In the event, the story I mentioned in my last blog post has stalled somewhat, so instead I've written something I've hoped to do for a while -- a poem that's long enough for this site. It's a bit of fun rather than anything really serious, but I find it amusing. Best (or worst!) effect will be achieved if you've seen the dreaded G3.6 (I think) "Newborn Cuties" episodes.

For the two and a half people who may be interested: I have another story in the works. It's going to be a short one again, perhaps even shorter than "The 20 Percent Solution", and it will be a change of pace from that story. The stars will be Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, and I want to explore their relationship a little bit. It won't be shipping, but a closeness a bit more like what we've seen in S2. I'll be taking myself out of my comfort zone slightly with a story like this, so it'll

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This time yesterday, "The 20 Percent Solution" had 17 likes and 0 dislikes. Now it's 16/1. The dislike doesn't bother me at all -- no story is going to be liked by everyone -- but I wonder what caused the reduction in likes? It seems unlikely that someone would change their mind like that. If someone closes their account, do their votes disappear? Ah well, it's hardly worrisome.

I wonder whether I'm the only British ponyfic author who sometimes has trouble deciding how consciously to write "American" for the sake of this fandom. I don't mean spelling -- I stick to British English for that, since correct BrEng is a lot better than dodgy AmEng. Nor do I really mean dialogue: we all know what (eg) Applejack sounds like, so that's not something you have wiggle-room on unless you're deliberately having fun. Rather, I mean vocabulary and grammar. In the first draft of "The

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The more I watch and think about S2 in particular, and the more I read comments by those who've thought about it much more deeply than I have, the more the relationship between Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy fascinates me. There's a remarkable quantity of little touches in those episodes that point to the very special nature of the bond between the two pegasi. For example, during the "Find a Pet" song, Shy gives Dash a little nose-beep, and Rainbow doesn't complain. Would she allow any

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Well, that's not bad at all. At the time of writing, "The 20 Percent Solution" has 139 views. Obviously the big, accomplished stories by big, accomplished writers get many thousands, but I don't think 139 views is too bad for a complete unknown like me. I'm encouraged. Huzzah.

As a relative newcomer to this site (and indeed the fandom in general), one thing that's rather startled me has been the non-standard paragraph spacing that a lot of authors use. I can't find a single established style guide that suggests using both line breaks and indentation for online publication, yet it's all over the place here. It's a little weird, to be honest. It's not something I find more than mildly odd, so I shan't make a song and dance about it -- but unless the

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Right; The 20 Percent Solution is up on the site, so I am now officially a FiM fanfic author. I did wonder whether anyone would actually read it, given my complete lack of fame in this community, but I've been pleasantly surprised: 65 views, eight faves and half a dozen comments (not including my responses) is actually slightly better than I'd expected. I entirely agree with one of the commenters that I need to work on my descriptive prose a bit: it's not that what I write of it

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Heh; it's strange being around fanfic again after so many years away from it all. I suppose that's one of the achievements of this show: making me interested in writing the stuff once more. Ideas aren't a problem -- I have three already -- but how good I'll be at putting them into practice is another matter. On which note: please be honest in your comments -- I'm absolutely not someone who can't cope with critique. I love critique on what I write! (Okay, so I love "This is amazingly

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