Once upon a time, I attempted to write outside my comfort zone:

Twilight wasn’t laughing. She wasn’t smiling. She didn’t look like she was even maybe-kinda-sorta thinking about smiling, and definitely not about laughing. Her pretty purple eyes were squinty and not-sparkly, and her soft, soft lips were squished into a grumpy line. No smiles there, no siree. Actually, if anything . . . Twilight looked mad. At her.

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Check this out:

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“Mommy, are you sure you know how to make a cake?” asked Velvet. The little lilac filly frowned at the thing that had just come out of the oven.

“Of course, sweetie,” lied Twilight, flashing her daughter a too-big smile.

“Is it supposed to be all black like that?”

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Well, look at that—I've been on this site for a year now. I've read over a million often beautiful words, and I've written . . . well, not nearly as many as I'd hoped to, but the important thing is that I am writing. I actively wrote original fiction when I was younger and dabbled with KotOR fanfiction, but at some point I stopped and didn't put pen to paper in earnest for a good six or seven years. Then I discovered ponies last year, and the Sparkle spark was rekindled. It's

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I was recently introduced to Pixar's twenty-two rules of storytelling (reproduced below for your edification). While I tend to take a rather Barbossan view of rules, these are nonetheless very good. Eleven and eighteen feel particularly relevant for me. I need to stop fussing over ideas in my head and start slapping them down on paper/the screen.

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I'm not a huge fan of princess-shipping, but I do still have a soft spot for Twiluna. Twilight and Luna are both sort of dorky, socially awkward, but well-intentioned ponies, and I think a romance between them could work rather well. Unfortunately, Luna is a lot harder to write than I anticipated, so I abandoned my plans for a fluffy, possibly naughty Twiluna short after I slogged through the opening scene:

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My first con ever, and the farthest I've ever ventured from home on my own. I'd be lying if I said I'm not the teensiest bit proud of myself.

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Have a little unfinished Rarijack snippet. I kinda like how it turned out, though I really don't have any plans to take it further.

“It ain’t fair,” muttered Applejack, bucking the tree a little harder than she had to. She heard bark crack under her hooves, but the ripe fruit still tumbled neatly into the baskets.

“What ain’t fair?” asked Big Macintosh from the adjacent row.

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WTF are you doing to Gmail? I know it's free and I'm not obligated to use it if I don't like it, etc. etc. etc., but still . . . who was the genius who decided it would be a good idea to force users to write their e-mails in a little chat box stuck in the corner of the screen? This is regression, not progression. I have a 24" monitor; why the bloody hell is my e-mail being stuffed into a corner? Why can't it stay in the MIDDLE OF MY BIG SCREEN so that I can, y'know, actually SEE it as I write

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