File: no share tuna.png (2.4 MB, 1600x1323)

2.4 MB PNG

First for best duo!

horses are the best

>>41227369
Being one of the first before I get lost in the whole discussion.

>>41227369
puter horse
:D

>>41227369
On the internet, nopony knows you're a horse.

I hate that Ezn's guide uses Carrot Top's name as the first word in its examples on dash usage, leaving me perpetually wondering if I'm supposed to capitalise the first letter in the action or not. I assume not, but it would be nice to have a clear answer. Every time I wonder about this I look it up and then am reminded that the guide has this terrible ambiguity.

>>41227413
You don't.

>>41227413
Ezn's guide is for middle school dropouts.

>>41227413
You should not capitalize it, just like you're not supposed to end it with any punctuation marks* (other than the dash, of course). The dashes function almost like commas there.
*In real-world published books, I've seen a few examples of ending with a comma when the original sentence had a comma at the point of the action split. It looks wrong to me, though, and I can't easily find any rules online that would back it up, so you should probably just omit it:
"I don't really think mudponies are strictly inferior—" Rarity hurriedly took another step away from Applejack's corner of the room "—but it's just that they're usually not as good as the other, more capable races when it comes to the more sophisticated tasks."

>>41227474
Did you read any fics on the site? Those are basics, yet, but people get them wrong in more than 80% of featured stories. That's why even fimfic links to the guide when you go to publish a fic.

>>41227508
>did you read
wdytwa?

>>41227622
That penis is unusually large

>>41227640
Pretty normal for a pone.

>>41227696
Nigga it's twice as thick as her leg.

>>41227704
Yeah, pretty normal for pone.

File: YOU'RE_STILL_HERE_ITS_OVE(...).png (12 KB, 389x435)

12 KB PNG

Anyway, talking of writing; I've been drafting that far-in-the-future and also future-set story for after Project Sparkle and weighing the idea of swapping race names.
Because of the regime in place, they're all rather old-blood nobility types and have changed their lingua franca to separate themselves from others, their language primarily represented by latin/greek.
Now, this would probably throw readers off for a moment if they read unicorn, pegasus, earth pony, gryphon, as something else, though it's pretty obvious after the first time it's mentioned who is what, and as each new race name is introduced they're tied to the character so you know this new race name is obviously, say, a gryphon.
However, that in mind, when reading stories that swap words do you find it unnecessary and annoying or do you like it as flavour to the setting? I like it because it sets that we're not in the past of Equestria and I like personally like figuring out such terms, but that's me and I'm curious as to other's thoughts.

File: image_2024-07-12_170702473.png (31 KB, 847x96)

31 KB PNG

>>41227929
>when reading stories that swap words do you find it unnecessary and annoying or do you like it as flavour to the setting?
I will hate the characters, and maybe hate you personally a bit.
If they speak a different language, have them speak the different language. If they have to communicate with ponies, have them speak in mangled English, like an ESL would, maybe breaking down and going back to their native language halfway through.
But please. PLEASE. Don't do picrel. Ever.

>>41227929
All I can think of is one mediocre fic which used "earthens" or some shit like that instead of earth ponies. It was mildly annoying, but most readers got over it soon. You have a better justification for the name change, but it'll still be at least somewhat annoying, especially at first.

>>41228052
You mean the ESL shit where they cut in their own language with English?
Everyone speaks English because that's representative of the common tongue, and it's mostly terms, places, racial names, sayings that are represented by latin.
Also who the fuck decided to make Tempest a mexican? I want to shoot them.
>>41228065
You're a cheeky cunt, I'll give you that.

No new Hailey yet.

>>41219720
They're not Harry Potter crossovers. That's probably the start and end of it. Go up the reply chain and read what I said about regular HP fics. It's quite easy to break Harry Potter when you try to write fics that run concurrently with Harry's plot.

Why is Luna depicted as drinking coffee? What does it have to do with the night?

>>41228131
Drinking coffee to stay awake at night is a common trope, and it's seen as the 'opposite' of tea which Celestia is associated with.

>>41228142
But tea does the same.

>>41228151
Who associates tea with trying to stay up at night?

>>41228157
The British.

>>41228157
Me.

I switched back to a Windows machine. It's a laptop with no numeric keypad. How the fuck do you guys write en-dahses? The best solution I found on Google was the fucking emoji keyboard.

>>41228166
I keep it in a notepad doc with all other annoying to remember bits of punctuation or ascii until I remember it.
Alt + 0151 is the — and I have also memorised the ™ which is Alt + 0153.

>>41228178
You need the numeric keypad for that to work.

>>41228181
I know, I was just flexing.
But seriously, make a notepad doc for such occasions where you lack a keypad.

>>41228166
I just do -- and let GDocs decide my fate.

>>41228235
GDocs is a little retarded about this, with -- being an en-dash and --- turning into an em-dash (technically it's –- ), when most word editors do both dashes with just two hyphens, using spacing to determine the correct length (spaced for en-dashes).

Did any of you encounter bot accounts following you and offering you "affordable 2D and 3D artwork" for your stories in a DM? I've got two in the last two days.

>>41228276
yes

>>41228276
>>41228489
Me three, as of just a couple hours ago.

Damn. Not even the bots want me...

>>41220554
I didn't post that.

>>41228945
Prove it.

File: Screenshot 2024-07-12 at (...).png (158 KB, 885x886)

158 KB PNG

RGRE is a pestilence upon this earth

How many of you fanfic writers use AI? It’s anonymous so tell the truth.

>>41229259
Not even once.

>>41229259
I'd like to, but so far I've spent more time fucking around with the AI setup than actually writing

>>41229259
I've used it for critiquing what I've written. Often using a demeaning voice.

>>41229259
No thanks, I prefer using my mind. It will never write what I write better than I can.

File: Rune Cover Art.jpg (1.6 MB, 1024x1024)

1.6 MB JPG

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561501/magus-aequator
Oneshot's up. It's a little melancholy thing about the lost "Golden Age" Equestria could have had that Celestia talks about with one of her government officials. I expect it to do worse than the poem from last year since at least that was something different. But the opportunity cost was virtually non-existent since this was already written for the archmage fic, so I figured why not?

I'm pissed Microsoft's botnet can spit out images so much better than Stable Diffusion can.

>>41228073
>They're not Harry Potter crossover
Neither are most of his other fics, but they're all canceled or on hiatus too. That's what makes the completed ones stand out all the more to me.

>>41227929
>as something else
Why is the narrator not translating those words into the correct English but is for everything else? Either you go full COPE or the narrator follows the universal translator rules.

>primarily represented by latin/greek
So, you'd be calling them unicorns, pegasi, and terra pullus, then? Doesn't seem like a big enough difference to bother with.

>>41229259
I use it for cover art when Depribooru fails to give me anything but tentacle hentai rune circles.

>>41229347
I liked the story, Anon. I look forward to your full Archmage fic.

File: sinuous cats.png (2.22 MB, 2070x1588)

2.22 MB PNG

>>41229347
At least four of the hours I could've spent this week on the club fic went to Stable Diffusion, and the outputs I got from it were totally outclassed by that stupid notebook page. I had fun, though.

>>41229347
Awesome, can't wait for that fic. This oneshot was great.

Question for those who have already read all of Changeling Queen: Can I skip the Q&A chapter?

File: twiedit.png (100 KB, 471x725)

100 KB PNG

>>41229259
I've used it for editing feedback about my first draft. I would explain the story and the characters in a new chat with a simple "editor card" (picrel), and then start posting fragments of text to criticize. It's pretty good for that, but you have to give it smaller batches of text to get meaningful suggestions. Also good for getting a second opinion about title/tags.

>>41229517
I wouldn't trust that Editor Twilight Sparkle bitch, Anon. It is simply using you to steal your mind cum so that it can gestate and publish it to various women's health magazines.

>>41229347
>narrator saying it
Nah it's the MC's perspective.
>primarily
There are also other bits in there, sometimes dependant on the species which is also changed by the words used to represent them.

>>41230119
The Chocodex Nougastartes does nut snackport this nougaction.

>>41230119
I like it if it's good fluff and there's at least some moderation with how it's applied. Different genres and styles lend themselves to different levels of fluff tolerance, too.

File: fillyread.gif (118 KB, 1383x1350)

118 KB GIF

>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561501/magus-aequator
A heavy, atmospheric vignette that reads straight out of a larger story which, considering the author, might not exactly be far from the truth.
It's a fic that asks questions and implies the answers, done so cleanly that it was a joy to read.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/560233/the-thing-about-chess
This fic is a comedy in the trappings of a tragedy in the trappings of a comedy. It's easy to laugh at Blueblood being... well, himself, but for every laugh and clever chess-terminology, the author tugs on the reader's heart by mentioning that under all the idyll Celestia works to uphold, she dances on the knife's edge. He could save Blueblood, with all the apparent innocent misfortune that brings, but Luna's situation remains only forgiven, not forgotten.
I thought the story was sweet but forgettable when I first started reading, but the second half made me not only love it, but consider it one of the best I've read in this contest so far.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561157/hide-dragon
Morbid and well written. It presents a much more gruesome, yet still grounded version of Starlight. Presenting the inside of the egg and pre-born Spike's thoughts are artistically muddy. I found the previous story more compelling with its depth, but for a simple (but not simplistic!) horror story this works well.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561118/chaotic-neutral
A fic where the 1k limit hurt more than it helped. I dug the concept even if it's late season and the Discord presented here is reasonably menacing, but the story ends before anything interesting really happens.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561315/body-of-lies
Body(?) horror caused by an ancient curse. I feel similarly as with the previous story. The core concept is really solid and the author tries hard to make it work in the constraints, but a curse like this works best if it's dragged out, not dealt with in like 300 words. The ending was regardless neat.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561358/millennium
A fic similar to Statistics. Cellie can only send a single word to Luna every year, these are her thoughts. I found it one of the best uses of the contest. One thousand years, one thousand words. I'm ambivalent towards "sehnsucht", because I feel "longing" would work similarly well without needing to contrive German into the fic, but it wasn't a dealbreaker. Really liked this one.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/560741/i
As beloved as it ended up by Fimfic, I didn't really like it. It doesn't really do anything wrong per se and the concept of Twiggles fading away is neat, I just wasn't into this fic. I felt like I've seen this exact concept too many times and this one didn't add anything that personally interested me (the typographic trickery was neat but not neat enough.)

>>41229259
I write better than AI can, so no.

>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561101/it-was-a-beautiful-day-in-ponyville
A confusing timeloop. A little eerie, but the concept would work much better in a longer fic. I liked the way Twilight tries to figure things out, but the fic sadly remained unremarkable.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561076/a-fall-unnoticed
As mentioned before, it's a small tragedy in and of itself that the story never even managed to get into the boxes. Luna's fall has been written and rewritten thousands of times, but for such a short story this one sets itself apart with its allegorical nature. It's not a new story, but it's a familiar story presented very nicely.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561420/senescense
Post-S9 Twiggles is sad because Flutters died. Discord is also there, but (seemingly) less sad. They discuss this.
I like the way the author portrayed Discord's grief. I wish he trusted the reader just a tiny bit more and called less attention to it, but regardless it was a much more impactful and tactful way than just saying "I'M SAD, TWILIGHT". Twiggles, however, really doesn't work for me. She apparently didn't really grieve when two friends died, but suddenly broke down when three did, because of denial??
I can buy a lot of things when it comes to grief, but we're talking years of difference between the deaths of very different ponies. I think Twilight would either grieve each and every or none until all of them died.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561167/come-fly-with-me
Spike goes on the dragon migration and Twilight throws a fit, because she doesn't want him to go. Neat concept, that ends up reading like a bad teen drama with plenty of over the top crying and loud proclamations of love. Didn't win my heart.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561109/arise-my-champion
Angsty angst. For what it's worth I liked most of what this fic does. Except for the last three lines. I'm really conflicted what to think about them, because I'm both not against a twist, but also feel like the story has no room to set up/execute such a thing. As it stands it just makes Cellie look evil for no reason, except that she's maybe mad, maybe just super manipulative.
I think played straight, the fic would have worked much better.
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/559792/tribulation-and-the-taste-of-tea
This story implies a lot, but while that was a compliment in the previous post, here I didn't really feel like there is substance behind these implications. Not that it's a bad fic, but I felt like it doesn't really make a point and so my entire reaction was a "huh, neat".

>>41230119
Your vacation

>>41230119
Fluff like actual pronounced extra pony hair? Always felt like a bit of a weird, almost fetishy obsession, but I guess it's harmless.
Or fluff like content that's not directly related to the plot just for flavour? I think it's nice, but you definitely have to strive for a good balance so it doesn't feel like things aren't going anywhere.

File: what a fil.png (221 KB, 700x700)

221 KB PNG

>>41230669
Reminds me of Snake Eater.

>>41229259
I tried that, but unfortunately, filly fooling is mostly incompatible with Claude.

>>41230745
Were you using the web chat or SillyTavern + API? From what I've heard, Claude will write pretty much anything with a little prefill

>>41230735
I GIVE MY LIFE, NOT FOR HONOUR, BUT FOR BLOOOOOM!

What is it with the amount of porn being posted lately?

>>41230843
Jewish tricks.

>>41230843
Jew- >>41230874
Beat me to it.

File: Would you eat a filly.jpg (268 KB, 1235x2053)

268 KB JPG

This fic really cavitated my air.
>/FSSBC/
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/544827/she-slays
I am so bothered by this fic. Let's focus on the technical side first so I can get that out of the way. The writing is good, but it lacks polish. Aside from a typo here and there, the main issue is a problem with repetition in the prose that could have been fixed with one more round of proofreading, or maybe a second pair of eyes on the story. That aside, the prose is engaging during the actions scenes and largely clear enough during descriptions, and overall I'd say it's a well written story. It's dreadfully undertagged though, clearly missing Death, OC, Dark, and whether or not the writer agrees with it the AU tag as well. We'll get to that in a moment. I do appreciate the chapter titles.
Right, onto the meat of the discussion. I'm going to work backwards here, because I want my point out asap. The fic bolting itself to canon the way it does ruins it for me. There is no way to reconcile what the story is about with the part of the show it places as its skipped-over middle portion. I think that's tied to another problem, one which instead becomes clear from the get go. This doesn't feel like a pony fanfic. It feels like an original work of fiction that someone shoved into a pony skin. The broader world feels nothing like Equestria, from advanced buildings to churches to demons, and Cozy feels and acts nothing like the canon one, never mind how her canon schemes also make no sense in the context of the fic. The fic justifies this with the sudden twist that everything was outside Equestria, but that also doesn't really work with the show.
What's annoying is that the story underneath the pony skin isn't bad at all. It's got a lot of neat worldbuilding, and more importantly characters I enjoy reading about. It's a nice piece of fantasy fiction. It's just wearing Cozy's body in a way that doesn't fit at all. But if you ignore the canon setting and characters, some bits are truly great. The church city's whole deal is great, and so is seeing how Cozy is constantly seen as a good pony and thought of as dead by those she meets and inevitably betrays. I particularly liked the wellspring demon, and the way Cozy actually has consequences for her fights and takes a long time to recover.
I do have some gripes with the ending. Not the epilogue, mind you, I really liked seeing those characters come back together. But something about the way things go down doesn't sit right with me. I don't dislike Cozy eating her own heart and blowing up. It's a classical story of senseless lust for power and its consequences. But maybe because it's a classic, I dislike the attitude the fic itself takes towards it. It (and the author as a result) feel almost smug about something that's really very by the book and even mediocre.
Next week we're reading:
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/187458/lies-and-lyres
You should decide what we'll read after, too:
>https://ponepaste.org/8813

>>41230936
>what we'll read after
Important announcement regarding that: The week after the next one will have its club day land in the middle of Galacon. It's likely, though not certain, that we may have another live edition. People certainly seem to want to do it. As a result, it would be best if the selected fic was something worthy of the occasion. Feel free to suggest what you think would fit, we still have a week to figure it out.

>>41230946
skip the club, stream your orgy.

File: golly_hahaha.gif (485 KB, 200x200)

485 KB GIF

>>41230936
The chapter titles weren't lying.
The first thing that's very interesting about the story is that it takes the common trope of "character tries to attain godlike powers out of pure ambition", which is almost always a role given to the antagonists (because the protags with this trope will, invariably, subvert it and course-correct in the story), and makes this THE story of the protagonist. And yes, she's a villain. Very obviously a villain, and I can't help but sympathize with her somewhat. Not for the control that she seeks, but just pushing the boundaries and seeing what happens. Having those kinds of villains' plans come together is fascinating and almost never explored enough.

In this case, Cozy dies. Yes, there's some intentional ambiguity about her fate, but I feel like the story's themes are clear enough that trying to see any other ending wouldn't work well here. Speaking of themes, I think chapter 2 is the strongest here by a good margin. The epilogue is nice, too, but honestly? Chapter two could work as a standalone story, and 90% of the story's impact would be kept. It—the whole fic, but especially it—feels like it draws extremely heavily from Shadow of the Colossus, intentionally stripping it from the philosophical themes and the tragedy to highlight Cozy's character instead. Or maybe I'm wrong about that last part, but it's certainly extremely Shadow-of-the-Collossus-like in its depictions of the enemies, the aftermath of the fights, and even some very specific creative choices, like the deliberate repetition of the "caviate the air" scene on every kill mirroring SotC.

But I've rambled for an impressive amount of words without saying much about the fic itself. I liked it. I liked how it progressed towards the end, and the resolution was as good as it could've been. The story knows what it wants to do and is very focused on that. This is good, especially since the fights are cinematic enough to prevent them from getting repetitive or boring. I haven't read (m?)any Gollyfics, but she feels pretty good here. Er, rather she feels rightfully evil.
It's also kind of underrated. 25-3 after the club? Terrible updoot ratio, too. I know the average fimfic reader doesn't appreciate the finer details, but this is just such a tidy and stylish package that it's a shame it got overlooked. Probably because of the gore tag. But even the gore, or 'gore' is... fine here. I'm not a fan of gore in pony stories usually because 9 times out of 10 it's done for edginess's sake, like in [warfic_you_dislike], but the gore here serves a purpose. Both the finality of these monumental demons being rent apart and Cozy's own mounting wounds capture her determination super well. I don't get the [Random] tag on this and the lack of [Dark] and/or [Death].
I wouldn't put it close to the best fics I ever read, not even if the plentiful and annoying proofreading errors got fixed, but it's memorable, and that's probably a story's most important quality.

>>41230936
What is "backstory"? Can I eat its heart?
I appreciate the way the story is structured. Each chapter deals with Cozy finding, fighting, and taking down a... demon. Not much is told about how she found out about the existence of these demons, of how to kill them, or how she expected to kill them when she's just a lil' filly. Not that she lets any of that stop her.
I want to say that this reminds me of bad 80s action flicks that focused on the fights and chase sequences with only the barest of plot threads tying it together. Except that I feel there's a bit more substance to this story. Even if only barely so.
First and foremost, the aim of this story was Cozy taking down these demons. We get a minimal of exposition to establish the setting and we dive into the craziness of each encounter. Rinse and repeat a couple of times until she has a final showdown and we reach the end.
Before I say anything else, I think I should make something really clear. I fucking loved this story. After the first heart ingestion, I was in for the ride and loved all the places it took me. Like I said, even though it only has the flimsiest of plots, and a whole lot is left unexplained, I liked what the fic did. I also liked how the ending pulled all the story threads together, tying them in a curious but satisfying manner.
Ultimately, what I get from this fic is how Cozy's deranged lust for power ended up consuming her in the most literal way. A fitting end for the crazy girl, I'd say.
I had a great time with this fic. Reading is so fun.
>>41230946
>it would be best if the selected fic was something worthy of the occasion.
120 Days of Blueblood.

File: 64553.jpg (182 KB, 1000x1000)

182 KB JPG

>>41230936
>the main issue is a problem with repetition in the prose
I'm 99% it's intentional. It runs so closely to SotC's "Colossus's soul absorbed" scenes that I'm choosing to interpret it as deliberate. If you somehow haven't played it (Which you should; one of the most atmospheric games of all time. One of the most "art" games, too. The previous game made by its director was THE game that made Myiazaki quit his job and start doing gamedev, and no other title has more influence on Soulsborne), here's how it looks. See 0:27, 1:24, and 2:25 for the first three: https://youtu.be/yCLznmqaLK4
This is what "cavitate the air" riffs off of, I'm pretty sure. The video skips the second half of the cutscene, where the hero recovers from the consequences of absorbing each Colossus. Also the ending, the minimalist backstory for the demons other than the singular "Kill them" objective, and the... presentation (I guess?) of the fic—with its focus on one demon per chapter and the way the fights against these primeval, huge, and so much more powerful titans go—are very SotC, imo. Maybe I convinced myself and I'm trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, but it feels so unbelievably close I cannot unsee it. I know I've spent so many words on that, but to me that's a central part of reading this fic.
>It's dreadfully undertagged though
No questions there. I mean, you could be cheeky and avoid AU if you really wanted.
>This doesn't feel like a pony fanfic.
I kind of agree. Only kind of, because this Golly read like Golly to me, although I don't have the most experience with the character. If she's as bad as you make her seem, then yes, this is not much of a pony story. The church to some local deity is borderline acceptable, but the tech later (computers?) are immersion-breaking at least a bit.
>The church city's whole deal is great,
100% agreed. I know I said that, but that chapter is easily the best thing about the fic.
>smug ending
Yeah, fair. I did want to see what would happen were she to succeed, and this ending was mostly underwhelming the way it was shown.

>>41230989
>I had a great time with this fic. Reading is so fun.
I don't have much more to add here (since I already said most of what I wanted to say above), but I'm with you on that. Reading it was super fun.

>>41230936
>>41230962
>tags
I only check the tags to see if they say "Human", "Anthro", or "Crossover".

>>41231264
So you can add it to your RiL?

>>41231283
No, to discard them while I look for the EqG ones.

>>41230955
I'm not sure a purely audio feed of that will be good enough.
>>41230962
>I think chapter 2 is the strongest here by a good margin
Definitely.
>feels like it draws extremely heavily from Shadow of the Colossus
I can see that, I suppose.
>I haven't read (m?)any Gollyfics
We should definitely read more of them.
>>41230989
>120 Days
I'm afraid that may be too long for a single week.
>>41231040
>I'm 99% it's intentional
On some of it I could agree, but other parts are just bad imo. I can't find any examples right now, but there are definitely passages where a word is needlessly repeated over two subsequent sentences.
>Reading it was super fun.
I can agree on that, although again I was very bothered when the show was brought in. I don't dislike Cozy's episodes, but I don't think they make a fitting middle portion for this story and this Cozy. It bothers me more than something like ToD, possibly because that fic doesn't try to make its own stuff fit in with canon. Here I was on board with the Cozy we were getting until that part. Her own demon slaying quest feels underwhelming when compared to her existing canon arc, and it would have honestly been better if the story just did its own thing for me.

File: +2 holes.png (453 KB, 1404x1395)

453 KB PNG

>>41231572
If you couldn't jack off to audio alone, the blind would have a much higher suicide rate.

>>41230946
>People certainly seem to want to do it.
Oh really? And where was this decided? In your secret /fimfic/ discord circlejerk?

File: Untitled.png (40 KB, 1042x802)

40 KB PNG

>>41227369
>>An in-depth writing guide for beginners:
>https://eznguide.neocities.org/
Well, I'm convinced.

File: winter moon princess.jpg (125 KB, 1600x930)

125 KB JPG

>>41232005
You know, if you weren't such a schizo, you'd fit right in with the club.

>>41229375
>>41229475
>>41230168
Thanks! Even though Mana and his rune's role is pretty small overall in the fic, they're actually probably the most important elements of the story, since they serve as the lynchpin of the archmage's obsession. He wants to create a Golden Age of his own.

I still need to write an entry for the Thousand Words contest. I'm inspired to write a story in which Princess Celestia is hit in the side of the head by a pie. I'm also going to write a story about a gravid Spitfire dealing with her condition while working for the Wonderbolts, but I'm drawing a blank on how to fill it out.

>>41232005
It's more of a GalaCon dicksword circlejerk, but yeah.

>>41232750
>how to fill it out.
I dunno, just stick a child in her?

>>41232786
Yes, that's the plan, but I wanted to, say, emphasize her need to avoid her usual duties. I was thinking about setting the story during the giant Spike attack, but where she can't leave with the others. There's got to be some decent angle I can take with this. The Applejack story I wrote last year turned out pretty good.

>>41232820
Fetish stories and pornography aren't allowed by the rules.

File: fillyfilling.png (458 KB, 2209x2187)

458 KB PNG

>>41232857
I'm tempted to submit borderline foalcon, just because the queerbaby running the contest would be obligated to read it.

I did it:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561672/ideas-of-starch

>>41233085
>writing an E-rated comedy referencing an assassination attempt attempted literally yesterday.
Impressive, but that's still putting real world >politics on the horsewords site, so fuck you.

>>41230119
>human genitals
Disgusting.

>>41233123
You'd fuck Fluffle Puff if it had a horsepussy?

>>41233128
>You'd fuck... horsepussy?
Yeah?

>>41233132
orly
https://derpibooru.org/images/1222166

>>41233137
The art isn't great but yeah I'd still fuck that.

>>41233085
Lyra Heartstrings final words before being pie-mobbed herself were reportedly: "Remember lads, subscribe to PewDiePie!"

File: 2187563.webm (44 KB, 256x256)

44 KB WEBM

"Wait, you're asking for my opinion? You never ask for my opinion!"
>/FSBC/

Note: I wrote all but the last paragraph of this after reading chapter 9, as I wasn't sure I'd finish it in time. My opinion has changed quite a bit.
This might be the odd story where I'm much lower on the fic than most of the club, but I swear it is for a good reason. Please sell me on this fic. To put it bluntly, I think the way this is written is actually terrible. Most bookclub anons ragged on the last fic we read for its errors, and while this starts with (barely) better writing on a technical level, the opening 40k are horrendously amateurish. It was painful to get through, and I don't say that often about pony stories. "Alright," I thought, "Off The Edge is also written pretty poorly at first; perhaps this one will also have astounding redeeming qualities."
To say that a plan could not be seen is to say nothing at all. Other than that, we're running into tense errors, sentence fragment repetitions ("Granny Smith told you this story told you this story when"), overuse of ellipses instead of proper pacing, wildly inconsistent/missing paragraph spacing, etc. I will not mention the plethora of grammar and style issues in this fic further—hard as it may be to ignore them—because I think it's unnecessary when the fic's writing suffers in so many other, even more important points. This fic has no structure and absolutely no idea what it wants to do. It's one of the strongest examples of how writing a longfic using the longstanding people's favorite "make shit up as you go" strategy can fail. In the first 50k, we go from Celestia's tense introspection to an extended fight+jail interrogation scene, a failed dramatic tension moment, a huge pile of completely unnecessary—for the moment—backstory and worldbuilding scenes, and finally some very poorly written character drama. There's so much infodumping going on that it's clear that there was no thought put into the way these elements should be arranged, other than, presumably, the author deciding he should tackle topic X next. The worst are the [Drama] parts, though. The author has a subpar grasp on the characters' personalities and struggles to communicate them effectively.

It's also very much a "tell, never show" fic. You thought DB was bad; well, you should think again. Dear Princesses. In the first nine chapters, we're told over and over again how the characters are feeling, but the fic almost never shows it. The most it does is briefly switching narration into 1st person to tell some of the pony's thoughts (which is done with zero grace). And to top it off, I think the author was maybe... too inexperienced to write it? There are several moments when we're supposed to feel for the characters, but they oscillate between soap-opera-melodrama and tone deafness so much that it's pretty impossible to really feel anything from the scenes for me.
(1/2)

File: 3024761.jpg (602 KB, 3276x2424)

602 KB JPG

>>41233273
(2/2)
The scenes where Celestia is alone with Twilight or Luna fall flat really badly; there's no sugarcoating that. There are some terrible cliches, too. Tia/Chryssi mom's death is almost amusingly bad. Also surprising is the focus on sex (brought up like five times in chapter 1 alone), which does the opposite of the, I presume, intended goal of making it feel more mature.

Yet ripping it apart is not very fun at all, because there's clearly passion in this story. After being rejected from EQD, twice, he got a bunch of editors who read Ezn's guide and fixed some of the basic mistakes, though leaving every kind not mentioned by the guide. It's almost charming, in a way. And despite its flaws, the fic is complete. Maybe it gets better later—I hope it does—but finishing a longfic that starts with such a terrible opening must have been a challenge. Oh, and the sudden scene changes being just an italicized "[Location/Time]..." is such a cute newbie writing thing that it made me smile despite it being obviously not great. It even pauses the story for a moment to launch into an obligatory ACW fixfic rant (twice) and includes Faust as Celestia and Luna's mother!
The idea behind the fic is cool. Maybe not original, but I kinda want to see where it goes. Prince Chadblood was also neat. The 'Spike was also there' jokes made me laugh. More importantly, when the fic doesn't try to be "emotionally impactful", it does pretty alright with being a light fantasy reading. Not everything needs to be a super serious drama, and this story would be better off not trying to be one. I hope it gets better, but so far it's probably among the most overrated fics I've read in this club; 4500 likes on an almost-okay story. The last bugfic we've read was far from perfect (probably a 7/10 all told, though I might push for an 8), but the quality difference between the two is night and day.

Ok, but after actually finishing this week's reading, I am feeling cautiously optimistic about the story. After 10 chapters of drudging through (bad) flashbacks and (worse) drama, Chapter 11 greets us with something that's actually good. The characters acted more in character, didn't have any completely out of place moments, the story finally decided to pick a direction to follow, and the writing is far more smooth than it ever was in the flashback hell that we seem to have finally escaped. There are fewer errors, too. I'd be wary of calling it a turning point quite yet, but if it's not a fluke, then the fic could easily end up being good for the remaining 100k of it. Fingers crossed, it delivers.

Next week, we're reading up to (and including) Chapter 21: Mother and Daughter.

File: worriedpone.png (1.18 MB, 962x757)

1.18 MB PNG

>>41230669
>neighthorse

File: Spoiler Image (566 KB, 2268x4032)

566 KB JPG

>>41233273
Well I really like this fic so it was a pleasant surprise to find out we were reading it. It's also not often I get to read physical for the 'book' club but I love it and I read it all in one go pretty much. I think one of my favorite parts of this fic are that the ancient beings actually feel ancient and powerful at least before the sequel. Which adds some interest for me at least onto what is pretty much a political drama. I also just like the general idea of the fic, that not only is Celestia a changeling, but she might as well have always been one. And I like that Luna is almost easier to convince than everypony else since she pretty much regrew up with Alternia post banishment and upon finding out was just guilt tripped even harder about NMM. However much I like the fic though, the transitions are complete fucking trash.
>ch2 and Rarity is already getting tied up
Get Faust dropped nerd
The Dawn of a New Celestia is pure ancient alicorn kino
>"Tell us, or would thou like thy story to remain untold? Lost to the sands of time?"
>"Why did fate decree two sisters to fight sisters on the same day?"
>Shadow Empire
Edgy name but they're kino hiding amongst ponies and killing other changlings
>General Caesar Salad
>Meringue Le Fay

>>41233273
>To put it bluntly, I think the way this is written is actually terrible. Most bookclub anons ragged on the last fic we read for its errors, and while this starts with (barely) better writing on a technical level, the opening 40k are horrendously amateurish.
>>41233273
>To put it bluntly, I think the way this is written is actually terrible.
>It was painful to get through
Wew wtf did this story do to you?
>To say that a plan could not be seen is to say nothing at all. Other than that, we're running into tense errors, sentence fragment repetitions ("Granny Smith told you this story told you this story when"),
Wait what?
>goes to look this up
>picrel
L M F A O imagine reading the unedited version of the story, couldn't be me Why the fuck would somebody do this lmao
>It's one of the strongest examples of how writing a longfic using the longstanding people's favorite "make shit up as you go" strategy can fail.
Huh? I'm just not seeing it. We get the wedding, which reveals Alternia and so she explains herself and then since she is Celestia she tries to actually resolve the threat to Equestria. Most stories that make it up as they go are far far worse than this when it's noticeable. Going as far as to have rigidly defined arcs and maybe even completely self contained chapters.
>hate all the [Drama]
that doesn't bode well for you

>>41233275
>Also surprising is the focus on sex (brought up like five times in chapter 1 alone)
Wait what? I have no notes of that at all and the only one I can remember is the maid who was an exiled ling and I guess Alternia mentioning having never been in love or something

>>41233273
I only made it a couple of chapters in, is the whole thing as horribly written as those? Also
>Shining being shorter than the other guards
What was the author smoking?

there are no good fics, only shit taste.

>>41233275
>Also surprising is the focus on sex (brought up like five times in chapter 1 alone)
alright well I skimmed ch1 and that's crazy lmao. Celestia mentions having never had a lover while talking about marriage, then later says Luna is good at getting ponies to consummate so she should do the honeymoon and Blueblood mentions a secret romance. To think I got called a schizo for saying the witness was horny when it was talking about the throbbing virility of an apple tree.
>After being rejected from EQD, twice
lmao, where did you find this info?
>ACW fixfic rant (twice)
kek, classic 2013 move
>The 'Spike was also there' jokes made me laugh.
And he even had the courtesy to vanish again afterwards
> I hope it gets better, but so far it's probably among the most overrated fics I've read in this club; 4500 likes on an almost-okay story.
wtf another wild take. 4500 isn't even good for the time and I'd personally say some of the stories with 3x as much are worse.
>but if it's not a fluke, then the fic could easily end up being good for the remaining 100k of it.
Well that's good I guess

>>41233410
maybe mud blunts with his earth pony guard homies

>>41233417
correct

>>41233378
wtf jokes on me for rotating an image file and expecting it to actually rotate I guess

File: chapter7.png (344 KB, 1255x856)

344 KB PNG

>>41233378
There's no "edited version" on fimfic. It's pretty weird that they fixed this fic's terrible writing in printed versions and never notified the author, but the on-site version is really bad in the first chapters. You're reading a different story that what was picked for the book club, kind of.
>the transitions are complete fucking trash.
At least they kept that, I see.
>Wew wtf did this story do to you?
I think I explained in way too many words already. The sense of direction in the first 35k (not 50k as I thought, at least) is nonexistent, and the story is a mash of scenes which don't always work, usually by failing to convey the emotions of characters in a believable way. The fact that it's littered with errors is a major issue, too.
>that doesn't bode well for you
Not necessarily. The last two chapters (silly historical references aside) were looking much better than the first ten. I don't know if he git gud overnight, or if he got really good editors, but it's a significant enough difference to be pointed out. Don't tell me you liked the, say, Alternia with Twilight scene. They go from reserved to 100% mad to basically crying and laughing over jokes in seconds.

>>41233410
It gets better. I'm not entirely sure how much better. I agree that it's really bad early on. Apparently there's an edited version but it's physical-only?

>>41233418
>To think I got called a schizo for saying the witness was horny
I think it's hornier than witless. At least the first chapter one.
>lmao, where did you find this info?
From the A/Ns, see picrel. The author loves to ramble about the fic, the school, the readers... in the A/Ns. Does your book not have A/Ns at the end of each chapter? You're missing out on some major non-story-related kino. Also, is the HUGE and irrelevant 10k of Q&A filler in your book? Those are kind of important questions.
>4500 isn't even good for the time
Have you checked this, like, at all? There's less than 25 non-M fics with >5k updoots. 4500 is firmly among "highest rated on site".
>some of the stories with 3x as much are worse
There are only 3 stories which have >10k likes: MLD, Fo:E, and BP. While I would rather withhold judgement on Fo:E until I reread it some day, the other two are better than this fic's opening.
>physical, edited book
Going back to fixes, how much did they edit? For a random example, take this bit from the beginning of the third scene in chapter 2:
>Where the Princess Celestia was once suspended in a cocoon, was a Changeling not just any Changeling.

>>41233436
physical fics are such a fucking meme. same as CDs in the age of FLAC.

>>41233459
They're collectibles. Plus, some people enjoy the feeling of holding a physical book and turning the pages, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Or rather, they're usually collectibles, because the physical copy of PC:tCQ fixes one of the fic's biggest flaws.

>>41233436
>Don't tell me you liked the, say, Alternia with Twilight scene. They go from reserved to 100% mad to basically crying and laughing over jokes in seconds.
I never said I liked any interactions in particular aside from actual celestia in her chapter. And I just skimmed back again and Twilight certainly is a schizo in ch10 while Alternia throws some words at her, but it didn't offend me. Sure the scene could've been written 10x better, but I mean so could everything else from the 2013 era and while obviously that's not an excuse I'm just perplexed as to why this fic in particular tried to kill you.
>From the A/Ns, see picrel. The author loves to ramble about the fic, the school, the readers... in the A/Ns. Does your book not have A/Ns at the end of each chapter? You're missing out on some major non-story-related kino.
Wew wtf, maybe not worth it. A/Ns are the best parts of some of the fics we read
>Also, is the HUGE and irrelevant 10k of Q&A filler in your book? Those are kind of important questions.
Wait lmao it actually isn't. Blessed be the physical book for skipping the completely retarded blog post tier 4th wall ooc chapter. Amazing. Do I dare go and read it?
>Have you checked this, like, at all?
Nope, I thought there were way more around 8-10 but I suppose it's just the big ones everyone has at least heard about so fair enough. I did double check piano man though, glad to see it's at least lower.
>Going back to fixes, how much did they edit? For a random example
lmao all they did was add an en dash after Changling

>>41233459
post your bookshelf
also imagine not having at least a couple of CDs for when you randomly have to drive some old ass car somewhere far away

>>41233459
Fimfics aren't good enough; they don't deserve to be printed on something physical.

File: chapter8.png (229 KB, 1049x863)

229 KB PNG

>>41233468
>lmao all they did was add an en dash after Changling
That's a pretty decent approach, imo. It fixes the biggest error with that sentence's pacing. I picked a medium-wrong sentence to see how much they'd be willing to change it. Extrapolating from fact that they kept "the" before Celestia (or didn't lowercase 'Changeling') shows they wanted to preserve it as much as possible while correcting the worst mistakes.
>I'm just perplexed as to why this fic in particular tried to kill you.
It's a mix of not good writing and a lot of mistakes. While I tried to not focus on the storm or errors present in the fic, they are very distracting. It's very possible—even likely—that if I were reading your version, I'd like the fic more as a whole. It's as simple as: Fewer errors -> better immersion -> greater tolerance for poorly written scenes.
So yeah, I think a huge part of the difference in opinion comes from reading the fimfic version vs the edited book.
>Do I dare go and read it?
It's not really worth it. Here's a sample that comes from the end of chapter end (and yes, the bolded "read the A/Ns" message really is a part of the chapter's main text.
>I did double check piano man though,
Kek, the fic that mindbroke the bookclub is still living rent-free.

>>41233514
>chapter end
chapter eight, I mean

File: worked on proofreading.png (63 KB, 735x765)

63 KB PNG

>>41233514
>It's a mix of not good writing and a lot of mistakes. While I tried to not focus on the storm or errors present in the fic, they are very distracting. It's very possible—even likely—that if I were reading your version, I'd like the fic more as a whole. It's as simple as: Fewer errors -> better immersion -> greater tolerance for poorly written scenes.
True and fair enough. It's crazy that they didn't just update the fimfic version considering picrel they say they just proofread it. Just a better version. I'm curious if there's any comments about this lol
Zervziel: Yall just doing the original or are there any plans to do 2 and 3?
vren55 They only offered me original :twilightblush:
lmao
>picrel
fucking wew, at least there was a warning to skip the chapter lmao

>>41233273
As far as this fic goes, I agree mostly with OP that it didn't nearly live up to the other stories we've read. It's inexplicably popular, though, so maybe we'll see chapters 13-21 settle on a central idea and story. As far as the whole beginning plays out, there weren't any parts that stood out as being particularly narratively well-written. To be honest, I'm not the best judge of character accuracy, and >>41233273 probably goes into any issues better than I could.

>>41233378
>However much I like the fic though, the transitions are complete fucking trash.
This is definitely true, the same with the pretentious quotes at the beginning of every chapter. The author makes a lot of questionable decisions in writing, like the weird switches between third and first person. I'm not talking about referring to characters in the third person when they aren't in Alternia's presence, but referring to Alternia herself in the third person when she was previously in the first person, like in chapter 9.

>>41233275
>Prince Chadblood was also neat.
I agree it was very interesting to see a rare positive portrayal of this guy. Especially given that he wasn't entirely different from his canon appearance and his prissiness still shone through during the interrogation scene. I liked how the author took a Rarity-esque approach with him, being pretentious and perhaps quick to judge, but of strong moral fiber and loyal to his ideals.

>>41233543
>$50 for a printed copy of this shit
I don't even hate the fic, but this author has their head up their own ass. Honestly, it's more interesting to talk about the author and the way they interact with the fic. There are the long author's notes >>41233436 mentioned, where vren's obnoxious personality rears its head in all caps and repeated exclamation marks. I don't know why he feels the need to detail to his audience the plans he has for the plot and minor interactions with fans for every single chapter. Not to mention promoting other fics in what seems to be some sort of mutual bargain with other authors. The whole thing comes across as really unprofessional, as much as fimfiction isn't the place to expect professionalism. The Q/A sessions were wholly unnecessary, and I skipped the 9k "chapter" of in-person Q/A. It felt like one of those tumblr blogs where a creator's OC "speaks" with the audience. Some of the quotes are also just ridiculous. Many of them are just pop culture references, other quotes from famous historical figures feel out of place in My Little Pony fanfiction, and one is even just the author himself.

I can't even say that this is due to some cynical desire to drive engagement and attract attention, though, as it's clear the author is passionate about his fic. I find that when a creator is passionate about their work, it shows through in the small details that aren't strictly necessary. For example, I though the referential names of the generals were cute (especially Ermane Rommel and Hanna Belle). The reaction of the ponies at the end of the first fight scene, when they realized they were still on the ceiling, was also cute in a way. It's hard to argue that an author has "sold out", so to speak, when they are clearly very passionate.

No, the answer here is that the author simply has an inflated ego and gets high off of the attention and praise in the comment section. Something you often see is that authors who are constantly praised settle into a niche and don't improve their work, and I'm a little pessimistic going into the rest of this fic.

I remember a year or maybe a little more ago I tried giving this fic a shot. The weird thing was that, despite the obvious issues, I enjoyed reading it until for some reason I stopped and never ever felt the inclination to continue. There was just something about it that made it feel not worth it even though the plot was engaging and I was still very deep in my "will read any 'ling fic" era.

>>41233137
canon

>>41233641
>The weird thing was that, despite the obvious issues, I enjoyed reading it
Yeah, This is my thoughts. I just really like the premise and the things that happen. To clarify my defense against Rara I'm just defending this in the sense that I think we've read worse than this, but there is issues absolutely and they do hold the story back a bit. But I can look over that with a fun plot, and somehow this political drama is a fun plot.

>>41233641
About where did you stop? I kind of sympathise, the fic's premise is interesting and the character drama isn't too bad, but there's something about it that doesn't grab me. I think it might be the lack of direction, although it seems like it's picking up a little at this point.

>>41233705
Apparently I've read it up to Chapter 11, based on the tickmarks on Fimfic. It's possible that the story will get good from here, but I think 50k words or so is more than a fair shake to give a story and if it still doesn't pull you in, it'd have to make some kind of miracle to change that.

>>41233702
>I just really like the premise
>somehow this political drama is a fun plot.
See those are both what I really liked as well. Hell, I'm pretty sure I've prattled on about how I'd like to see more le serious political trickery fics. But I just couldn't really get back into the story.

File: star_farm_by_flutterluv_d(...).jpg (772 KB, 1800x1350)

772 KB JPG

>>41233725
>le serious political trickery fics
I'd tell you to read ___, but you don't have time to get to the good part.

>>41233790
I thought she was surrounded by minions at first.

>>41229222
I think it’s good fun

>>41233794
Fuckin’ love the minions, man. Stuart? Kevin? Bob? I’d demolish their yellow holes.

File: Celestia AIslop.png (3.16 MB, 2048x2048)

3.16 MB PNG

>>41233566
>I'm not the best judge of character accuracy,
It's subjective, isn't it? You can have two people who are very familiar with the show and still disagree on X being OOC or not in any given fic. But it's good that you pointed it out; Celestia/Alternia is fine considering the story—at least for me—but most of the supporting cast has moments that don't feel very in-character. We haven't seen them much, but Twilight is a notable example, imo.
>The author makes a lot of questionable decisions in writing
That just about sums it up. A lot of the time you can tell that what he's doing is intentional, but that doesn't always make it, well, good.

>>41233616
>a rare positive portrayal of this guy
Is it rare? From my admittedly small sample size, it's 50-50 if the fic will have him in a somewhat positive role or not. He's the star of Synthetic Bottled Sunlight, and the hero in TBNE and This Platinum Crown. Meanwhile he's only a minor (corrupted) villain in Machina Cor Armageddon, and a stuck-up but-not-strictly-wrong antagonist in Exit Through Canterlot. I'm not complaining, though. Ponies with personalities that are not entirely typical for ponies are fun to read about more often than not, see also: Trixie.
>but this author has their head up their own ass
>The whole thing comes across as really unprofessional
I usually avoid bringing the author's personas into this, but yeah, definitely the impression I got from it. It's tough to criticize a piece of pony fanfiction for being unprofessional without coming off very pretentious, but few give that feeling as strongly as this fic's A/Ns. Besides The Will of Evil is notorious for doing a similar thing, but even that is arguably not nearly as egregious with its A/Ns. At least WoE doesn't have a fucking tumblr Q/A shoved into the fic.
>the author simply has an inflated ego and gets high off of the attention and praise in the comment section
Aren't all authors vain little creatures at heart? Some just avoid giving into those whispers for longer.

>>41233641
I'm at the point where you dropped it, and while I do want to finish it (not that I'd drop a bookclub fic), it was definitely testing my resolve. After hitting that Q&A "chapter" I stopped reading and proceeded to find a lot of other things to be doing instead.
>will read any 'ling fic
The previous one the bookclub did, Changeling Heart and the New Moon, is a very good 'ling fic if you don't mind 25% of it being spent of (largely self-inflicted) borderline Lunabuse. She gets better, though. It has a very impressive understated/artsy writing style, too—one that's unfortunately slightly marred by a lack of proofreading.

>>41233702
>I think we've read worse than this
We definitely have. I'd put it in the bottom 25% for now, but it's definitely not Piano Man tier. I may have set my expectations too high after seeing its staggering like count. I quite like DB, for example, and that fic is definitely not great, either.

>>41233641
>will read any 'ling fic
>>41233901
>Changeling Heart and the New Moon, is a very good 'ling fic if
I wholeheartedly agree with Raranon that CH&NM is worth reading if you're a 'ling fan. Many grammatical and spelling mistakes, but there's a solid and fairly well-planned story underneath. The real strength is the vivid prose and amusing characterization of the changeling characters. Moonfags beware though, she is not treated kindly for the first half of the fic.

>>41233901
>I quite like DB, for example, and that fic is definitely not great, either.
I think it's totally valid to like a fic despite it being technically poor. Looking at my own library could remind me of that any day. What baffles me, though, is how popular Changeling Queen is. It doesn't seem to stand out all that much from comparable longfics. The premise, while interesting and handled mostly well, is far from the most unique or creative I've seen. I wonder what caused it to garner so much attention.

File: luna in sunray.jpg (300 KB, 1280x1205)

300 KB JPG

>>41234012
>I wonder what caused it to garner so much attention.
From the club comments and story page, it sounds like the answer to this is one of the dark arts of marketing: community engagement.
One of the things I resent about COYAs is the way they have no substance after you strip away the back and forth between the author and participants, and yet, their popularity can easily eclipse stories that are otherwise identical at their core. This author is clearly motivated to push the story into the fandom, not just with submitting it to EqD multiple times, but also engaging with the FiMFiction community extensively.
The fic is present in almost 50 groups, has an audiobook, the author had pulled in half a dozen editors and more, several cover artists, and apparently dedicated large sections of the text on FiMfiction, plus apparently an entire chapter of the story text itself to interacting with the community. And, of course, the comment section.

The updoot count is mostly there due to the story's age, but it really looks like that otherwise inexplicable extra boost is due to the author making sure the community knows it's there, and for the ones who find it, keeping them engaged with the story.

>>41234349
>COYAs
*CYOAs

File: old luna.png (252 KB, 726x704)

252 KB PNG

>>41233901
>Changeling magic is the only thing powerful enough to negate a pastry addiction.

>>41232750
So I read your pie story, and it didn't click for me. I could see your thinking, and I guess I could see some humor, but I didn't even crack a smile. Sorry. It was a nice try. I liked it better than your usual fetish stuff, at least.

>>41234431
Hey, I’m glad you read it anyway. I just wanted to be the first guy to do it.

>I liked it better than your usual fetish stuff, at least.
On that note, I just finished a second entry for the contest:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561718/heavy-duty

File: big luna vector.png (1.11 MB, 8708x6000)

1.11 MB PNG

>>41234353
Yeah, those.

>>41234522
Hey, here's a story for you:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561631/luna-luna-luna-luna

File: 1506629582876.png (328 KB, 537x458)

328 KB PNG

>>41230194
>>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/559792/tribulation-and-the-taste-of-tea
Oh, hey. Thank you for the read/review, Filly.

>I didn't really feel like there is substance behind these implications
Yeah, damn. The idea for the story itself is actually something I've been kicking around for a bit and I used the 1k contest to finally put it to words rather than keep sitting on it. I thought it would be a fun challenge to try and work as much as I could into it but that obviously just didn't do much because nothing had the space to lead anywhere, as you said. I think it was a total misstep to try and condense it like this, and I should've just sucked it up and tried to make an actual longer story. Or maybe I just couldn't cut things down in the right way? Live and learn.
>Not that it's a bad fic/"huh, neat"
I'll take it!

File: nsfw.jpg (212 KB, 1600x1200)

212 KB JPG

>>41233459
I'm all for FLAC, but it feels nice when you've got a good sound system and put on a vinyl record; especially in those peaceful, summery afternoons when you're dry fire practicing your suicide.

>>41233085
>>41233152
>Those fic and cocksucker comment downvotes.
It hasn't even been a full day and this is your already your second most downvoted fic (That's still up, at least). Impressive, very nice.

File: 270F5036-1E6A-470A-AF15-F(...).jpg (214 KB, 624x485)

214 KB JPG

Has the once-per-month sort-of-okay ACTUAL fic been written yet or should I check back later?

>>41234864
>month
Try decade.

>>41234879
Actually true. What was I thinking? I'll return in 10 years or so. See you, anons.

>>41234864
I mentioned it earlier in the thread.

>>41234900
Now write one about Messi getting injured.

>>41234972
Who?

>>41234495
If I didn't already know about your fetish, I wouldn't realize it was a fetish from this story. And, to be clear, I mean that as a compliment. It means you're almost respectable.

>>41235003
Thanks.

>>41235003
I'll elaborate. I realized I was writing too many stories without the husband, like I'm Japanese or something, and decided I should really try to write more stories where the father has an active role beyond being somewhere else, or vague when present. Someone in the pregnancy general recommended Spitfire, which made this easy to do.

>I wouldn't realize it was a fetish from this story
Yeah, not everything has to be fetishistic. My submission last year was the same way, which is how it ended up getting a surprise Mother's Day reading:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/539940/apple-seed

>>41232750
>blank on how to fill it out
If it were a normal fic, it would probably be a SoL affair about her grumbling about being put on desk duty, have some Wonderbolt lore while she does paperwork, ship tease who the dad is but never actually say, then have some kind of exciting training crash accident as the climax where she has to help, thus showing she's not so useless on the ground.

But given the flag, I'm assuming the narrator will instead focus on her struggling to zip up her uniform while she stares in the locker room mirror at her swollen belly.

>>41233085
Why's the ratio so bad? It's just a comedy onesh--
>merely grazed the princess' ear
Ah, I see. Attempting a bait feature. Let's see if it pays off.

>>41233459
>physical fics are such a fucking meme.
It's more cringe than a meme for me. I don't know why anyone would want physical proof they read and have such shit taste in horsewords.

>>41233725
Unironically ___.

File: 1673014893709765.jpg (122 KB, 1088x1279)

122 KB JPG

>>41235356
What did Anon mean by this? I put this into a Morse code translator and it returned 'Ø', which is apparently some gay Danish shit. Are the Danes coming back? How can we stop them?

>>41235519
You're joking, right?
There's no way anyone itt doesn't know that. If you scroll up, >>41233790 already recommended the same fic in this very thread.
It's very nice to see that we constantly get new blood itt, but lurking is still recommended.

>>41235524
So, nothing to do with the Danish? Good, apologies, please carry on.

>>41235533
It's https://www.fimfiction.net/story/196256/the-moons-apprentice
A really bad fic.

>>41235519
It's this thread's retarded in-joke of calling the fic "The Moon's Apprentice" or "TMA" simply "___" as if it was censored or something. No need to think too hard about it. Considering all the pretentious jockels in this general, you should actually be glad you didn't know what it means.

Now that the Thousand Word contest is over, here's hoping the New and Featured sections will be usable once again.

>For those of you who don't already know, I'm Forthwith. I'm now a professor in computer science who writes fiction for fun.
We are all going to make it.

>>41227369
>http://mlpficreviews.org.uk/starter/
I am surprised to see Twilight Sparkle of the Royal Guard on the recommended list. Strange ship AND a retelling of the pilot episodes? Not really something I would expect to be popular with people in general.

>Friendship is Optimal
>continued relevance on the FiMFic site
I've never seen anything reference Friendship is Optimal. Have I just missed references or was there something big that I missed?

Also, who the fuck put Crisis on Two Equestrias on there? An alt-fic stuck right in the middle of its story arc?

>>41236227
People are STILL writing FiO stories to this day.

>>41236227
>Journey with a Batpony
>over 1 million words and unfinished
I know a Polish guy who checks up on it now and then and he's said that most of the fic nothing of substance happens other than Twilight being coerced into sex.

File: TwilightSparkle_Cadance_i(...).jpg (839 KB, 1000x1018)

839 KB JPG

>>41236227
>Twilight Sparkle of the Royal Guard
There's a good argument to be made for it being the best adventure fic on the site.
Personally, I value the more whimsical/mysterious fantasy and/or even more "pony" (not that TwiGuard is bad on that front) stories very highly, so, for me, Daetrin's fics slightly beat TwiGuard, but you really cannot go wrong with either. Despite the silly-sounding premise, it's almost certainly the best AU on the site. It really delves into the consequences of having the world be (very slightly) non-optimal due to the Twi-Shiny swap.
The story is very compelling, the characters (and their interactions) super fun, and the writing is good, too. I was surprised when it ended up being "only" seventh on my personal "top fics of all time" list, but there are definitely people in this thread who would rank it as *the* best fic ever written. And that's very fair; it's very close to being a perfect story, imo, especially if your preferred brand of adventure is that distinctly T-rated one. Then there's the sequel, which is also fantastic and easily recommendable, but unfortunately, the sequel left some teasers for the third and final part of the saga that was never written. No cliffhangers, but the clear feeling that something else was supposed to go after it.

>>41236238
For what it's worth, the guy who suggested it itt did that about two years ago, when those nominations were being first collected. Someone, presumably the same anon, posted a few updates in the coming months that the story has been going in circles with not much happening.

>>41236305
Eh, I don't remember all the details in Royal Guard so perhaps I missed something. It ended up on my favorites and I do remember liking it, but don't really remember the reasons. Having the focus on Twilight/Cadence rather than the actual main 6 was a nice change of pace.

I eventually liked Trinary's writing (even if the first one, Rainbooms and Royalty, wasn't as good) and was enjoying Luna's Protégé by MrAlterad, even if all the followup stories are dead, so there's not going to be a conclusion there. Then again, over 90% of fics for this are going to be dead at this point anyway.

Maybe I'll go re-read Royal Guard to see what I didn't pick up on the first reading.

File: luna ponytail vector.png (3.91 MB, 3375x4031)

3.91 MB PNG

>>41236227
>Have I just missed references or was there something big that I missed?
There's a difference between FiO in /fimfic/ and FiO on FiMFic. Here's the FiO fics published in the last year or so on FiMFic
https://www.fimfiction.net/stories?q=group%3A1857+published%3A%3E2023-07-01&order=relevance
In /fimfic/, there's a collection of trolls who can't go very long without connecting it to their IRL frustrations to it and getting upset, see >>40881829 for an example. It actually hasn't consumed a thread in a while...
I guess the best way to get it pulled from the SK was to somehow go a year without desperately trying to convince everyone that uploading=death. Who knew?

>>41236381
>desperately trying to convince everyone that uploading=death
There's no point in trying to convince anyone of that. It's a self evident fact, and anyone who thinks otherwise is too dumb to be reasoned with.

>>41236410
Word of God is that's not the case though. FiO has other huge, glaring issues of course.

>>41236414
>other huge, glaring issues
Starting with the fact that it's barely a story. Much less a pony story, since no ponies show up in the entire fic. The author didn't put a single genre tag on it, either.

>>41236414
It doesn't matter what delusional fantasies the author has. Uploading is death until he fixes the text so that celestAI doesn't dodge the question and the method used is unambiguously one that transfers instead of copies.

>>41236021
Just wait until the 1001 word contest gets started ^:)

>>41236414
Word of God says the M6 are teenagers. We ignore that because anyone with a brain can tell they're older than that.

>>41236457
If they're not teens, then why is my dick hard?

File: luna halberd.jpg (3.65 MB, 2104x2720)

3.65 MB JPG

>>41236457
She didn't really say that. Rather, she said something that the fandom had already figured out by the time the show aired.
https://www.deviantart.com/fyre-flye/journal/FAQ-276161988
"Teenagers" stops having a negative, childlike connotation when it's clearly established that they are old enough to live on their own. Most people correctly put them all in the 18-22 range, with Pinkie the youngest and Rarity the oldest. So yes, it is almost reasonable to call at least Pinkie a teenager and leave it at that, but it's as disingenuous as the FiO posters above to extend that to the rest of them.

>>41236227
Just 20 minutes ago, I discovered that I was reading the works of a rationalfag.

>>41236227
>AND a retelling of the pilot episodes?
wat

>>41236551
I mean that it's one of those fics which work at retelling the first two episodes, the return of Nightmare Moon. Which is true, it's just that Twilight wasn't involved in that and so we don't go thru the events with Royal Guard.
You still see the results of Shining and the girls having done so.

File: image_2024-07-15_162124357.png (64 KB, 822x360)

64 KB PNG

Good to know.

FiO makes me think too much of euthanasia. I have dreams where my mother has just taken the lethal jab and I wonder if I will lie to her dying face and tell her I love her.

>>41236695
Not entirely true.
Call my schizo but I fully believe we have a cure for cancer. Except, big pharma can't make bank off chemo and shit if there's an easy way to get rid of the cancer that doesn't have a long treatment plan, so it's been suppressed.
The motor industry and big oil had Stanley Meyer killed for making a working water-powered engine prototype that would have destroyed fossil-fuels and the accompanying engine designs overnight.
Never forget that lobbying and governments are evil, as an aside.

>>41236707
Now I believe a lot of red pill shit, but you are not going to get me to believe that water-powered cars are real.

>>41236713
It's bunk because Meyer was sued by investors for fraud and during the civil trial he refused to let them actually test his fuel cell out, and that trial was two years before his death. His patents had long since ran out too so if it did work anyone could make them.

File: luna and twilight sparkle.png (2.17 MB, 863x1252)

2.17 MB PNG

>>41236713
You can read about a water powered rocket that Twilight and her friends made in TWOLOT to go see Luna, if you want.

>>41236713
That's why it was a prototype.
He was killed because he was trying to innovate in such a way that scared them.

>>41236739
Prove it. Provide either the prototype that will function with the only input being water (if battery is required, while spending more energy than the battery can physically contain) when assembled by someone else, or the math required to remake the engine.

If you can't, then you are just a gullible idiot who got tricked by basic electrolysis (not any more sustainable than trying to run a normal internal combustion car on its own exhaust).
If it can exist, it can be replicated independently. You can't catch everyone, there WILL be a guy who'll be not-retarded enough to upload everything in triplicate.

File: 2098A23E-4571-D629-94E0-F(...).png (199 KB, 2048x1536)

199 KB PNG

Fics for people who like the smell of their own farts?

>>41236799
Background Pony

>>41236804
I meant literally

>>41236804
Please don't insult Applejack like that.

>>41236823
Sorry
Chromatic carpet chewer

File: APPLEJACK_HAS_DOUBTS.gif (47 KB, 294x233)

47 KB GIF

>>41236827
I reject later season 'canon' and substitute my own.

>>41236707
>Appleflag making a non-retarded post
What the fuck is happening to this thread?!

File: NUDGE_NUDGE_WINK_WINK.jpg (515 KB, 1280x1140)

515 KB JPG

>>41236835
>APPLEJACK_HAS_DOUBTS
ABOUT_HER_HETEROSEXUALITY

File: APPLEJACK_KNOWS_THE_TRUTH.png (220 KB, 500x267)

220 KB PNG

>>41237048
She regrets to inform you (not really) that her barn door does not swing that way.

This conversation really jacks my apples.

>>41237048
Live long and dash apples

>>41234590
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561631/luna-luna-luna-luna
404

File: k69n-1721045979-561682-full.jpg (230 KB, 1024x1024)

230 KB JPG

Read this, now. This is good.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/561682/celestias-first-cigarette

>>41237610
It's right there. Just guess the password.

>>41236021
>will be usable once again
Don't worry. The HiE and pornfics will return to their rightful spot in a day or two.

>>41236227
>a retelling of the pilot episodes
It's a what if AU, so it's not surprising it'll start to run through canon stuff before hopping off the rails.

>seen anything reference Friendship is Optimal
It's not a fic that can really be referenced given it's almost entirely about humans and has a sci-fi plot. FiO was big because it spun up a bunch of recursive fics, much like its autist siblings TCB and FO:E did. There's 203 fics in the group so far.

I disagree with the "cultural relevance" thing the starter kit did. Fics should only be on it based on how good they are, not based on some bizarre fanfic meta lore.

>>41236707
I just don't buy any of the "Big X is suppressing their competition" theories. Why didn't Big Whale Oil assassinate Rockefeller before he drove them out of business? Why didn't Big Kerosene drive Edison away before he could make a profitable lightbulb? Why didn't Big Horse fuck up Ford and Durant? It's because once a real innovation actually happens, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.

>>41237661
I guess you need an account to even have the option to enter a password?

>>41237676
Yes, that's right. But if you really don't want to make an account, don't worry; you're not missing much.

>>41237682
What's the point of leaving it unpublished like this? Sounds like it's nothing special, neither in a good way nor a bad one

>>41237689
It violates the site rules. If it were actually published, the mods would take it down.

>>41237673
>I just don't buy any of the "Big X is suppressing their competition"
It does happen, but not how appulfag describes it. Rather than kill the competition, you'll see a big corporation either acquire the smaller entrepreneur developing the new technology and shelf it, or find a way to inundate them with lawsuits until the small company goes bankrupt.
We could've had digital cameras in the 80s. They would've been super primitive, but the technology existed in the late 70s. However, Kodak bought up the patents and just sat on them while they coasted on the revenue from film and developing materials.
Something similar happened with MP3s. We've had the technology since the time of the walkman, but on that case there were heavier technological limitations that didn't make the product feasible until decades later.

>>41237698
The original Walkman was 1979. That predates the personal computer revolution. Even by the late 80s, I think MP3 player–like technology was unrealistic. MP3 (and also JPG) wasn't standardized until the early 90s. There were compressed audio formats around, but computational limitations mean you could only do minimal compression. (This is also the era when trying to watch MPEG (i.e., MP1) compressed video in real-time required either very low resolution or special hardware.) Either your files would have been very large, or you would have had to use a restrictive file format, like the MOD files used by electronic music trackers. (In particular, you wouldn't have been able to listen to a recording of an actual human performance.) And you would have had trouble storing such large files. Flash-based storage was only introduced in the early 90s; your options are ROM cartridges, floppies, or hard drives. If you store your song using uncompressed 16-bit samples at 44.1 kHz like a CD, then a 64 K ROM cartridge fits less than 0.75 seconds of audio, and the maximum you can store on a 3 1/2" floppy is 16.71 seconds of audio. (Remember, CDs first became available in the early 80s.) Plus, you couldn't even read the floppy fast enough to play it back in real time. Hard drives were large enough and fast enough, but they were too fragile. If you tried to walk while they were in motion, the heads would crash and the drive would be destroyed. So while it's technically true that the 80s had all the pieces necessary for an MP3 player, it would have been essentially a lab experiment. You couldn't have made a commercial device; it would have cost tens of thousands of dollars, would play nothing you wanted to hear, and would break almost immediately.

File: lol lmao.png (348 KB, 519x414)

348 KB PNG

>>41237747
Yeah. I just looked it up again. It was called the IXI system from 1979, and it was super experimental. It appears to only have been made as a proof of concept.
https://www.kanekramer.com/_files/ugd/945bb8_eee29728afeb48f0b2063bffa5135c06.pdf?index=true
And yeah, hilariously limited. Even for the time. You could essentially only hold one song in there.
Still, imagine people had looked into this and had spent the 80s refining it and building upon it instead of ignoring the idea until the 90's.

PONIES

>>41238137
I HATE THEM

File: expression of pure hatred.webm (1.21 MB, 1920x1080)

1.21 MB WEBM

>tunafag getting uppity again
Pic related.
>>41236414
>Word of God is that's not the case though.
What >>41236430 said. If it were the case that the fic had uploading guaranteed not being death as a suspension of disbelief thing I would've been fine with it. But as it is that isn't the case. The fic treats it as though it may or may not be. The author states that it isn't death because he believes it isn't death in real life.

File: FLAP FLAP FLAP GET FIT GE(...).gif (1.98 MB, 480x380)

1.98 MB GIF

>>41238176
Good G-d, early season faces have so much SOVL.

File: Obesity.png (176 KB, 420x413)

176 KB PNG

>>41238363

>>41238368
Be nice, don't post her pre-lipo pics.

>>41238368
she's just like me fr

>>41238176
>The author states that it isn't death because he believes it isn't death in real life.
Which is hilarious because there's 1 (one, uno) process of brain digitization that maintains the original consciousness, and even that can be made to copy and kill the original.
Unless you're a rationalfag (read: objectively retarded) and think that a copy of a transient state is the original (not even "identical to the original in all practical regards", but THE original), a.k.a. that qualia does not exist.

File: GETTING_REAL_TIRED_OF_YOU(...).png (714 KB, 1126x867)

714 KB PNG

>>41238363
Say God right now you dirty fucking kike.

>>41238461
Not until I get my comm, you limey bastard.

File: ACCEPT_IT.png (309 KB, 485x400)

309 KB PNG

>>41238471
...Yeah alright.

File: ishygddt.gif (85 B, 20x20)

85 B GIF

>>41237616
I don't know if I'm too tired to read or I'm having a fucking stroke.
>Changing fontsize
>Changing fontcolor, purple on darkmode
FUCK
Intentional or not, this is public restroom graffiti but someone halfway through crudely drawing another penis attempts to be artistic instead.

>>41237616
Author, if you wanna shill your stuff, just be open about it, 'kay?

File: sad splotchbutt.png (245 KB, 922x720)

245 KB PNG

>>41237694
It's a little light on plot, sure, but hasn't that always been one of her more beloved attributes?

File: 1954166.png (516 KB, 1000x1414)

516 KB PNG

>the only writing I've done in months is erotic roleplay with increasingly degenerate fetishes

File: 3176425__safe_artist-colo(...).png (51 KB, 1600x1200)

51 KB PNG

>>41238900
The bots? They've been impacting my writing, too, even without resorting to anything too degenerate. I was terrified to find out I keep defaulting to the present tense.

>>41238918
>even without resorting to anything too degenerate
>present tense
Well, which is it?

>>41238947
touché

File: flutterscream.jpg (5 KB, 204x247)

5 KB JPG

>>41238967
But did the é consent?

>>41239060
That dirty European whore got what she was asking for.

File: And the cover art was good.jpg (474 KB, 791x1024)

474 KB JPG

Do you ever have fond memories of a shit fic because the few scenes you remember were awesome?

I still love The Longest Day. The scene where Fluttershy unknowingly convinces Draco that she's a perfect Slytherine is amazing. And it's completely in Fluttershy's character! Talking to snakes is nothing for Fluttershy, but the Draco it's DEFCON 1. The author manages to push this even further with little details like The Stare and her having no reason to give a fuck about ancestry. I have a comparable love for the scene where Harry realises that the ponies are Atlantian and the onlookers think that Harry has seduced Rainbow Dash when the reality is that she's just as touchy-feely as the rest of the Mane Six. The really funny thing is that the chapter following all of this features Marsellus Wallace. I could not make that shit up.

>>41238709
I'm not the author

File: image_2024-07-16_161652794.png (535 KB, 863x935)

535 KB PNG

>>41239434
>If only you knew how FUN things really are

On average how long does a fanfic take to write from brainstorming to final posting on Fimfiction?

I'm a newbie writer so it might take longer for me but I'm just wondering since I never really see anyone talk about how long writing a fic actually takes.

File: GaymanPonders.gif (3.23 MB, 242x214)

3.23 MB GIF

>>41239455
This is exactly what the author would say.

>>41239520
Pinky teeth-ussy got me curious.

>>41239434
Everything is Fine is a shitfic that has lived rent free in my brain for over a decade. There is dream sequence after Fluttershy drinks a potion meant to bring out superpony feats that shows her going up through the food chain in the Everfree. The PoV keeps changing as she moves from predator to predator until she's a dragon towering over the burning forest as the supposed top of the food chain. Then the dream ends as the sun rises and an alicorn sweeps away the world with its blinding light. It sits in mind as the perfect encapsulation of early show alicorn fanon as actual gods and I fucking love it.
Unfortunately, the fic got deleted sometime in the last few years and was removed from fimfetch as well. A real shame even if it was a poorly planned incomplete mess.

>>41239629
>fimfetch
Stop using self-appointed hall monitor's shitsite that is most definitely not an archive.
http://foalfetch.net/story/37198

>>41239544
Imagine rubbing your cock against Pinkie's exposed dental pulp.

File: bfed-sugar-stamp.png (4 KB, 600x400)

4 KB PNG

>>41239540
No one's giving you estimates because that's not very comparable. I'll give my personal example later, but if you want hard numbers, then consider that active, professional novelists (who make writing their daily job) usually get to ~750-1500 words per day, five days in a week. If they're very prolific, they might creep closer to 2k/day like Stephen King did during his most productive years (but back then he was also doing drugs a lot). However, note that this includes the time spent editing, publishing, etc., which are things that fanfic writers either don't have to do (publishers) or often skip (editing).
But even this varies. Joyce took seventeen years to write Finnegans Wake (averaging 30 words per day), while Stevenson got the first draft of his most famous novel, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in a drug-fueled, unbroken three-day delirious writing session (8000 words per day). He did spend over a month and a half turning it into a publishable book, however.

The first stage of writing is mulling over the idea, and everyone does it completely differently. After that, it's generally recommended to plan out your entire story. Then it's good to prepare short descriptions of the characters in your story (and their journey in the fic). After you start actually writing, you can probably expect to write at ~250-1000 WPH. Huge variance from author to author. This assumes that you have the will to write it; writing a fanfic can get painfully difficult to find the time for if you're otherwise busy, at least it sometimes does for me. Once you finish a draft, you should spend quite a bit of time editing it, coming up with a good description, finding the right cover image, pre-reading it at least 2-3 times to catch errors and plot holes, etc. For me, when writing oneshots, all of that usually takes about as long as writing the draft.

>>41239683
why do I keep seeing this coco ripoff everywhere?

File: 2615163.png (601 KB, 4500x4500)

601 KB PNG

>>41239708
She's a major—and majorly cute—character in case 2 of Elements of Justice. Which, seeing as you haven't watched it, is definitely worth recommending despite being a crossover. The "series" starts with Turnabout Storm, which is now one of my favorite pony creations in the fandom. Most people prefer the newer cases (and, seeing the thread we're in, you will probably do so, too), but the "early season" feeling of Turnabout Storm is a 10/10. I know that selling a crossover with [thing-you-don't-know] sounds dubious, but I have never played a second of any Phoenix Wright games and I liked it a lot. It's a really fucking good crossover, one that doesn't assume or require knowledge of the crossed-over franchise. Just note that there's a quality dip after TS and EoJ, because the new team and new VAs had to figure out things from scratch. EoJ gets much better in case 2, especially in its second half. They're currently releasing case 3, which iirc will be the last case.
Turnabout Storm: https://youtu.be/yUDfoZGhLjE

But to actually answer your question regarding her recent popularity spike on the board, a couple months ago rewatch OP decided to try queuing the first episode of TS on the rewatch stream. Pretty much no one, including myself, watched it before that (because "lmao crossover"), but 80%+ of rewatch anons instantly fell in love with it. Then OP continued queuing Elements of Justice, and when that cutie showed up, the rewatch fags took her to the rest of the board.

>>41239731
>quality dip after TS and EoJ,
*and before EoJ

>>41239731
>Elements of Justice
Didn't the guy behind that get cancelled for lewding Scoot-Ayy-Loo and consequently unpersoned himself?

>>41239751
I haven't watched the series until a few months ago, and I definitely don't know about any drama, but EoJ is still going strong with 1 episode per month. The epsides are ~1h on average.
The EoJ team will even have a panel at this year's Galacon.

>>41239657
Thanks anon, now I can reread it in all its disconnected glory. I didn't even think to check foalfetch since its not porn. I thought I was gonna have to download an actual archive if I wanted to read about Fluttershy's schizo breakdown and alternate personality again.

There will be a pony writing event this week over at the WriteOff.
https://writeoff.me/event/291-TBD
You can submit prompts now and writing will start on the 18th.

>>41239755
It's both >nuMLP and >nuAA, so regardless of the fact that everyone involved in its creation deserves a fire ant enema, it's
S O U L L E S S
O U L L E S S S
U L L E S S S O
L L E S S S O U
L E S S S O U L
E S S S O U L L
S S S O U L L E
S S O U L L E S

>>41239801
>>nuMLP
Not entirely. While it sadly has Twilicorn and the trashfire castle, the CMCs are without their marks so we're in S5 at worst. No Glim, either.
And yeah, I do prefer Turnabout Storm for getting the early season feel exactly right, but dismissing EoJ is wrong. It really is a lot better than you'd think it is.

File: WOW.png (458 KB, 1024x961)

458 KB PNG

>>41239811
Glim was the only good part of mlp 2.0 albeit

>>41239811
>bully original creator because muh underage pixels
>opt to make the CMCs underaged
Really activates my almonds.

Still working on Project Sparkle's next chapter.
However in the meantime, I've put out a new chapter of Flash.

>>41239914
flash those femboy tits why doncha

>>41239916
I stopped being a femboy once I hit 30, it's like a legal requirement that's government enforced I think.
Also I lack tits, not being a tranny on HRT or obese.

>>41239918
>not being ... on HRT
Your loss.

>>41239933
Nice try, health industry.

>>41239540
In commercial fiction, generally the slowest an author can write is one book per year; otherwise, they're not releasing often enough to build a steady audience. A complete novel is going to be in the 100,000 word range (though it varies between genre); let's just say it's 100,000 for simplicity. If the author works only on weekdays and takes a two-week vacation, then they have 250 working days per year, so they need to produce 400 finished words per day. First drafts aren't finished (at least, not in professional publishing), and revising and editing generally takes as long as the initial writing. So realistically, a professional author needs to write about 800 words per day, and at that rate, the writing takes a full year.

The upper end of productivity for a professional author is around a million words per year, i.e., 2,739 words per day with no days off. There are hacks who manage this, but they write garbage.

Fanfiction is a different world. Most fanfiction writers have limited time, and they don't rely on their hobby for living expenses, so they can write at whatever pace suits them. One of my slowest-written stories took four months, and I averaged 110 words per day; but there was an interruption of a little more than a week when I wrote one of my fastest, which went at 650 words per day. Part of the reason for the discrepancy is the level of care I put into them. The slowly written story went through many drafts because I took it very seriously. The quickly written story was basically an extended shitpost, and while I did scan each chapter to catch typos and grammatical mistakes, I didn't work too hard.

Experience has made me faster. I wrote some 1,000 words contest entries that took me only three or four days each (always mostly over a weekend). For another story I wrote recently, I averaged a little over 300 words a day for almost exactly a month (including time for editing, which took about as long as the initial writing). Maintaining that rate made me feel like I was writing really fast.

But now I've slowed back down. Some of that has been family obligations. Some of that is because I'm planning a fic. I don't yet know what pace I'll manage because I've only just finished planning it.

>>41239963
>There are hacks who manage this, but they write garbage.
*cough* David Silver *cough*

Just finished watching “Tinker, Tailor Soldier, Spy” (movie) and it was great. Going to watch the series later, heard it’s good.
Are there any good fics with complicated intrigues, political stuff, alterior motives, conspiracies e.t.c?
If not maybe I should try writing one, a serious pony spy thriller would be cool

>>41239988
Platinum Crown, I think.

>>41239963
Thank you for posting this. My personal writing speed is very similar to yours, with 1000 word stories taking three days on a good week and getting an 8.5k story done in a month feeling fairly fast. Seeing some of the numbers people post either itt or in the descriptions of their fics has always been a little disheartening, and it's good to know it's not how everyone does it.

>>41240008
A word of warning: that fic has been abandoned two chapters before completion, though with the comments saying that he'd probably need more than two to close out all the plot threads.
It's what kept me from starting it; I don't want to get Asylum'd again.

File: anime cloud vantage.jpg (278 KB, 1125x1044)

278 KB JPG

>>41239988
The story discussed above as "___" focuses on complicated intrigues, politics, ulterior motives, and conspiracies, to a more extreme degree than any other fic on the site, almost certainly. It's not very approachable, though.
Two more such fics are https://www.fimfiction.net/story/344288/in-the-company-of-night and https://www.fimfiction.net/story/6515/days-of-wasp-and-spider
The former is told at a macro level with a mercenary company interacting with the state of conflict between several countries. The latter is more of a "wolf in sheep's clothing" style of spy thriller, and the politics are better described as "war" as it goes on, although it keeps up the intrigue without issue.
Two more examples are https://www.fimfiction.net/story/39157/the-best-of-all-possible-worlds and https://www.fimfiction.net/story/332008/in-sheeps-clothing and their strengths should be obvious from the story description.

>>41240064
Thanks, will definitely check out all of them!

>>41239540

It took me about 2 years to write a 70,000 word crackship of Big Mac and Celestia. It started as a retarded idea I wanted to take seriously and I thought it turned out pretty well honestly. Ultimately it takes as long as you want it to take.

>>41239982
Memeing aside, is he really THAT bad?
If yes, in what aspects is he bad? Bad prose, bad plots, not enough proofreading, or what? Seriously asking, because I've been thinking about commissioning him, as my own writing isn't very good

>>41240112
You can do much better than Silver, he's rubbish and pumps out endless shlock.
I'm open to writing commissions if they're not absolutely shit ideas. :^)

>>41240120
I can't give you my fic ideas, writer. They are too strong for you

>>41240112
>If yes, in what aspects is he bad?
My impression is that he does very little planning for most of his commissions. He's constantly flying by the seat of his pants, 2000 words at a time. The result is characters that are only vaguely defined and a plot that goes nowhere in particular.

I've also read some of his older Ponyfinder fics, which are better in these respects but are still pretty mediocre overall. But one of those fics is also the one where he brings in a patreon insert at the 3/4 mark who shits on all the prior characters, including Twilight - that may well be the most mind-bogglingly stupid story decision I've seen from any author, ever.

>>41240112
On Dicksword, he seems quite proud of the fact that he does not revise or edit his stories before publication. His advice to people who are considering revisions is almost always "smash the publish button." Every day, he proudly announces when he's reached his daily quota of 2,000 words; sometimes, he feels productive and writes even more, and when he's done with that, he crows about it. For a long time, he didn't have a prereader (though he seems to have gotten one recently) because, he said, he wrote so fast that it was unreasonable for anyone to keep up. Putting this together, you start to realize that David Silver's product is not stories; it's words. If you hire him, he will produce words to your specification, but he will not produce characters or plot or story. If you want that, you will have to provide detailed directions and make it an explicit part of the commission (and nobody ever does that, so I don't even know if he could fulfill a commission that specific). Otherwise, all you will get is a pile of words.

>>41240112
His most obvious issue is his prose is fucking awful. It's dry and robotic. He'll, as awful as AI is they still have better prose than Silver does.

>>41240112
Its a matter of personal taste, but isnt most of his dreck about forced trannyism?

On hearing the name, all I can conjure up is memories of HiE forced genderbending ponification

>>41240264
I thought that was Starscribe.

>>41240313
youre right. I had to go back and double check.

I've never looked at any of silvers commissioned stuff, but his original series is all self insert, t rated fetish bait

from memory theres:
HiE
forced tf ponification
forced age regression
forced mind regression
mind control
forced homo (not gay rape, but having a colt added to his herd then being mindfucked into accepting it)
harem

I'm positive theres probably more, but its been years since i read the garbage and I dropped it pretty early in the series

>>41239540
>On average
I'd say the overall average is quite low--maybe a week--given how many oneshots there are. Those don't usually take long from conception to final publishing compared to the months or years the longfics take.

>I'm just wondering
It all depends on the scope and scale of the fic and how much you write. Longfics will usually take a really long time (year+) to write, since life will almost always impede the time you have for your hobby. I'm 72k into the archmage fic and it's nearing the two year mark. Still have at least 30k to go.

Of course, this was a fic that had a very weak "spur of the moment" start that's undergone several shifts over time as the concept and idea's matured. Generally, the clearer the initial vision, the faster things are going to go.

>>41239731
Don't forget about the 600k warfic prequel series that for some inexplicable reason is set in the Turnabout Storm-verse.

>>41239801
>nuAA
Alcoholics Anonymous?
American Airlines?
Anti-Aircraft?
Applefag Anon?

>>41239811
>castle
>No Glim
That would be the S4/5 hiatus, then, since her first appearance is the Jonestown two-parter.

>>41239988
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/193262/do-changelings-dream-of-twinkling-stars
It's technically more of a noir fic, but it still fits the bill.

Rites also features a complicated conspiracy with unknown motives, but it shows no signs of finishing any time soon.

>I should try writing one
Definitely. There's a serious lack of conspiracy thrillers.

File: god weeps.jpg (45 KB, 599x447)

45 KB JPG

>>41240435
>>nuAA
Probably meant Ace Attorney. They're all cringe weirdos unlike me and you, we're still sane.

>>41239520
>>41239664
Imagine that an adjacent couple of Pinkie's bottom teeth have rotted and fallen out, leaving a gap for the tip of your small cock to squeeze in when her teeth are clenched. Whenever she grinds her teeth your member is scrunched, twisted, and rolled along with them — squishing your frenulum against her hot, bumpy, toothless gums. After the apex of every roll, she nibbles and pinches whatever glans or skin that dares bulge out from her ivory gloryhole. Any breath that manages to escape her mouth makes a toothy whistle, like that of a muffled clown horn ( https://youtu.be/Z0mrOFZuNJo ). You don't know if the blood is yours or hers, and Gummy watches vacantly, knowing subconsciously that he is the next target.

>>41240435
>That would be the S4/5 hiatus, then,
I think it's actually during S5. 'No Glim' doesn't mean she doesn't exist, just that the topic is never brought up and she isn't with M6. And IIRC they put her in one of the backgrounds as a joke (referencing Amending Fences and/or What About Discord), but I haven't mentioned that since I'm not completely sure that's what happened.

>>41240112
Read a couple of his fics to decide if you'd be satisfied with that, but the other anons are all correct: he's optimizing for words-per-day and ignoring everything else, in addition to having really terrible prose. Clearly some people like what he's doing, else he wouldn't get commissioned, but imo he's easily the worst out of the "big" writers on the site. This thread loved to occasionally complain about RunicTreetops when that guy was shitting out AiE snippets twice+ a week, and while the criticism wasn't wrong, I'd take RT's "story concept pretending to be a story" or "same story again" over DS's bland 'fics' any day, despite RT writing mostly AiEslop.

File: Books_intensify.gif (266 KB, 462x463)

266 KB GIF

>>41239988
There's a book, you know...

File: 1 800 3 BEAM UP.gif (1.84 MB, 325x244)

1.84 MB GIF

>>41241288
>he thinks books are real

File: 250px-Gutenberg.jpg (34 KB, 250x318)

34 KB JPG

>>41241567
What the FUCK was his problem?

>>41241572
>Guten(((berg)))
gee I wonder.

>>41229222
Yeah this story really sucked.
Is good femdom so much to ask?

>>41241973
>is good [oxymoron] so much to ask (for)?
Yes, retard.

>>41241986
What about evil femdom?

>>41242024
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/508109/

>>41242073
Comedy dies in repetition, y'know.

>>41242194
You didn't click that and now I get to mock you for your assumption.

>>41241986
Equestria is a perfectly good setting to imagine feminine primacy having the mandate of heaven. All we need is a single author to dare to write a story about it, instead of "what if I had infinity social leverage and used it to be a potty mouth at authority?" for the thousandth time.

how do groups work?
can a group be hidden yet show up as a recommendation or is it a bug?
eg https://www.fimfiction.net/group/200768/equestrias-pet-play-society gives me 404 yet I see its icon, name and brief in the recommendations

>>41242361
It's probably a bug, but I've had it for a long time, too. One of the suggested groups for my personal Favorites shelf gives a 404.
Just another of those things Knighty never bothered to fix.

>>41239780
Was it good?

>>41242282
Math, do you play any dles of your own?

>>41242449
I don't understand this post

>It had been over a week since [Spike]’d broken up with Rarity
Secreter Club is off to a great start.

File: Generosity.png (548 KB, 1270x702)

548 KB PNG

>>41242656
>cucking Rarity
Uh, based?

what does it take to become a fimfic janny? I want to see peoples' unfiltered, dogshit first drafts that would never make it past the approval process.

>>41242810
You would have to ask Perfectly Insane, since I think he's the most recent person to become a moderator. It sounds like he did it by getting to know Knighty. I don't know how, though. Knighty isn't communicative and is said to have long-term real-life issues.

However, I think the job isn't as sexy as you're imagining. Mostly, it seems to be cleaning up bot spam.

>>41242810
>I want to see peoples' unfiltered, dogshit first drafts
https://archiveofourown.org/tags/My%20Little%20Pony/works

>>41242908
That site reminds me how lucky we are to have Knighty and Fimfiction. Imagine if we had to use fanfiction dot net/AO3/google docs to this day

>>41242940
Fimfic still hasn't reached feature parity with AO3 after all these years.
tag filtering? Nonexistent. RSS feeds? Laughably limited. Loli lewds? Still banned.

File: fuzzy nmm does not like.png (697 KB, 701x1001)

697 KB PNG

>>41242954
So you're saying that if AO3 bans pedos, they'll be 50% of the way to extinguishing their dumpster fire of a site and it might start competing with FiMFiction? Big if true.

File: Stalker_hl.png (138 KB, 230x711)

138 KB PNG

>>41242810
A fate worse than death.

Dialogue only contest results are out: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/217629/dialogue-only-contest-d/thread/542995/contest-results

Many here complained about "I Know You're There" (>>41059032 and replies), but it didn't even get an honorable mention.

>>41242389
Did the group get deleted or something? Is private groups a thing?

>>41242989
Unsent Letters, Unsung Failures is good, glad that got a place. I wanna say it should've gotten higher than five, but I haven't read any of those other stories so what do I know

>>41242989
The results are pretty decent from what I've read. The one that won was definitely good; I remember hoping that it'd do well. The entry that got second didn't impress me much [at all], but if that's the worst on the list, then that's not bad at all.

>>41243144
I have no idea, but I don't hearing about recall private groups, so I would guess it got deleted . Neither google nor desu return any meaningful results about it: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/210585/probable-enlightenment
I know that fimfic will 404 you if try to you click on a link to an unpublished, pass-only story without being logged in. It could be something similar.

File: tunonces need not apply.jpg (598 KB, 3508x2480)

598 KB JPG

Who's the best romantic pairing for Twilight?

>>41243612
I like some of his work, but this is atrocious.

File: waktf_scout.jpg (149 KB, 1000x640)

149 KB JPG

>>41243592
>but I don't hearing about recall private groups
I feel this pain, anon. Whenever I reorder a sentence but my mind doesn't register the errors until the next day.

>>41243612
Finally, the cycle of posting smut, degenerates taking the bait, then puritans attacking begins again.
Today it's OG Twixie, in honor of >>41241913 kino. What's the least shit Twixie fic?

>>41243634
>least shit Twixie fic
Eyes on You

File: HIYA NONNY.png (139 KB, 1024x1024)

139 KB PNG

>>41243612

What are the tell-tale signs of someone using AI? Is it even possible to tell anymore?

File: Fluttershy_android_socks.gif (133 KB, 858x870)

133 KB GIF

>>41243664
For ChatGPT, it's trivial to tell and even the most casual users will recognize its style.
For Claude (Opus), it's still fairly easy to tell from the prose, but only if you have some experience using the LLM to generate stories (or, as is far more common, ERP). There are certain iconic phrases, character behavioral tics, and scene progressions that will set off alarm bells for any /chag/ anon, though they will slip unnoticed through everyone who's not used to them. LLMs also heavily associate some behaviors with specific character archetypes, which is something that can be a sure tell, too. Yet another dead giveaway is when the fic's writing style changes and is suddenly free of spelling mistakes for a couple paragraphs, when it wasn't written well previously.
There are also many other models (locals, NAI, Gemini), but they're bad and/or very unpopular, so it's exceedingly unlikely that someone would use them.

All of the above assumes that someone is just getting straight-up generated prose. If they're only asking the AI for feedback and suggestions, there's obviously no way to catch that.

>>41243677
here was my workflow for the 1k contest:
>ask chatgpt for story prompts
>get claude to write a few thousand words based on one
>summarize it using copilot
>salt and pepper to taste

>>41243634
>>41243637
Honorable mention goes to Of Mares and Magic, sans epilogue.

File: punning is magic.png (1.22 MB, 1820x1782)

1.22 MB PNG

>>41243710
>sans epilogue
How many fics could be improved by shoving a silly skelly into their ending?