haha you have to suffer with me now

so if you saw my last blog you knew i was in a poetry competition today

long story short i wasnt in the top 5 so i'm not going to state, but i didnt have a nervous break down!
so yeah

aaand im gonna be offline for awhile soon because some of my friends are in a musical tonight

toodles

It's characteristic of fiction writers that we tend to be good at bullshitting. Something of a necessary skill, really. And it's characteristic of everyone that we tend to be pretty bad at judging our own importance without some self-aggrandisement.

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Okay, I'll own up. That's a deliberately confrontational clickbait-y title. I couldn't help myself.

Really this blog is about language. Contrary to the bleating of the Average Internet Intellectual, the meaning of a word is not absolute. We, as a community, can choose how to use words and consequently the meanings we give to them. If we're sensible, we choose in a way that reflects the real world and enables discussion.

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(With any luck, this is about political as you'll ever see me get on here.)

And coming up next: Talking about the value of stories. Or another go at criticising critics. We'll see.

Friendship Games is a middling sort of installment. Better than Equestria Girls, worse than Rainbow Rocks – but given the latter was so great, and the former so abysmal, that's no real surprise. How did it fare on its own terms? Again, middling: Better than it might've been, but still not quite as good as it could've been.

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Though perhaps not in their final form as I'm still waiting for a preread from Silentwoodfire and Denim_Blue. They'll get to it later, but Part 38, you may recall, was the first all-new bonus chapter I wrote back in the day, and it remains one of my favorites for showing what happened the second morning before trial. I didn't think it needed much updating except to correct my violet unicorn syndrome (seriously, all my usages of it are painful to read now!) and also to tone down Phoenix's charm

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Updates and editing passes have been completed to parts 13-15 of Turnabout Storm, which take the story through Phoenix's first encounter with Pinkie and second interview of Rainbow, including breaking her psyche-locks and getting the truth from her as to what she was doing near the crime scene that night.

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Part 46 - Eye of the Storm remains my favorite standalone bonus chapter, detailing what was happening during the recess between Fluttershy's testimony and Sonata's. It showcased everything I was trying to do with the expanded story, from the shipping to the explorations of what was happening around the trial, taking a peek in at everyone from Twilight's friends to Lenora and Cruise

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A lot of cleanup, one big new sequence, and a brand new trial graphic added in these chapters.

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No major changes this time; just the usual editing pass and some minor description and dialog improvements, including making Apple Bloom just slightly more stubborn and Twilight’s efforts to buy her off a little more overt. I also gave a better reason for Fluttershy to have held onto her half of the resignation letter and not have told anyone about it.

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Continuing my few-a-week pace, the next three story chapters involving Phoenix meeting up with Pinkie Pie and searching Ace’s hotel room/first encounter with Sonata have been updated and undergone a full editing pass by my prereader production crew of AJ_Aficionado, Silentwoodfire, and Denim_Blue.

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You may recall that in the videos, Trixie convinced The Judge to limit Phoenix's first cross-examination of Gilda based on the simple fact that she 'had an important job' and 'was very busy'. In reality, not even The Judge is so big a pushover he would let her get away with something so brazenly in defiance of court rules, so in Part 40 - A Mythological Witness I changed the

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Thanks go to Denim_Blue, AJ_Aficionado and Silentwoodfire for getting to all this so quickly. There were three major upgrades to Part 53 - Fight or Flight, which is Sonata's confession chapter. Taking them all in order:

1. How did Sonata evade the Magatama?

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In all the rush to get a second Firefly chapter completed by September's end, I forgot to announce that I had a couple more TAS chapters updated as well.

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Nothing too major changed this time, just a lot of editing, smoothing, and the usual removal of 'violet unicorn' and 'human lawyer'. I've also learned a trick I'll share with you here:

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Enhancements this time include a new picture in Part 63 - Trick or Treat, and a more fleshed-out appearance by Celestia at the end of Part 64 - Frozen Heart.

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...bringing us to the point of Sonata’s confession. Significant changes were made to both chapters, including some new graphics.

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With Part 59 - Of Mares and Men seeing some hefty additions to the attorney misconduct board scenes.

Before, the hearings were too short, and a major figure was not heard from--The Judge. Now, he has some very pointed things to say about both Phoenix and Trixie's performance during Rainbow Dash's trial, and Fluttershy makes a plea on Phoenix's behalf as well:

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