What’s this? Ghost Mike actually has some news! Well, yes. I had quite the weekend, my friends. It was my parents’ 30^th anniversary yesterday, and as they passed on any celebration for their 25^th​​, they decided to have a massive gathering here. 60-odd people (a mix of family and close friends), catered buffet, the works. Been a long time since a family gathering (in part) was anything that size, even omitting COVID, we’re all just older and busy with our lives.

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While I’m no active pre-reader/editor, I have sometimes lent my services on such for Ponyfic when people asked. Last fall, one such fic was for Jarvy Jared’s Cammie. And as the crafty sod had the whole thing written before publishing a word, allowing for bi-weekly updates, now it’s all up. If this kind of story tickles your reading bone.

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I had hoped, when I finally got my schedule cleared up enough to do another author spotlight, that it would be fully a joyous occasion. Sadly, this is not the case, for today’s featured author, Ninjadeadbeard, was taken from us by cancer on December 19^th last year.

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Happy quarantine, everyone!

For those of you who don't know, my fan-novel The Ghost of Coltistrano was released last July, and in that time I've made an effort to begin a sequel series following that characters and expanding the world a bit more. It's been a great way to spend the quarantine and stretch the ol' writing legs again.

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Yeah, so my statement of reverting to a random menagerie of fics this week wasn’t quite true – after my first Author Spotlight back in Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #19, I’d agreed to myself to make them a semi-regular thing going forward, perhaps in the range of one every month or two. Well, last week of August, time for some queue shuffling! For the sophomore Author Spotlight, I’ve chosen

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I guess I’m looking forward to Pokémon Scarlet and Violet coming out on Friday, though I tend to play new Pokémon games at my own pace these days, which is less hectic than most people’s need to finish it in a week. My association with the franchise these days is a little grey in places, and the online community is to blame for that partially, to the point I often tend to just enjoy it on my lonesome more often than not. To a degree, anyway.

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Happy 2023, my friends! I hope you all had a good holiday. Mine was okay; uneventful, and I still allowed myself to get stressed over nothing for stretches. But towards the end, I relaxed and loosened up, and it did me some good. If nothing else, I’m resolving to try and go with the flow more this year, continuing to work hard on what matters, but allowing myself to have fun, in casual and dedicated hobbies, without worrying or guilt-tripping myself as much.

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Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if this week’s Monday Musings sailed by most folks, what with Hasbro and Netflix, in their infinite wisdom, dropping nearly three hours of G5 content across eight Make Your Mark episodes on us today. I’ll certainly be watching at least a few of them. Regular readings know of my expectations, but I’m gonna continue to largely keep them out of these Ponyfic Reviews. I doubt they will affect the fics here much, either in the short term or the long term:

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I had hoped it would be ages before I did another Author Spotlight on an author who had passed away (with the exception of Darth Link 22, who left us a little over a year ago, and is on the queue). Life is cruel, unfortunately, and so this spot in the queue is a spotlight on the fics of Level Dasher, who, despite a hospital surgery to remove a tumour, had cancer spread uncontrollably, finally taking him 15 days ago.

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I am often struck by random-yet-interesting thoughts as I go about my day. That’s not worthy of note. But just as I was pasting today’s reviews from my master review workfile into this week’s lot, I noticed the publication years of the fics, all different except for two, and spread over the site’s history. It got me to thinking: is that true of my reviews as a whole, or do I lean more towards certain years or eras of Fimfiction?

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I have quite the habit of timing my finishing of a video game – be that the main campaign, 100%’ing it, or just to the goal or stop point that I’m satisfied with: whatever I’m gunning for at the time – right as the next game that will be my big one for a while comes out. I’m sure that’s hardly unique, many folks probably do the same, especially when direct sequels of the game they’re currently playing are on the horizon. But it can take many forms, I find.

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Ghost Mike, Ponyfic Review Monday Musings #66, 12^th June 2023:

we’ve reached that point in the generation where everyone internally knows the writing is on the wall and are already refocused on the future. […] The lack of announcement of further content for G5 beyond the initial episode orders […] only further intensifies this.

Well, that aged well.

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What’s this? Halloween, you say? You know, it used to be an exciting time for me. Even as an adult, the last few years, I’d look forward to a little pumpkin carving, at the very least. But eh, lately I haven’t even done that. This year hasn’t really broken that trend. It’s not alone – most one-day holidays tend to glaze right by me these days, over in a flash. Honestly, though, it doesn’t bother me much. I certainly want to get back to carving a pumpkin every year, but otherwise, it’s fine, I

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Some minor but important housekeeping this week: I finished adding the word counts of every reviewed story to the spreadsheet Archive. Somewhat annoyingly, despite double-checking the story lengths and accounting for the two de-listed stories (I’m sure my fellow Ponyfic reviewers will baulk that only two of 250 have been removed), the word count is still off of that in the Reviewed bookshelf here… by forty-nine words.

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When I started out these Ponyfic Review Monday Musings, I didn’t have any definitive goals, beyond reaching the end of that calendar year. Which I did, evidently. And truth be told, both before achieving that and after it, I didn’t see a situation in which I didn’t make it to the one-year milestone. So even now, it doesn’t feel like that big a deal.

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As reported by Equestria Daily, Gillian Berrow recently disclosed at Ponycon Holland that one contributor to the minimal direct generational crossover in G5 is that Discovery Family still partially owns show content rights to G4. Worth remembering that Hasbro only partially owns FiM’s base tv channel – the rest formerly belonged to Discovery and now Warner Bros. Discovery after the 2022 merger.

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I just... I just thought I'd write this. This might end up being a long blog, but oh well. Let's begin.

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