I have a large number of stories which are on my favorites and recommended stories lists but which I have never done a real review for. I thought I might start correcting that. Consequently, every story in this post is either recommended or highly recommended. I would say that I hope you enjoy them, but I know you will.

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Sometimes, folks write stories which twist or reframe the basic premises of the series. Maybe they alter the relationships between the characters, or maybe they show us a different slant on things, a different way the world could have been with the same ponies – a world which adheres closely to the world we know, but which changes one thing and goes off in a different direction.

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I’ve not been doing terribly well lately. Let myself just sort of fall apart, not really do… anything of value, really. I read and reviewed some stories, but I didn’t want to post them, because I wanted this to be my 1000th review… I worked on some writing, but didn’t finish it, because I let myself get stuck…

And then, today, I decided I was tired of being stuck, and read Eternal in its entirety, from start to finish, in about six hours.

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Sorry folks, it’s been a while since I posted a review set. So I figured I’d start us back off with some of my favorite stories that I haven’t reviewed yet, before I start waving my cane at the kids to get off my lawn.

Today’s stories:

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Weeks ago, I started on this set with the intention of including a review of Eternal. Alas, I ended up reviewing five stories before I got around to reading it, and consequently it (along with Skywriter’s Heretical Fictions) got pushed off to another review post.

Why?

Because sometimes, when I’m stuck on a story, I go back and read through stories by others in the hopes of capturing some of their magic.

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As promised last weekend, I posted a story this week:

I Can Explain!
by Titanium Dragon

Teen, Sex, Comedy
1,033 words

Rarity explains to Sweetie Belle what the Cutie Mark Crusaders saw when they walked in on her and Applejack.

It was totally innocent. Really!

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On Thursday night, at about 6pm, my internet died. Around 10pm, it came back to life.

Fortunately, I downloaded a number of pony stories from FIMFiction, so not all was lost. Still, being without the Internet is a terrible fate, and leaves me feeling diminished, as if I have been cut off from a part of myself.

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It has been a while since I’ve done a set of recommended story reviews.

Unlike my usual review sets, in these, I am drawing from stories that I put on my recommended and highly recommended lists before I started reviewing stories.

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Today is Election Day in the United States, the crescendo of over a year and a half of people campaigning to be leader of the free world. Be sure to vote, if you haven’t already (I did in mid-October, because here in Oregon, we vote by mail – no waiting around in line, and plenty of time to research the topics while you’re voting).

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Recently, I’ve been trying to be more productive. There are all too many times where I’m aware that I’m wasting my time, and I’m trying to make more of an effort to divert said “dumb time” into time where I actually accomplish something of value.

We’ll see how well it goes, but I’ve managed to put out a review set every other day since I started. So, progress, right?

Today’s stories:

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I’ve re-read Heretical Fictions a few times over the years, but kept on putting off posting a review of it until after I reviewed Eternal, as Heretical Fictions is a story about Twilight and Celestia reacting to Eternal being published in Equestria. Thus, that story’s review kept getting shuffled forward and forward in time, until finally I reviewed Eternal.

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It has been a long time since my last recommended stories post, but I figured that before a nice long three day weekend (at least, here in the states, where Memorial Day is on Monday), some folks might want some good stuff to read.

All of these are taken off my favorites stories list from before I started writing reviews, so all of them are very good stories. Some of you may have read some of these, but if you haven’t, you shouldn’t keep missing out.

Today’s stories:

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While I haven’t posted a Recommended Story Review set every month, I have been trying to do so, and this set brings me up to #15. This is starting to have an interesting consequence, though. Because these sets are composed entirely of stories that I enjoyed enough to recommend before I started doing reviews, the number of stories I can include in these sets shrinks every blog post.

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It is almost Christmas, and that means that it is time for me to get off my butt and get people stuff to read for the holidays. I have been remiss in getting review sets posted; hopefully the rapidly approaching end of the year will encourage me to get more done.

This is a rather eclectic set of stories in some ways, but in another way, all but one of them manages to capture a lovely little sentiment. I wonder if you can guess which one that is from the titles?

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I was going to post another set of “Read It Now” reviews today, but the stories I was reading weren’t agreeing with me. So I figured I’d finish up this set of recommended story reviews, as I haven’t done one of these in a while.

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It has been a while since I wrote one of these. I had been planning to put this out before Christmas, but I ended up procrastinating too much on it, and didn’t get the last two stories reviewed until last night, when I was, ironically, procrastinating on doing something else.

Clearly, the real secret to productivity is to make it so that you loop your procrastination around to the point where you are always getting stuff done.

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In an attempt to re-energize my writing, I re-read a bunch of excellent stories in the last few days. But of course, it would be terrible for me to keep these to myself; while many of these are fandom classics, and others should be, if you somehow haven’t read them, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Hoofprints is perhaps one of my favorite pieces of writing on the site, and it is a pity it is hidden away in a short story collection; much like

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At one point, I was hoping to get at least one set of recommended story reviews done per month, meaning it would only take me, oh, a couple years to finish reviewing all the stories I would recommend or highly recommend but read before I started writing reviews.

It has been a bit slower than that. Still, I do hope you folks enjoy these.

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I made the fatal mistake this holiday season of overcommitting myself. I tried to get so many things done, I failed to get almost any of them done in time for my online friends.

But it is the holidays. And just as my mother orders things from Amazon and sometimes gets them on December 30th instead of the 24th, it is still part of the 12 days of Christmas, right?

That’s totally how it works, isn’t it?

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Some stories on the site are rated mature to keep them out of the hands of children. Because, really, what child would lie about being 18 on the Internet?

Some of these stories are quite good.

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