Come one and all to the meta-writefag and help raise the quality of MLP fanfiction! Featuring: Fat Horse Pussy Sex World!

ITT: Playing fast and loose with feudal statehood, getting aroused by fics describing childhood trauma, Luna has an Electra complex, UBI is why Fluttershy has any money, they can take my cum but not my love, Sweetie Belle x Diamond Tiara fics are now incest, I was once a man with nothing and now I have bad horsewords, RainbowTyphoonAnon with tripcode !!ExNoRpbWPG5 comes through, I'm a schizo who at least knows how to use a fucking bookmark, bookmarks sully the divine purity of default state, the advent of writing has been a disaster to the medium of storytelling, I can always count on you faggots to make the worst possible post about any given topic, citylet supermarketcuck hfytard detected, and a man putting you in a headlock with his chiseled thighs!

>/fimfic/ Secret Book Club
The one hundred and twelfth and one hundred and thirteenth books are The Creature and The Knight:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/567461/the-creature
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/577735/the-knight
If (You) want to join in the discussion, finish the fics by Sunday, June 22.

>Recommended stories:
Tired of authors crossing over a dozen IPs? Fed up with downer shipping? Well, we've compiled the best of the worst in order to bring you our absolute average!
New Starter Kit - http://mlpficreviews.org.uk/starter/
Old Starter Kit - http://i.imgur.com/vuTA7EN.png

>Common fic abbreviations used by the thread:
https://ponepaste.org/7317

>A list of reviews made by the Anons in this thread:
http://www.mlpficreviews.org.uk
Use the commands ">review <story link>" and ">discuss <story link>" to add reviews to a story.
Userscript for extra features: https://ponepaste.org/8619

>An in-depth writing guide for beginners:
https://eznguide.neocities.org/

>Can you pre-read my story?
Post it on Google Docs or HackMD with comments enabled and give us a link.

>Additional material for authors:
Rhorse's Horse Behavioral Notes - https://ponepaste.org/932
Politics and the English Language - https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
1911 Walter Baker's Hot Chocolate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAueNTXpn1E
Vhatug's tips for anatomically correct clop - https://poneb.in/g4VpEg4f
Setting a story in motion - https://youtu.be/ufO8LbwTdu0
Taking criticism - https://youtu.be/-v4R2ZcxPlA

>Various reviews and riffs:
Fillyanon's Bookshelf - https://ponepaste.org/5555
Notkickass222urmom's Reviews - https://pastebin.com/u/notkickass222urmom
IHeartShinzakura's Reviews - https://ponepaste.org/user/IHeartShinzakura
Appleanon reads fics - https://poneb.in/wmGX7FPm
Deluxe Big Master Review List - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z9Bz7UnEbxo-svlXa2tV49PJkP-yFuR7pRXiBUn-IeU
A Guide to Rational Fics - https://files.catbox.moe/3jzrfm.png
The Royal Canterlot Library's Top 16 Fanfics - https://royalcanterlotlibrary.net/top16/

Previous Thread: >>42257001

Have you ever been in the middle of writing something and decided your whole idea was bad? What did you do?

>two soft (you)s in the ITT
Ah, purest ambrosia.

>>42287629
I cope. I'll usually try to work out a way to salvage it or move the parts around, but most of the time, I'll close the document without saving and go and sulk for a while.

>>42287645
i have been mentioned in every single ITT for the past two years
get on my level

>that feeling of power when you write the ITT

It's easy, you just need to post something retarded

I think AiE is overhated.

>>42287745
You look like you fuck human men.

>>42287745
in the medium of greentext, yes
in the medium of prose (or greens that try to be prose), no

>>42287334
>>42287352
So does anyone bother to report “stories” like this, or does nobody even care anymore?

>>42287833
I think the one that were reported were by anons here. From the comments and likes, it seems like few people can actually detect it.

>>42287745
In a pure and absolute sense of judging things by how a perfect world should be, AiE is indeed overhated. The amount of hate towards it should be 0, because there should be no AiE to hate in an ideal reality, nor even a concept of it to taint the minds of its people.

>>42287629
Yes. So I stopped.

>>42287629
I liked how I wrote it but the idea was bad. So I just recycled parts of it elsewhere.

Also holy fuck why is every bad male alicorn OC named Orion.

>>42287745
nah it isn't.

What's the edgiest edgelord edgefic you know of?

Give me your
>most hated tag
>the story you like the most with that tag

>>42288307
No

>>42288307
I haven't (intentionally) read any story with the anthro tag, so I can't answer that.

The

>>42288331
I'll occasionally skim past the tags out of laziness and then get blindsided by fingers.

>>42288307
I'm with >>42288331

I'm taking psychic damage

>>42288024
Not all of them mine is named Polaris

>>42288338
I've got my emotional support animal helping me through this one.

Also, at what point do I just give up on an idea? I wrote a clocpfic years ago that went unfinished because I ended up liking the idea more than just as an Avenue for porn, and last year I managed to write 35,000 words towards fleshing the idea out into something that fits under the T rating, but at some point I gave up, because the scope got way too big for my fly by wire type of writing where I just go with what feels right in the moment.

So last night, I changed plans. I sat down, and summarized the entire plot of what I want the story to be in 5,000 words, and I managed to convert the first few paragraphs into the first two chapters of the story, but I just don't know if it's going to pan out. Even when I have the entire story planned out, which should prevent me from rushing my writing to get to the next plot point, I still feel like it just goes way too fast. Why is it so easy to drag out a sex scene to at minimum 6,000 words, yet anything else, a conversation, a fight, anything, it struggles to hit 600?

>>42288357
>at what point do I just give up on an idea?
When I'm dead.

>>42288377
That's my spirit so far, but my unpublished stories still outnumber the published ones. Part of it is my own doing; I refuse to publish anything until it's finished. Ain't nothing bug me like an unfinished tale that never sees its ending!

>>42288357
>Also, at what point do I just give up on an idea?
You don't. Like a lego you don't like you cannibalize what's left of it.

>>42288389
>lego
Funny you bring up Legos, anon. I was musing last night that my writing seems to operate just like the Lego creations of my childhood; unplanned, built on inspiration alone, but if anything went wrong, chances were, my original plans and my in-the-moment plans would conflict, and it all goes downhill from there.

Hell, my largest non-porn fic has an opening chapter that sets up a mare to be the main character and THEN I FORGET SHE WAS EVEN THERE. It just veers off to tell a completely different story! Like damn, dude!

What are some good fics to read while doing a rewatch of the show, and around which seasons or episodes would you read them?

>>42288338
>>42288351
You know what? I might not be Rembrant, but if people have the gall to put out shit like this, I damn well owe it to myself to publish my fic.

>>42288446
Forget anything else. how the FUCK can you be insecure in a world where something like Pooh's Adventures exist?

That motherfucker is producing shut to a level that's never been shart before and you're afraid you'll somehow what, do worse than that? Are you telling me you've got less confidence than the average delitization deviantart guy?

>>42288474
>Pooh's Adventures
do i want to know?

any cute ship fics about Tree Hugger? i love my stony pony

>>42288506
I'm more surprised you don't know.

>>42288526
it sounds vaguely familiar so maybe I'm just repressing the memory

>>42288529
I feel like it defies my ability to describe it properly, and anything I could write wouldn't do it the autistic justice it deserves. I'll leave it to you to google it.

>>42288575
https://poohsadventures.miraheze.org/wiki/Pooh%27s_Adventures_Series
what. how. why.

>>42288642
You see what I mean? You really going to have insecurities when THAT guy fucking doesn't?

>>42288657
suddenly the 4 am crackfic about what if bowser was secretly a hot ass dragon wearing dumb turtle armor no longer sounds so bad
still not gonna be proud of it but like, damn, winnie the pooh?????? why???????

>>42288441
Best Night Ever after TBNE
Keepers of Discord and Mendacity after season 2.
Stop the rewatch after that point.

But if you insist on continuing:
Daetrin's fics after S3.
All the Mortal Remains between S4 and S5.

42nd for best duo!
Enjoy this conveniently packaged Tuna: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/348665/tarry-not

>>42288700
Cheers, anon. I've missed a few of those so I'll be adding them to my TBR

does anyone have the link to that fic where bill clinton gets head from fluttershy in the oval office?

I've been reading To Perytonia on my commute or at bedtime since April. This was a bad idea. I should have been reading technical documentation.

The title is very often the first thing I write in a story, because my brain conceives amazing titles and I am then compelled to give them a story to belong to. Such is the case with my current attempt at the 1k words contest.

>>42289333
I'm the opposite.
I'm shit at coming up with titles. Even OC names. I just suck at them and have to spend a good while just trying to come up with something that doesn't sound awful

>>42289354
seconding this
the title is the last thing I come up with, and often I'm unhappy with it even after changing it several times

>>42288383
>Dash Academy
Shit, that brings me back. One of the earliest factors that got me into pony back into the day.
It also (eventually) taught me to be wary of unfinished stories, be it webcomics or fics

>>42289464
I read it recently all in one go, it just made me feel bad for Derpy.

>>42289093
No it wasn't, those places are much better suited to reading about Peryton and dumb birdhorses. Especially on an e-reader.

>>42289464
I've always been wary of Unfinished stories but it roped me in before I could think to check, I had plans to finish it myself, clearly, but it never really worked out. Still, I owe it to all the other people burned by the unfinished cliffhanger, to finish it myself with the medium of word rather than art.
(I cant draw ayylmao)

Fic’s that lie to me?

>>42289660
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/10997/the-liar

>>42287391
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/838904/bbcode-updates
Found it, anon. It's [footnote][/footnote]. You'll have to mess around with it as I'm not sure exactly how it works. They never added it to the BBCode page despite adding the opacity one mentioned in the blog post, so they might not have ever finished fully implementing it.

>>42288441
If you want to suffer through the relationship drama, Winning Pony weaves itself artfully around the last few episodes of S2, especially Hurricane Fluttershy. It's probably the highlight of the fic, in my opinion.

>>42289660
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/190641/withdrawal

>>42289847
Winning Pony mentioned yet again. We stay winning

>>42289847
Thanks. Time to see how it interacts with the wordcount.

>>42286951

>>42289560
Why?

I said I'd try to be better about it, but I lied; the bookclub post will be slightly delayed this week. Maybe by 20 minutes or so.

I don't think Mono was exaggerating,
>/FSBC/

Terrible time for me to be writing this post. I just finished the fic, and finding myself so enchanted by it (despite the relative lack of libraries!), this could not be the most objective opinion
.
Therefore, I will start by saying that this could be the best fic(fics) we've read this year in /FSBC/. There's basically nothing I can criticize here; it has a strong idea at its core, it realizes that idea incredibly well with very enjoyable writing that's written far better on a technical level than almost all fics, it's a pony story despite the AU and focuses on great depictions of canon characters (unicorn Twilight, too!), the one major OC that it does have might be the coolest male OCs I've ever read in a ponyfic (sorry, Basedji) without him ever overshadowing or even equally-shadowing the canon characters, and while the character dynamics are sort of predictable, Mono really nails how the fic feels, and— I could just go on and on. This fic is GOOD. It's also very sweet and romantic the whole time, so I guess if you're the kind of person who only enjoys long sci-fi infodumps, this might not be for you, but you would be really missing out.

If there's anything I can criticize, it's that there were a few sections in The Knight that... didn't "drag on", but the drama was starting to stretch for longer than was ideal, and the sections weren't the 10/10 that the rest of the fic was. Part III is the most guilty of it, and the visit to the dying filly's house was very meh—serviceable for the role it had in the story, but I expected better of the fic. And the king being so bad was a bit overplayed. The oneshot also had a rather large timeskip between the first healing and "kingdom loves her", which served the plot but still felt rather sudden. Those are very minor criticisms, though, and as for everything else? I love it so much! And yes, those of you who paid attention to some of my posts could guess that I'd love the Vampire!Rarity far more than the average person, but oh well—we all have our tiny vices and preferences. She is quite amazing, though, even if that doesn't factor in for (You). So very Rarity and marshmallow'y—even though she spends half the fic looking like a corpse. And TwiGuard is pretty good as well. I like her more purple, but the TwiGuard backstory. It's funny. I could see this Twilight being the best character in most of the stories she appears in, yet Rarara and North Ridge are so great that she comes in at a firm third place for me here. I also enjoyed the worldbuilding with splashes of fae paint on it. Changelings as faerie are nothing new, but it was nice to see, as were the teases of lindwyrms and other such creatures.
But above all else, the most important thing is what I started with—the fic has an idea and executes it brilliantly, conveying all the feelings that it wants to convey, and very vividly, too!

Next week, Rainbow Typhoon:
fimfiction.net/story/22148/rainbow-typhoon

>>42290500
I will make sure to read the fic and engage in discussion as promised even though I know nobody here cares

>>42290500
I totally forgot to mention, but to preempt some of the "but it's too obvious" comments: It's a good thing. Yes, a lot of the time it's kind of obvious where the story will go next. For example, when Rarara tries the possession spell, you'd have to be blind to not see her using it to make Twilight "kill" her, and also that she would survive it because duh—undead, unbeating heart.
However! It is obvious because of how well the fic conveys its tone and atmosphere, themes, etc. It really immerses the reader in what it's trying to tell (at least it did for me) and the suspicion of what will happen next is deliberately used to add to the tension, as evidenced by, for example, the plentiful remarks that things will go south soon. That's good writing, not bad writing.
There's much more that I'd like to say, but it's probably best to leave it at this for now.

Oh right, VOTING:
Some ideas, but I'll have to look for more things to put on the list soon:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/375944/one-white-unicorn
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/86542/winds-of-change
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/191237/ghost-of-a-rose
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/566978/maize + https://www.fimfiction.net/story/525598/a-skeleton-in-the-closet

>>42290500

(1/2)

A little ways into The Creature, I realized it was a fairy tale. Fairy tales aren't written like ordinary stories. One of their traits is that the characters are archetypes instead of fully drawn characters. Twilight's archetype is "Paladin," and she's so selfless that Mono might as well have renamed her Jesus and hoisted her on a cross. Rarity's archetype is initially "Crone" (in fairy tales, an ugly woman who will help you if you treat her kindly; as opposed to a "Hag," who is malicious) and becomes "Damsel in Distress." King Violet is of course "Wicked Ruler."

Archetypes don't have personalities, and their morality is either white as marshmallow or black as Nightmare Moon's ass. But if a fairy tale goes on for too long, the characters are forced to develop personalities. At that point, it stops being a fairy tale and turns into fantasy. That happens in the final scene of The Creature, where Rarity has disguised herself as Miss Aurora. Twilight killed the king, but the king was wicked, so according to fairy tale logic, Twilight is morally blameless. Therefore, when Rarity protects Twilight from the authorities, Rarity is also morally blameless. Yet she mind-controls an entire town to do it, and that ought to be a wicked act. And so the characters have outgrown the simple-minded morality of fairy tales. I don't want to criticize The Creature for starting as a fairy tale, but I do think it was a mistake. The tonal shift between the beginning and conclusion was handled awkwardly. It doesn't feel intentional or like a subversion or anything like that. It feels like Mono didn't realize in advance that there would be a tonal shift; like she intended to write a fairy tale and it turned into fantasy without her realizing it.

>>42290528

(2/2)

That problem isn't present in The Knight, which is fantasy from beginning to end. I think The Knight is a better story, and I believe Mono when she says it's her best story. But if it really is her best, that's unfortunate. She's been writing for over a decade and has published over a million words total (despite removing TEK from Fimfic). The Knight is solid; its constantly changing interpersonal drama is entertaining; but it consistently felt amateurish to me, and I think that's because of its tendency toward melodrama.

For instance, at the end of Part 1, Rarity gets a good death scene. Or at least, it should be a good death scene. But Mono knows it's supposed to be a good death scene, and she tries too hard to milk it. Despite appreciating the drama, I found myself smirking at pompous lines like, "Foul creature, I condemn you to death." It would be better if she just played it straight and trusted the reader to endow the scene with the drama it deserves.

The drama of the later parts is like this, too. "I love you so much that I'm going to dedicate my whole life to you" is a classic sentiment for fantasy romance. But that's paired with, "And I'll never speak so that you never be sure who I am, even though you arranged to have me stay in the village and directly asked for me to guard you so you clearly have a pretty good guess." Most pieces of evidence point toward Twilight and Rarity being mature adults. But mature adults would not behave like they do. Twilight and Rarity both act like thirteen year olds.

Someone is about to holler that the writing is "woman-brained," but that's idiotic. It has nothing to do with being a woman. It's about trying too hard. Mono has good ideas for drama, and she wants to be absolutely sure that you know it, so she's going to turn everything up to eleven. Everypony involved in a dramatic scene must turn into a histrionic mess and lose basic interpersonal skills. That way, you know that Mono writes good drama and that the scene is Serious and Deep.

And it does kinda work. She does have good ideas for drama, and like I said, I found it entertaining. I left an upvote (which I didn't do on The Creature). But I also couldn't take it seriously. Is it better than most fics? Unquestionably. But I feel like its target audience is the same as the audience for soap operas.

Mono recently posted on her blog that she got into a creative writing MFA program. Congratulations, Mono, but I hope they beat all the melodrama out of you.

>>42290500
I liked both almost equally. I absolutely adore sensory deprivation in writing: I love the way it creates intimacy and changes communication, style, and opportunity. So I'm spoiled here with muteness and two opposing perspectives of blindness. Also, I will proclaim now that a long-awaited gentle kiss on the forehead is the apex of physical romance.

>The Creature
This came across as almost fairy tale or fablelike. The tone, background, and setting were quickly established, driving straight into the narrative. Good emotional beats throughout. That little Shining heart-to-heart, Fluttershy existing, and so on. I was expecting a creature maybe a couple centuries old to be more stubborn, cold, experienced, and mature, but it's just a soft, beautiful Rarity. The last quarter of the fic changes into something different, and I'm torn between disappointment that the story wasn't tied up with a clear cut message (typical of fables) and the satisfied, guilty indulgence of a very cute RariTwi ending. With that said, the whole Miss Aurora section may be my highlight across the fics. Out of the two, this fic is in the superposition of being both the worst and best.
Oh, and that cheeky remark at the end.

>The Knight
If the last quarter of The Creature was indulgence, then this was a descent into decadence! Where is the romance tag? "Mystery" is only a technicality here! There wasn't as strong of a fable feeling here, just Mono's refined RariTwi fetishism, lovely. Anyway, this story felt somewhat compressed or cramped, though I wouldn't want it stretched out either — maybe Rivermoon at the library and her adventures with Ridge being efficiently glossed over contributed to this. Most if not all character interactions were fulfilling, although Twilight and Rarity's interpersonal drama of "No, I'm protecting you!" did get tiresome at times. Mender and Rivermoon doing something as simple as sitting together, with the little hatchlings used as a method of interrogation, was amazing and tense. There was also some fine dialogue that's still stuck in my head, such as Ridge's "you’d get to take the title of widower back" and "Kings? Dear girl, I’d have killed gods", Rarity's heart analogies, and Twilight's ending confessions.
With that, it's not the best fic I've read, and I'm not sure if I share Mono's "I think it's the best story I've ever written" compared to their previous works, but this fic is very charming and succinct: satisfying.

With both fics together as a whole, it's a nice package. To smush in some more points (char limit):
I was foolishly expecting twists. Rarity's Chekhov's guns of supernatural speed and controlling ability were never really used, but it was their disuse that was used as a part of the story, I liked that. The changelings didn't do much changeling stuff besides be a convenient third party.
I didn't have much issue with the writing itself; it was good, but Incantation's name being shortened to Ink definitely threw me off.

>>42290500
Monochromatic must think really highly of this story (because it's really only one story), given that she calls it "the best story I've ever written" and has also changed her profile to Creaturity. I thought it was very good. Not the best story I've ever read, but certainly up there. It had its flaws, and some weird grammatical errors, but it really gripped me; I read the whole thing in one sitting over several hours. That's quite a rare thing indeed, for a story to do that, and you have to treasure it when it happens.

The environmental details and imagery of the story were fairly flat, but the story more than made up for them with the characters and general tone. Monochromatic is obviously *the best Raritwi author*, or at least the most famous for it, and so of course she knows how to turn a story about a horrible plague demon of the forest, which would be tagged horror by any other author, into a lovely fairy tale romance. I liked how there was a break from her normal "Princess Rarity" thing, since it was nice to start fresh from the ground up, even if most of the tropes and dynamics she fell back on were basically the same. Towards the end, you could tell the author was starting to get a little tired of very serious, heavy romance, since she started paraphrasing lines from the show e.g. "We're the best of friends, she and I".

I won't really bother talking too much about the characters since they were all obviously pretty good. (My main complaint is that, once Twilight got to the changeling village, she suddenly turned pants-on-head retarded and self-sabotaging. Beyond being frustrating in the moment, I think it was honestly a poor narrative choice that felt contrived. It felt as if the author were trying to wring more intermediate drama out of Twilight's search, artificially delaying the natural progression of the story, even if the stuff during the village "arc" was entertaining.) Instead, I want to talk about *themes*, which other anons have previously insisted are the most important part of interpreting a story. Not to mention that Monochromatic is actually skilled enough to deliberately utilise them.

>>42290572
The most striking thing about Rarity and Twilight's dynamic, of course, is their mutual self-sacrifice. I liked how the author portrayed this taken to excess, to the point of each neglecting the well-being of not only themselves, but their partner. Their shared one-eyed blindness at the end illustrates the resolution to this nicely; their burden isn't lifted entirely, but they learn to share it in a healthy way. That would still be pretty standard on its own, but what's interesting is how the author incorporates the theme of identity into it. This is what she was trying and sort of failing to do in the changeling village arc, I think, but she really wanted to discuss how taking on burdens affects one's identity, how an identity itself can be a thing consciously affected (who better to illustrate this than Rarity?), &c. Obviously, Rarity's main power to take on disease demonstrates those ideas very clearly physically, but I liked how hard the social dimension was hammered in on top of that. It's nothing as shallow as "Rarity is socially accepted when she's pretty", because she's recognised as the creature even in normal pony form, and her ugliness is celebrate amongst the changelings. Instead, she's really forced to adapt herself to wherever she is, usually for Twilight's sake, and it's clear that none of the "Rarities" we see are really a full reflection of her, even when she's ostensibly happy in one village or the other. The same can be said for Twilight; even though she's happy in the pony village, she's crippled and impotent and forced to hide her identity. Her sense of self as a guard is being neglected, which she explicitly states later when telling the hatchlings she "wasn't practicing", and she only really fulfills that role once more when defending Rarity from the family with the grief-stricken daughter.

It's also worth noting how, as the story progressed, Twilight and Rarity each changed *so much*. Similarly to what I said above, their dynamic with each other is totally defined by which particular mask each is wearing at the time (even when they aren't both physically present, as with Twilight discovering the writings at the grave), and Monochromatic went to great lengths to try out every combination she could conceive of. We see basically the full spectrum of each character, but only parts at any one time, and they play off of each other in interesting ways. I personally liked the pony village, with Rarity playing both the role of confident leader and also the responsible caretaker, while Twilight just kind of hung around, but towards the end their roles are almost totally reversed.

>>42290578
Wow, three posts?
I mentioned it before, but I liked the ending, even if it leaves some tension unresolved. Neither has anything like a "full realisation of self", but they learn to balance themselves in a healthy enough way, and by sharing that balance with each other, they're able to finally stop idolising the other and putting them on a pedestal *or* fretting over them as a helpless, fragile work of art.

So there's my surface-level analysis of the thing. I liked how the author forced both Rarity and Twilight, but especially Rarity, to undergo a continous sort of metamorphosis trying to survive or please the other. Is it the best thing Monochromatic has ever written? Maybe. I don't know if I'd give it a favourite; I'm tempted, but I still really dislike the execution of the final arc.

>>42290528
>fairy tale
There is a shift, to be sure, and while it doesn't perfectly line up with the Creature / the Knight split, it does line up with the two halves of the story being told here. But Rarity isn't really the crone, as you call her. Maybe she would be, were she an OC, but since this is the Rarity that we know, the early moments of marshmallowness are enough to place her as, well, just Rarity (undead creature form). She's shown to be soft in her second scene, with the Creature (and later, the Lady) personas as something born out of necessity, for her own defense. Twilight is, and remains, a Paladin for almost the entirety the story across both fics, which I have more mixed feeling about.
>Yet she mind-controls an entire town to do it,
Not "mind controls"—only uses a weak charm. As in, just planting a relatively harmless suggestion that she lived there, not making her do her bidding or anything like that.

>>42290530
>consistently felt amateurish to me, and I think that's because of its tendency toward melodrama.
Bad taste, shaking my hooves! The fic is indulgent, definitely. It does, as you say, milk its scenes a lot. Sometimes it very nearly goes too far. The Chapter 3 guarding situation that you mention is where it was treading that fine line between "a lot" and "too much" the most. But it usually keeps just shy of crossing it. And is that a bad thing? Mono wanted to write this as an almost melodramatic fic. It's what gives the story its flavor. In this regard, it's about the best it could be before looping back into being cheap and failing to achieve its purpose.

>>42290533
>is the apex of physical romance
To add to this, not tagging the fics Romance is weird. What was she thinking? I can maybe understand it for The Creature, but The Knight lacking it is just a tagging error.
>This came across as almost fairy tale
I'd drop the 'almost'.
>but it's just a soft, beautiful Rarity
The setting is more fairy tale-like than FiM-like in some spots, and I would say that putting so much emphasis on Rarity's Rarityness is what makes it a good ponyfic. It's not that easy to write a good fairy tale, but it's much harder to do so while 'keeping it pony'.

>then this was a descent into decadence! Where is the romance tag?
Oh yeah, this.
>Rivermoon at the library and her adventures with Ridge being efficiently glossed over
As much as I'd like to see more of Ridge, I have to commend Mono on having a good idea what was important to the story
>it's not the best fic I've read
It isn't for me, either. But it's the best of Monochromatic that I've read (note: haven't gone through TEL yet), and I would not be surprised if, a year from now, it ended up still hanging out it my top 20 fics of all time. It doesn't enter my top 10, but I wouldn't blame anyone for putting it very high. As you said, the writing was good and some lines felt great. And I'll repeat myself by saying that North Ridge was far better that I expected him to be.

What is the stupidest review you've ever gotten?

>>42290605
Holy based

Kassaz is the Runic of pregnancy.

>>42290611
Jesus, did he rape your dad or something?

>>42290612
No, his mom. Raping his dad wouldn't get anyone pregnant.

>>42290500
>the best fic(fics) we've read this year in /FSBC/
Still below Sundowner Season? Me too.
> that's written far better on a technical level than almost all fics
Are you sure? I don't think you can use "alert" as a noun the way she does with "her alert grew tenfold", for example. I might be wrong; I should have taken notes so I could give more examples. It's still very good writing, though.
>it's a pony story despite the AU
The AU is very clean and I loved it. It's extremely pony but also entirely a fairy tale, the opposite of grand high fantasy that's so popular with "worldbuilders". The essence of a fairy tale is that tight scope (the "petite fantasy") and misty sort of indeterminacy, and Monochromatic really masters it.
>might be the coolest male OCs I've ever read in a ponyfic
I mean, he was kind of obnoxious, but it was on purpose, and he was at least good-natured about it. I liked the role he played without liking him personally so much.
>the kind of person who only enjoys long sci-fi infodumps
Again about "worldbuilding" scum and how they defeat the essence of a story.
>Part III is the most guilty of it
>serviceable for the role it had in the story, but I expected better of the fic
Certainly. As I said above, I think Monochromatic was reaching the limits of the story's natural extent around there and trying to figure out where to go. I was thinking during Twilight and North's travel montage that it would have been nice to see more of their adventures in detail, but even then I acknowledged it wasn't really within the scope of the fic.
>And the king being so bad was a bit overplayed
Yes, especially his big, evil betrayal that nopony could have forseen. "Twilight Sparkle raised her sword up high, turned, and slew the monster" made me groan. The townsponies' posthumous praise of the king and especially the foals' play were very blunt, but being fair, I don't know if I could have done better.
>I also enjoyed the worldbuilding with splashes of fae paint on it.
Yes yes yes, very nice world she's constructed! It was great.
>the fic has an idea and executes it brilliantly
You're right that that's the fic's greatest strength. It's not that it had a plot that was exactingly planned out from the beginning, although planning clearly helped. It's that the core premise and themes were rock solid that the fic could really shine.

>>42290520
>It is obvious because of how well the fic conveys its tone and atmosphere, themes, etc.
Yup! Sometimes, it seems like being "good" by being subversive or a genre-deconstruction is easier (or more popular, at least) than being good and playing things totally straight. I respect the fic for taking such an earnest, honest approach.

Oh, and voting for Maize.

>>42290611
Damn that's a little harsh, don't you think.

>>42290631
For who?

>>42290530
And people thought I was mad for dropping TEL.

>>42290599
>crone
No, at the beginning, she fits the Crone archetype perfectly: She's so hideous that most people find her revolting, but Twilight treats her well and is rewarded for it. I think you're responding to how she quickly develops too much marshmallowness to remain just an archetype. It doesn't take her long to do so, and by then, you can already see the beginning's of the fic's transformation from fairy tale to fantasy. Even so, she starts as a Crone.
>weak charm
>just planting a relatively harmless suggestion that she lived there
You're underestimating the severity of what she's done. Her "weak charm" convinces the whole village to hide Twilight: "They don’t suspect she’s here." That's mind control. Not "turn them into slaves" level, but still mind control.
>Mono wanted to write this as an almost melodramatic fic.
Yes, and I think it would have been better if she hadn't. There is a lot that's good about this fic. What isn't good is that she milked drama from Rarity's vampire teats until they were bone dry. It would be a better fic if it were more subtle.
>romance tag
Somehow I didn't even notice this was missing. It's so obviously a romance that I can't imagine why she didn't tag it this way.

>>42290611
You guys are always afraid of someone finding their niche.

>>42290605
Reproduction is generation, not creation, you dumb fuck.

>>42290528
>I realized it was a fairy tale. Fairy tales aren't written like ordinary stories. One of their traits is that the characters are archetypes instead of fully drawn characters.
That may be true at first, like you say, but I really don't think it works against the fic. It progresses very naturally from a simple fairy tale to something more complex, though I'd still call it a tale.
>At that point, it stops being a fairy tale and turns into fantasy.
See, I think of all types of fantasy, this is still closest in spirit to a medieval romance, which is in many ways just a longer fairy tale. I mean, Twilight is literally a knight and Rarity is, for all intents and purposes, both a damsel in distress and a princess, as you identify. That spirit persists all the way through, and I think this is just a case of the longer, more complex sort of fairy tale; you might also call it something like a heroic epic or saga, if in essence more than in form. To be clear, that's not literal praise of the fic, like "it's just like X historical masterpiece!" It just means that it follows that particular, older kind of model.

>>42290530
>but it consistently felt amateurish to me, and I think that's because of its tendency toward melodrama.
The melodrama was nice when it reinforced the themes, and also just the "feel" of reading a romance (in the old sense) like this, but I agree that it was overdone to the point of being distracting at certain points. Twilight's arrival to the changeling village comes to mind, and so do the scenes during and immediately after the visit with the family.
>she tries too hard to milk it
Yeah, it's probably a case of an author being too in love with their own fic and inadvertently undermining it.
>Most pieces of evidence point toward Twilight and Rarity being mature adults. But mature adults would not behave like they do. Twilight and Rarity both act like thirteen year olds.
To be fair, the plot point of "I'm so overcome with emotion that I lose the ability to speak, and that leads to tragedy" sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'd find in a myth or legend. I just think that Monochromatic's execution screws it up. Maybe if she'd leaned more into the fantastical element and relied less on strictly emotional drama. Especially since Twilight just voluntarily refuses to speak, like an autist, the whole time.

>>42290533
>I absolutely adore sensory deprivation in writing
I think Twilight's blindness was portrayed very well; it was one of the highlights of the fic. It definitely reinforced the intimacy of the whole pony village section. I also think, ironically, that the focus away from sight and towards other senses made the whole section more vivid than any other part of the fic. That is to say, it would have been nice if Monochromatic kept up that level of sensation throughout.
>a long-awaited gentle kiss on the forehead is the apex of physical romance
I also like how pure the romance was. We read too many sex-focused stories, and the world is full of it. It's even the case that Rarity and Twilight are only indirectly referred to as partners, and their (romantic) relationship is never clearly defined; the subtlety there was pretty important in tempering the melodrama, I think.
>This came across as almost fairy tale or fablelike.
Is everyone going to say this?
>That little Shining heart-to-heart, Fluttershy existing
You know, it *was* nice to see more canon characters get re-interpreted like that. It was interesting, but never distracting. And of course, I respect the author for not needing to include absolutely all of the M6.
>I was expecting a creature maybe a couple centuries old to be more stubborn, cold, experienced, and mature
You know, that's actually one pretty large criticism you could levy at the fic. Rarity is meant to be this old, mythical creature, but past the first half of The Creature or so, we never really feel her age.
>the whole Miss Aurora section may be my highlight across the fics
I definitely agree there.
>maybe Rivermoon at the library and her adventures with Ridge being efficiently glossed over contributed to this
Oh, for sure. It must have been hard to give the sense that Twilight and North went on a year-long journey, having lots of adventures and growing close during that time, but I think the author just barely pulled it off well enough.
>with the little hatchlings used as a method of interrogation
That was clever, yeah.
>Ridge's "you’d get to take the title of widower back" and "Kings? Dear girl, I’d have killed gods"
I'm actually not a fan of these. They feel too much like "one-liners" that Monochromatic was clearly very proud of herself for writing. And wouldn't "taking the title of widower back" mean that Twilight is once again becoming a widower? Surely, North would be jealous of her for divesting herself of the title, no?
>The changelings didn't do much changeling stuff besides be a convenient third party
Oh yeah, you basically forget they're changelings if not for the "liking ugliness" and "hating/hiding from ponies" aspect of things, and even those aren't always consistent. I also agree that "Ink" was awkward to figure out on the fly, and when "Buck" was introduced, I thought Incantation was just cursing until I saw Buck in a paragraph and had to backtrack to figure him out.

Remind me, which fics does /fimfic/ generally think are some of the best again? It seems like you this is another that you guys like quite a bit.

>>42290714
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/500819/

>>42290572
>has also changed her profile to Creaturity
I, for one, welcome our monster mare overlords.
>I read the whole thing in one sitting over several hours.
Same, and I expected that I'd need to pause it to clubpost, but just couldn't do it—I had to finish it. I was also reading it pretty quickly, which usually means that the writing is either good or very bad. And it's definitely not very bad here. I didn't notice many grammar errors, actually, at least nothing too obviously wrong (not talking about one failed em-dash left as two hyphens). It could be that I wasn't paying enough attention, but nothing took me out of the story.
>fairly flat, but the story more than made up for them with the characters and general tone.
Yep. Nothing groundbreaking about the world, but this isn't a fic about that, and it still has a very solid FiM fairy tale feel.
>nice to start fresh from the ground up, even if most of the tropes and dynamics she fell back on were basically the same
Ha, I made the same observation in my notes. "Wait, it's all Mono's RariTwi again?" "Always has been."
>paraphrasing lines from the show
Sure, but I did the little nod to the HWE play (the part where Rarity rides Twilight) neat.
>once Twilight got to the changeling village (...) a poor narrative choice that felt contrived.
It's the weakest part of the fic. You're right; I think the idea was to stretch it just a bit longer before the resolution to not make it feel too abrupt, but keeping up the charades for months was dubious, and didn't meaningfully contribute to the difficult decision both of them faced regarding their identities.

>>42290578
Yep, good analysis. While I do enjoy trying to wrestle the non-obvious true meaning of a story sometimes, between all the various forms they go through, it was probably a good decision to keep it to mostly very clear terms here. And obviously having Rarity's appearance physically reflect her state was something the fic relied on a lot. The ending with each of them having one functioning eye was really sweet.

>>42290581
>I don't know if I'd give it a favourite; I'm tempted, but I still really dislike the execution of the final arc.
I mean, that part is not amazing, but there are still plenty of good bits in it (and by far the most of Ridge!). If you reserve the Favorites shelf for just the flawless stories, you'll maybe get a more representative selection of Fimfic's finest, but you'll also have very few stories on there. Some of my favorite fics have elements that I think are completely unsalvageable and awful, e.g., the last chapters/epilogues of Bug and BP. For me, this is one of the fics where the worse parts don't bring the good parts enough to deprive it of the place on the shelf.

>>42290500
>la creatura
It’s a oneshot, alright. I like it, and it’s easy to like. It helps a lot that it’s being the best oneshot it can be. Mono likes fairy tales, and I’m reminded of Circles in how by-the-numbers this story is. Of course, Circles was great and following a well-defined path gives you the opportunity to refine it, and the story can be great if you do, which Mono did.
Well, the epilogue wasn’t part of the fairy tale structure, it just leads to the actual story to talk about.
>The Knight
This is good stuff. I can see why Mono would say this is the best story she’s written, although I think it’s more of a “trades blows” with TEL than simply the best. The Knight is outstandingly compact, in the same way that Apotheosis is, while rendering a romance in the same way that I think OtEM always intended to, but couldn’t.
To make further comparisons to TEL, that story is clearly advantaged in the AU it lives in, this one doesn’t have the word count budget to compete. With the locations visited, it falls towards a generic medieval fantasy setting, but I think not all the way out of FiM. While I didn’t really mind it that much here, Rarity and Twilight are also far more clearly themselves in TEL, unlike the way they are molded to fit in this AU setting.
As for the story itself, my only real complaint is that the vampirism is weak. Rarity doesn’t care much about feeding, and it mostly has the opposite effect of what it should to bring in proper vampire themes. The whole “intent” thing about it manifests as very arbitrary magical effects. The nature of it as a plot device is much more transparent than the other half of the prompt (TwiGuard).
That being said,
>>42290699
>I think Twilight's blindness was portrayed very well; it was one of the highlights of the fic.
This is completely true, so I can't argue with the results.
>>42290578
Yes to all of this. The ideas put into this story are very well rendered, and the low word count to get the result is amazing.

>>42290605
Not so much a review as it was a ruskie having a meltdown in my comments.
On 'Moonstruck' as with all my porn stories there's plot before the porn, and he was not happy with that and it somehow devolved into him thinking I was shitting on all ruskies or some shit. He yeeted a bunch of his comments so sadly it's not possible to see most of it beyond the start of him being a weirdo.

>>42290572
>Beyond being frustrating in the moment, I think it was honestly a poor narrative choice that felt contrived.
>>42290728
>It's the weakest part of the fic
I don't agree with this. When they reach each other in the changeling village, I got the impression of a dog chasing a car that doesn't know what to do when it catches the thing.
Both of them want to get back together, but even before they saw each other, neither of them were ready to. That was compounded by the way both of them changed as a result of the "slaying." Is the other pony even still the pony she loves? They have to find out. The way they're unprepared for each other is emphasized by their continuing to use the disguise names in private, even after they both know. It adds weight to their year apart and both of them making at least some progress on processing their grief which was taken away by the "whole year disappearing" line.
The finding out part, through the medium of the hatchlings, was good, both for slowing it down to a rate that the two of them could both handle and to keep the story interesting, because I want to know too. I think it would've been worse if they just did a "comparing notes" section and then just got back together and that was that.

>>42290629
>below Sundowner Season?
But over Reticence. And most likely over E485k as well, but I'm not sure—they're so different it's very hard to compare them with any degree of objectivity.
>Are you sure?
I'm not. There could be errors here—or things that are too bold grammatically—but there was nothing that screamed "this isn't proper English". The writing being nice does help mask some dubious choices, convincing me that they're intentional and probably correct.
>he was kind of obnoxious
I beg your pardon, he was great! Even when he's being annoying to Twilight, he does it for her own benefit, and the "surprisingly clever, good-natured boomer adventurer joyfully (and loudly) reminiscing about his older adventures" archetype is very fun when the character is self-aware.
>would have been nice to see more of their adventures in detail
Yeah, but I also agree with your conclusion that it's good that Mono omitted it.
>being "good" by being subversive or a genre-deconstruction is easier
It makes the writer and the readers who agree with the writer feel very clever, even when it's not.

>>42290669
>You're underestimating the severity of what she's done.
I might have been, yes. But what's a little mind control between friends when it all worked out? (joking, of course)
>It would be a better fic if it were more subtle
I don't know if I'd agree—it would be a different fic. Drowning the reader in the nearly-melodramatic story was the authorial intent of the story, and a less dramatic version of it would fail to do that. While that would make it better by some other metrics, I can't agree with such a definitive statement that those other metrics are "objective" better than the goal she'd set for herself here.

>>42290681
>sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'd find in a myth or legend
Mistaken/hidden identities are also a classic trope of the genre.

>>42290699
>it was one of the highlights of the fic
Oh, it was very good, yes! But I liked how the perspective and perceptions changed over the course of the fic, so I don't know if I'd agree with
>Is everyone going to say this?
Hey, I didn't! I was tempted to, but character limit is a pain.
>Rarity is meant to be this old, mythical creature,
Is she, really? For all we know she could've been chased away in her youth and spent her centuries in isolation. Not much room for character development when you're stuck alone in the forest.
>They feel too much like "one-liners" that Monochromatic was clearly very proud of herself for writing.
No, the "I'd have killed gods" line following the reveal that he was being loudly annoying on purpose to find Twilight is a really nice moment highlighting North's actual character versus the first (poor) impression you (and Twilight) get of him.
>forget they're changelings if not for the
And their extremely fae-like introduction, with hidden villages in the woods, blindfolds, etc.

>>42290675
Niches are lazy and bad.
Those who "find them" are prone to falling into habits and creating awful art that over time becomes more and more like a exaggerated parody of itself, catering only to a specific subset of readers sharing your obsession and enabling you further. It doesn't always happen, but very often.

>>42290675
That's not going to work, because nobody wants to fill the niche for anthro lactation clopfics

>>42290751
>while rendering a romance in the same way that I think OtEM always intended to,
It pains me to admit this, but I think it's an accurate comparison.
>the vampirism is weak
Unfortunately the story isn't very much about that, only what it makes her, so it gets sort of glossed over very often. I'd have liked if she was more vampiric, though the fic admits that she's probably not a real vampire, just something kind of similar.

>>42290795
>would've been worse if they just did a "comparing notes" section
That would be worse, but what I have an issue with is not long and impactful that section is. I understand the idea behind putting that into the fic, but it feels too long for what it is.

>>42290776
Marussia rapefic when?

>>42290839
Then I guess I'll disagree with the notion that it was too long. Very little of their time spent together in the "vow of silence" was on annoying hijinks. Most of it was learning about Rarity's past during the timeskip.

>>42290500
Well I don't think this is Mono's best fic (but that's an assumption and I dropped TEL so maybe it is kek). It's far too much of a fairytale for that and I personally enjoy most, if not all, of their other Twiguard Rarity fics more than this one. I'm also just now realizing maybe I don't exactly like fairy tales. My main problem with this fic is that no-one ever just says "I would rather die than live without you." and so the entire fic is both of them trying to kill themselves so that the other one can... idk have some sort of 'better life' even though it's quite obvious that that would be the worst thing imaginable for both of them. So for 3 whole arcs we watch them try to kys themselves and only Rarity kinda wins because she just forces Twilight to do literally the most traumatic thing she ever could've done (out of love for Twilight of course) and win their sick little game. It seriously got a bit old by the like the halfway point or earlier hearing both characters argue that they should do the exact worse thing for the other one because it is the best thing they could do for them. Like, come on people.
Also it's long? That's not a bad thing but it contributes to it not being my favorite Mono fic. I would've preferred any other of their Twiguard fics to have been this long instead of this one. The ones that are more fun and have more characters in them (I was actually shocked when Fluttershy got another one-off sentence like 65% through the fic) since that provides a much needed dynamic for their characters. This barely felt like the others because Rarity never brags about how good of a guard Twilight is to everyone else. There was no cute noble Fluttershy with her trusty guard Applejack trying to mediate between Twi and Rarity while they're being passive-aggressive with each other. Instead here we get the same story 3 times and only the 3rd time do we even get a new character in it. It really evoked the same feeling as whatever that other fic was where I got to the point where I really just wanted to see them interact with other people. North is probably the 3rd character I'd list for this fic and he shows up 70% through the fic. Anyways, I liked the fic, but just liked it.
>twilight lets the guards chain rarity up
>and lets her die in the cell for a week while she continued guarding the king
>I'm only asking for one life
Kino the second time around
>not assuming the lady is blind
>now twi is mad that rarity is doing everything twilight was doing over the past year

>>42290714
This is my checklist.

>>42290681
The reason why the transformation from fairy tale to fantasy seems important to me is because fairy tales operate on "magical thinking," where supernatural forces create causal connections between otherwise unrelated events. For example, "It is raining because I am sad." In a fairy tale, if you are ugly then you are presumed wicked. Treating an ugly person kindly is virtuous and charitable, because wouldn't be ugly on the outside unless they were also ugly on the inside, so you can't expect them to respond well to your kindness. Unless, of course, their ugliness is some kind of disguise or curse; for example, if an ugly woman arrives at your castle and begs for shelter (instead of being wicked enough to take it without asking), then in a fairy tale, you can be sure she's a disguised fairy or a cursed young maiden or something like that. And so it is with Rarity: Most ponies see her as evil because she is ugly; Twilight is virtuous because she treats Rarity kindly anyway; Rarity is actually good but cursed.

Fantasy stories don't work that way. Their characters are like characters in an ordinary story. As The Creature progresses, it becomes less of a fairy tale and more of a fantasy. Rarity gets a personality: She can't eat a pie, but she does want a book, but maybe not a book on agriculture, and by the way, she likes dresses... Twilight's transformation is slower, and I'd say she doesn't really break out of the Paladin archetype until The Knight.

To me, the distinction between the two types of stories affects how we're supposed to react to events. In an ordinary fantasy story, I'd say that Twilight was unjustified in slaying the king. There are ethical, moral, and political ramifications to assassinating a ruler that are completely ignored here. We operate on fairy tale logic: The king is evil, so killing him is good.

I disagree that either The Creature or The Knight are like medieval romances. The conventions of courtly romance are missing. In a real medieval romance, Twilight would go out and perform heroic acts in the service of her mistress. That's missing here; Twilight doesn't engage in any real acts of heroism. (Murdering the king would not be considered heroism in a medieval romance. The king is Twilight's liege, so murdering him would be seen as one of the most evil things she could possibly do.) And because she doesn't engage in heroic deeds, Twilight earns no reward. Again, in a real medieval romance, a lady's champion would get something in return; it might be sexual, but it could also be just praise and glory.
>>42290814
>Drowning the reader in the nearly-melodramatic story was the authorial intent
I can't argue to the contrary, but I think that intent is misplaced. If the ultimate goal is to evoke emotional reaction in the reader, then at some point you need to rely on the reader. You can't feel their emotions for them. Pushing melodrama too hard dampens the reader's own response.

>>42290675
You're mom's pussy is my niche.

>>42290819
But I like my niche

>>42290669
>You're underestimating the severity of what she's done.
That's a good point; there *is* some dissonance between Rarity and Twilight's actions and how they're portrayed as generally totally innocent. Monochromatic is clearly biased in that respect, of course, but I think it would have actually reinforced the themes if Rarity and Twilight were portrayed as more morally gray or even doing strictly bad things and being judged for them by the narrator rather than simply being star-crossed lovers who are absolved at every opportunity.
>Somehow I didn't even notice this was missing.
It is? Huh.

>>42290728
>I expected that I'd need to pause it to clubpost, but just couldn't do it—I had to finish it
Yeah, I was up until 4, and even the parts that made me grit my teeth (see: Twilight's vow of silence) still made me want to keep reading to see if Rarity could carry the story and blow Twilight's cover early. She really didn't, but it ended up all right.
>the little nod to the HWE play
It's a cute detail. "Do watch the", uh, "infected sores, darling. They're worth more than all the", uh, "swords, in your li- sheath".
Also, going back and checking part IV of The Knight, the deliberate callback to the knock on the door in the pony village, with the changeling now telling Twilight that Rarity's pretty, is a nice touch.
>While I do enjoy trying to wrestle the non-obvious true meaning of a story sometimes
I wouldn't call it the "true" meaning, just *another* meaning on a deeper level. Like you say, the reliance on clear and straightforward techniques benefitted the fic, kept it from getting too obtuse or convoluted.

>>42290500
>I don't think Mono was exaggerating,
Eh I would obviously have to actually read their other stuff to have a full opinion on it but I at least like a bunch of their other stuff a lot more. However I can easily understand why they might've said this. From a meta sense looking at the fic it is well-written and a lot of thought and effort went into it which I think can directly corelate to them thinking it's the best they've ever written.
>and finding myself so enchanted by it (despite the relative lack of libraries!)
That fic certainly wasn't enchanting
>(unicorn Twilight, too!)
I mean yeah, it's the Twilight bodyguard AU
>might be the coolest male OCs I've ever read in a ponyfic (sorry, Basedji)
wtf I liked North Ridge too, but he's surprisingly deep comedic relief, not blood in the sands of time Basenji, dog of kino.
>It's also very sweet and romantic the whole time
Again I really am just soured by loving this au, I'd argue most other ones are more sweet and romantic than this one. Although this one might have 'more' quantitatively than most of the other stories and certainly has a more fairy tale feel to it that might contribute
>The Knight that... didn't "drag on", but the drama was starting to stretch for longer than was ideal
Agreed and agreed about most of the parts mentioned specifically
>And the king being so bad was a bit overplayed.
This I actually really didn't like. Again... in the other AU fics the king is benevolent and Rarity is his daughter and Twilight commonly likes the king more than Rarity at first (as a guard should) and it arguably adds to Twilight being a good guard for guarding someone worth guarding. Here, we have Twilight and her whole family devoting themselves to protecting this guy, in the only country of the 4 countries on the planet that don't have evil fairytales about the forest, and it turns out the king is a piece of shit.
>>>"No Monarch that has ever lived is to be trusted."
Yeah, Rarity was based as fuck for that one.
>Vampire!Rarity
I did really like what Rarity was in this story though
>It's funny. I could see this Twilight being the best character in most of the stories she appears in, yet Rarara and North Ridge are so great that she comes in at a firm third place for me here.
Honestly I'd agree which is crazy

>>42290528
>A little ways into The Creature, I realized it was a fairy tale. Fairy tales aren't written like ordinary stories. One of their traits is that the characters are archetypes instead of fully drawn characters.
Absolutely agree
>I don't want to criticize The Creature for starting as a fairy tale, but I do think it was a mistake.
And agree here, but I don't necessarily ever think it stopped being a fairy tale
>But if it really is her best, that's unfortunate.
fucking kek
>The Knight is solid; its constantly changing interpersonal drama is entertaining; but it consistently felt amateurish to me, and I think that's because of its tendency toward melodrama.
Also completely agreed here

>>42290751
>The Knight is outstandingly compact
That's definitely a strong point in its favour. It feels like we get more than twice the amount of "experience" than would fit into 36k (47k) words, and it's mostly very good.
>With the locations visited, it falls towards a generic medieval fantasy setting
You see, I thought that was actually a big strength as well. It kept the story tight and focused, since the only details about the setting which were included were strictly necessary for the story. It feels kind of timelessly dreamlike, in a way, if it's done well, at least. That's a critical part of a fairy tale, I think; it's able to be told and believed no matter if you're in 1100s England or 900s France or 1500s Germany.
>Rarity and Twilight are also far more clearly themselves in TEL, unlike the way they are molded to fit in this AU setting
That's a very fair criticism. Not so much with Rarity, but it often felt like Twilight was more of a dull, grim-faced protagonist than snarky and bookish. I think part of what made the Miss Aurora segments great is that both Rarity and Twilight's show personalities really shone through.
>my only real complaint is that the vampirism is weak
Also fair; the entire time, she seemed more like a sort of lich than a vampire. It was also slightly misleading how she was immortal and lived on such little blood, but simultaneously needed to feed on Twilight so frequently to stay alive. I can't really comment on the "intent" thing other than saying that I like magic when it's mysterious, as long as it's consistent.

>>42290795
>I got the impression of a dog chasing a car that doesn't know what to do when it catches the thing
That's an interesting perspective, but probably as a combination of how Twilight's long search was largely glossed over and how openly affectionate Twilight and Rarity were beforehand, I didn't think it was natural for her immediate reaction to be giving up and leaving without even making herself known. Her given reasoning is that "Rarity looks happy here without me, and she doesn't like talking about her past experiences with me, so she must now hate me", when this is clearly not a conclusion that's likely to be true. Now, any other pony getting overwhelmed by emotion might have been understandable, if still unsatisfying, but Twilight is the logical one even in love; it felt like she got handed (hoofed) the idiot ball for a bit.
>neither of them were ready to
>Is the other pony even still the pony she loves?
This is an excellent point to bring up, and it strongly ties into the themes of the fic. I hadn't really looked at it that way, but I still think the author could have portrayed it better.

>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/579528/a-technicolor-constellation
>188k words dropped all at once from a new writer
Shame it's isekai but I'm impressed. Also this is one of five stories by new writers currently sequentially in the new column, I think one of the mods is taking his meds again.

If you pick a good niche you can go far with it, honestly.

>>42291014
I don't want to out myself as being a paranoid schizophrenic, but I'm getting a whiff of LLM writing from this one.

>>42290530
>But Mono knows it's supposed to be a good death scene, and she tries too hard to milk it. Despite appreciating the drama, I found myself smirking at pompous lines like, "Foul creature, I condemn you to death." It would be better if she just played it straight and trusted the reader to endow the scene with the drama it deserves.
>Twilight and Rarity being mature adults. But mature adults would not behave like they do. Twilight and Rarity both act like thirteen year olds.
Absolutely agreed with everything you've said so far lol
>But I also couldn't take it seriously.
I didn't think about this but yeah. I'm not sure at what point I realized it but I was also not reading this 'seriously'. I had pretty early on (maybe at the king trying to kill rarity, but also maybe earlier in the heavy fairy tale parts) accepted that this wasn't going to be as good as the other fics in the same au and once that happened I was just along for the ride.
>Congratulations, Mono, but I hope they beat all the melodrama out of you.
kek

>>42290533
>though I wouldn't want it stretched out either — maybe Rivermoon at the library and her adventures with Ridge being efficiently glossed over contributed to this
Yeah I got this feeling as well. The large timeskip into Riverwood at the capital and essentially another one for her and North crossing the whole country in a year
>"No, I'm protecting you!" did get tiresome at times.
yeah
>I was foolishly expecting twists.
kek

>>42290572
>I liked how there was a break from her normal "Princess Rarity" thing, since it was nice to start fresh from the ground up, even if most of the tropes and dynamics she fell back on were basically the same.
I agree, but I hate that we apparently needed a shitty king to get there
>(My main complaint is that, once Twilight got to the changeling village, she suddenly turned pants-on-head retarded and self-sabotaging
lmao surely she was talking about how much she enjoyed her life as a beautiful seamstress in a different village than the one she was in with Twilight, surely
>>42290578
>I liked how the author portrayed this taken to excess, to the point of each neglecting the well-being of not only themselves, but their partner.
This might've been my biggest dislike and what kept the whole thing feeling fairytale like for me
>Their shared one-eyed blindness at the end illustrates the resolution to this nicely; their burden isn't lifted entirely, but they learn to share it in a healthy way.
And this sort of feeds into it. What did she just decide to drink a little less? Or can she control it this much? And why would they not have just gone 50/50 earlier considering Rarity was the one with the power to and also the one who was healthier
>it's clear that none of the "Rarities" we see are really a full reflection of her
This part I did like

>>42290814
>But over Reticence. And most likely over E485k as well
I liked Reticence, but putting it next to these other stories is awfully high praise. I'd put Creature/Knight above E485k just because I like what it's good at better than what E485k is good at, but they really are entirely different.
>"surprisingly clever, good-natured boomer adventurer joyfully (and loudly) reminiscing about his older adventures" archetype
There are certain archetypes that one likes in a story, but then hates to interact with in real life. "Jovial boomer" might actually be the opposite; cool in real life but somewhat bothersome in a story. His self-awareness was his saving grace, I'll tell you that much.
>I don't know if I'd agree—it would be a different fic
Agreed here. The author does what she sets out to do, and if she had deviated from her inspiration too greatly, then the story would have suffered for it, even if such changes would generally be considered "better".
>Mistaken/hidden identities are also a classic trope of the genre.
That's true, but I'll admit some common ground with the flagless anon that the story pulls away from its fairy tale roots towards the end. If she'd pushed it unapologetically as a straight fairy tale plot point, then I'd like it better.
>But I liked how the perspective and perceptions changed over the course of the fic
Honestly, this may be a fic that would be good for a(n eventual) re-read once you know how the dynamics change, and you could appreciate them better as they come and go.
>she could've been chased away in her youth and spent her centuries in isolation
Well, that's exactly my point. It's hardly significant that she's any older than Twilight, other than the fact that ponies have a preconceived idea of her legend, and even that's overwritten by the "kingslayer" myth that crops up. Monochromatic throws in some hints at her age early on, such as how she sings old songs, but even those are forgotten eventually.
>No, the "I'd have killed gods" line ... is a really nice moment highlighting North's actual character
It sounds like something out of a YA novel. My criticism there isn't with North, it's with the line itself and how out-of-place and schlocky it sounds. If North is opening up to Twilight past his chatty exterior (even if he has a chatty interior), it should be more grounded and candid. And it seems like the author intended it to be candid, but it just came across as amateurish.
>And their extremely fae-like introduction, ... etc.
Well, yes, but even if changelings *do* come from English fairy folklore, they weren't really "MLP changelings", just elves or fairy creatures. And that's not a bad thing, but MLP changelings are such an idiosyncratic race that you can't help but feel that they weren't used to their full potential.

>>42290605
Hey Gold Meddle. It was pretty funny when a guy told me I "should go in an irrenanstalt" and that he regretted reading my story. The story was admittedly an acquired taste, but nonetheless it was funny. What makes it even better was a later reviewer telling me "Not at all my cup of tea in the slightest, but the writing is pretty good!"

>>42290611
Howso? I use different plots, and don't throw in a human for no good reason. I'm even slowly branching out of my niche, just a little.

>>42291040
It's the writing it all at once, isn't it

>>42291040
You're not a schizo. It's.

>>42291077
>german
>frightened of passing on his genes
say it ain't so

>>42290814
>But what's a little mind control between friends when it all worked out?
So we reading FiMC next week or what?

>>42291040
It’s better to be a schizo in an age of autism. For you can see outside of the boxes and systems that the rest cannot.

>>42291083
The volume of it is a factor, but I'm looking more at the saturation of em-dashes, the over-consistent sentence structure, the abuse of contrasting descriptors ('a mixture of [x] and [y]'), the empty similes, and other such hallmarks.

>>42291040

>>42291094
Hey, look at that. Born too early to be a blade runner.

>>42291094
Why do this in the first place
Do they just want the accolades without any of the joy of creation

>>42290885
>even though it's quite obvious that that would be the worst thing imaginable for both of them
Kek, that's very true. It gets very played out, especially towards the end, but sometimes fairy tales are about just never learning your lesson.
>This barely felt like the others
I think it's a mistake to consider this alongside the Twiguard fics, as unintuitive as that is. It's more of a soft reset where Monochromatic goes "back to basics", as it were, and tries a slightly different spin on Raritwi.
Lots of Monochromatic's foreshadowing was really un-subtle, which I disliked. We already know that Rarity takes on the diseases of those whose blood she drinks (except when she just gets scars from sucking out your syphilis or something, and that she heals except when she doesn't), and we know that she has now given Twilight sight, but North still had to ask about the messages, "Did she write them with her eyes closed?"

>>42290922
>Fantasy stories don't work that way. Their characters are like characters in an ordinary story.
I see what you mean in regards to character progression, but I think you should allow for some variation in the level of nuance across different fairy tales. You might have a very simple story with very simple traits like "ugly = bad", especially in stories like Hansel and Gretel or Little Red Riding Hood that are meant to teach children basic safety. However, you could also have longer and more mature fairy tales like the ones about Percival or King Arthur, which I think is what this story tries to evolve into. You could debate that those are fairy tales at all, but I'd call them so on the basis of having a mythical setting, mysterious fae magic, being folklore for a wide audience, and having clear morals.
>To me, the distinction between the two types of stories affects how we're supposed to react to events.
I agree, but Monochromatic tries to blend things together in a way that I don't think always works out. For example, Twilight's king-slaying IS depicted as good, at least from the narrator's point of view (Twilight certainly never shows any guilt), but she simultaneously needs to deal with the more realistic fallout of killing the king.
>The conventions of courtly romance are missing
I wouldn't say this is strictly true. Twilight's calling Rarity "my Lady" is clearly meant to indicate that her allegiance is shifting towards Rarity and away from the king. While that's a violation of medieval codes of honour and wouldn't fly in a traditional romance, such things are interpreted more loosely here and Twilight is given a pass because her """real""" liege is Rarity. If the author wanted to draw out The Creature, she would have written more about Twilight's conflict of loyalty, which I honestly think is glossed over too much. Also, in The Knight, Twilight's heroic deed is her year-long quest that's also skipped over because Monochromatic is really only concerned with the romantic parts of a romance.

>>42291112
Could be someone who had an idea but no clue how to write. Or someone who doesn't read much and was impressed by the default prose of an LLM.
Also, when we were in the bunkers, there was a post on /chag/ by an anon who wanted to use LLMs to publish on Fimfic.
The justification was that with a good model and preset, it was easy to make the writing look non-AI and have better prose than most of what's in the bin.
We all told him he was retarded, and that if people go there to read, it's to read human prose and ideas. Fanfiction is also about the writing process and the community, not just the end result.
But that gives you an idea of the thought process some of them have.

>>42291090
No but sooner or later the other club will. You will join us when we do, right?

>>42291180
>the other club
It's dead, Jim.
It's not coming back.
'Strayo killed it.

>>42291196
No, I'm pretty sure it was the aneurysm.

>>42291112
Why are you so obsessed with FNaF?
>>42291094
>>42291092
Aw. Sad. Well, at least there's also this which made me laugh looking at it (I have no idea if it's actually good): https://www.fimfiction.net/story/579510/prey-and-the-laugh

>>42291178
>it was easy to make the writing look non-AI and have better prose than most of what's in the bin.
This, the basic problem is a combination of autism and an obsession with utility. They have the souls of engineers, not artists, and they view everything in life as a technical problem to be "solved" without asking why.

>>42291178
It's always about the end result with these people. Always fucking lazy.

>>42291222
>they have the souls of engineers, not artists
such a distinction has never, and will never, exist

>>42291241
Found the engineer. Post decimal digits of Pi to scare him away.

>>42291246
if i was an engineer i would be claiming that the engineer soul is superior to the artist soul

>>42291241
Well, yeah. Engineers don't have souls.

>>42291241
Nice bait

>>42291279
That would imply an engineer would ever do the smart thing.

There's this fanfic that i really enjoyed when i read it many years ago. I wanted to give it a read again today and when i tried to find it turned out that the author deleted it from everywhere, i had to dig quite a lot and download a dump of all fanfiction of the site that story was posted on. I found it at the end, i now have a copy on my computer.
Do you think i should post it on pastebin or any similar site or let it be erased like the author apparently wanted? It was never on fimfiction and it's not in English, so this story isn't on any fanfic archive.

>>42291470
Everything will be destroyed in the end.

>>42291470
Post it. If you publish something, you should be prepared for it to exist forever.

>>42291473
Nihilism.

>>42291127
I don't feel like Arthurian legends really count as fairy tales. In my mind, a fairy tale is a kind of folktale (like Brothers Grimm) or conscious imitation of such (like Hans Christian Andersen). If you read medieval literature, you find that the style is nothing like that, even when the stories are about Gawain, Lancelot, etc. But I might be too strict. Modern retellings of these legends are more fairy-ish than the originals, and maybe it's reasonable to interpret them as fairy tales.

Twilight's search is something a traditional knight might do, but it's a comparatively small portion of the story, and the only heroic deed that comes out of it is persistence; she doesn't overcome anything, neither external (like a monster or another knight) nor internal (like temptation or despair). Twilight and Rarity's romance is driven by their psychology. If they acted more maturely, half the story would vanish. The Knight is basically a modern romance set in a medieval fantasy world. It adheres more to modern romance novel conventions than it does medieval ones: The two characters get together; one of them acts retarded and they separate; they get back together; the other one acts retarded and they separate; eventually they put aside their retardation long enough to get married; and the story ends before they get divorced.

>>42291470
There's fimfiction archives that backup stuff, post it there?

>>42291507
Things get on those archives by being scraped from Fimfiction. If it wasn't in English originally, then it can't go on Fimfiction (and will be deleted if you try).

>>42291482
You make a good point that modern retellings will lean more heavily into the fairy tale aspects, at least aesthetically. I'm probably conflating fairy tale influence on romances with genuine common traits. It's also true that romances were much more rigidly defined by their conventions, and so there's a strong case that you could easily rule this fic out of the "medieval romance" genre based on that. I like your view that this is more of a modern romance in the aesthetic style of a medieval romance (because that's really what it is, isn't it?)

>>42291477
Congratulations, you didn't understand nihilism. You're mentally 17.

>>42290423
Because of the content, and how you are consuming it?
Technical documentation does not want to be reflowed onto a small display. All such that I've seen needs a big display to show diagrams, preformatted text, tables and any other layout tricks that are used to organize the content. You need a laptop or better at least to read it, if it's not on paper, or else you're gonna have a bad time.
You can use a laptop on a bus, but it sucks. Using a laptop in bed is much worse. A tablet only gets closer to solving those issues if it's laptop-sized.

Reading a story on an e-reader has none of those problems. And it's better to read a story at night before bed than trying to focus on technical documentation before going to sleep.

>>42291542
The universe is empty and uncaring by nature. But horsewords are good and ponies is nice.

>>42291542
>mentally 17
So above average for this thread.

What fic is shit or kind of shit but you like it anyway

>>42291681
Anthropology

>>42291542
I bet you think Nietzsche thought he was the Ubermensch himself.
>>42291686
This.

>>42291699
No, anon, but he pretty explicitly presented nihilism as the new starting point for society, not the arrival edgy teens treat it as. God is dead, therefore man must reach higher to compensate.

>>42291681
I had this ESL HiE I was watching that I couldn't stop myself from liking in spite of itself. I'd link it, but I think the author had one of those bouts of artistic caprice and wiped it.

>>42291699
Nietzsche thought and said a lot of stuff if you count the whole going insane thing. We got a cool song out of it at least.

>>42291681
all of them

>>42291681
Past Sins

>>42291699
>I bet you think Nietzsche thought he was the Ubermensch himself.
99% of zoomers who got into philosophy are like this while 1% are schizos that actually have interesting things to say.

>>42291790
Only applies to Amerimutts, the civilised world actually has (history of) philosophy lessons in high school.

>>42291899
The "civilized world" makes it illegal to question certain historical events, and conveniently elides certain lessons or opinions from our predecessors.

>>42291968
Is that what they told you to believe, sweetie? Keep eating your corn and paying for Israel's wars.

>>42291968
Stick to the pregnancy stuff bro

>>42292041
>>42291978
sometimes pregnancy isn't an option under the criminal order of the world

>>42292179
See this is why we talk about sticking to your niche.

Hey faggots what guidelines would you give the /g4r/ general when attempting to remake the magic of season 1?
>>42290912

>inb4 you don't.

I want to know what seasons and episodes of the show do fanfic readers like.

>>42292578
Meme general retained only for shitposting.

Is it dead?

>>42292586
>meme retained only for shitposting
so... like every general more than a few years old?

>>42292603
It seems like he didn't

>>42292603
Yeah, let it go anon. The author hasn’t logged into fimfiction in close to a year. I’ve posted those here before but there’s a chance he may have actually killed himself. He revealed in a blog post he’s stuck in a dead end wagie job with collage debt. He also seems to be mentally unwell judging by the way he writes (and projects himself onto the oc main character of his fic who is in universe not well)

>>42292578
To give you a serious answer, focus on character relationships and actual social dynamics (/friendship problems/). Don't make just a generic cartoon plot, make it pony. Don't introduce more than one or two new characters or settings if you have to, and for the love of God, don't rely on callbacks to already-known characters or events.

Keep the core problem simple and realistic, even if the way it's framed is more fantastic or cartoonish. Green Isn't Your Color and Suited for Success are good examples of more mundane plots, but even Dragonshy is about peer pressure, learning to contribute, etc, and Feeling Pinkie Keen is about learning to trust your friends and stop being neurotic, even though both are very fantastic and end with big monster fights.

The best season 1 episodes usually have a plot with several conflicts at once, or a plot that twists unexpectedly multiple times. Going back to Green Isn't Your Color, both Rarity and Fluttershy are upset and hide it from each other, and /also/ Twilight needs to learn to respect their privacy and let them solve their own issue. Sonic Rainboom is about Rainbow's fear of inadequacy, but Rarity's wings are an unexpected factor, and the episode shifts once she decides to enter the contest. Feeling Pinkie Keen is first about Twilight figuring out Pinkie sense, but then they need to go and rescue Fluttershy, and even after that, it's revealed at the very end that the real problem is that Twilight just isn't believing. Even something like Over a Barrel has an interesting twist where Rainbow Dash unexpectedly sides with the buffalo, and that Braeburn and Strongheart want to reconcile while Rainbow and Applejack make things more heated. In Suited for Success, Rarity gets through making the dresses the second time, and thinks everything is finally over, but then Hoity Toity shows up, etc. You get the idea.

Also, just generally keep things light and innocent, not too serious. Write your story as if it were aimed primarily at kids, but would also appeal to a large audience. Maybe think about what kind of letter to Celestia Twilight would write at the end.

>>42292578
>>42293079
Oh, and read the damned show bible from pre-S1.

>>42290605
Way back when, some tumblr fanfic review blog thought the red and black OC oneshot satire I wrote was really serious and me bitching about how no one liked my special OC. While it certainly wasn't my best fic, and the satire wasn't even all that great either, the fact I'd inadvertently baited someone into doing a whole rage review of it made it a success.

>>42291196
They strayed from their purpose. If they'd kept reading schizo kino it'd still be around today. They could have done Behemoth and entered a shitposting Golden Age but instead fell to the Flash Sentry sissyfag.

>>42291470
I'd say toss it up on AO3. There doesn't appear to be any language rules and they don't appear to have the same "only post stories you wrote" rule that Fimfic has.

>>42291681
Another Winning Pony mention. The relationship drama is awful and Cloud's an idiot, but I still spent 12 hours straight reading it.

>>42292823
>tfw the last thing he ever wrote on Fimfic was "I can't stop. SEND HELP"
From his profile comment section, it looks like this isn't the first time he hasn't logged into Fimfic for a prolonged period of time.

>Read pretty much all of Mono's other bodyguard!verse fics at work today
Yup, that's the good shit

>>42292603
It was never good.

>>42293190
No, no, I'm pretty sure it was the aneurysm. Also I know I shouldn't be surprised by someone on 4chan being mentally suboptimal in some regard but it's impressive how thoroughly you obsess over the club reading Behemoth after being told multiple times it was managed by the guy who wrote it.

>>42292578
Forget all magic items and power scaling faggotry. S1 and 2 go out of their way to indicate that magic comes from ponies and their internal qualities. The physical elements of harmony don't matter. S3 brought in the crystal heart and Starswirl's book, and from there the show lost a lot by focusing on external macguffins and power levels instead of solving conflict via character development. A big part of the 'magic' of the early seasons is in not knowing exactly what the Mane 6 are capable of doing. There's no limit to Twilight's magical power, Rainbow's speed, Fluttershy's animal handling, etc. What matters is whether they're using their talents for the right reasons. Magical items and quantifying magic potential limits what the Mane 6 can do and suck up time that should be spent on the characters.

>>42293723
I'd wager that it began at the end of S2. Something twists in my stomach whenever I think about Celestia and Chrysalis having a beam struggle. It just wasn't meant to be like this.

>>42293837
Yeah, I don't really consider Canterlot Wedding to be part of the S1-2 era. It's not macguffin bullshit yet but you can clearly see the seeds of what's to come.

>>42293837
You faggots need to watch the original mlp movie before opening your fucking mouths about what pony is supposed to be.

>>42293850
Not FiM, not pony.

>>42293850
Is this going to turn into another HiE flamewar?

>>42293875
Not HiE because that's not Equestria.
>>42293864
Better than most of FiM.

>>42293846
>>42293837
Anyone who puts S2 together with S1 needs to be executed on sight or forced to rewatch both back to back 1 episode of each and if they still can't notice the obvious difference then you either torture them by shoving them in a mental asylum or you execute them out of benevolence. You have to brown, asian or an autistic white man if you cannot notice behavioural difference between seasons when it's more obvious than you not having friends, let alone a normal /fit/ gf.

What circumstances would lead to someone needing a limb amputated or need a prosthetic because they got shot in said limb. Assume there's not much period of time or some shit.

>>42294194
Usually it's when the bone is shattered to the point that it can't meant mended by being pinned together and the limb requires amputation.
That occurs even in the modern day.

>>42294256
So just blowing the limb off outright or shattering it completely. Got it. Sorry, Scootaloo.

>>42294303
More or less.
If a limb is absolutely fucked in multiple places the doctors almost immediately write it off. Usually high-speed crashes that pulverise limbs are the ones where it occurs most frequently as the bones are basically shards and powder at that point.
A limb blown off can be re-attached usually, at least today, but the bones need to be intact and the muscle needs to not be shredded to fuck to the nerves can make their connections.

>>42294303
Why's it always Scoots?

>>42294327
Well I've got to find a way to give her a sweet kickass robot leg and I've got to find a way to make Rainbow Dash feel bad. It was that or a hydraulic press on the leg.

>>42294365
Hydraulic press would certainly do the trick, albeit fucking brutally.

>>42294365
>hydraulic press on the leg.
lol what? what kind of story are you writing? is she working in a factory? is this a, mmm, rainbow factory fic perhaps?

>>42294370
Yeah but I feel like there's no real situation that'd call for Scootaloo to be caught in a hydraulic press during a cyberpunk heist gone wrong. An underpaid security guard accidentally shooting her and then having PTSD over shooting a kid just seems more likely.

>>42294381
Ooh, cyberpunk stories are my jam.
What's the premise?

>>42294385
"Ponies all think they're in a dystopian cyberpunk world where friendship and happiness can't ever change anything but forget that they're magic rainbow ponies and that it can"

>>42294394
Project Sparkle is somewhat that as well except that the magic of friendship has mostly died and they're making do without it whilst trying to restore it as best they're able.
I more meant what's the basic premise of the story rather than the general idea of the setting.
With Project Sparkle, Twilight is basically a nigh-unstoppable glowie for the Crown that does her best to stop all threats against the realm. Enter something that can hurt her, huge fucky-uppy, what the hell, not as simple as it appears, yay conspiracy time and deeper rabbit holes as things progress.

>>42294381
>during a cyberpunk heist gone wrong
What about one of those high tech doors that slam closed when an alarm is hit?

>>42294412
Here I'm having her as an ex-corporate bootlicker who doesn't believe in anything, least of all friendship. The one person I can't place is Pinkie. Maybe as some sort of deposed gang leader.

>>42294422
If you can make that work then grats. Given her personality I couldn't put her in that position without feeling like I'd lean into the meme 'secret mastermind' persona most fics do when she has an actual brain.
It was the one odd note I found with GTG that I accepted because the story was completely decent. Ponk as a villain or 'evil' character doesn't ever work unless it's a meme comedy fic IMO.

>>42294422
Pinkie should be physically still and permanently physically hooked to the net because her mind shattered exploring it and she's literally not all there any more even if she's trying to put herself back together. Like a less fucked up 40k Emperor.

>>42294433
Oh oh, maybe something where Pinkie's mind got spread across a bunch of other people's bodies and shit via a cyberpunk version of the mirror pool. So she's this spaced out hivemind.

You have her pop up in multiple places unexpected until the reveal.

>>42294431
Twilight's TOO neurotic to do the mastermind shit. For all her skills at planning any long term stuff is something she'd be bad at because one little thing would go wrong and she'd freak. A good mastermind is basically Xanatos (where the game is set up so he wins either way) or someone who can improvise on the spot.

>>42294442
I find Twilight to be good at that, even if she does it a little late or she gets a push from one of the girls, she's usually the one to figure out what needs to happen to fix everything.
That could be applied to planning for trouble, and with her planning skills she could make endless contingencies.
Do you a full premise set or are you still trying to figure out the building blocks and how you want things to go?

>>42294453
I got it outlined. I wrote it out as a joke and now it's going out of control.

>>42294435
I like that. Plus you could just keep killing Pinkie Pie for funsies.

>>42294456
>I wrote it out as a joke and now it's going out of control
I have an unpublished story I keep adding to over time that started out the same way until I thought 'Hey actually... this could work seriously.'

>>42294422
What's Fluttershy?

>>42294699
A whore.

>>42294699
Drugged up whore.

>>42294703
>>42294700
I mean in the AU, not the show

So very close to the end of To Perytonia, I can't remember some of the locations or people mentioned in the letters. It's was like 500,000 words ago.

>>42294456
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/545609/chromed-wings
This you, senpai?
If so
>Human
Loses me.

On a horsewords marathon, been reading 60k words per day for a week already. I'm beginning to ascend

>>42294903
100 dollars says it's Fae doing a sequel to his AI Dash one.

>>42294942
Chewing through longfic(s) or tearing up several shorter ones?

>>42295032
I want to do more with it and I like seeing someone's cynicism get crushed.

>>42295190
Everything, from 5 to 140 thousand words. Mostly rereading stuff after many years. Getting ready for /mlp/con

>>42295404
We talked about niches, now it's time to talk about lanes. And staying in them.

>>42295407
>it's time to talk about lanes. And staying in them.
Do tell. I need more material for my extension bowling themed fanfiction.

Guys I need some fics with good sex scenes I don't know how to write sex because I'm autistic and virgin

>>42295412
I wouldn't know, I hate bowling

>>42295412
i once challenged my brother to wii bowling and lost, so then i challenged him to real bowling and lost a second time

so like, do that but with shining and twilight idk

>>42295414
penis go in vagina
feel kind of good
penis cum
feel really good

>>42295431
This also applies to booty in a gay or straight fashion.

>>42295414
Just find the clitoris. If you can't find it, consult a map.

>>42295435
i've seen porn with a girl with a 2 inch long clitoris
it looked like a limp noodle just flailing around

>>42295439
And... that was attractive to you?

>>42295414
Anon, I am confident guessing that at least half of all the sex scenes ever posted to fimfiction were written by autistic virgins.

>>42295444
All of mine sure were!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>>42295444
Who's not an autistic virgin writing horsewords?

>>42295435
>consult the map
I swear to god there is a fic about twilight reading a book about how to have sex while having sex I just can’t remember the name of it.

>>42295448
Me. I don't write.

>>42295449
She's an autistic virgin having horsewords sex?

>>42295449
>>42110282

>>42295435

any recs for short pony poems?

>>42295492
Not really a short one, but definitely a poem.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/329054/only-only-only-you

>>42295492
A rare opportunity for me to shill myself: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/566494/the-anoniad

>>42295500
eh, short enough, i'll check it out
>>42295505
thanks

why do i punish myself by writing things that make me cry

>>42295543
because you know that the end product will make it all worth it
it's like cutting onions to make a tasty soup

>>42295543
Crying is good and it makes my migraines feel less.

>>42295543
I've been told that's emotionally manipulative. Real tears come from things like testicle pain, or heartburn.

>>42295557
No, the truest source of tears is AiE.

>>42295563
I just said, heartburn and testicular pain.

>>42295568
>testicular pain
you ever jack off so much that your balls start getting pins and needles?

>>42295573
Not since I was twelve and did it ten times in a row to Samus getting railed, why?

>>42295573
Sometimes I scratch my pp and balls until the skin is raw and it is to painful to masturbate

>>42295492
Who's the Shel Silverstein of fimfiction?

>>42295873
me

>>42295876
No you aren't. Get back in your fucking hole.

>>42295878

>>42295879
Gross

>>42295873
Me. Here are some poems I once wrote:

>In pictures the Apples have teats that look bigger,
>but when you're in bed, it's more fun with a zigger.
(>>41485904)

>For pleasure in sex, your partner needs vigor.
>You won't get the best unless she is a zigger.
(>>41486212)

>Telling the truth is for Twitter a trigger;
>they won't admit that "hot mare" means "zigger."
(>>41487048)

>The comics portrayed her each time with a snigger.
>The artists aren't worthy to have sex with a zigger.
(>>41490154)

>They make me want whiskey, much more than a jigger,
>they're more racist than me, and I use the word zigger.
(>>41490908)

>Identites here are tricky to figure;
>all that I'm saying is, I'd fuck a zigger.
(>>41493572)

>In politics, one doesn't reason with rigor;
>it's all about name-calling; you know, like "zigger."
(>>41500969)

>>42294381
>cyberpunk
Have it be a laser instead of a bullet, either as a security device or a weird gun. It slices the leg off and cauterizes the tissue which both prevents Scootaloo from bleeding to death and prevents the leg from getting reattached.

>>42294422
She's the game master for one of the megacorps who sets up the mental fantasies the ponies can use their brain implants to escape to. As she has root access to the implants, she's a prime target for either your protag or the villain since she could potentially mentally manipulate her corporation's subscribers. She loves her job bringing what little happiness she can to a bleak world and would refuse to help whatever scheme they're trying.

>>42295574
Good taste.

>>42295032
There goes any chance of the story being good then. Shame he's too focused on pumping out slop to actually stop and reflect on it and try to make his work good.

>>42295958
Isn't the cauterize thing actually incorrect and just a star wars meme?

>>42296509
Sort of. If you cut flesh with something hot enough, then the heat would cauterize the wound. That's one way that battlefield cauterization was actually done (back before they learned that it generally does more harm than good because it greatly increases the risk of infection). In popular fiction, a laser tends to just obliterate whatever is in front of it. Those don't heat anything, so they wouldn't cauterize. An actual laser would probably injure by burning. Maybe it's so focused that opens a wound faster than the surrounding tissue can heat to the point of cauterization. Or maybe it takes a moment to burn away flesh, and that's enough to heat the surrounding tissue.

>>42296534
I feel like a cyberpunk setting would have some okay medical stuff when a filly gets her leg exploded off. Maybe.

Do whichever is more traumatizing

>>42296557
The leg should be raped off via a stallion fucking a cut into a proper wound.

>>42296624
Anon*

>>42296557
>Scootaloo gets her leg blown off and they have to cauterize it after the fact
>Then she fails her pre-algebra test

yall fucked up

>>42296557
>goes to the chop doc after getting her wing blown off
>he rapes her

>>42296685
It's just a pre-algebra test

>>42296685
This anon needs correction.

>>42296745
The thread was better when you were gone.

Fics about parasocial relationships?

>>42296690
Leg not wing

You guys really like to torture disabled ten year old girls

>>42296805
And lots of other stuff, too!

>>42296805
Hey now. I like torturing all disabled girls, of every age, and non-disabled ones too.

edgy =/= cool

>Hurt/comfort but there's no comfort.

>>42296418
If this is the alternative no thank you

>>42296805
>drawings and text on the screen are real people

>there are "people" ITT who are actually so fucking stupid they think the suggestions above, including the one about raping a leg off by fucking a wound, are real and earnest and not deliberate shock value ones made in half jest because this is fucking 4chan
Jesus Christ, learn to read the room. That includes you, Fae.

>>42296828
You can't rape a leg off, that's stupid.

>there are "people" ITT who are actually so fucking stupid they think it isn't bait
Jesus Christ, learn to read the room.

>there are "ponies" ITT

>>42296833
Sadly Fae has shown time and again that he's an offboarder retard who outs himself with stupid shit at the drop of a hat.

>>42296831
Well not with that attitude.

New fic by a thread author whose thunder I'm stealing by posting about it before he can, ha!
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/579515/sweetie-belle-reviews-my-little-human-fanfics

>>42296841
Confidence doesn't give you magic limb-raping abilities, this isn't Fallout. You can't fake your way into raping a limb off, it's a matter of physics.

>>42296845
>>42296831
Maybe you and your pitiful human cock can't, but I'm pretty sure the average horsecock is thick enough to tear through the width of Scootaloo's tiny foal leg, at which point it's just a matter of moving your hips hard enough to pop the bone off its socket or just pull it away if it's already broken.

>>42296845
well it depends on what you mean by rape
in some countries it still counts as rape even if the implement of penetration is an inanimate object
so, theoretically, you can rape someone with a grenade and have the explosion tear the limb off

>>42296853
Right but you're also suggesting that could be done in an active firefight. Forget the physics, think logistics too.

>>42296856
Okay Kiwi.

>>42296856
Okay if anything is rape then the entire discussion is pointless. It's fucking Twilight raping up and raping herself a nice breakfast before raping a good morning book, raping open the door and then raping down the street to have a nice day of raping her friends.

>>42296858
No, silly, you do it after the fight, and presumably after you've already disarmed the pony, pinned her down, and crushed her spirit talking about how her sister won't come back to save her.

>>42296865
she can fit all that shit up her vagina?
shining must've done a number on her

>>42296869
You dare underapestimate Celestia's student?

>>42296869
I think it was Celestia actually.

>>42296843
I rate this a cute out of funny.

>>42296828
>getting this pissy
Calm down edgelord.

>>42296843
>Rumblebelle
WHAT THE FUCK!
Sweets was supposed to be MINE!

>>42296888
>he can't self insert into a video games obsessed loser with mommy issues
Do you even belong here?

>>42296889
That's Button Mash. Rumble is the girly looking girlboy with a older black brother.

>>42296889
>mommy issues
Shitty fanon tied to a shitty OC. The gooner neet colt should be unbound but that garbage mare eating up precious incest polls.

>>42296898
Good, your incest shit deserves to polluted by OC.

>The Anthow-logy still hasn't updated
Reeeeee

I think there might be a human in this thread.

>>42296934
>I think
Christcucked propaganda, Descartes was an idiot and a coward.

>>42296828
>learn to read the room
I'm like 90% sure that he knows and just pretends to be retarded for his own amusement. He's been doing that itt more than once.

>>42296840
Also this.

>>42296957
Is that what you think?

>>42296963
Yes, but I have no pretence that it verifies my existence. Did that buffoon ever read a book? Does he think fictional characters are real because they're shown "thinking"?

>>42296968
Someone come get your tulpa, it's getting antsy.

>>42296957
This post is what you would get if you trained an ai only on bait posts from /lit/.

>>42297091
How would this general change if GR15 was lifted and we were moved to /lit/?

>>42297104
The levels of faggotry would remain around the same, sadly.

>>42297104
I’d guess this
-more smarmy psudo-intellectualism.
-more low quality posts about /pol/ and /his/ related topics
-general would become even smaller and slower

>>42297136
>-general would become even smaller and slower
I'd wager there's quite a lot of people on 4chan who would enjoy ponies and pony fanfiction if they gave the show and mlp fics a chance, and additional exposure on other boards would inevitably bring new people in. Especially if we talk about a literature general on a literature-themed board.

>>42297176
Didn't they read fallout Equestria or some shit

>>42297176

Fics for this feel?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxVTrX8TjrU

>>42296888 (checked)
This but with Rumble

>>42297261
Sorry, anon, Nintendo says you can only have Rumble for a short while.

Cumble

A magic gun transmutes Scootaloo's leg into her parents and it just leaves.

>>42297598
Here's a (you) for making me snort.

>>42297598
Kek

>Witcher crossover
>it's not an HiE instead of just witchers being a thing for ponies

I have defeated To Perytonia. What a long but easy read.

>>42297194

>>42297817
Any final thoughts?

>>42297817
Should i read it if i'm not a big fan of Slice of Life and don't enjoy reading huge chapters where nothing happens?

>>42296684
>Cheerilee passes out pre-algebra tests
>Scootaloo's leaps off the desk
>It gives her a massive paper cuts in her leg, over and over
>Eventually it severs her leg entirely
>Then it rapes her

>>42297987
Did she get an B+ at least

>>42296843
Wow, I guess I don't even have to do my own advertising anymore.

>>42298014
It gave her the D.

>>42298022
Her grades are really suffering

>>42298018
You're a true e-celeb now. How awful.

>>42298036
You're only a real e-celeb if you get seethers, that's what videogames taught me.

>>42298050
I'm my biggest hater, and I seethe daily because I don't write enough.
Am I an e-celeb?

>>42298036
I'd prefer if people left upvotes and comments on my fics.
>>42298050
My angry Derpy fic (Depth Perception) made someone seethe so much they downvoted my entire catalog. Which actually felt kind of like a kind of success.

>>42298096
That's how you know you've made it.

>>42298096
It's not a success since the fic in question sucks and you should feel bad for writing it.

>>42298134
Oh you. You always say that.

>>42298134
It sounds like my fic evoked a strong emotional response from you. I count that as a success. If being petty makes you feel better, you can downvote all the fics I’ve written since then.

>>42297176
If we bring new people in, though, then we become less of a circlejerk. Why would you want that?

>>42298581
I truly don't understand the circlejerk accusation. What the fuck?
We don't stick together because we're arrogant; we do it because, as some of the last enthusiasts of well-crafted prose, with grammar that hasn't gone feral and themes that stretch beyond "Anon Fuck ponies", we're practically an endangered species.
It's not about superiority; it's about holding ourselves to a standard that, frankly, not everyone on this board can appreciate. Think of us as keepers of a fading art, an ancient guild dedicated to maintaining the flame of complex characters and coherent storylines. Without our little circle, huddled around our flickering candles of literary nuance, that flame would be snuffed out by a wave of greentexts and dime-a-dozen HiE retarded tropes.
So no, it's not hubris when we come together to encourage each other. It's survival. It's duty. And if someone has to stand as the last defenders of FIMfiction's soul, well, we're willing to make that sacrifice.

>>42298637
it's about hyper pregnancy

>>42298250
I circlejerk too much to downvote a /fimfic/ fic, but writing to "evoke a strong emotional response" rather than to create something good is cheap and misses the point of fim fanfiction more than the self-insert AiEs.

>>42298778
Your autism is showing.

>Wonderbolt Academy for pegasi
>Gifted School for Unicorns for the hornheads
What should the earth ponies have? Farming apprenticeship programs?

>>42298895
>What should the earth ponies have?
Parents that actually raise their kids.

>>42298895
Capitalism! eg.:Filthy Rich

>>42298778
>writing to "evoke a strong emotional response" rather than to create something good is cheap
this.
anyone can make a movie that's just a blank screen with random loud jumpscares and get "emotional reactions".
if you're writing to piss people off then you're still just as audience captured as if you were only writing what your fans want.

>>42298778
But none of you can write something good, so might as well go for emotional responses.

>>42299053
>anyone can make a movie that's just a blank screen with random loud jumpscares
Your ass couldn't get that approved and distributed by a studio.

>>42298895
Trade Schools

>>42298778
>>42299053
I didn't write Depth Perception primarily to evoke a strong emotional response. But I recognize that some people waifu Derpy too much to appreciate the concept of the story (that she is secretly angry all the time because of her disability). For those readers, a strong emotional response is the most I can expect to achieve: If I make that kind of reader angry, then I've accomplished something.

>>42299005
Yeah that's working out real well for Diamond Tiara and Apple Bloom

It's cool that two of this thread's talking points are about the crippled horse that can't see straight and the crippled horse that can't fly. Someone should drop some Tempest Shadow angst to round us off.

>>42299322
There's a lot of disabled horses in this horse show huh.

>>42299072
That's why Andy Warhol only showed his films at empty warehouses with his band of maladjusted cohorts.

>>42299315
Please understand, Spoiled was born from a unicorn family, she never learned to parent. Just look at what her sister gets up to.

>>42299205
>people waifu Derpy too much to appreciate the concept of the story (that she is secretly angry all the time because of her disability)
That's a very convenient way to dismiss the fic being aggressively OOC. You do not have to like Derpy to say that. I don't really like her, but there is literally nothing in the show to suggest that "concept," and most of the scenes she's in present her as one of the most cheerful and careless characters, which makes it a total OOC asspull. All of the shitty "What if Pinkie was secretly depressed all the time?" fics have a better grounding in canon than that, and they're still ridiculed often. Justifiably so.

This would be somewhat more permissible if you tagged it as an AU "what if" scenario, but the audacity to write an intentionally not-Derpy character (and also a bitch) and attempt to pass it off as Derpy Hooves is what makes the fic bad. There is also the matter of it being a very non-pony premise, too, but that's more subjective, even if your opinion is subjectively the incorrect one.

>>42299457
>Just look at what her sister gets up to.
Don't forget that her older niece is the town bicycle.

>>42299504
Yeah, bet she's fucking jealous the role was stolen when it used to be hers.

>>42299544
She's a trophy wife now, she doesn't need to blow Apples in the alleyway to make ends meet.

>>42299547
I wish /I/ could make a living sucking off stallions.

>>42299549
We know.

>>42299549
You could make a living writing about sucking off stallions, if you were any good at it

>>42299568
Are you hiring?

Whatcha writing about

>>42299205
In a vacuum, as a work of fiction, I think it is very well done. You did a good job depicting a disabled protagonist becoming more cynical and jaded, stewing in negative emotions, and shooting it back at a world that is constantly judging her. It's a very real perspective. The fact that she acts so coldly to New Colt felt like it was deliberately done to remove the audience's expectations of Saturday-morning cartoon story beats and replace them with something real. No pun intended, I believe there is a depth to this that you would lose by softening how much of a struggle living with disability is.
I agree that fans are prone to let fandom interpretations of characters cloud their judgment and make them forget what is actually depicted in the source material. Derpy has only a handful of spoken lines, and her biggest roles are debatably relegated to being a supporting character in an official manga that most fans do not know exists. In that same token, I have a hard time believing someone can watch FIM, focus on Derpy's appearances, and say, "yes, this is a story about the silly-eyed bubble horse" without it being a full AU, or warranting another tag like sad or tragedy.
Saying a story does not feel "pony" enough is a hard critique to gauge, on the same level as saying a story doesn't have any heart or soul. It's a miserable story with a miserable protagonist dealing with a miserable disorder that has a miserable conclusion. You could parse a message here, but it is not written with the same feel-good purity that people associate with MLP.
If this were not a fanfiction, and instead a short story about an older woman living with disability, it would not be scrutinized to such a degree. However, by taking place in this universe, readers have certain expectations regarding the world and its cast. I do not believe it is conducive to fully dismiss that perspective as fans being over-protective of their favorites.

>>42299696
After 4 or 5 aborted attempts I finally have a one-shot idea I'm excited enough about to actually finish

>>42299547
Silly anon, Filthy checks the records. She needs off the grid income for those purchases she doesn't want him knowing about.

>>42299754
"Dae disability is le bad" is every bit as artificial, patronising, manipulative, and misguided as "dae disability is not le bad" and the story is sure to be trash for its lack of nuance, because it's fundamentally constructed with a core skeleton that doesn't align with reality and the characters have their skin and flesh stretched around it to fit the dictated course, becoming disfigured abominations in the process. As happens with most stories where the author decided they knew what the message was and wrote around that, resulting in a product that feels fake at best, outright contradictory at worst, because the rails are predetermined and the story is forced to follow them regardless of sense.

>>42299696
Two fics about foals being led astray.

Not a writefag (not yet, anyways) but is it common place to use the show/pitch bible as reference for writing the six or certain locations? Seems like a decent resource.

>>42300070
Not accurate to the show itself nor to the development characters received through it. Probably okay for locations but potentially really off for even pre show M6.

>>42299696
I'm workshopping a fic about Flurry Heart going on an adventure with Chrysalis and Cozy Glow and one about The Annual Equestrian Convention for Big Sisters to Little Sisters (or SisCon for short). Not sure if either are going to go anywhere

>>42299979
That is fair.
I read the story as if it were written from the perspective of a protag who is set in her bitter ways and is unwilling to change and is ignorant to the good around her. Similar to the inverse of a character with rose-tinted glasses. Of course, if you do not acknowledge an alternative mindset, you don't have to challenge it. I don't even know if you can say the story has a real conflict. The story in very comfortable in being uncomfortable. Her perspective is pitiable throughout, and she is never forced to change or reexamine her viewpoint. It's almost as if a pony being happy despite having a disability is an impossible outcome.
I feel like a more nuanced premise would be Derpy, closer to her more optimistic depiction, having to deal with another character with a different viewpoint and experiences than her.
What I'm saying that the story is not completely unsalvageable. The premise can be expanded beyond "Disability sucks and the world sucks and it never gets better and God hates you The End" But you can't get there if the author is unable to reflect on critique beyond an assumed bias.

>>42300101
>SisCon for short
Uh...

>>42300108
I'm sure there's a convention for brothers too called Brocon.

>>42300117
You're thinking of the Brotherhooves Brocial.

>>42300122
There must be a lot of brojobs. It's good that they help one another with work.

>>42299696
Editing for the first chapter of my first fic, and what will be by far the longest thing I've ever written. I'll be shilling it here hopefully very soon.

>>42299696
Adventure horror romance.
A tricky balance, but I think it's shaping up nicely.

>>42299696
Failed marriages

>>42300910
writing from experience?

>>42300913
Observation.

>>42299322
Wait until the SSC publish date.

>>42300913
Nobody here is/was married. You don't write horsewords if you've known the touch of a woman.

>>42300933
Pretty sure Fae is.

>>42300948
Will he adopt? Because it would be pretty hypocritical if he didn't.

You know I either haven't been paying much attention or this is some lore I'm not privy to, but who the fuck is Fae?

>>42300970
adoption anon

>>42300970
Lurk more, newfag.

>>42300988
>he fell for the lurking meme

>>42300970
>posting your face on 4chan

>>42300933
what if the woman had a dick

>>42300957
Pretty sure the lore is that he has actual bio spawn and that's how he got into mlp in the first place, so probably not.

>>42301047
What's his kid's favorite pone

>>42299498
>literally nothing in the show to suggest that "concept,"
Do you consider a fic an AU if it contains anything not already suggested by the show? That's rhetorical; I doubt you do. If we go only by what the show depicts, we would have to forbid any fic with any red tag, any kind of horror, any depiction of unhappy couples, etc. I agree that the show doesn't suggest that Derpy is angry. It uses her almost exclusively as comic relief. But how many people would be really happy living their life as someone else's comic relief? The story really came from wondering, "What if Derpy wasn't happy with how people treat her?"
>>42299754
>without it being a full AU, or warranting another tag like sad or tragedy.
I did consider whether it might warrant another tag, but none of them quite seemed to fit.
>readers have certain expectations regarding the world and its cast
This may be the best explanation for why my fic makes people angry. Some fics fit pretty well into canon. Some other fics don't fit into canon, but they establish themselves as being clearly non-canon. Depth Perception occupies some kind of uncanny valley. It does not feel like canon because it portrays Derpy as being extraordinarily angry (and not in a comedic way like Cranky Doodle), but it does not include any clear signal that it's an AU or crackfic. I've said before that I think Depth Perception is consistent with canon, but only barely; for it to be consistent, you have to believe that the show depicts Derpy only on her good days.
>>42299979
>stories where the author decided they knew what the message was and wrote around that
I agree, but that's not relevant to this story. I did not write the story to have a message; I wrote it as a character study.
>>42300102
>I don't even know if you can say the story has a real conflict.
It doesn't. Unless you count "Derpy versus the world."
>I feel like a more nuanced premise would be Derpy, closer to her more optimistic depiction, having to deal with another character with a different viewpoint and experiences than her.
I did get a request to write a longer story where Derpy gets fixed. I think that's a good idea, actually. It could make a nice romance. However, Derpy getting fixed wasn't part of my original concept, so I don't know how that story goes. Someone else might, and they're welcome to try.
>you can't get there if the author is unable to reflect on critique beyond an assumed bias
Most criticism of this story has not been worth reflecting on.

>>42301047
>what are you writing dad?
>scootaloo's leg getting shot off!
>oh. okay.

What fics should I read to make myself never want to read any my little pony fanfiction ever again?

>>42301372
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/500819/

>>42301047
No, that's me, not Fae. Sometimes I wonder if Fae is obsessed with adoption because he's infertile.

>>42301397
I just like family stories and Dash and Scootaloo's relationship, and most of the time if you're establishing some sort of family plot with pre-established characters who are actually characters adoption is basically what's on the table, either formally or not.

>>42301416
Clearly you need a story about Twilight dealing with the consequences of being pregnant.

>>42301427
Ah, the dreaded KassxFae faceoff is upon us.

>>42301434
Call me a tofu curry because I've got no real beef with anyone.

>>42301427
>Finally, after years of hints, consideration, and indecision, Rainbow Dash files paperwork to adopt teenage Scootaloo.
>A week after the paperwork is finalized, she discovers Scootaloo is pregnant.

>>42301452
Isn't this just that stupid Tumblr askblog from years ago.

>>42301427
Or one of the established parents already in the show. Velvet or the Shys

>>42298778
>rather than to create something good
I thought the point was to have fun? All other considerations--whether wish fulfillment, horsefame, making something good, etc.--are secondary.

>>42298895
Agricultural college fits the secondary education theme.

>>42299205
They have a right to be angry because that Derpy is directly out of character. Gif related. The [SoL] tag is also not helping things, either. Mistags are responsible for half of angry comments on Fimfic. Slapping [Drama] in its place would have helped.

>>42299696
I've been working exclusively on my old deadfic, eagerly writing scenes I've had in my head for years. I now await the crash when I get to the scenes I haven't had in my head.

>>42300070
The show bible's not really that good of a resource. It was written early in the process and contains a lot of differences like Ponyville being called Fillydelphia that were later changed as the pitch developed and matured.

>>42301821
>the show bible is a loli
Hot.

>>42301349
The description says Derpy has been blind her whole life. The show clearly establishes that Derpy isn't blind, and that her eye condition only started to develop in her youth. Either your description is lying or you wrote AU.

I used to write some psychological/bio horror stories, mostly stuff revolving someone either being 'haunted' by an AI pony, or a few somewhat graphic ones that involved accidental, often painful, transformation into mare.

Recently I discovered that after seven years or so, some people still mention the one-shot I wrote. So I logged in, and turns out I still have some 2k followers, though mostly dead accounts by now, I bet.

Is it worth doing anything to inject new content or just 'nah, water under the bridge'?

Not really looking for fame or success, but mostly to have a place to organize some new ideas, and who knows--

>>42291033
Pretty cute pic.

>>42291033
>Twilight's castle turns into the newest gay hotspot when it's revealed she can make magical lesbian spawn via magic

>>42302588
I sure hope MLSes have rights, because otherwise, she's just providing an endless supply of fresh victims.

>>42302601
>otherwise
Silly anon, rights existing just makes it hotter to ignore them.

>>42302601
If magically created babies had no rights Spike would be considered chattel.

>>42302624
So they have no rights, is what you're saying.

>>42302629
Hey, she's the princess of friendship, not the princess of cloning ethics.

>>42302412
It's always worth bringing more horsewords into the world, Compass.

>>42301821
I agree that it's canonical that she likes sports. Sports come up in the first paragraph of the story, where she says—in agreement with canon—that she liked participating in individual sports as a foal. I don't think it's a big stretch to believe that, despite the story's Derpy being consistently angry, sports are one of the few things that bring an actual smile to her face.

[Drama] isn't appropriate because the story doesn't have any central conflict.
>>42302142
"Blind her whole life" is clearly not intended to mean "zero sight from birth." It means "effectively unable to see ever since she was young," which is consistent with what the show depicts. I expect you'll tell me that that's an invalid interpretation of the phrase "blind her whole life," so I want to point out in advance that exaggeration is a standard rhetorical technique; if I said, "Celestia ate a trainload of cake," you wouldn't start jumping up and down and screaming, so why would you do that here?

I feel like this argument is just going in circles. You seem to feel in your heart that what I did was somehow beyond the pale; I worry that if you were a site staff member, you might forcibly unpublish the story or add tags I consider inappropriate. To me, it feels like you're groping for reasons why your intuitive judgment is correct. I think that what I did was just fine, if a little provocative, and so far I haven't seen any reason to change my mind even a little.

>>42302653
That's because you're autistic and bipolar and you need to take your meds.

Speaking of Derpy anyone got some good names for her parents? I've got Droopy Hooves right now but I saw one weird one where Donut Joe was her dad.

>>42302669
Alarm Clock had funny ones that I forgot.

Frankenstein is kind of repeatedly terrible at some very basic storytelling stuff, huh?

>>42302412
If you have a story to write, write it.

>>42302669
Droopy and Dracula Hooves

>>42302669
Each previous generation of the Hooves family just has slurs. Her grandmother, Mongoloid Hooves, and her mother Retardy Hooves.

>>42302653
>everyone who disagrees with me is the same person

Has there ever been a good male alicorn OC

>>42303039
Yes.

>>42303142
Where

>>42303039
Has there ever been a good alicorn OC?

>>42303167
Luna

>>42303183
Heehee.

>>42303454
Fics where Luna isn’t angsty and self loathing about here past?

>>42303677
I think she might have been happy for a while in my fic before she went into a coma.

>>42303677
My fic where she has sex with my male alicorn OC

Fics with realistic melee combat? I'm not talking about the descriptions but about the dangers and consequences of it. I've just read a fight description where the main character knocked out like 6 royal guards while simultaneously dodging spell attacks from multiple unicorns before finally being subdued. I can believe overpowering 2-3 enemies, but this is ridiculous.

>>42303183
Kek

>>42303940
Anon, ponies tunnel through midair boulders with their bare hooves faster than they can touch the ground. You won't get realistic combat in this setting.

>>42304002
>writer's pet OC performing miraculous feats
Color me surprised.

>>42304009
DYEWTS?

>>42304023
Yes, and the godawful fanfic that followed.

>>42304024
Pinkie was Faust's OC, silly.

>>42304002
>with their bare hooves
Pinkie and Maud had some sort of struts on their forelegs. They had something like a power fist from fallout. Not that smashing a boulder to rubble before it hits the ground is not impressive, regardless.
That said, Applejack bucks a similar boulder away, unassisted, in a different episode.

>>42304096
As far as I can tell it may just be a generic suit, hard to say. The hoof part itself is just barely covered, but the length of the leg may have something that's supposed to help.
https://derpicdn.net/img/view/2015/11/28/1031951.gif

>>42304096
>>42304248
IIRC that's the same episode where Maud has no assistance and tunnels through a giant boulder by herself?
I assume the strength level varies between earth ponies.

>>42304248
I will never write about this Sheldon cumrag in my life.

Oh wait no, Maud tunnels through a giant boulder or a bunch of rock to save Pinkie when she's down a gorge in the later seasons, right?

>>42294317
The doctors never told me how to repair my nerve damage.

>>42304373
Sorry Scootaloo.

See you can't rescue a filly from abuse if she isn't getting abused.

>>42304347
Your loss.

>>42295439
Denise Masino

>>42303677
9DD, DoWaS
Twilight's Plan
Vertigo
Luna, Princess of Space
Within The Seas of The Galaxies
Approaches to Preening
Spring Tide
Tarry Not
Natural Ones
Singles Combat
Becoming One With the Night
The Luna Cypher
The Dreamer’s Due
In the Pale Moonlight
Lunar Enthrallment
A Bug on a Stick
Certain Advantages

>>42297923
It's very much a slow-burn adventure.

>>42297922
Shit. I still need to write a review.

>>42304445
Twilight is into vore?

Gay gay homosexual gay fics?

>>42304479
Not exactly, but the tongue is involved.

My new copy of The Hobbit arrived today and it's way bigger than I remembered it being.

>>42304545
I’m always surprised when I remember how long it is. The first time I read it, it seemed to whiz by. The second time, it seemed to drag.

Fics for when you're trying to write a clopfic but you can't get past the damned exposition scene, and it's already at 1k words and growing?

>>42304963
You can get past the exposition whenever you decide it's done.
>Pinkie Pie ran into the room. "Time for sex! Sex! Sex sex sex!" She began humping the walls and floor. "Sexy sex! Sexiest sex! Sex sex sex!"

>>42304963
>1k words for exposition
Bro that barely describes Rarity's fancy lingerie. 1k words isn't growing. 1k words isn't even showing.

>>42304983
Oh no, someone check on Scootaloo's leg!

>>42304963
Next thing you'll do will be pruning the porn and leaving it as SoL Romance. And that'd be based.
>but it's my SSC fic!
That is a problem.

>>42304993
Just write a cute slice of lice romance fic and in the middle of it have the filthiest fucking porn scene possible. Don't even make it between the two leads.

>>42304999
>slice of lice
Like with a deli slicer, or all just poured into a food processor and pureed?

>>42305014
Whatever chops up a changeling best, I guess.

Just read A Puppet To Her Fame for the first time. Ordinarily I'll privately write down my thoughts on fics after I read them, so I can refer back and see which fics are worth a reread and which I should avoid, but... There's a whole thread for discussing this sort of thing, so why not?
Now for the thoughts. I'm not 100% sure of the common courtesy for spoilers here, so hiding to be safe. I feel as though the fic doesn't hit so hard as a tragedy. I chewed on it for a bit, and I find that when I try to articulate it, the best explanation I can give for "why" it doesn't feel so bad is that Octavia never had a choice. Almost nothing that happens is her own fault. She was under her parent's control, then she was under the spirit's control. A literal puppet her entire life, and that's tragic in its own right, but I think tragedy hits harder when the tragedy could have been avoided. When there's a clear route the character could have taken, but instead they make some grave mistake that causes everything to tumble down. It's not like she chose to introduce the spirit into her life, and it's not like she did anything that could reasonably be seen as cause for the final outcome. It just happens to her, and no other choices are presented. I can't really point out any real issues beyond that. It just doesn't bite as hard as I think it was meant to. The bite was lessened even more when I realized that Vinyl only knew her for about a week.

>>42305089
>common courtesy
We don't do that around here.

>>42303039
Celestia and Luna's brother in Upheaval wasn't bad.

>>42303940
>Fics with realistic melee combat?
Probably very few. Earth ponies always get the kick buff in warfics (Redheart's War) and pegasi and unicorns don't usually do melee (Lunar Rebellion, Rise of Firefly)

>>42304248
That's still a 10/10 warfic scene. Shame the Royal Guard fight was absolutely awful and the whole AU premise makes no sense.

>>42305089
It's tragic, in a way, but not a tragedy in the strictest sense.

>>42304993
If only other people had more patrician fetishes (stuff I like) instead of filthy degenerate fetishes (stuff I don't like). Then, maybe I'd actually want to get to the "writing porn" part.

>>42304873
All the more impressive given at the end it literally just goes "and then a big fight happened."

>>42305187
>the whole AU premise makes no sense
You just don't get it.

>>42305422
I'm surprised you joined in the first place. Did you ask to anonymise your prompt?

PrintFriend, my reply to your corrections will come at the last possible moment and might even be late. Apologies for that.

I'm finally sitting down to read Changeling Space Program. Are my high expectations going to be met?

>>42305612
It's a ponified playthrough in the vein of Fallout: Equestria, but significantly lighter on lesbianism.

>>42305657
Fine by me. I happen to have a KSP run going at the moment, so it'll make a nice companion piece for when I get too bored of grinding contracts.

>>42305657
>but significantly lighter on lesbianism
So worse

>>42305657
I prefer my lesbianism darker.

>>42305805
Like TNWOLesbian darker or...?

>>42305809
He means Tuna

>>42305811
Not quite...

>>42305837
That's a smaller age gap.

>>42305837
>Zecora using voodoo magic to become a filly and exploit Equestria's Romeo & Juliet clause
Let's hope the courts can still build a case for miscegenation.

>>42305865
Does she carry a card around like Michael Bay though? And does it rhyme.

>writing my fic via the on-site editor
>get cloudflare captcha'd every other time I click the save button
This is ass.

>>42305612
I tried to read it once and found it fucking boring. I think the people that do like it are delusional and coping about enjoying it. It’s the literary equivalent of a shitty deli meat sandwich that’s been left in the fridge for several days.

What happened here?

>>42305991
US protests, Israel trying to get people in the sandbox again, and the Air India flight disaster all in the same day?

>>42305991
That's probably around the time fimfic's spam protection measures completely stopped being sufficient and knighty hit the button.

>>42306013
I wish he'd hit the bottom instead (I want him to spank me while I call him Daddy).

>>42305963
I'm about four chapters in, and here's what I'm thinking so far:
Well-written, generally easy to read. Feels suitably pony. Humour isn't laugh-out-loud funny, but smirkworthy; none of the jokes flop outright. Chryssi is OOC in both good and bad ways: more level-headed, less pants-on-head, still very much a villain. She's a decent foil to the more comic characters she presides over, but softer and more patient than she ought to be, and she asks a few too many stupid questions. Cherry Berry verges on the 'hypercompetent badass who takes no shit' trope too much for my liking, particularly with how she mogs a weirdly pliant Chryssi. Plenty of dubiously-necessary autism over ponifying some highly specific KSP gameplay mechanics. I'm still basically enjoying it, but I can see immediately why it might get dropped by a lot of people. I can see myself finishing this one.

>>42306186
>Cherry Berry verges on the 'hypercompetent badass who takes no shit' trope too much for my liking
Unsurprisingly, as she's the retard writer's pet.

>>42305958
>>writing my fic via the on-site editor
That's exactly what you deserve for this.

>>42306208
What would you have me use, you flaming homosexual?

>>42306237
Google docs? A typewriter? Literally anything else?

>>42306508
NTA but Fimmy is honestly better than most writing programs, Gdocs included. More consistent across devices, not bloated by useless features, no automatic alterations to what you type, and no obtrusive UI. It's legitimately a good-feeling text editor.

>>42305963
I haven't read it but i'd assume that space autists are the target audience of this story and you just aren't one.

>>42306609
I used to be more of a space autist when I was younger but then I flipped and became more schizo and interested in other things.

>>42306659
I'm more a space fantasy autist

>>42306690
I don’t really read fiction anymore.

>>42306696
That much is obvious.

>>42305659
I hear the game is free now. Any truth to that?

The Only Mark That Matters updated.

>>42306853
All games are free, if you know where to look.

>>42306853
Just wait for KSA.

>>42306890
The game of life sure isn’t (unless you’re a parasite)

>>42306968
It literally is. https://playgameoflife.com/

Who bakin

>>42307132
Me

make a new thread already this one is about to die!

Please don't. Let us be free.