gave back in July, and the fact that turnout has been rather low this year (there are only 2 submitted stories to this year’s contest as of this writing). The contest ends Oct. 7, so I’m going to whip something up pretty quick.
· Pony Poetry Contest: It’s been a long time since I’ve written any poetry, so this contest will give me an opportunity to flex my creative muscles. Still haven’t decided on a theme, so I’ll have to figure that out soon. (Due Oct. 18)
· October Flashfic: Many of you likely know of the Flashfic Group that does monthly contests of stories under 150 words. I’m going to get a story in by Oct. 21 (their deadline). The theme this month is “Uncharacteristic”.
· Solomon Kane Story: In case nobody’s seen my blog post ranking his stories, I’m a big fan of the Robert E. Howard character Solomon Kane. The idea of him having adventures in Equestria has been in my head for several years now, and the season of fall is the perfect time to start his journey. This will probably be released on Halloween.

STORIES TO BE WRITTEN OVER NEXT FEW MONTHS

· What You Give and What You Take: Some of you may be aware of the Quills and Sofa Group, which do writing prompts with really fast writing times. I wasn’t with them very long, as I felt their quick writing periods didn’t fit my personal writing habits. However, I did write one story when I was with them that I thought was strong (and so did the other members, because it won first place for that contest). I really want to polish it up, since the premise was great (Discord vs. his estranged son). I’ll probably aim for finishing it in sometime in November, with the outline at least getting done this month.
· Finish Kung Pow: Enter the Hoof: It’s been a running gag for years on my update blogs that this MLP/Kung Pow: Enter the Fist crossover would be completed any moment now, even though it’s been nearly a decade since the first chapter was posted in Jan. 2015 (with a single editing run in 2018). I have already written the second chapter, as well as outlined the whole story, but just haven’t gotten around to finishing it for various reasons. However, someone recently favorited it despite its age and incompleteness, so I’ve gotten a renewed drive to complete it once and for all. I’m considering finishing it by Chinese New Year (Jan. 29, 2025), but one way or another, it will be done by January.

SHORT TERM ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS

· Quantify sequel/rewrite possibilities: For several years, I wrote stories in the WriteOff Group, a well-respected contest group that’s been on this site for around a decade now. While I stopped participating in the group upon finding myself no longer needing the contests to push myself to write, there were several stories I did there that I’ve always wanted to revise and post to the site. I need to go through these stories and figure out which ones I want to work on. I also need to go through the 23 stories I’ve published here on FimFic and figure out which ones I want to do sequels to. Let me know if there’s a story of mine you’d like to see a sequel for, and I’ll think about it.
· Missed Contest Stories: One of the problems of early era FimFic was that it was sometimes difficult to find writing contests to participate in. Unless there was a site-wide post or a real popular user posted an announcement, it could be hard to learn about these events. Fortunately, around 2021, contest tracking groups like Hall of Contests started providing a centralized hub for announcing writing contests. There were a lot of them that I wanted to write stories for, but didn’t have the time or couldn’t think of a plot. I really want to list the contests I missed and see if I’m still interested in writing a story for them.
· Codifying Long-Term Series: Many of you know that all of my writing on FimFic so far has been one-offs, with no sequels or wider series written. However, as I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with my writing, I’ve realized that there are longer stories I want to tell. The character of Price Back, featured in Hard Deadline, was supposed to be my first series character, but I got sidetracked and haven’t gotten another story of his finished yet. So I’m going to try and start doing longer series. Solomon Kane and Price Back will be the first ones, but there are definitely going to be other series in the near future.

READING AND REVIEW GOALS

· Read and Review Ponyfeather Publishing Stories: The main reason I was able to publish Winter Dreams, Summer Reminisces was because RBDash47 created Twilight’s Book Nook for Everfree Northwest, and he’s been a great host for those of us authors who couldn’t visit the con. As such, I wanted to check out the publishing house RBDash47 runs called Ponyfeather Publishing, which publishes the crème-de-la-crème of pony fanfiction. My plan is to read all of the books over the next few months and talk about them on this blog.
· Read and Review Jinglemas stories: Jinglemas has been the only consistent contest I’ve submitted to for the past six years, but I’ve actually read very few of the other stories submitted for these contests. As the next round of Jinglemas will be coming in two months, I realize I need to start reading through all the past years’ stories before the new slate comes up. I also want to do reviews on individual stories that I find the most exemplary or just fascinating to talk about. It will be a difficult task (there’s over 600 stories), but I’m going to try and read through them over the next few months.
· Read and Review Jingleclop and Summer Sin Celebration Stories: Some of you know that Jinglemas had an evil twin called Jingleclop for one year, which was a contest that focused on clop writing. It was later renamed Summer Sin Celebration and moved to July, as some folks found it hard to write 2 stories in one month and it provided more narrative variety. I’ve participated in the contest every year (save 2022 for the reasons mentioned in the first part of this blog), as I’ve been trying to figure out how I feel about erotic writing. However, like Jinglemas, I actually haven’t read all that many of the other Jingleclop/Summer Sin stories. These will be easier to read and review since there are only about 170 stories, and many I will not read because they have content I do not like.
· Read and Review the Season 10 and Generation Five Bingo Contests: Some of you may know Shrink Laureate, who in 2020 and 2021 did writing contests for a theoretical Season 10 of MLP: Friendship is Magic and the first couple of Gen 5 stories on the site, using Bingo cards of random prompts featuring characters and places. Much like the other contests, I didn’t read many other contestants works…partially because I thought my submissions to these contests were some of my worst work and didn’t want to read stories I knew were way better than mine. I want to ameliorate that and finally see what others wrote.
· Read and Review Other Contests: As most of you can tell by now, I’ve submitted a fair number of stories to contests, but have also not read a lot of my fellow contestants’ works. I feel a bit bad, because I know they worked hard on them just as much as I have, so I wanted to go through all the contests I submitted for and read through them. These contests are: the Filly Anon Contest, Lofty and Holiday Contest, and Crackfic Storm 2024.

BLOG POSTS OF MAXIMUM IMPORTANCE

· Ranking Solomon Kane Comics: Way back when I did that aforementioned ranking of the Solomon Kane stories, I mentioned that I wasn’t reviewing the various comics featuring Solomon Kane because I hadn’t read most of them and figured most were just adaptations of the original Howard stories anyway. However, having now read many of the Kane comics, I’ve found that a good number of them are original stories, and even the adaptations have interesting creative choices. It also helps that Marvel, who did the most comics with the character, finally released an omnibus of their Kane comics from various titles back in 2020 that made it easier to find his stories. So I want to do rank these comics from both Marvel and Dark Horse, as they are extremely interesting (and may provoke a few ideas for my own Kane series).
· Essay for MLP: A New Generation: Most of you have likely heard the recent news that MLP Generation 5 will effectively be ending upon the conclusion of MLP: Tell Your Tale this month, as well as the possible cessation of any new Gen 5 comics from IDW. I’ve been wanting to talk about the film that kicked off this Gen, MLP: A New Generation, from the first time I saw it three years ago. So I’m aiming to either write a review or do a video essay explaining my feelings about it by the end of the year, as there are suggestions Hasbro will be doing a revamp of the property next year and I want to get my thoughts down before then.
· Write Reflection on Winter Dreams, Summer Reminisces: Some of you may remember I wrote a reflection on the stories featured in Endings, my first ponyfic story collection. I wanted to do another one for Winter Dreams too, as I wanted to think back on the stories and my mindset when I was writing this collection. Aiming for this to be out in late December or January.
· Filthy Rich is the Best MLP Character Blog: I’ve been promising this blog for a long time now, but I want to finally get it out. I legitimately really like Filthy Rich as a character and want to explain why he deserves more love. I was initially thinking having it out by Black Friday (given his fixation on money), but there’s a couple comics that I need read that use him as a character. So we’ll aim for early next year for this one.
· Why Garble’s Reformation Sucks: Most of you can probably guess what this one’s about by the title. Garble was a dragon who often antagonized Spike throughout the show before he was “reformed” in Season 9, and personally, I thought this was the worst reformation in the show. This post will basically be me ranting about how Garble was better as a villain and how he should’ve grown more nefarious as time went on. Don’t expect this one until maybe late January/February.
· Artistic Analysis of Skitter’s Age Regression Art: No, you’re not having a stroke; that’s the actual title. Basically, there’s an artist named Skitter who did a lot of transformation art that involved age regression for canon and OC characters. I noticed some interesting elements to these pics and how Skitter’s style evolved as they went on, so I really wanted to write an analysis of these artworks and explain how their progression showed an intriguing change in Skitter’s artistic mindset. This one’s actually going to be pretty in-depth, so I’m not putting a firm date on this one. Maybe January since New Year would be an appropriate theme for this discussion.

LONGER TERM PROJECTS

· BamHoofYah! Recovery Project: Out of all the things on this list, the BAMHOOFYAH! Recovery Project was most negatively affected by my mother’s passing. I had just posted the landing page for this project, which discusses a 2013 PMV that adapted a White Panda album, in March 2022 before everything went to hell, so when things did go sidewise, this project fell to the wayside the hardest. However, back in July, one of the project’s editors commented on the page and offered to talk about the project. So I really want to get this started back up by uploading the PMV (apparently someone else tried to upload it earlier this year; it was likely taken down because I can’t find it anymore) and moving on to the interview portion of the project.
· OC SlamJam Re-Read: Way back in 2015, well-known fandom guy Obsolescence did a contest called the OC SlamJam. This was a writing contest where contestants made their own characters, who were then matched with another author’s character. The two authors of the two characters would then write separate stories featuring the characters, and the participants would vote on who wrote the better segment. I only got to the second round with my character Price Back, and thus didn’t bother reading the rest of the entries starting with the third round. I want to go back and re-read the parts I missed, deciding if I agreed with the decisions of voters for the remaining rounds of the stories.
· Flashfic Story Collection: I mentioned the Flashfic group earlier, and one thing I’ve wanted to do is collect the various tales I’ve written for the group over the years into a single collection. At the moment, my contributions to the group only amount to 683 words, which is under the minimum 1,000 words FimFic requires for you to post a story. My hope is that doing the Flashfic contests for October, November, and December of this year will allow me to finally collect and publish them as a flash story collection.
· Figure Out MLP Story Contest Ideas: I’ve been toying with the idea of hosting my own writing contest, as I’ve found there are a lot of story subjects not many writers are broaching and I don’t want to be the only one writing about them (particularly with specific characters and genres). Still tinkering with this, as I want to make sure that the contest ideas used would actually attract a fair number of writers to participate.
· Year of the MLP Movie: Anyone who knows me is aware that I’m the biggest MLP Movie (2017) defender of all time. I’m planning on writing a long defense of it at some point, but back in 2022, I was planning to do something called “The Year of the MLP Movie”, where I would write numerous ponyfics featuring 2017 Movie characters throughout the year. However, as you can guess, the personal turmoil of 2022 put a pin in that plan and I never went through with it. I will not attempt to do this next year either, but I want to keep it in mind for 2027 (the movie’s tenth anniversary). Only time will tell if I go through with it.

So that’s the plan for a lot of this October and the coming months! Hopefully I get at least a little bit of it done, though with the work I’m doing outside the fandom that may be easier said than done. Whatever comes though, I want to thank you all for reading, and here’s hoping I can become productive again!