First things first: happy thanksgiving to all you Americans out there! Couple days early, yes, but it’s not like I’m gonna have a blog on Thursday to say it then. May not mean to us this side of the pond, but we can appreciate spending time with family and being thankful for what we have for sure.
March 1st saw witness to a brief but strong (and unexpected, to the ire of the weather people) bout of snow. Which, if you’ve never been to Ireland, is extraordinary rare – the last notable such spell we had was six years ago in March 2018, a cold front so strong it actually shut schools and college down for several days (all your Northern Americans and Canadians are yawning at this, I’m sure 
).
So, how about that Crowdstrike fiasco on Friday, eh? Despite our workplace using Microsoft Teams for all meetings, we weren’t affected at all, so I might have missed it altogether were it not for discussions in Discord servers and hearing the news later – some pubs and cafés even had to go cash only for a while. No real insightful commentary from me here (
), but a big deal nonetheless, never been something on this scale before.
I really don’t travel much*, but on the rare occasions I do, the flying downtime bereft of internet nudges me to read lots of Ponyfic. Such was the case this past weekend, where I read enough to have the fics locked for next week’s Monday Musings (I did say my backlog has well depleted, hadn’t I? 
). Which means, what with that being the last regular week, that the pressure for Monday Musings has basically lifted.
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.
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?"
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,
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.
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.
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.
This being Ireland, and not the Western/Southern United States as it is for a hefty chunk of the audience, only now are the effects of Summer starting to make themselves known. And still in a limbo where sometimes it’s warm enough to only wear a t-shirt outside, other times it’s not, and there’s no rhyme or reason. Plus the unpredictable rain, of course.
Another mild milestone this week! First story reviewed to be over 35,000 words long, if not quite a novel (apart from having fewer conflicts than one, it doesn’t hit the loose 40K cutoff threshold), and also the longest review week yet, with 50K worth of writing across these five stories.
And also the shortest story, at less than a thousand words. Yeah, I don’t know how that’s a thing either.
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
Alright, I’m spent. It’s Sunday night as I’m writing this, I’m more knackered than Big Mac after the turkey call competition, and I have literally nothing to mention as a forward to this Ponyfic Review Monday Musings that’s springing to mind, except a pointless two-paragraph ramble on what I’ve been watching lately. I won’t blame you for skipping it.
We’re already starting to see dividends of my efforts on reading more longer stories, albeit small dividends: this is not the week with the longest word count (that still belongs to my first G5-fics only week, right before Tell Your Tale debuted), but it is only the second week to break 40,000 words. Moreso, it includes the first story over 30,000 words long.
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. 
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