So what's next, after Warrior Meet? Or during?

Little bit of a preview/what's to come for the near future.

Warrior Meet is ongoing, weekly updates are scheduled. No change in plans there.

My next two story ideas have been converted to more or less chapter-by-chapter and scene-by-scene outlines, work on those will begin shortly, but I'll get to the timing in a bit.

First idea is Rainbow Dash and the Shameless Self-Insert: Rainbow losing the manuscript of her fanfic (see: Spike at Your Service) and frantically trying to find it before anyone reads it and ruins her chances of running for public office. Four chapters planned, nice and light-hearted.

Second idea doesn't have an official title yet, but the working title is 'Orphanhooves Social.' It will be a direct sequel to the Cutie Mark Crusaders Sleepover at Octavia's fic, and focus on Vinyl Scratch's relationship with Scootaloo. 'Focus' meaning: Vinyl tries to compete in the Sisterhooves Social with Scootaloo, as well as a hangover of epic proportions. Details are still sketchy, but I know I'll be including this:

"Darling, you went drinking with elephants?" Rarity asked.

Vinyl groaned and rubbed her pounding forehead. "Yup."

"But, but... elephants never forget, no matter how drunk they get."

"Tell me about it."

This will be contrasted with Spike competing in the Sisterhooves, partnered with Twilight Sparkle. Who keeps falling asleep due to an untimely studying session. Both are competing, so far in the concept stage, for a day with the most awesome pony in Ponyville: Rainbow Dash. Expect them to play up the 'orphan' card against each other, even though technically neither of them is an orphan. Slightly less involved with this one, because I do want to diversify my work a bit and I've been doing a lot of Scootaloo-related stuff over the years. I don't want to overdo it, or get accused of anything (Yes, this means you, Mr. Grand Accusor McJudgypants . You know who you are.)

Now, timing-wise: you may recall way back in last December, January-ish that I put up my resolutions for the year. Some of them have been very successful, some are mixed. One that I intend to finish the next two weeks is my review/discussion of Niko and the Way to the Stars, also known as Niko and the Flight Before Christmas. If you haven't seen that movie yet, do give it a watch, it's great. Just don't watch the CBS version of only 45 minutes, as that (allegedly) cuts out the one-night-stand story and the weasel's sexy dance number, or as I like to call it: the good bits. Anyhoot, I still need to find pictures for that, I'm planning to toss it up on DeviantArt when it's done. After that, I'll get started on the next couple of fics.

What about Changeling Blood's sequels? Bastion's story needs expanding! Yes, it does, but I'm told the last Season involved changelings to some degree, and I still haven't caught up with all of that. I may have to scrap some of my ideas for that series.

Speaking of series, you may also be aware that I use fanfiction to calibrate my writing skills for original work. Well, the next few stories will be calibrating how well I can do episodic stuff. You've already seen me try that with the triple-featured Rumble's Big Day trilogy, but the next step is creating my own world and doing a series in that. It's a big task, to be sure.

On a related note, art update: since there is some demand for pony animated figures, I'll be cleaning up my 2D puppets and uploading them to the Synfig forums, to be torn apart by the people who actually know what they're doing. I've already shown you what my shadow ponies look like, I'll be copying that workflow for original characters sometime next year and hopefully publish a tutorial. As for the animation I'd planned to do: it's a stick deer right now, which isn't quite what it should be, but it's a start. I'll upload that test run to YouTube soon, too, probably after I figure out how tuberculosis curves work. I think that's the term for it, at least

I also want to get back into Blender, more regularly. My latest attempt at a 3D pony didn't get finished, but it at least didn't look freakish in the process. Not in the head, at least. The rest of it... I still want at least one 3D pony that looks passable all around, since I've already got a passable-looking Filly. Aside from that, it'll mostly be original characters in 3D, because those are easier to re-use for novel cover art and I'm a lazy 'chu

Next blog: reviewing the resolutions of the past year, checking where improvements can be made, and after that, obviously, blogging the next year's resolutions.

Until next time, I can't think of anything good to link, so have some epic vidya game music:

Cracker out.