At time of writing Fimfiction hosts 143,967 stories. From a story’s Statistics page one can glean a fair amount of information, though context for that information is not presented in full—which admittedly is a significant coding challenge that may not be worth the effort, since most people probably don’t care much. However, I do, partly because fiddling around with raw data simply tickles my fancy, so I decided to check where my stories stand in ratings relative to the site’s whole

Read More

After more cogitation and additional information, I’ve revised my earlier journal post “Big and tall, short and small”, ranking the Mane Seven by relative height, build, and age.

It’s not huge, but I always have been a little bothered I never finished the landscaping on the map of the site. So I did. The revised PDF file now is available for download.

Rose is a veteran military officer and social worker, a competition-grade pistoleer, an expert martial artist, tough-minded, quick-thinking, and fearless. In short she has all the makings of a good action hero—yet I never have written her as such! The closest I got was Virga, but even there she plays the part of the steady, indomitable commanding officer rather than the two-fisted guns-blazing ass-kicker. Lately I have been hankering to find just one good situation to let her cut loose.

Read More

Dealing with a little housekeeping on the Twin Canterlots group subsite—primarily rationalizing story folders. What I have now is . . .

• Main series: The core stories and anthologies of the Twin Canterlots setting, subdivided using the same schema as on my profile page.

  • Cook’s Tour—Cookie Pusher’s arc of four stories
  • Brass Ring—Rose Brass’s arc of four stories

Read More

Cook’s Tour and Brass Ring are complete, or at least as complete as they need to be. The former clocks in at around seventy thousand words, the latter at about seventy-seven thousand, counting “Oops.” Print lay-outs are complete for both as well; with “The Farmer in the Dell” and a chronology appendix in Cook’s Tour and “Conference” in Brass Ring, I was able to bring both volumes to almost the same page count—just four pages difference—which is pretty amazing. (I

Read More

. . . be better than the last.

This is an approximation of the two-story bungalow converted decades ago into a bookstore with a small studio living space at the front of the upper floor. The house measures thirty feet (9.1 m) wide by forty-six feet (14.0 m) long; before the extension to make room for a LULA elevator the length was forty feet (12.2 m).

Ground floor

Read More

This is an approximation of the furnished studio apartment Cookie Pusher moves into during the course of Foreign Nationals of Unusual Importance, as it appeared when he arrived. The footprint of the usable space is twenty-four feet (7.3 meters) square, with a four-foot-wide balcony inset next to the sleeping area.

Read More

This is an approximation of the efficiency apartment Rose Brass moves into after being retired to the army’s permanent disability list. She lives there for more than fifteen years, partly out of inertia, through her entire career as a youth social worker. The furnishings are shown as described in Three-act Play, with a couple of simplifications due to limitations in available art assets and for clarity. The footprint of the usable space is ten feet (3.0 meters) wide by twenty feet (6.0

Read More