Chapter 4 of Where They Understand You is now up. I did say I'd try to get it done by the end of June, and (wonder of wonders) that's exactly what I've done! Read and enjoy, as the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's Literature Division might say.

It's going to be tight, as a lot of things have crowded in on me, but I should still get the fourth chapter of Where They Understand You published by the end of June. A big thank you to everyone who's stuck with me so far. I hope I can repay you by giving you a good story. As a reward for bothering to read this blog post, a sneak preview: in this chapter, Rainbow Dash gets a job!

My copy of The Journal of the Two Sisters is still in the post -- but according to someone who's already got the thing, it's explicitly stated that "Pinkie Pride" is Rainbow Dash's tenth birthiversary. It's probably impossible for me to reconcile the chronology of "Where They Understand You" with that, since I've been assuming that a) Rainbow is (just about) an adult by the time she moves to Ponyville, and that b) she's the last pre-Twilight Mane Sixer to settle there.

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I've been on holiday recently, and I'm now really busy, but fear not! "Where They Understand You" is most definitely still a live project -- it's a story I very much want to finish -- and I hope chapter 4 will be up in a few weeks' time. You may have noticed that "Friendship is Poetry" has been placed on hiatus. That's largely because I'm so busy; I do want to resume that at a later date. (This is also why I haven't read much lately, either; again, I hope to pick that up again

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First up, here's how I rank the episodes. I've counted the premiere and finale as one episode each, making a total of 24. These are then split into four tiers of awesomeness. Episodes are in order of preference within each tier, too, so "Bats!" is a few places higher than "Flight to the Finish". I'll expand on a few things in a moment, but here are the tiers:

Tier A: Filli Vanilli; Testing Testing 1, 2, 3; Pinkie Pride; Twilight's Kingdom; Maud Pie; Pinkie Apple Pie

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I don't think I need to say all that much about "Twilight's Kingdom", other than that I agree with the consensus view that it was an extremely fine double episode. It wasn't absolutely perfect (those Rainbow Power forms looked silly, quite frankly) but it was very, very good. I certainly do not want every episode to be like that -- I have virtually no interest in watching a full season of Ponyball Z -- but as a one-off it worked outstandingly well.

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Impressed as I am by those on this site who get through literally thousands of fics each year, that's beyond me. It does mean, unfortunately, that reading the stories everyone who comments on my own stories has written isn't really possible. However, I do try to keep up with reading as well as writing. Partly that's so I can write my Ponyfic Roundups over on my Louder Yay blog (plug, plug) but mostly it's

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I'm happy to be able to report that "Clouded Minds" has been accepted by the Twilight's Library group. I actually felt quite nervous while it was waiting to be assessed! Since the story is too short for Equestria Daily even to consider, this was about the most prominent place I could submit it, so I'm very pleased. And the rules of the group allow me to post this

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I've been tremendously busy over in that bizarre thing we call "real life" of late, so I haven't had much time for writing fanfic. However, I did get another 600-ish words of "Where They Understand You" bashed out tonight, so that's definitely still coming along. I'm hoping chapter 2 will be published in the next couple of weeks, but please don't hold me to that. "Friendship is Poetry" is also still very much live, though I don't know when the next chapter of that will appear. When I get some

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An odd time to be writing this? Well, maybe, but I have my reasons. We have a break this weekend, and I suspect that when the show returns people will be spending a lot of their time looking forward to the season finale. This isn't intended to be a detailed, well thought out analysis of the first 21 episodes of S4, but really little more than a few notes.

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