So many things... on the blog... for me to waffle about

Typing this with my long-abandoned PC keyboard instead of my laptop one. I really hate it how they made the Left Shift key smaller so they could fit in, of all things, an extra backslash key. Like, of all the extra keys I could wish for, I think the backslash-and-bar key is at the very bottom of the list. Maybe if I was an ASCII artist?

So in other news, I came third in the Hearth's Warming Care Package contest with my story about Sweetie Belle getting stage fright. It came as quite a surprise, especially since I beat Chris's Going Up (one of my favourites and – I thought – a shoe-in for first or second). Anyway, I'm not gonna complain – I get some cover art out of this, and that's pretty cool.

I'll upload Stage Fright! here once I get that art and make some changes to the story based on the feedback I've received. It'll still be the same basic story, but you might want to avoid reading it until then if you haven't already.

So, that episode. Just watched it. Spoilers in white all-new spoiler tags, highlight to see them. I enjoyed it, though I enjoy most pony episodes. I've only watched it once, so I won't go into too much detail, but mainly what I want to talk about is Luna, and how she enters dreams now, and how I happen to have a fic about a pony who does exactly that.

In short, it is very cool, and this new canon gives me some interesting things to work into I Dream of Daisies. Writing ongoing stories for a show with ongoing, ever-changing canon is a dangerous business, but sometimes new canon comes along and gives you new ideas for your work instead of shooting it full of holes (like with "Secrets of My Excess" and Long Distance), and those are moments to cherish.

The new FIMFic layout is gonna take some getting used to (and I hope ampersands and quotation marks start displaying properly soon), but I think I'll like it – especially all these new non-shipping banners, and the joy of not seeing the Feature Box everywhere. Only thing I don't like is how it seems to have broken the super secret BBCode I was using to make those left- and right-aligned boxes in my custom box work. Also, I think portalz0r's script is mucking with it a bit though, so get on with fixing that! *whipcrack* (I like some of the new banners, but 502Fiction is still best banner by far)

And we should totally make a group called "Bring back the old layout" so we can pretend this is Facebook.

I put a Santa hat on my avatar because TD told me to. You should too, unless you don't want to. Maybe you were raped by a Santa hat at a young age, or you haven't been visited by the three ghosts yet, or you'd rather not go along with this most commercialised of holidays.

Oh, and as a special end-of-blogpost treat, here's something I wrote a while ago for a bad shipfic contest:

Pinkielight Sparklepie

It was a dark and stormy night, and the Clocks were all striking Thirteen.

"Ow! Stop!" cried Thirteen Shades, famous writer pony, as the hardcore timepiece-themed gang of donkey bikers beat him within an inch of his life.

Meanwhile, somewhere else, Twilight was reading a book about science or maybe or magic or possibly the science of magic. That last one would make the most sense because she is a pony in Equestria, and you know, ponies in Equestria have magic instead of science. I wish we had that, maybe then I wouldn't have to sleep so much in science class.

Anyway, so Twilight was sitting there all quiet-like, minding her own business and readin' some words on a page. She looked so innocent and naieve, like a plate of waffles no-one had had sex with.

A very tasty plate of waffles, thought Pinkie, psyching herself up for her role in this shipfic. She'd always preferred comedies, but her mother had cancer and her sisters all had triple-AIDS and their medical bills didn't pay themselves.

Pinkie walked up behind Twilight, doing some sultry sashaying and slaloming and stuff, it was super hot, if you're a pony I guess.

"Hey Twilight, I love you because you're smart, and because in that one episode we dressed up like Sherlock and John and I love to write slashfics about them, so let's sex!" she said, cutting through at least seventy chapters of subtle, slowly smouldering relationship-building bliss I had planned. Oh Pinkie, why you gotta break the fourth wall so much?? It must be because it is super funny and always leaves the reader in stitches.

"Sure!" said Twilight, looking like she'd just found the lost library of… like, sex plus something Twilight would like, I guess.

***

Twilight and Pinkie emerged from the library hours later, looking exhausted.

"I hope you enjoyed my exhaustive lecture on the reproductive habits of every animal known to ponykind!" Twilight shouted after Pinkie as the latter head for home. "I'm not even using a disgusting metaphor euphemism thing here, that is actually what we did. Whoever wrote this story is basically the best at subversive parody, and I totally do not want to have his babies because that would make this look like some weird self-insert which the author is too good for."

Little did Twilight know, the author sadly wasn't too good for beating self-deprecation into the ground with blow after unfunny blow. He cries himself to sleep every night.