In the last two months, animatics of four Season Two FiM episodes have been posted online by a storyboard artist who worked on them, Raven Molisee (as one of two or four board artists). Presumably it’s a mixture of being for her showreel, though the uploads lack any edits to point out what parts she boarded, even if one can spot when the drawing style shifts. Regardless, it’s pretty cool, I think, to have production history legally available like this.

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It is pure coincidence of scheduling, and nothing but, but it seems oddly fitting that A New Generation came out exactly three years ago. This Roundup post marks the end of my movie review stockpile built up over the last year (plus scattered ones during the year-and-change prior), meaning it’ll be just an end-of-month roundup thereafter. And wouldn’t you know what film I specifically left the review of till last with these Roundups in mind?

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Best turn away if legacy Disney Animation isn’t your thing This roundup is mostly dedicated to the remaining Disney100 rereleases I saw last year, though there is a surprise or two to round out the lot to seven.

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As far as “officially” watching Friendship is Magic has gone over the years, the overwhelming majority have done so via Netflix. To the point that, reportedly, something like ten times as many people watch it there compared to its home network The Hub/Discovery Family. That may be small potatoes to us fans who obviously don’t wait for it to come there, but it’s worth acknowledging.

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I would caution that my rating criteria here is obviously not the same as with Ponyfic reviews, accounting both for them not being free (well, okay, they are if you’ve got the right streaming service, but you know), the different medium and higher standards. Perhaps in the future I’ll say more on this, but for now, ★★★1/2 is a good benchmark for “worth a watch, no strings attached”, though you have to go higher to get to hearty recommendations.

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Most of you will know that animation more broadly (though not all types and genres, of course) is probably my biggest passion. And as I am generally more a film ghost than a tv ghost, reviewing, analysing and dissecting animated films (plus live-action at times) is certainly something I've dabbled in over the years. If nothing else, it's been the primary developer of my style when discussing other media, and thus, the foundation of how I look at Ponyfic in Monday Musings.

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I don’t know how long ago it feels to you all that I announced Monday Musings would be ceasing regular weekly uploads, and moving to uploads only when I happened to have enough eligible fics, at max fortnightly (it was five weeks ago, for the record). But given I’d been wrestling with it since March, it feels long enough coming I can barely believe this is the final outing. And yet… here we are.

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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.

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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.

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While it didn't quite hit the stratospheric height of last year’s 168 entries, the third Thousand Words Contest eclipsing the 160 benchmark to the tune of 164 stories, despite only being open for five weeks instead of the usual two months (Bicyclette hosts contests on the regular these days, she’s a busy one), is yet another sign of our fandom still going strong.

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