Thread 42736173

ITT: Growing complacency, Golly apologia, AI slop taking honest slopwriter's jobs, Moondancer: Mare Rights Activist, just accept you're NGMI and give up, Mono writes accurate female characters, Anon writes, APIs killed the review site, conditional immortality, clubbing, HiE/AiE just has to be good (impossible), and the best straight ship of 2010!

>/fimfic/ Secret Book Club
The one hundred and thirty-fourth, hundred and thirty-fifth, and hundred and thirty-sixth fics are the Halloween special!
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/22323/a-fleet-ng-light-n-the-darkness
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/152876/a-glimmer-of-hope-in-the-black
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/350781/krastos-the-glue-maker
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/461994/the-lights-between-the-trees
If (You) want to participate, finish the story by Sunday, November 2nd.
Past bookclubs: https://ponepaste.org/11255

>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/

>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/
Vhatug's tips for anatomically correct clop - https://poneb.in/g4VpEg4f
Setting a story in motion - https://youtu.be/ufO8LbwTdu0
Purdue Online Writing resources: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/index.html and https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/creative_writing/writers/index.html

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

>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: >>42690747

First for best duo!
Enjoy this conveniently packaged Tuna: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/175385/the-luna-cypher

Second for FUCK Tuna.

2nd for escaping death for more horsewords!

>>42736186
I saw it happening lol, he was trying to kill the cheese sandwich thread and I bumped it to spite the faggot. couldn't save the fimfic thread sadly

>>42736188
What happened last night?

>>42736244
The usual slides, same threads being samefagged to death and the same retards spamming posts with the public proxy to shit up the board.

>>42736258
That's the wrong kind of Al to get mad at.

>>42736382
Is it that new Sunset one

Damned if the Sinbox hasn't been a mess

>>42736742
It's not? In the 7 new slots there's only 1 HiE/eqg/anthro, 2 clopfics, and 4 normal fics seemingly ranging from fluff to horror.
That would pass as good at literally any point in the site's history, and especially in 2012.

>>42736173 (OP)
Man, it's been years since I've seen this thread fall off early. It really goes to show how bad things are getting here. I didn't check the board until right after I could've saved it, apparently.

>AI slop taking honest slopwriter's jobs
kek

On the Nightmare Night/Halloween front, my plan to finish the first chapter of a humanized Queen Chrysalis story fell through, so my backup plan is to release that Queen Chrysalis anthology finally, and my second backup plan involves finishing the first chapter of my Eris commission to publish just in case.

>>42736670
Yeah, when it started to talk about how hairy women's chests were I was really fucking confused

>>42737168
wait what

>>42737214
You heard me
It also kept calling her a toddler when Sunset's like 8 in this. I don't know if this is some bizarre language barrier, but at least it's not AI.

I've figured out why I'm enjoying The Chrysalis Gambit so much. The main cast has so many gods in disguises that it's like watching the Mafia City advertisements.

Best fics for courtly intrigue, maybe with a side of romance?

>>42737627
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/500819/

>>42737675
Best fics about taking a joke that wasn't very funny to begin with and running it further into the ground?

>>42737680
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/437266/

>>42737703
Wow, you actually did it.

>>42737627
___

Alternatives to googledocs that are browser based and actually have functional grammar and spellcheck?

>>42737924
LanguageTool and pretty much whatever you want via browser addon. You'll have to pay them if you don't want to self-host it.

>>42737924
You're not writing a significant amount in a web browser, are you?

>>42737924
>browser based
Why?
I know that QuillBot saves what you write when you use the grammar checker.

>>42738043
Googler docs

>>42737407
>Join my gang or else!
>You'd be wise to join my gang.
>(they're both Twilight)
kek, I haven't started yet since I was waiting for it to get some more chapters but glad to see it's still just a fun read. Not that I expected any differently

Oh boy, AI generated trans fics coming in now too

>>42737680
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/581114/i-took-a-slight-tumble-onto-an-active-roadway-and-got-magically-reincarnated-into-a-different-world-based-upon-the-show-my-little-pony-and-the-game-fallout-in-the-side-fic-of-fallout-equestria-known-as-project-horizons-as-a-stable-99-stallion

>>42738043
The refusal of anons to download LibreOffice or pay an Indian five bucks for a gray license of Office continues to amaze me.

>>42738835
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/584119/a-glitch-in-the-horseshoe-bay
Christ, look at this shit. The description is literally just the prompt and ChatGPT's response.

>>42738982
>The refusal of anons to download LibreOffice or pay an Indian five bucks for a gray license of Office continues to amaze me.
>not Emacs

>I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear word processor... If you are a professional writer... emacs outshines all other editing software in approximately the same way that the noonday sun does the stars. It is not just bigger and brighter; it simply makes everything else vanish.
-Neal Stephenson, 1998

>>42739333
>1998
Yeah, and people used to think Asbestos is amazing too.

>>42739116
Report works well.

>>42736173 (OP)
Anon, there are four fics but you only listed three fic numbers. Lights Between the Trees is the one hundred thirty-seventh book. Odds are good the count will go wrong next thread and stay wrong for at least a year.
>captcha
Holy fuck what is this

>>42739786
Looks like that one scootadopt one got taken down too.
Nature is healing. The machine god is dead.

>>42740842
Reported this one too.

>>42739786
Do they also take down the less obvious ones? Like where the author wasn't dumb enough to just paste in the whole prompt, but it's still full of "it's not just X—it's Y" and nonsense detail that goes nowhere?

>>42740896
What do you even select for the report? Bot account?

>>42740842
The one with the girl scouts that save her from being a prostitute? The guy went on discord and swore up and down with his best poker face that every single word was hand-typed with no machine assistance, and it got restored. I guess when it "technically" can't be proven even when it's still fairly obviously AI, a straight face is all it takes to appeal unless it's profoundly obvious like the tranny gamer one or the dragon city one that were just a few paragraphs per chapter prompted by an actual child.

>>42740946
Not that, there was one where it was Big Mac adopting her and it had weird shit like, besides the dashes, just mentioning random details like they were important that wouldn't go anywhere.

But the biggest giveaway is always when the actual author comments are completely different.

>>42740896
I believe so, yes. But most of those who try that on Fimfic are thankfully either not subtle or only have access to official AI portals, so they’re easy to spot.
For the report, just start by briefly explaining why you believe it’s AI. That should be simple if you’ve spent any time in /chag/ or used those models yourself.
Then include a screenshot from https://gptzero.me/. They almost always score over 90%.
As mentioned before, while those detectors can be easily deceived into seeing AI writing as human, if they flag long creative writing as AI, it’s basically guaranteed to be AI.
That’s usually enough to get the story taken down.
>>42740943
Other then write AI writing.

>>42740963
Oh, cool. They have an extension.

I like how the thread's only active when talking about getting rid of AI writers

>>42740478
In my defence, I was still sleepy when I made the new thread.
What are the chances we finish this one before Sunday and I can fix my mistake?

>>42741610
Well, I don't mind posting 238 more Lunas.

>>42741610
We are dead as fuck recently.

>>42741683
So's the site.

>>42741685
So you're saying the new captcha works?

>>42741797
I ain't gotten no indians calling my stories good (IE lying to me) in months, so I'd say it's working

>>42740478
Cucker pretty much already solved that captcha.
Mark my words that hiroshimoot might force email only posting site-wide in the future and that naturally people with 4ch mold will be able to post w/o a email.

>>42742344
Moona

>>42742349
Yep

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/528958/my-little-pokmon-grander-world

Didn’t realize this finished a few months ago. The whole series combined is eight and a half million words. God damn. There’s a good chance that that figure is never topped and that it is for the rest of all of time the longest my little pony fanfic series.

>>42742651
it is impossible for a human to type so much in such short time. This is hubris and insanity. How are they doing this? I can barely push 2500 words in a month.

>>42742684
It’s a easier when you are autistic and don’t care about quality

>>42742684
Isn't it them copy and pasting whole wikipedia sections? It's cheating.

>>42742736
Your thinking of loud house revamped. Which got removed from fanfiction.net along with the sequel. I don’t recall what the reason was, if one was ever made public.

>>42742752
Huh. Guess the damn thing really is just pure autism.

>>42742651
The 2nd and 3rd longest single fics both have a shot at surpassing it in time and are both still active. Theoretically, Norsewords as Skirts envisioned it may also be longer, but that will never be finished.

I see plenty of fics with autistic as balls Moondancer, but anything with autistic as balls Twilight?

So with loud house out of the running, what's the longest fanfic in existence now?

>>42742862
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/300693/shears
Very unpleasant fic—I wouldn't recommend it. It's 40k words of Twilight trying to do stuff and failing due to the myriad mental illnesses the author has inflicted on her.

>no mention of Travis, who likes cryptocurrency and wants to fuck Rarity, in the OP
Fimficcers hate OC confirmed

>>42743340
Iirc there’s some Mario fic that is like 16 million words long.

>>42743424
What is the fimfic equivalent of this

>>42743456
https://foalfetch.net/story/513101

>>42742862
I like writing an autistic Twilight Sparkle, but it's all very short stuff. Oh, and she's pregnant, that's also important. I should write a full-length story with her sometime. You know, she's a secondary character in my newest story, so I'll look into making her extra autistic, now that I think about it. I was going to do that anyway, but it's good to have it in mind.

>>42743424
I was sure that one was a shoe-in too.

>>42742862
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/459048/natural-ones

I just had some guy today telling me I could use the blockchain to grow my business and it reminded me of Travis (who likes cryptocurrency and wants to fuck Rarity).

>>42742862
What about autistic Twilight with balls?

>>42743877
If I wanted your garbage I would have gone to your dump.

>>42743905
I'm about to dump these balls in your mouth.

How's that writing going, guys?

>>42744525
Almost done with it.

>>42743600
Why do you allow autistic people to reproduce in your fantasy utopia.

>>42745132
What's the point of an autistic gf if you can't make her your autistic wife?

>>42745132
Fun fact: there’s a word in this sentence that, if you replace with a certain magic word, you’ll get banned!

>>42745892
sci-fi utopia?

>>42745132
Autistic mares deserve love too Anon.

>>42745132
How can it be my utopia if I wouldn't be allowed to reproduce, silly?

>>42745132
Do you not want to have kids, anon?

>>42746017
In a perfect world, men like us would not exist.
But this is not a perfect world.

>>42746024
No, and for the good of society I will not.

>>42736173 (OP)
Requesting good horror fics for tomorrow, preferably personal favorites and underrated stories because I'd already read The Stars Had Gone Away, Circles, Pipes, etc. several times over.

>>42746232
Society's fucked but I feel like I could give my similarly autistic kid a cool life.

>>42746317
Here's everything Horror (or Dark that I feel is Horror-adjacent enough) <10k views that I felt was good enough to bookshelf. Probably posted about most of these before so I'll keep it brief.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/384325/this-is-the-last-train-car
>25.4k berry punch knows there's something wrong with the train that runs after midnight, and she won't stop riding it until she finds out what
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/142105/seated
>4k an assignment in her grading stack from a student she doesn't recognize dredges up memories cheerilee thought she'd escaped from
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/508734/hey-twi
>3.3k when people start disappearing, sunset writes to twilight for help...
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/551796/tilt
>1.4k twilight insists there's something off about luna's bed
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561388/in-the-house
>1k a mare notices something concerning about the book she just read
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561101/it-was-a-beautiful-day-in-ponyville
>1k something's wrong in ponyville, twilight's sursomething's wrong in ponyville, twilisomething's wrong in ponsomething's wro
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/580198/memories-returning
>1k twilight has to keep running and she can't remember why

>>42746317
Have some other.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/568437/rippled-reflections
>6,5k Pinkie's clones want to be the real Pinkie.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/545067/we-dont-go-past-the-garden-wall
>1,1k Gosh darned Apples
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/526130/meat-and-bone-sinew-and-bile
>5k Medicine is the spookiest thing of all
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/525598/a-skeleton-in-the-closet
>24k Adventure horror that reminds me of The Dream Warriors
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/488834/when-the-stars-sleep
>25k A rare Fluttershy and Twilight dynamic. It's hard-hitting, but remains pony in spirit. Resolution is a bit rushed, though.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/451970/the-needle
>45k Adventure Horror that does both really well

>>42746317
Obligatory Kaidan mention.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/478767/kaidan
In hindsight, I should've nominated this for clubbing this weekend. It's really good! Not only the stand-alone stories, but the overarching one is engaging, too.
The author has other decent horror stories, as well.

>>42746409
I got the bad parent kind of autism.

>>42746512
Don't worry, you'll do better than Applejack

>>42746317
>good horror fics
A cannot think of a single one.

>>42746667
Applejack molesting the Twilight clone is funny but realistically she'd be one of those godawful parents that can't deal with it and thinks vaccines caused it, then watched that Zachary Levi autism boy movie and thinks it was good while alternating between being endlessly frustrated that her kid isn't normal like the rest of the family and pretending like she's saintly for putting up with the bare minimum while making that her entire personality.

>>42747073
She knew what she signed up for when she decided to have a child with Dash

>>42746024
Not in this world.

>>42747073
You okay anon

>>42748830
Tuna seems like a ship that could be explored through horror.
Are there any Tuna horror fics?

I find it polarizing how popular HiE/AiE is in this board and how popular it is with greens, but not actual fics apparently. Why?

>>42748881
Because it's slop.

fuck you faggot, you're going to die, nothing is coming to save you.
https://vocaroo.com/1my9rYPUqezZ

That was weird.

>>42748878
>>42746444 posted one, Tilt.
It's definitely one of the Tunafics of all time.

>>42748881
Because greens are when you're just shit at writing. Just turn it into a normal fic. Just turn anon into an actual character. Is it really so hard?

I feel like Travis, who likes cryptocurrency and wants to fuck Rarity, becomes less effective as a character if he's just Blockchain, the local unicorn that wants to fuck Rarity.

It's spooky time!

The real horror is having a job instead of trick or treating. I'm about to find out if my cover art's ready after ten months of waiting, how about you?

>>42748881
It's so lazy. It's the lowest hanging fruit.

>>42749882
Just applied to a part-time job that will hopefully still leave me with enough time and energy for pony.

>>42749882
Has to spend ages doing work shit but I can finally write again. Sometimes I wish time wasn't real.

>>42749882
Try spending years searching for a job without one interview to show for it.

>>42750591
Haha welcome to the economy buddy.

>just remembered exactly how I wanted a scene to go after struggling with it for a while
Fuck yes

What's an iconic good alien that a kid would be familiar with other than ET

>>42751294
Superman, or ALF if you don't care for cats.

>>42751294
Disney's Stitch
ALF, depending on what year it is.
Several Star Wars characters.
I know that the mainstream cape comics have a few aliens in their rosters.

>>42751301
God dammit how did I miss superman I'm a moron

I'm looking through some of my favorite horror fics and wanted to ramble about a few things I noticed, particularly with some members of the Mane 6.
Regarding protagonists, Twilight is a popular choice. Outside of just being the main series MC, I think having a logical-minded character trying to break down the supernatural happenings works well.
With AJ and Dash, who are also popular, they are both "strong" characters, which makes them good for being broken over the course of a horrible situation. AJ is grounded, mature, and level-headed. I think she feels the most "real" out of the Mane 6, which makes for relatable horror. I think "float" covers that well. Dash is super confident, and I think there is a natural urge to want to test that trait and break it down.
I cannot recall any standout stories that use Fluttershy as a protagonist. I suppose using the character that is scared of everything isn't as striking. I started reading the Twilight Fluttershy piece posted above, and I am liking it so far.
I think Pinkie is probably the hardest to do as a traditional horror protagonist. I think it is hard to keep a serious tone while also having Pinkie feel like Pinkie. Maybe take a psychological angle or introduce a tragedy before or during the story. If I had to pick something for inspiration, I'd go with Pet Sematary.
I wanted to say something about Rarity to round this out, but I got nothing. I liked the story "Carousel." That's about it.

>>42751350
Lex Luthor when he doesn't account for wind speed in his haste to try his new kryptonite sniper rifle:

>>42751389
A lot of the time i see Scootaloo as one and she usually dies horribly.

>>42751484
Based

>>42751484
Hardly anyone dies nicely, do they?

>>42751527
My grandma, I hope.

>>42751527
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BdAH1yTKwGk

>>42751530
Fics where Scootaloo is supernaturally cursed to make random fuckers have uncontrollable hate around her, like that one little girl SCP?

You could call it Cute Aggression.

So, since October was a blessed month of things returning from the dead, which fic resumed?

>>42752227
The autistic pokemon fic finished

>>42749882
It was not ready, kek, but I was:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/582238/tall-tales-of-the-one-true-queen-and-her-many-children

I forget
How does the sun go down? Does Celestia make the sunset last for long, or is it a two minute thing?

>>42752850
It seems to come up for only a minute or two

>>42752850
I always assumed it was like pulling a lever or flipping a light switch. Like, Celestia and Luna would start up the Sun or Moon for the day/night, and they would get stuck at dawn or dusk without the aid of magic.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/547602/pax-chrysalia-imperium
>17th Dec 2023
>8th Jan 2024
>26th Oct 2025
>26th Oct 2025
>30th Oct 2025
>30th Oct 2025
>31st Oct 2025
>31st Oct 2025
>Complete
>Published: 47 minutes ago
Why publish it like this?

>>42753218
Severely bipolar

>Jinglemas sign-ups opened
Any suggestions for a prompt?

>>42753218
Even more psychotically, the writer spent much of October writing another, longer fic, came back to finish this one, then declared this one a sequel to the one he just slammed out.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/547604/eaw-tartarean-bayonet

>>42753862
Ask for your favourite ship.

>>42753914
But what if I don't have a favorite ship.

>>42754081
Then you deserve nothing.
Nothing!

>>42754081
Do the easy way out and just pick a Twilight ship, she's good with everyone.

>>42754175
And yet people say Rarity is the slut.

>>42754235
When will people realize there's a difference between a slut and a whore?

>>42754326
Sounds like whorish slut cope.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/584153/1/keep-kick-away/at-the-core

This was good.

>>42754355
Fixed your link, brah
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/584153/keep-kick-away

>>42754235
I said A Twilight ship. Just because she's got chemistry with everyone doesn't mean she has to fuck everyone.

>>42754235
Well, Twilight doesn't feel the need to test the "good with everyone" hypothesis herself.

>>42754478
>Twilight's lover finds out she's totally shit in bed because she couldn't find a blowjob book to study

>>42754175
>she's good with everyone.
While I generally agree, I've yet to see a fic that really sold me on TwiShy.

>>42754355
>Both of her fics at the top of the Sinbox
Feels like cheating that does.

>>42754663
I counted three.

>>42754690
Good God stagger them out at least

>>42726741
>>42727672
I finished this story a couple days ago, and the main things I liked the most from the rest of it were the role shifting between Twilight and Rarity.
From Twiflag's bemoaning of Rarity's "crash out," I thought it would be worse than it was. It was only mildly ugly, I think the most offputting part was Rarity starting her apology to Twilight with a whine. Even within there, kudos to Mono for staying with Rarity's established character. It's easy to exaggerate her, and it helps a lot to just not do that. Keeping her the way she is is exactly what makes her so entertaining to read and watch.

After that, it was a lot of fun to watch Rarity decide she was going to give in to her love for Twilight and how she started deploying little gifts and favors, and teasing her. And then, after that, how Twilight immediately took charge of their interactions after the train station kiss. The scenarios in which one would tease the other were unusually funny for what they were.

Lastly, the
>black and blue scarf that fits Twilight so well
heh

>>42753218
I'm rabbitholing this author. I find his derangement fascinating. From reading his earlier microfiction: he seems to know how to drive at a theme or a strong central idea, but his sentence-to-sentence prose is bloated and arduous. I'll report back tomorrow to tell you what I think of his more recent, more refined long-form works.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/520059/your-human-and-you-buried-above-the-ground
This, in particular, reads like the writer's wet nightmare. It's about as incoherent as a dream, just as hard to make sense of, and much, much harder to explain to somebody else. It contains deer rape, animal stillbirth, ling drone gangrape, and a cheesejob. That's all in the first six thousand words; I'd like to know what the next eighteen-thousand contain, but the prose itself reads like molasses.

>>42753218
>>42753883
>>42755793
Oh fuck it's this author, I didn't realize he had that many other works. I read https://www.fimfiction.net/story/541158/1/do-you-doubt-me-traitor/how-do-i-break-you.
It was an interesting even if awkward read, especially since I was reading it in the subway and it gave me a boner. Though the semi schizo style of the story written by a seemingly mentally ill orthodox brony was interesting enough for me to follow him immediately after reading it.

>>42755887
I was sucked in from the moment I looked at the little gallery of 'distinguished heroes' on his profile. Setting aside the likes of Stalin, Gaddafi and MC Ride, anyone who looks up to Feyda-kun can't be all that far from my interests.

>>42755900
Yeah that has to be trolling, there is no way anyone looks up both to MC Ride, Crowley, Kant, Dugin, Lenin, Nick Land, Aristotle, Hussein, and all those other guys at the same time all while having a compilations of Icons on his wall. It has to be trolling. Good trolling, but still trolling

>>42755982
Trolling implies disingenuity. I'd put it more in the grey area of 'genuinely-held, if poorly-understood beliefs, presented facetiously'. It's most likely a collection of people he hasn't properly studied, but likes the sound of.

Time to update the old standby

>>42756096
Post obscure words that you're looking for an opportunity to use, anons.
>wan
>rictus
>conflagrate

>>42756112
The fucked thing for me is it's not even obscure words. I just forget things. I forgot the word "boat" the other day.

>>42756115
mare
rump
snout
cute
Early on-set Alzheimer
unicorn

>>42756126
It's not Alzheimer's, I just have crippling ADHD, thank you.

>>42756131
You wanna swap developmental disorders? Mine keeps stopping me from starting any fics at all. I don't suppose you'd like a break from all of those taxing horsewords, would you? C'mon, I've just got to get the ball rolling, here. I've just gotta get started. I promise it won't be for long. It'll just be for long enough for me to get things moving. That's all I'll need. Honestly, it is. I promise.

>>42756155
Fuck no, horsewords are what keeps me going now that all other forms of entertaining have ceased to bring me pleasure.

>>42756112
I'm always fond of ereyesterday and overmorrow. I must also once more report that whence does not need a from when used. Awhile is neat.

>>42756165
Your Highness, is that you?

>>42756165
I'm fond of "erstwhile".

>>42756112
I will use brillig any chance I get.

>>42754175
She really isn't.

>>42756716
She really is. She's like shipping bedrock. If your character doesn't work with Twilight romantically you need to rewrite that character.

>>42756724
Uh...I guess I need to rewrite my Diamond Dog OC x Twilight clopfic

>>42756724
I don't read only Tunafics, I've read Twidash and Twinkie and obviously a lot of Twirity. She doesn't have chemistry with any of the other M6, even Mono struggles mightily to make plausible reasons for the two of them to be together. Writers consistently find it easier to just give her generic chemistry with generic stallions and generic m/f toolbox shipping elements than to ship her with any of the M6.
I do know the "Twilight gets all the mares" meme, but the only foundation any of those ships have is that she's the main character in the show and the other characters are also in it.

Conversely, it's much, much, much easier and more natural to ship her with Luna, Celestia, Cheerilee or an OC tailored to her. It really should be obvious that she's not a particularly easy pony to ship for the same reason that she did not find it easy to make friends before she was carted off to Ponyville.

>>42756778
Also, the only characters Twilight has on-screen chemistry with are Celestia (many times, but BNE is a good example), Luna (fewer times, You'll Play Your Part is a good example), and her plumness.

>review https://www.fimfiction.net/story/434536/under-your-control

3/10. I spent 45 minutes the other day sifting through the mind control group for a Twiluna fic where Twilight does it to Luna, found one David Silver deadfic and had to settle for this Twidash instead.

Dash calls Twi "babe" in her first line of dialogue and that sets the tone for the whole thing. The characterization of both felt completely off for the entire story, but perhaps that's just the fetish porn tax getting collected. Speaking of, the mind control stuff also felt really weak. There didn't really seem to be any difference between it and them just RPing the whole thing instead. I guess taking away the rapey aspect of mind control really takes the wind out of its sails.

>>42739333
>emacs
FOSSfags wonder why Microsoft can gangrape PC users and then vomit pic related at them.

>>42742684
>How are they doing this?
Autism + being underage/NEET

>>42744525
I've been chipping away at the deadfic. It's surprising how fun it is writing a WW1 tech era cruiser fighting an alicorn. I love tech vs magic. So much I'm even tempted to change the ending of the fight from allies Twilight made earlier in the fic destroying the cruiser while it's distracted by her to her just doing it herself.

Oh, shit. It's Saturday. I still have two stories to read for tomorrow.

>>42757104
This audiobook is good, if you haven't read it yet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzG654pKeg4

>>42756862
I should have listened. I couldn't make it that far into this one. The Viziepop profile pic was already a big red flag. Every line of dialogue just hits the ears (or eyes, I suppose) wrong. It all feels very un-pony even for a fetish fic, which is saying something.

>>42756862
Read FiMC?

>>42756862
Gara was such an insufferable, pretentious cunt last I spoke with them. I don't know if it's the sexual assault doing that or what, but the insane lack of self awareness just soured me on any further interest in talking with them.

I just need one modern-tech fic where the guns are designed for pony anatomy. I genuinely cannot read past the point where a pony wields a gun like a human would because trying to picture it makes my mind's eye short-circuit. This form of autism must be my punishment for subverting the purity of Equestria with human evil.

>>42757937
>sexual assault
How desperate do you have to be to rape a tranny?

>>42757943
A gun designed for pony anatomy is a cannon.

>>42757950
Desperate enough to be a Fimfiction moderator.

>>42757950
The only acceptable scenario for a man having coitus with a transsexual is to snap an FtM bitch out of her delusion.

>>42757951
I've had a think about it. I can come up with pony-plausible versions of most types of gun, but I think the only kind that ponies would find impractical are rifles; barring unicorns, they'd have no way to fire them accurately while retaining any kind of mobility. Any rifle-caliber weapon would have to be an emplacement, either by design or by necessity, with the possible exception of a light machine gun in a purely suppressive role. With the rifle being the standard infantry weapon of the past hundred-some years, you'd have to entirely re-invent gunfighting tactics to revolve around the lack of them. Admittedly, maybe that's too much effort.

>>42757985
You'd be surprised how many FtM are into that.

>>42757943
Unless it's a sci-fi AU, wouldn't it make more sense a for a pony to use some type of magic object, like a wand or an amulet, that can fire a basic magic projectile?

>>42758010
It would, but autistic people are obsessed with enforcing human history onto a fundamentally different setting as if the progression of events is predetermined and not the result of the starting conditions.

>>42758010
There's ways to fluff it so that guns are better for mass use. Perhaps it's too costly, on an industrial scale, to create a magical weapon powerful enough to seriously injure. As a bonus, there's an exceedingly obvious lay-up in there for the theme of the world's magic (not literal magic, more like its appeal, or collective snowpity) getting smothered by automation and mass production.

>>42758019
Yeah, but that's lazy autism. The ascended form of this is putting in the groundwork to make the random human thing you want to see in Equestria work within its boundaries.

>>42757943
I'm currently writing a fic where towards the end, ponies do get firearms, The weapons are pretty much rifles strapped on the side of ponies (or front) through a sort of specially made vest , a bit like pic related, and it would work with the vest being linked to the tail of the pony, and the movement of the tail being what decides if it fires, stops, puts the security or drops the magazine to insert a new one (which would be done by hoof by the pony.
I'm surprised to have never seen someone think of something like that in their fic (though someone probably did, I just haven't seen it yet), the closest thing to it is to my knowledge the guns in Fallout Equestria, but they use their mouths instead of their tales, which I always found dumb because what if you need to shout orders or just communicate? Doesn't seem practical.

>>42758032
Cannons develop first and are already a thing in Equestria, and are probably easier for them to use than for humans since transportation is less of a problem. They're also going to fundamentally be an earth pony weapon, since unicorns will use magic and pegasi can be dropping rocks or using weather manipulation. There's the matter of whether it's pony vs pony or not, too.

I guess I've been under a rock; I had no idea NaNoWriMo was an organization, and that it's dead. I'm still going to aim for 50k horsewords this month, though.

>>42758036
A side-mount on a harness was my first thought, too, which is what led to me assuming that rifles wouldn't be practical. You'd have to imagine that it's difficult to keep the weapon 'calibrated' in exactly the right position to ensure accuracy, since it'd shift from recoil or get knocked around on the move. I can see this being less of an issue for machine guns (calibrating the harness gives the assistant gunner something to do, too) but precision shooting wouldn't be reliable.

>>42758055
I could see rifles and the equivalent of handguns existing, but only for pegasi and especially unicorns. We've see multiple times pegasis using their wings as pseudo hands, and I don't need to elaborate on unicorns. But the earth ponies would have to spray and pray, yes.

>>42758055
Side mount is going to fuck you up long term. Outside of worse for pony ears that regular shooting already if for humans, asymmetric strain on the body is really bad and there's no real way to brace properly for it. Plus bad aiming as mentioned. I think a single weapon carried beneath the barrel makes more sense. Easier to brace for, can be reaimed each time with horizontal accuracy if needed. Though for proper precision they can just have actual sniper weapons that aren't attached to the pony at all.

>>42758072
As a result of underbarrel doctrine, rifle sections are all-mare units, because everyone got really sick of every single stallion recruit making the exact same joke.

If we're talking open warfare of the traditional to Napoleonic era kind then you don't really need that much precision for weapons because if you're shooting at a wall of bodies you'll hit something. This is also why cannons were an effective field weapon at the time. But once you advance guns past a certain point they effectively kill that style of combat because charges become suicidal. Any kind of modern weapon isn't designed for the traditional approach to war, and modern warfare looks fundamentally different. If you gun autism the ponies you risk literally digging yourself into trench warfare.

>>42758072
wouldn't underbarrel run the risk of the pony shooting his own legs?

>>42758107
Not if the barrel is long enough to poke out, which also has the benefit of being good for affixing a bayonet to and charging.

>/fimfic/ has already forgotten about cock cannons and vagina mortars
Grim.

>>42758138
No, we just ignore them because they're stupid as fuck and anyone who thinks you can brace a firearm against soft tissue has never shot a weapon in his life.

>>42758072
Once again the dong gun proves its superiority to all other armaments.

>>42758153
>>42758150

>>42758150
Got a newsflash for you, Anon.
Ponies are ALL soft tissue!

Bookclub anchor in ~10-15 minutes, sorry for the delay.

Hiding in the midnight in,
>/FSBC/

[Krastos]
I appreciate this fic more than I did on my first read through it. To address the first elephant in the room, HV seems rather bitter here. There's the very meta comment on the fandom, and he also tries way too hard with the prose. It's ridiculous more than sometimes, plus his pony characters and the FiM setting struggle to keep up. He's suffocating, much to the detriment of the story. You can't get away from that feeling as you read.
But this time I'll say that the fic ended up pretty good anyway. Despite his best efforts, there's still a good horror story underneath all the “do you remember”s and “back then”s.

[The Grimmfic]
Yep, it definitely is one. The best story this week, and I don’t think it comes as much of a surprise. Are kelpies the most common non-FiM creature to appear in fics? Probably? Either way, this was simply a very good horror story. The atmosphere, pacing, and mixing in the calmer moments before spiking tension higher—it was all just on point the whole way through. Where Krastos is more of an action thriller with meta elements, this is just pure fantasy horror, and it tries to ground itself in FiM so much better. I could see this kelpie living in the Everfree, the wisps that tempt, etc. This is a very good piece of pony horror. And the ending, despite the arguably zigga-ex-machina, doesn't feel cheap at all. I really liked how the hospital scene ended as well. And I should say that the writing is both very good and very polished, which is a combination we get super rarely. Just a great fic.
Is Grimm the best [Horror] writer on the site? I'd say so, but you could make the case for Thornquill or Horse Voice.

[LeEE||3RS |n tHE Tit|E~~]
Holy horrorslop Batman!
This sucks. Well, I am exaggerating a bit, but I didn't even updoot it after finishing the two entries.
To be fair to the story, the subgenre it picked is full of bad works. The first-person 'found journal' horror is rarely written well. This is not as bad as most of those, but it is still not good. The writing is not atmospheric in the slightest—the worst flaw of any possible horror story. That's partially a problem with the form, but little effort was spent on making the writing eerie, captivating, or anything else at all. It's just a fairly bland report, and ANYTHING scary about this fic has to be your own input. Granted, the idea is pretty scary, but the fics lazily don't do anything with it and trust you to fill the blanks yourself. That's awful. The one thing that it DOES do are formatting gimmicks, which is also bad. It was also the sloppiest kind of horror (zalgo, really?) and less pony than the other two we've read for today.
Take this part of the post with a grain of salt—it's not a truly bad fic. It's just mediocre, maybe okay. On another week this post could've been more neutral than negative. But after the other two, I was sorely disappointed.

[Voting]
Still the ones mentioned at the end of this post: >>42726741

>>42758262
Well I got sick as fuck for Halloween so I barely read any, but according to rarifag I read all I needed to
LBT the only one I read. Pretty good. The gore tag always scares me that it's just gonna be some grimderp shit, but in the end this one is mostly kino and the gore is just an actual lasting consequence for one of the characters. They should also really tell someone about the kelpie living right next to town. Also can adults not see the lights or was AJ just trying to get AB killed by chasing them down? And speaking of grimderp, the actual kelpie scene reminded me of Astertes when they get to the magic orb and they're all drawn to touch it then come to their senses and try to stop touching it but they can't. Sweetie just needs to put a plasma pistol to its head and blow her hoof off. Although the end result is the same since she cuts her own arm off. I guess the CMC are space marines.

Krastos the glue maker
>>>>>>doctor whooves
>human with a sickle cover
>Twilight's library has cognitohazards in the public section
Kek, anyways I just read ch1. I didn't necessarily 'drop it' (although it maybe seems likely) but got way too sick and didn't read more

l33t in the d@rk
I apparently read both of these before, but offer no comment.

>>42758262
>this is just pure fantasy horror, and it tries to ground itself in FiM so much better. I could see this kelpie living in the Everfree, the wisps that tempt, etc. This is a very good piece of pony horror.
Yeah, as I said I was worried about the gore tag and something crazy happening but this was nice.
>And the ending, despite the arguably zigga-ex-machina, doesn't feel cheap at all.
This is what made me doubt that adults couldn't see the lights, although maybe Zecora had a kelpie run in at some point in her life and she can hear them now and found the CMC because of that
>[LeEE||3RS |n tHE Tit|E~~]
>This sucks.
fucking kek

>>42758262
>I appreciate this fic more than I did on my first read through it.
I think it that's a common experience with the fic. First time I read it, it was a jarring experience. The worst crime of the fic, aside from the blazing fast pacing, is that each scene feels so isolated, and as a result I couldn't get into it. At all. Second time I read it, the issue was less notorious. I got to appreciate some of what the fic did.
Still, I wouldn't call it anywhere near HV's best.
Also, brilliant move, Zecora. This monster is spread by knowledge of it, so let's tell everypony about it. lmao

>Grimmfic
It actually took me a bit to get invested in the fic. Early on, it has this weird balance of show and tell where we see the CMC do things and talking with each other, but then it goes back to telling us about the things they're doing. I don't know what Grimm was going for here, but it wasn't until they reach the lake proper and we see the scaly mare that the fic really kicked into gear for me.
After that, it was just greatness. I would've liked some foreshadowing for Zecora so it didn't feel as jarring when she pops in, but that's a minor complaint. I liked how Sweetie Belle desperately uses her last breath to save her friends and herself. Overall, it was a great story, and proof that you don't have to kill ponies to make the story have weight and consequences.

>Fleet
I remember loving this story back in the day. I still like it, but nostalgia didn't carry me through. I really like the general mood of the fic, though. Even if it reaches the fatal flaw of all of these kind of stories. Once shit hits the fan, why are you still writing? Realistically (lol), you'd stop the journal entries, or keep them short and more janky, more stream of thought as the situation deteriorates.
That audio version posted earlier does a lot for the story, though. I think it's the superior version.
Also, hot damn, there are even more sequels. What the hell?

>>42758262
Oh, voting for mugging and youth

>>42758310
>It actually took me a bit to get invested in the fic. Early on, it has this weird balance of show and tell where we see the CMC do things and talking with each other, but then it goes back to telling us about the things they're doing. I don't know what Grimm was going for here, but it wasn't until they reach the lake proper and we see the scaly mare that the fic really kicked into gear for me.
I completely agree with this. I didn't care for the first 3rd of the fic or so, but the rest was good and by the end I accepted the whole thing. But something about that beginning part certainly didn't reel me in at all. And they don't even get to the lake until about 50% into the fic lol

>>42758315
>didn't reel me
ehehe

>>42758308
I hope you got better now, but yeah, you picked the best part to read. You could give Krastos a second chance later if you want to, but you probably wouldn't enjoy it all that much.
>The gore tag
This is the problem with the tags. A pretty graphic scene of a filly losing a leg should necessitate the [Gore], but it makes you think of the grimderp that usually earns the tag for most other fics.
>was AJ just trying to get AB killed
Either the kelpie made those wisps visible only to the fillies (she fails to capture even the CMCs), or AJ knew and thought that shutting down the idea was better than potentially exposing them to the kelpie's spell in some way.
>but offer no comment.
Probably appropriate, desu.

>>42758310
>is that each scene feels so isolated,
That's exactly the problem. Maybe he didn't want to write more; maybe he thought a slower pacing wouldn't fit. But in the end, it feels like he wrote the more important part of the story and just skipped the rest.
>I got to appreciate some of what the fic did.
I mean, yes, but the fic is still partially to blame for presenting itself in this way. It's good, but it's not HV's best for sure.
>it has this weird balance of show and tell
The second part is better, I agree, but this felt appropriately surreal for me. I really like his writing style so it could be that I'm getting fooled into looking past the story's problems. Not that it has many. Right, I saw one missing quotation mark!
>I really like the general mood of the fic, though.
I wish I could say that, but it just didn't do enough to establish that mood for me. I'd concede that it maybe works much better as audio—I was reading it normally. Audio would also require replacing the formatting gimmicks with something else, which should help the fic.
>Once shit hits the fan, why are you still writing?
My "favorite" parts are when Twilight writes down her notes on the trip from Golden Oaks to the farm, and when Applejack narrates her mad murder spree and its consequences.

>>42758315
>But something about that beginning part certainly didn't reel me in at all.
That might be valid. Grimm's writing style makes for a very enjoyable read for me. He's good at putting them words together.

>>42758394
>Either the kelpie made those wisps visible only to the fillies (she fails to capture even the CMCs)
I had the thought that there should've been some sort of backstory to the kelpie and ponyville, but the fic isn't long enough for that. Like a scene where the CMC talk about ab seeing lights at school and featherweight walks by and says 'I saw some lights too but my mom said to stay away and stay inside when they show up!' or alternatively there's some sort of ponyville legend about them

>>42758006
>women have rape fantasies
Stop the fucking presses.

>>42758414
I liked a comment that said this could be the start of a new urban legend in Ponyville.

>>42758534
I guess that could also be the case. Kelpie just failed its very first hunt kek. Well I guess it got a leg

>>42758394
There's this really funny comment that barrels through the 4th wall where Horse Voice speaks through Apple Bloom and goes "gee whiz, it's been so long since the fandom was in its heyday, I feel I missed my chance. Even the Treebrary is gone!"
It really makes me feel for the guy, but at the same time, if you've already missed your window for your magnum opus, why not spend a couple extra months really fleshing it out?

>>42755793
I'm back. It sucked.

>>42758568
What did this experience teach you?

>>42758684
That I'm more prone to sunk-costing than I thought.

>>42758262
Reading the other club's reaction to the Krastos fic is interesting. Also, it's been a year and a half since then, holy shit.
https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/41004159/#41017738
It makes me think about how this fic would be received if it was written by anyone other than Horse Voice.
The general consensus is that it's a good idea for a story, but nowhere near as developed out as it should be. Not one of Horse Voice's best.
So, if this had been made by a different author, with no preconceptions or expectations, would it have been judged as harshly? Would we have been more understanding, seeing it as a newbie's first foray into horror?
It's odd.

>>42758694
And...?

>>42758957
Today I learned about amorphous globosus. I am not sure if I will incorporate this in a fic or not.

>>42758310
>there are even more sequels. What the hell?
When the superior Rariflag tacked on the Grimmfic to pad out the wordcount, I was a little conflicted because Pray, Hope and Wander is definitely part of that Light series. On the other hand, each one gets worse about eliminating any bits of mystery and horror the setting had, with the last one basically answering all possible questions a reader might have. Because the readers wanted all their questions answered.

>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/581327/sonic-the-hedgehog
I know I should pay no mind to the crossovers autistic (man)children put on the Internet, but there's something deeply troubling to me about the way this is written like someone is describing a movie and not telling a story. Like a fundamental loss of the art of writing happening before my eyes.

>>42758957
What do you want out of me, here? Am I lacking critical information on some kind of meme I'm supposed to follow up on? There's nothing to say. Tartarean Bayonet was a literary death march. It's a string of suffocating, purple vignettes pincushioned by plagiarised quotes about mankind's relationship to war. I should have cut my losses at the first lifted passage I recognised - Blood Meridian; Holden's comments on War preceding man. It's a lot of bloated, fatuous nothingness. I went in expecting the fun kind of mental illness, where the author surprises you with how their ongoing manic episode can wield English in ways I wouldn't have imagined. I got the literary equivalent of four-thousand calories worth of white bread. Worst of all, it's not the least bit pony.

>>42756862
I love Emacs. Wish I learned Vim instead though.

>>42760654
Hey. White bread is fine.

>>42755793
I read 'your human and you buried above the ground' and it is abysmal dogshit. Self-insert HiE level dogshit, and it feels just as long as one of those fics. The whole text amounts to nothing.

I am really disappointed. I really thought from the rarity rape fic that he had something more going on, that he truly was some Russian Orthodox schizo, but after reading what amounts to miserable fetish porn, I wonder if the awkward read I took for literary talent was nothing more than smut he jorked it to, which I found strange at first since he obviously has that orthodox spirituality aestethic (so why write smut when there are at least 3 dozen orthodox crosses and saints in your profile?), but I now realise it's just that, an aesthetic, more or less genuine, but nothing profound, only surface level schizo talk, which would explain his roster of improbable characters classified as 'hero's', probably an edgy kid who took anti-centrism to a bit too much to heart, and thinks esoteric stuff is cool.
I knew a guy like that down to the medieval images. He was a very swell and interesting guy until this type of "lol esoteric trad-bolschevism idiosyncratic deist-oneness lmao I am so different and whateverthefuck-pilled" nonsense consumed his personality, that's probably why I'm so angry at the author for this.

I'm still going to give this author another shot with one of his more recent works (as he says himself that he found this fic to be terrible and that he agrees with the criticism made of it), but seeing >>42760654 doesn't exactly fill me with faith, as it sounds just like more of the same. Which By the way >>42760654 , this kind of 'inspiration' or whatever you want to call it also happened with the rarity rape fic, which is directly inspired or lifted or whatever by some song about rape, (It is an unlistenable, but sincerely profound/manic song). So this kind of unoriginality isn't a first. Maybe his style only works when it's a thousand words long, who knows.

>>42760654
Whenever you see Blood Meridian referenced you know you're in for a boring time.

>>42760724
At least it's not Jewish rye.

I did it

>>42762179
You did it!
Is it finished?

>>42762184
Nah, still a few more scenes to go. Hopefully can get it done within the month.

>>42762191
Godapeed, brother. I just passed 38k on my fic, and I hope to reach ~70k before Valentine's.

If you can't beat an AI at making fanfics then you need to hang your pen and burn your book.

>>42762280
That's more a statement about storytelling than it is about quantity of words. If you're just interested in sheer quantity of words, I can write a script that strings random words together faster than any LLM ever will.

>>42762280
Beat an AI how?

>>42762319
At the world's most fearsome test of masculinity.

>>42762346
How can Button Mash claim he's anti AI when his crush is a robot?

>>42762346
Having sex with a colt?

>>42762179
This is one story? What's it concern? Surely you have the short summary finished by now.

>>42762280
Well, I'm getting paid to write, which in this evil bloodsucking competition is the only metric that matters. Even if we take into account that all of my profit from commissions goes straight into my commissions, I've certainly lost less money than the fuckers running those things.

>>42762319
The cellular automaton was devised when considering a machine that could replicate itself. No so-called artificial intelligence system can reproduce, so there's that.

>Haven't read a single fic since the start of October
Anything posted in the last couple of weeks that you've found interesting, Anons? I'm open to anything

>>42763519
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/583710/atop-white-cliffs-shrouded-in-mist

>>42763519
I saw this one yesterday. I want to see how similar it is to Sun Princess.

>>42763617
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/584299/dogged-devotion
Of course I paste it wrong.

>>42762623
>What's it concern
Derpy/Doctor romance. Dinky is there.

>>42762365
Who art thou?

>>42763519
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/578488/the-unrequited-thespian
I read this a few weeks ago, and I think it was pretty good. I haven't often found good Celestia romance that felt this earnest and grounded. I really liked it.

>>42763761
>The blue em2 writes more autistic slop
Fork found in kitchen

Oh hey changes finished

>>42763820
Which changes?

>>42763868
The Scootaloo fic on the sinbox.

>>42763761
>173 stories and all of them bad
Woof

>>42763550
>>42763629
>>42763666
Thanks for the recs, Anons! I appreciate it

>Reef
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/578651/reef
Holy hell, I'm glad to be back. Time to work on my part for the anthology.

Does Luna have problems holding her lactation in?

>>42764023
Welcome back, bro.

>>42764023
>ponies looked at my differently.
>my
Disgusting. Delete your story in shame.

>>42764651
>Minor spelling error

>>42764651
>>42764676
Hey now, don't argue.
Anon was probably dehydrated!

>>42764651
Why didn't you help him? Why weren't you there when you were needed?

>>42764651
It's so fucking over. thank you

>>42758262
Next week we're reading:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/99602/princess-celestia-gets-mugged
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/50795/the-youth-in-the-garden

>>42758736
A "horsefamous" name carries some weight. It reminds me of that experiment that Skirts did, where he swapped accounts with some random dude for one story. His story on the dude's account failed to gain any recognition whatsoever, while the fic written by that random writer immediately soared to the sinbox.
It's not the same as this, though, since the way this fic is written is enough to guess that its writer could do a better job even if you've never heard of HV before. It's like when you happen to find a fic by a clearly mediocre writer doing his absolute best, seemingly elevating the story past his skill cap—this is the exact opposite.
We'll see how a TD fic from this week compares.

>>42765119
Can you even do horsenumbers if you're a new writer these days?

>>42765126
While you can do the numbers if you catch what's popular and do a lot of it—see RunicTreeslops or even Catweazle right now—I think it's impossible to become a "renowned" horsewords writer. The pantheon of "The Good Writers" has been closed for several years now, and that has nothing to do with the quality of the stories themselves (which is, on average, higher than it was in the "golden age").

>>42765126
Groups are your friend, in my experience.

>>42765179
Shilling in discord servers are the new meta, I hear.

>>42765261
That too.

>>42765261
My only shill venue is this thread. You guys would back me up, right?

>>42765276
I always do.

>>42765276
Of course

>>42765276
Yes, we would all get right behind you and give you what you want. We'd back you up as hard as we could.

>>42765285
>>42765504
>>42765726
Aww, you're the best. Now, all I need to do is actually write something.

>>42765726
This butt nyx

>>42765788
Wrong thread, buddy.

I hate LaTeX with a burning passion.

>>42765814
It's just a rubber like material anon, what's the problem?

>>42765865
Not the fun latex, anon.

>>42765788
Reminder that nobody's written a Dyx fic yet. You could always be the first.

>>42765878
You've reminded me that I have a Dyx story on the backburner, technically. I was asking Pony Quarantine and Jargon Scott about the lore, so to speak, and they didn't know it nor did they have it written down anywhere, kek.

Are you absolutely certain no story includes Dyx already? I know there are plenty of Anon Filly stories including the regular OCs.

>>42766054
I looked, but I wasn't able to find anything except for one Pen Stroke thing sort of based off her concept that made her a Daybreaker clone resurrected to be Cozy Glow's minion that hates her mother and has a bunch of kids.

>>42766054
It's not rocket surgery. You just have to envision a shitty, unlikable forced meme of an OC and try writing her sister.

>>42766100
Anon please the old version of Past Sins hasn't existed for almost twenty years now.

Any good stories with Milky Way in them?
>janjan nuked the hash of the relevant image

>>42765878
I accidentally recreated Dyx and Nyx in this one story.

Why did Mono disable the ratings and comments on TEL and TEK?

>>42766213
USI.

>>42766323
Fucking hell that trilogy is never going to get done

>>42766323
Do I want to know?

>>42766445
The U means he feels threatened by Mono's writing prowess, the S means he envies her fame and website, and the I means he's terrified of what's between her legs.

>sat down tonight all ready to write
>Nothing comes out
Dammit

>>42757931
>anthro
No, and I won't.

>>42758019
Cannons are canon, so it makes sense there'd be the same progression of miniaturizing them to become fully portable "hoofheld" weapons over time like happened IRL. The problem is, writers aren't engineers and have no clue how such a process would work and end up doing really stupid things like mouthguns.

>>42762191
>a few more scenes to go
I look forward to the 150k screenshot, anon.

>>42763761
>A loose adaption of Sodor Fallout
https://sodor-au.fandom.com/wiki/Sodor_AU_Wiki
What fucking rabbit hole of autism is this?

>new mono fic :D
>it's humanized :(

>>42767581
Humanised sequel to a not humanised fic because she's spiralling ever deeper in her tortured artist paranoia.

>>42767694
Promise me that if I ever start pretending that I write more than saccharine slop that you'll personally shoot me dead, alright?

>start reading a fic
>"god this sucks"
>think back on later and maybe I'm just not giving it a chance
>read it again
>it's even worse than I thought

>>42768469
Me reading my drafts.

>>42768476
My favorite is when you feel like it's going to be a niche fetish slop fic dressed up as not that, and maybe it won't be, but then it is.

>>42768529
This, but it's niche ship slop.

>>42768548
Me when I'm trying to figure out if the writer is intentionally writing an incest relationship or doing it on accident

>>42768562
accidental incest is hot

>>42768643
Once it mentions Celestia growing huge tits to breastfeed the main character is it even barely disguised?

>>42768681
Wait, I might want to read this.

>>42768715
dont get baited

>>42767694
tortured artist paranoia is based but what does that have to do with putting h*mans in your fics

>>42768681
Is the main character fillified or just a mommyfag?

>>42768756
Yes.

>>42768815
Sigh. Is the main character fillified?

>>42768839
coltified

it's always a gamble whether or not it's a momlestia story or a mommylestia story.

>>42768865
mediocre

>>42768870
Or a momolestia story.

>>42768872
I like how this is where you drew the line of mediocrity. Not the rest.

>>42768889
To be fair I don't particularly care for the huge tit breastfeeding either but at least if it's a fillified anon it'd roll back around to being somewhat based

>>42768896
There's a lot to unpack with that statement, buddy.

Suddenly I'm getting inspiration for the first time in months to write about a Celestia breastfeeding. Wonder where this came from

Suddenly I'm getting inspiration for the first time in months to write about cryptocurrency. Wonder where this came from

>>42769245
I was going to write about Twilight's uncontrollable lactation, think they're related?

>>42769414
>filename
*breastfed

>>42769541
Breestfed*

I think I figured out something else that bothers me about WoE, and it's that it utilises Balrogs too casually when late Tolkien lore has them as very powerful and "no more than 7" ever existing. I think that's the fault of reading the Silmarillion last, which gives you passage where there are many more and they're much weaker.

>>42769585
>late Tolkien lore
What Tolkien wrote later is relevant as a point in the discussion, but they've always been depicted as one of the two most powerful kinds of evil creatures, and their standing compared to the ancient dragons is not clear. Gandalf, a powerful Maia, goes toe-to-toe with one (not even the greatest one), and in Silmarillion they manage to drive away the Ungoliant, who's one of the most fearsome evil beings (Morgoth himself was afraid of her). They do die, but usually to very heroic mortals. Their biggest failure is when the greatest of all non-godlike creatures, Fëanor, mortally wounded, manages to successfully fight off a group of them—but that's Fëanor when he's mad.

This leads to a bigger point: Named Heroic Units with a mission to fulfill get a huge buff in Tolkien's legendarium, and trying to play power-level autism with the setting is generally an exceptionally poor idea that shows a lack of understanding of how the setting operates. It's all about the epic stories and the Heroes, good and evil. A named ancient elf can lose to a named leader of Balrogs but then proceed to solo a whole group of them at once, despite his mortal wounds. You'll run into the same issue when trying to compare ancient dragons and balrogs—the answer is "it depends who's the focus of the current story".

>>42769742
It makes me think of a setting where everyone knows this, so every battle is a fight between people who want to be the protagonist

>>42769859
That's just Discworld.

>>42769859
That's almost MahoAko if you squint enough and ignore half of what you said.

Is there any fic with a ridiculous, autistic overly complicated premise that's actually good?

>>42770311
You don't need permission to read ___ and decide for yourself.

>>42769405
>breastfed
Shouldn't it be suckled, since horses have teats and not breasts?

>>42770355
Look the dude's going through some stuff, let him plant his lips around Celestia's massive bazongers, aight?

>>42770356
>Alex, who is into cryptocurrency and is suckled by Celestia

>>42769405
God, why did I give this a shot. The upvotes made me think it might be something worthwhile but it's definitely an age regression fetish story. How the fuck is it rated so high?

You think the Milky Way guy is mad that after so long trying to push it it's instead upstaged and taken by a Celestia shitpost instead

are there any trixie torture fics

>>42770571
The Secret Life of Rarity has a chapter of that nature.

>>42765814
Pandoc.

>>42770920
Doesn't really solve my issue at all. However, using an older template not tainted by a student's retardation did help.

>>42765814
Latex is a perversion of TeX from a powerful typesetting system that lacked some pre-built libraries for common stuff, into an abomination of layered upon layered libraries and redefinitions that eschew all concepts of proper software organisation and can only be used by dumping them into a pile and praying the typesetting works, and if it doesn't, dumping more extensions into the pile

>>42770982
Holy long sentence.

>>42771073
S-sorry

>>42770982
>Latex is a perversion of TeX
TeXfags should all have their fingers individually broken.

>>42769742
Morgoth had myriads of Balrogs in his forces at the end of the First Age, and only a couple dragons. They are formidable, but also they got slaughtered anyway.

>>42771109
Tolkien said there were supposed to only be between 3 and 7 balrogs ever. A single one could go toe to toe with Gandalf and he wasn't even the strongest. Two of them drove away Ungoliant. The fact of the matter is that the Silmarillion is not an actual book but an unfinished collection of scraps that are by their nature contradictory. You can headcanon it as "Melkor made hundreds of weak balrogs and only a few big ones" but that's you putting a plaster over a problem that's ultimately caused by things written at different points in time of the construction of a setting that was never properly finalised being shoved together as part of the same story. The Silmarillion should never have been compiled in its current state and instead should have been a more academic book with notes and context surrounding each fragment.
Which makes it all the more baffling Tolkien was actually planning to write and publish the whole thing first before LotR.

>>42771134
Not even the only time it happened btw. Tolkien retconned the fuck out of the original version of the Hobbit, although it is cute that 'canonically' the original version of the book is the lie Bilbo told others about how he got the Ring.

>>42769742
Tolkien wrote his legendarium across like 50-60 years of his life and his perspective naturally changed over time as he grew from a fresh graduate being sent into the WWI trenches while scribbling autistically in notebooks, to a wisened Oxford professor with grandkids and multiple very popular published books. I'm not saying this to mean that his older stuff was shitter or anything, just that his ideas and perspectives will understandably have shifted quite a bit over the long years of his life.
As far as I can tell, his earlier mythos is characterised as being a lot more mythological. The dark lord brough forth hordes of fearsome demonic creatures to swallow the earth in darkness, and the shining elven heroes struck them down with supernatural might, things like that.

Now part of it is directly related to Middle-Earth canonically getting less and less magical over time, but also a lot of it is just him changing his mind and mulling over his ideas. At one point he imagined balrogs to just be some powerful unit, maybe at a relative power level similar to the trolls in Sauron's army in the third age (though more powerful in absolute terms simply because everyone was more powerful back in the first age). Later he decided they were going to be extra special units who existed in tiny numbers, and retconned the idea of having "hosts of balrogs". But then he had the audacity to die at like 80 or so before even finishing all of this stuff so a lot of stuff only exists in older, unrevised versions.

>>42771147
Whenever someone tells you your worldbuilding isn't as good or as thorough as Tolkien's remind them that Tolkien's worldbuilding is an unfinished and wildly inconsistent mess of things that are mostly inconsequential to the actual story of LotR and that chaining your life's entire production to a single setting isn't actually that good.
Or just tell them that trying to be the next Tolkien is far more likely to make someone the next Andrew Hussie.

>>42771259
>isn't actually that good
It's actually pretty good all things considered. Each version of the setting is good in its own right, and the parts that he did finalize for publishing in LotR are high quality and deserve their fame, the only issue is that he was writing and re-writing it all his life so the stuff he never finalized for publishing isn't all in a consistent state. That doesn't make it bad quality or anything.

Things are bad when they're inconsistent due to incompetence or laziness, and especially when published. When your fifty year old drafts are inconsistent with your latest ideas and your only sin is not living till like 200 years old so you can finish everything I don't think it makes for bad writing.

>>42771147
>a lot of it is just him changing his mind and mulling over his ideas
I disagree with this way of interpreting a universe. The only 'canonical' look into Middle-Earth we get is through the lens of the works that are set in it. Notes, letters, etc., can all shine some light on how the author understood his world, and you might agree with some ideas if they're supported by the main text(s), but they are never definite proof of anything, and—in many cases—they are incorrect. Retcons that are not grounded in a new work are exactly as valid as any fan's fanfiction.

Balrogs do not appear in The Hobbit, and only one shows up in LotR. LotR does contradict The Silmarillion (as it was published) in a few spots, and therefore the two could be considered slightly separate branches of canonicity. When talking about balrogs as a species, we are talking about the Silmarillion branch. Because in its current form that is a separate work, a story, effectively co-authored by Christopher making editorial decisions. If things went differently, then maybe it wouldn't be its own story, and you can argue that it would be better, but that's not what happened.
When Tolkien scribbles in a margin that there are up to seven balrogs, he is just incorrect.

>>42771291
Tolkien didn't publish the Siilmarillion. It's by all means fanfiction.

>>42771302
It is a point you can make in general, but when discussing "balrogs" we are by necessity discussing that fanfiction. I did say that, you know. They just don't exist in LotR canon.

>>42771291
By your logic of only definitely published works counting, then the Silmarillion definitely does not because it was published by his son, and assembled from precisely the kind of unfinished drafts and notes that you're discounting for everything else. Ergo, LotR does not contradict the Silmarillion but rather LotR is canon and the Silmarillion is "as valid as any fanfiction" (which I strongly disagree with btw, authorial intent matters a lot and authorial penmanship even more, even if I can understand the sentiment of not putting it on the same level as an actually published work).

So in pure published canon, we do not have a definite number of Balrogs. Beither there being 7 nor there being hosts of them are mentioned in any work actually finished by JRR. There are drafts mentioning "hosts of balrogs" and there are drafts mentioning 7 total. Christopher assembled some drafts into various published volumes - the Silmarillion, The Unfinished Tales, even History of Middle-Earth is technically a published work. But just because he used one draft over another, perhaps because it was more complete with the surrounding narrative and later revisions weren't fleshed out enough, doesn't mean that it's actually what JRR intended as a finished, published work. In the works that JRR published, we only see a single Balrog going toe-to-toe with a Maia and being able to practically destroy his physical presence on Middle-Earth, and some vague mentions of it being an ancient evil from the old world. That's it, we don't have any further lore saying there were or were not any armies of Balrogs in the past.

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Christopher regretted publishing the Silmarillion in the form that he did, and wished he had taken fewer decisions on massaging it into a "book" and left it as a more explicitly unfinished collection of drafts, because that's what it is.
In another universe Christopher could also have decided to go the other way and actually significantly edit his father's works into something resembling a more complete story, taking on the actual final writing step to reconcile everything and prioritising storytelling over authenticity, but that would still not have been a JRR-published book. JRR left behind a collection of drafts, and no matter which way you slice it, they're not anywhere near the level of LotR as far as being officially published by the author, and the only difference between a note describing a Balrog army that made it into the Silmarlillion and a note saying there were only 7 Balrogs is that the former would've been more conveniently part of a story fragment that Christopher decided needed to be included.

In general canon can be defined in several ways; and drawing the line at "only finished published works" is understandable even if I disagree. But drawing the line with LotR and Silmarillion on one side and, say, Unfinished Tales on another side is just a very oddly arbitrary way to draw the line.

>>42771310
Okay now you're either having a brainfart or being bretarded

>>42771334
I think he meant in plural.

>>42771348
Humans don't exist in HiE.

>>42771320
>Silmarillion definitely does not
It is a published work that has its own canon. I think everyone, Christopher included, will agree compiling it was done poorly (and I'd be partial to either of the approaches you mention), but since it's out there and we can discuss it like this, you have to take some sort of stance on it. To me, it makes the most sense to interpret it as a separate work with its own canon, one based on some of J.R.R.'s ideas.
>doesn't mean that it's actually what JRR intended as a finished, published work
You're right, it doesn't. As far as J.R.R.'s Middle-Earth is concerned, all of that does not exist. But it is what the [co-]author of those books, Christopher, intended at the moment of their publishing, so 7 Balrogs remain a pure speculation forever, while a Balrog army was made a part of the established Silmarillion canon.
>Unfinished Tales
Yes. The Silmarillion is far from being a 'pure' story, and it gets worse for those other works. It is logically consistent to treat these other books the same way, since both Unfinished Tales and History of Middle-Earth "deserve" to be considered their own branches, but the situation with them is extremely messy. I also haven't read them for well over a decade, which is why I don't feel at all confident arguing for or against them in any way.

>>42771334
See >>42771348. Apparently there is a single LotR mention of them in plural, but I don't remember what it was.

>>42771403
>To me, it makes the most sense to interpret it as a separate work with its own canon, one based on some of J.R.R.'s ideas.
You know what, that's fair, I don't think I'll even disagree. It's quite natural to talk about "published LotR canon" and "JRR draft canon" if desired.
However I disagree on the next bit. Yes, technically you can talk about "published Silmarilion canon" but to me that seems like a supremely useless metric, given that we all (me, you and Christopher) seem to agree that it's a flawed presentation of JRR's draft writings. I see the Silmarillion as a view into some of the various unpublished things JRR left behind, not as a complete work that's worth discussing as canon on its own in isolation.
Same goes for the other stuff like Unfinished Tales. Even if it be treated as a story, or if we only consider the individual coherent story fragments in there individually, none of it is worth treating as a self-contained work with its own "canon".

There is one concept that could be useful, and that's to talk about "the state of Tolkien's word" at any given point during his writing, e.g. taking some chapter of the Silmarillion or some tale from the Unfinished Tales and discussing what the precise state of the worldbuilding was at that moment in time. But I don't think it's useful to talk about what's "canon" and what's not. Canon is a word that, to my knowledge, is used to distinguish authorial intent from fan-made extensions; when piecing together disjoint drafts making up a fluid and evolving scratchpad as the author's ideas evolve and change, it doesn't make any sense to me to timestamp any specific collection of drafts and declare "this piece makes up its own self-contained canon".
If I had to give a definition to the canon of the sum of all the drafts, it'd be whatever ideas JRR had settled on last, but as mentioned above even this is largely not very useful as a metric given how many storylines remain un-updated and assume an older state of the world, or how many revisions and ideas were never properly elaborated on.

So yes, I'll agree that LotR can be considered a separate "published canon" and the Silmarilion can be considered part of a wider canon encompassing JRR's unpublished drafts and ideas, but I don't see the point of singling out the Silmarillion for its own self-contained branch of canon, let alone any of the other tales. An academic study of the state of the world at the point any given draft fragment was written can be useful, but it wouldn't be called "canon" and the Silmarillion is pieced together from many time periods anyway.

>Apparently there is a single LotR mention of them in plural
I looked it up and searching "balrogs" on that site returns a passage that actually says "balrog's".
However, I think the fact that both Legolas and Gandalf say "a Balrog", not "the Balrog", seems to clearly indicate that there was more than one.