I’ve recently picked up a bunch of new followers, and favorites on my stories old and new. If that’s you, thank you so much for liking my work! I’m glad I’ve brought some joy to your life. I’m never sure how well my work will be received, and seeing all the positive feedback is so great.

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When you are writing, do you prefer to listen to music or not? And if so, what kind of music do you prefer?

I generally do not listen to music, but I will sometimes if I find a song that is inspiring or puts me in the right mood. For example, I listened to the theme from Terminator 2 when writing The Last Crusade, and I listened to Owl City’s Fireflies while writing Faces of Love. I might put on some hand pan music now and then, but I mostly prefer quiet.

What do you guys think?

I hope this holiday season finds everyone well. I know this can be a difficult time of year for some. If that’s you, I wish you a special blessing this year to endure whatever troubles you, and perhaps find joy despite the challenges.

I didn’t have a chance to write a Hearth’s Warming story this year, so enjoy The Night Before Wednesday, which remains one of my favorite bits of pony fic I’ve written.

Take care everyone!

~Scribblestick

Many years ago, when I was a baby-faced college student thinking journalism would be my lifelong career path, I joined my college's writer's workshop. It was a great group of students who genuinely cared about helping each other write great stories. I eventually felt confident enough with them to share a couple of my MLP stories, even though none of them were fans of the show. That changed when one girl said, rather dismissively, "Ponies, huh? You'll get out of that phase eventually."

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So I was on Facebook earlier today and came across this little website in my news feed. No, it has nothing to do with ponies or anything relevant to this site. It's about mattresses. But, I feel like it's been a while since I unleashed my snark in written form, so I decided to just sort of have fun with it.

Apologies in advance for this being unrelated to anything relevant, or for lacking any coherency or basic factual truth.

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So I guess there's a new season of ponies or something. Guess I should say something about that.

I found a lot of interesting stuff about the Season 5 premier, but I'm either still thinking about what it means or too tired right now to explain it all. However, I will say I'm intrigued to see where this season's story goes because of one Starlight Glimmer. (Spoilers ahead if you haven't seen it.)

To summarize previous major villains from the show:

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What makes a bad fic bad?

It seems like a simple question, and one that any reviewer should be able to answer with ease. Bad grammar, overused plotlines, flat characters - the list could go on and on. But why are these things bad? Is there some objective way to measure a fic’s quality?

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I was reviewing a story earlier today that had many, many flaws. One of these flaws, as some commenters said, is that the author used a character from a well-known fic written by a well-known author. These commenters complained that, unless the writer had the permission of said author, using that particular character was bad. Somehow.

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I've made some changes to the first two chapters of "The Last Crusade." Nothing major, just getting rid of the horrible exposition blocks at the beginning.

That is all. For now.

I don't hate "Twilight's Kingdom." I want to get that out of the way now, in case someone thinks I'm going to be ranting about how much I hate this finale. Because I don't. I just found it underwhelming, and this is one reason why.

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