That's poor in both senses, I'm afraid! Though before I say any more, I need to stress that I have a warm, safe home, enough to eat, internet access... the essentials, really. I am not in danger of losing those. However, I won't be doing much beyond those essentials for a while. Without going into boring details, I will very shortly be going in for dental work to be done. Which, as we're not just talking a quick filling here, means dental bills as well, and they won't be small. (I

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I keep my online activity to an absolute minimum on Christmas Day, so I'll take this opportunity to wish all of you reading this a Merry Christmas!¹ However life has treated you over the past year, I hope it treats you better over the next. I shall be back to reading Fimfiction on Boxing Day!
¹ By all means substitute another holiday if you like though here in the UK, we tend to say "Merry Christmas" to everyone; "Happy Holidays" is quite rare.

Loved it! A few little quibbles, not all the acting from the newcomers was stellar and sadly parts of the gender-related stuff felt awkward and forced, eg "something a male-presenting Time Lord wouldn't understand", but I liked much more than I didn't. Plus one of my worries about the new Disney-cash-infused Who has been dispelled: this definitely did not feel like a big American series. The ending with Donna spilling her drink into

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Fortunately not in the literal sense! But yeah, I'm currently stuck at home, yet not feeling well enough to concentrate on ponyfic. It's a seriously annoying combination.

This is inelegantly copy/pasted over from the (slightly) nicer looking report over on Louder Yay. Of course, I'm sure you all read Louder Yay anyway because you're such great people, but just in case here's the report here as well...

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Even though it was a shorter affair for me this year than usual, it was still great to get to Nottingham for UK PonyCon. As ever, a big part of this was catching up with friends I hadn't seen for a long time, especially at the pre-meet at the Roebuck on Friday night. The two names that people on here are most likely to know are Ghost Mike and hawthornbunny, but there were quite a few more -- including folks going for their first ever convention. One of us, one of us, etc.

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Yes, I'm off to Nottingham tomorrow. Sadly for a variety of reasons, not least the continuing financial fallout of that car accident in June, I can only attend the Saturday daytime (until about 6pm) portion of the convention this year -- but that's much better than nothing! This year's guests of honour are Kelly Sheridan and Elley-Ray Hennessy, and while matching last year (Actual Fluttershy, Andrea Libman herself) would be impossible, that's not a bad duo! A train strike means my evening

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Rather more reviews from me in July than there had been in June. We start off with the final part of the "Arboreal Yearnings Contest" results and follow up with three "mixed bag" editions. I'm very happy to say that there's a five-star story in this month's batch -- feeling able to award a top score is always a wonderful experience. As usual, please click on the underlined header to each section to be taken to the actual review blog.

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This is a bit of a whinge, but I wonder sometimes whether some people bother to read group rules any more. The Underappreciated Story Society has a clear, short set of rules. One of these is "No New Stories", which is then defined as meaning fics in their first week. As of my writing this, more than one folder there has stories added in their first two days. Given that an

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For a small variety of reasons, not least my spending a week away on holiday, there were only three editions of Ponyfic Roundup in June. Indeed, one of those was a single-fic Spotlight, so this will be a rather shorter post than sometimes. The other Roundups were the first two parts of my reviews of "Arboreal Yearnings" contest stories. As usual, please click the underlined intro to each section to read the review blog itself.

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