I can make plans? Also, I ship AppleDash, here's why:

I have had many plans. I have stuck to less than 10% of them. (Yes, I just made up that percentage, my point being I don't stick to a lot of them)

However, I don't seem to learn, so I've come up with a few plans of things I want to get done.

The first plan is another mystery. It's in the process of being written, with one and a half chapters already finished out of three. I am particularly happy with the resolution, but obviously I can't tell you that here. What would the point of that be? Just know that it's about Octavia and Vinyl Scratch, and I'm pretty proud of it so far. Here's hoping I don't get distracted.

The next two are a bit more interesting. I have started neither one, so chances are these are just some random thoughts I'm throwing around. How I came up with the ideas, though, is a little more interesting. I've been looking for challenges to do, since I particularly enjoy overcoming them, and doing them well.

The first is AppleDash related. There are a ton of stories that relate to Rainbow and the Wonderbolts, and have the pairing encounter problems due to her needing to leave or be busy most of the time. This theme has been done a lot, and by some very talented authors, too. Obviously, I shouldn't get involved, right? No sense beating a dead horse.

Wrong! That horse is twitching! Where's my tire-iron?

Whilst I'm not enthusiastic about leaving behind my intentions to approach the ship and all other subjects in new and interesting ways (or at least try to) my reason for wanting to try this is two fold: I came up with a great pun, and I want to use it, and I believe that the way I will approach the subject is different. Very different, in fact, with ideas I'm confident haven't been portrayed before (or at least, not much).

And my second plan (and I can't believe I'm saying this) is for a HiE. I've never voiced this opinion before, but I don't like HiE. Why? Because there's always at least one HiE story on the homepage, and every time I read the description, frankly, it sounds the same as every other one before it.

And that's where I intend to differ. This idea is a challenge to myself, and also to HiE everywhere. I'd like to prove that the genre can be different, can be unique, and can be entertaining. Obviously, such lofty ambitions are bound to be crushed, yes? Well, probably. Almost certainly. This is HiE we're talking about. There are a lot of them, and even though a lot are annoyingly similar, there are bound to be those few that give the genre a good name. But I'm not afraid of taking a few risks.

So those are some ideas you can (hopefully) expect from me in the future. The mystery I mentioned is going to be finished soon, so I guarantee that one at least. The next two... less so. They're ideas, and I haven't stuck to many in the past.

In the end, pretty much everything that's done has been done before. That's what happens on the internet. But I've done some pretty original stuff (I think) so far: I based a romance on phobia, I blew up Rainbow's house (twice), wrote an adventure about going to a coffee shop without it being outright comedy, and I made Shining Armour a detective before he married Cadence. Maybe, just maybe, I can throw a new spin on these latest subjects too. At the very least, I want to find out, whatever the results may be.

I'll try my best not to disappoint!

Today, there's one more thing I'd like to talk about, and I've been meaning to for some time. I'd like to explain why I ship AppleDash, of all things. Bear in mind, this is mostly my opinion, so agreement is optional.

It started during my revision period last year. It was not fun, and it was then that I discovered this awesome show that made me feel much happier about myself. It was called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I'd watch the episodes every evening, and it was tons of fun.

Then, just when revision got serious, I ran out of episodes. I was basically screwed, and my morale dropped faster than a bass at a dubstep convention. It was then, when at the height of my stress, I turned to fanfiction. I had previously scorned fanfiction in much the same manner I had scorned cartoon ponies, so it really was my first introduction to online fiction.

However, I encountered problems. So many stories I found sounded sad, some outright dark. Those couldn't cheer me up in the middle of stressful revisions! It was when I was browsing through stories on the EqD that I encountered a comedyfic. I believe it was called Double Rainbow (directors cut) or something similar. And no, it wasn't AppleDash.

It did feature (quite hilariously) Applejack being infatuated with Rainbow Dash. I think this was to poke fun at the pairing, honestly. I laughed, and it got me thinking. The idea of bestpony and second bestpony getting together made me curious. I explored further, and found some really good examples of AppleDash, including Those Blue Wings, and later on the AppleDash Project (one of my all time favorites).

They were fun, and wasn't afraid to be funny, too. It could get serious, but not in a silly way. I've never liked a lot of romance that had both parties acting like they were soul mates constantly. Both ponies were never afraid to poke fun, tease, and sometimes get outright angry at each other in the show, and this trend continued in the shipfiction I read.

But that wasn't really the reason that reading it made me happy. It made me legitimately smile, and that's something that almost no other ship has done for me. I think this is because of something I call the Cuteness formula, and it describes how cute and adorable something is as the difference in toughness.

For example, both AJ and RD are tough. When they're acting romantically, they're not. This made their romance even cuter in contrast to, say, TwiDash, where Twilight is, most of the time, pretty adorkable. Her being cute and adorable is a more normal thing to see than Rainbow being all embarrassed about liking books. The same idea follows for romance, and also for being awesome. Every time Fluttershy acts brave and tough, it means a whole lot more than when Rainbow does it, because it's not her forte as a character.

And that's the story about how I ended up reading the ship. Not quite the same reason for why I began writing it, which I shall explain here.

Like I mentioned, a lot of the stories I initially read were things like Those Blue Wings and the AppleDash Rroject, both very strong examples of their ship. And I didn't often find much I found was as good. In fact, I even began noticing trends and cliches (Rainbow being afraid of being a fillyfooler anybody?).

Now, I have an ego. I even have to book extra luggage when I go on flights just so I can bring it with me. So it came as no surprise when I thought I could do better. I based myself of my Cuteness Principle, and wrote Rainbow as being afraid of a relationship, because reasons. It's not the best thing I've done, obviously, but I got a pretty good reception, all things considered. I'm still thankful of my first commenters and followers who, knowingly or not, encouraged me to keep going (I still have a special place in my heart for my very first commenter... No, not BFG)

I've learnt a lot more about the ship in the meantime: how their goals are different, how Applejack is a 'foil', how I see Rainbow treating AJ as 'home' as opposed to her own house, but at it's core, I ship AppleDash because it's the cutest, most believable ship I can see happening, and it makes me happy to read and write. I'm no analyst, so all that talk about their underlying characters goes right over my head, but that's fine, because I treat them as vectors anyway, and that goes right over their heads, so there!

Of course, feel free to disagree. If everyone shipped AppleDash, well, I'd have way more competition, and I can't quite handle that yet. So enjoy Rarijack (or even TwiDash, if you really have to) because there's no such thing as a 'best ship'. There is such a thing as 'my favorite ship', however, and I have reasons to back it up.

This has been a long, long blog post (for me) but I hope it explains a bit about where I'm coming from and why, and as long as I have an ego, I'll still be trying to write better stories than everybody else, because I'm a sucker for being humiliated.

Stay tuned for future stories, and have a good one.

HazardPony, the magnificent Teapot