IWT read Daring Do books with RD.

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Second for best duo!
Enjoy some conveniently packaged Tuna: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/41152/within-the-seas-of-the-galaxies

>>41466782
Is doo doo really so daring or brave? i don't think so

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Does a tilde have any place in prose?

>>41466838
Only on an ñ.

>>41466873
Basado.

>>41466780
How does one write sunburst BEFORE he reunited with StarLight and started interacting with ponies? Literally just Twilight at the start of the series but worse?

>>41467146
Just use your life as reference, anon

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>>41467152
Touché

>>41462412
>if I shit the bed and don't land the ending?
Yes. Anons can't mention Bug on a Stick without also saying "the last chapter's shit." You fuck up the ending and you're fucking up the last impression readers will have of your fic.

>>41462659
>add some gay twist
Was there ever a "Human/Anon can't stand to live in Ponyville because the whole town smells like a stable and there's piss and shit everywhere because they're horses" fic? I may be wrong, but canon might back this up, too. I don't ever remember a bathroom being shown.

>>41463201
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/50726/changing-the-colorof-apples
I still can't tell if it's a trollfic or not, but I still found it really funny.

>>41464021
Character tags are reserved for the main characters of the story. If the OC isn't a protagonist or antagonist, they don't need to be tagged.

>>41467146
>started interacting with ponies
I'm a little rusty on the S6+ stuff, but wasn't he just a huge nerd? I don't remember him being Moondancer-tier and a complete sperg.

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>Austreoh next
oh shit, is this a mandatory club participation moment?

>I still can't tell if it's a trollfic or not
If it's a trollfic the author is dedicated enough to make it real in spirit. Their blog posts are fucking hilarious. My favorite is the one where they say they're taking a break from the site for thanksgiving in Mid-October and then they post another blog a week before thanksgiving saying they're done with thanksgiving and they got a lot of work done during their month away, before posting a single 5,000 chapter of Discord and Nightmare Moon gang-raping Spike.

Actual. Fucking. Gold. Whoever this person is, they need to hit themselves on the head with a hammer until they remember their fimfiction password so they can come back.

So
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/10322/fixing-up-miss-smartypants
Has a kind-of sequel (a story set in the future, mainly)
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/12021/three-magics
Twilight has neglected her friends and life for an important research project for which she has received a bursary. The neglect has festered for years, leaving her key relationships in tatters. Like the first one, it's a story of escalating tensions and satisfying release and reconciliation. Unlike the first, it is incredibly sad: we're paraded through the carnage wreaked against the blissful ending of the first story, and even when the damage is being corrected at the end there's a bittersweet sense that some losses have been permanent. It's also very clearly inspired by A Christmas Carol (not poorly by any means), broken up into phases of mounting revelations of the destruction that the great can cause when they shirk their duty, which bring about a conclusion in which the protagonist returns to their mantle as a patron and caretaker of their world to right their wrongs.
The ponies are mostly in character still, although the feeling of being somewhat episode-worthy has been lost with the darker tone. There's a clear but subtle connection between all of the damage Twilight's friends suffer and Twilight's ability to have resolved said damage: Big Mac not reading the fine print on the mortgage without Twilight to ask for help, Dash suffering stage fright during her audition that Twilight didn't go to to support her, etc.
The flaws are a bit more glaring: most obviously, because Twilight wouldn't /actually/ let her friendships collapse for 5 years, there's a McGuffin which contributes. It's well-placed, foreshadowed, part of a satisfying resolution, but still a McGuffin and still a facile dodge of blame for Twi that helps trivialise her reconciliation. Second, and this is a stain on all X-years-later-a-problem-has-festered style fics, is that too weak an effort was put in on everyone else's part - the cast of the show does not let friendship problems sit. Twilight acting weird should have become The Gang's Next Mystery at some point.

Overall I had a good satisfying time, but I would definitely call it a weaker submission than its predecessor and I resent having all that happiness dampened. Partially my fault for jumping into the sequel so soon.

>>41467213
>Austreoh next
why?

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>https://ponepaste.org/10374
>https://ponepaste.org/10374
The first chapter of my autistic FiO spitefic: Some Dreams Never Die, is done. This thing is purely retarded and the tone of the story and the characterization of Celestia are absolute polar opposites of what they were in FiO. I have no doubt in my mind that this story is going to get absolutely shit on and torn to shreds, assuming anyone on Fimfiction even reads it. If they do I'll be amazed, since it's an anime crossover fanfiction of a fanfiction that doesn't even have the decency to be canon-compliant.

Somehow, it was the most enjoyable fic to write so far. Maybe AiE shitposters are onto something.

>Popular fic author has a mental spiral and starts picking fights in the comments section of any fics that are similar to their own
>they somehow piss away the hundreds of followers they once had to the point where their new stories don't even break 20 views
How do you fuck up this badly? Just shut the fuck up. It's that easy.

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About the corpse: don't you worry, I'm on it. I knew I said it would only take a week, but life got in the way.
I'm not like that other guy, it's gonna be finished in a few days!

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>>41467195
>I don't ever remember a bathroom being shown.
I don't recall any toilets inside houses on screen, but since bathrooms with running water and outhouses both exist, ponies should have them. Off the top of my head:
>That one constantly referenced outhouse in Appleloosa -- The Last Roundup
>Bathroom in Sugarcube Corner -- Feeling Pinkie Keen
>Apples' outhouse -- The Perfect Pear
>Rarity's bathroom -- It Isn't the Mane Thing About You

>>41467195
>>41467790
Bon Bon is famously shown next to a toilet in Three's a Crowd.

>>41467195
>f the OC isn't a protagonist or antagonist, they don't need to be tagged.
Bad take. Tags should be as extensive as possible for the sake of preserving information. If the OC is literally just a nameless pony someone bumps into once then of course they don't need a tag, but if they're named and have some impact on the story they should be tagged. Because tags aren't just there to lure readers in when you publish, they're there to let readers search for your fic in the future. You should always tag as much as you reasonably can.
>wasn't he just a huge nerd?
He was canonically a neet and embarrassed about it, but he definitely wasn't averse to friendship. More like kind of depressed about being a failure.
>>41467247
>they're taking a break from the site for thanksgiving in Mid-October and then they post another blog a week before thanksgiving saying they're done with thanksgiving and they got a lot of work done during their month away
Canadian Thanksgiving?

>>41467570
I don't even need to read the draft to know that with the right cover art and short description you'll be riding this thing to the top of the sinbox.
>>41467646
Who's this?

>>41467213
>dashfic
only if you have shit taste.

>>41467915
hownew.ru

>>41467277
Because nobody stopped me.

I've grown to realise I kind of dislike stories that equate Twilight missing the old library with her hating the castle. On a meta level, yes, one was destroyed so the other could be there. But in universe the connection is much more strenuous. Having her associate the two feels like injecting the fandom's own bitterness into the character.

>>41467570
The more you said, the less I wanted to click the link.

>>41468020
Loving your family doesn't mean you hate everyone else's.

>>41468020
Is that a common thing in fics? I usually see it presented as "this doesn't feel like home" (which is something even the show addresses) rather than Twi hating the new castle.

>>41468028
Not common, but I've seen it from time to time.
>>41468027
I don't mind her missing the library and I don't mind her disliking the castle for being different, what I dislike is specifically when she's angry at the castle as if it took away the library, when in universe that anger should have a different target. It would make sense if, say, Golden Oaks was destroyed in a natural event and she was seeking an outlet for anger without a target, but when the destruction of the library has one clear culprit it makes more sense for her to be angry at him.

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So this is the power of the feature box in current year. I kneel.

>>41468049
Not currently featured, with or without the M filter. I can't check the big featured fics bookshelf because I don't remember where to find it though.

>>41468099
It fell off, but it was featured at #5 when I made that post.

>>41468108
You fell off.

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Snakes! Why'd it have to— oh, I did that joke too recently,
>/FSBC/

>The Lamia
I'll need to correct a statement that I kept repeating: Apparently I don't hate [Comedy], it's just an order of magnitude harder to write it well. The first ~two thirds of the fic were simply excellent. Rarity was delightful, Oriole was exceptionally cute, and the comedy in this fic was extremely nice—I was just laughing through most of it. This beats "Evil is Easy" as the most funny fic I read. Part of it is in the writing, I think; juxtaposition and comedic timing are apparently super hard to get right. All of Oriole's antics are fun, just as are the little things, like Rarity designing clothes for her. But I'm getting distracted. Again, what really matters is that characters are great (especially for the dreaded land of [Comedy] where, to many people, OOC seems to equal "fun"), the story was nice enough, and I liked the comedy a lot. It's also admirable that CiG managed to write a story about this murdering monster (not anymore, though!) in an Equestria that's close to canon. There's the sex tag that stops it, sure, but not even that felt *that* out of place. The TwiGlimmer stuff in the background was an odd choice, but not one that would sink the story. About the only thing that I didn't like was Twilight's birds and the bees talk with Spike—that fell kinda flat, but the fic was otherwise delightful and an easy favorite!

...is what I'd love to say. But then there's the ending. What the hell, CiG? Is he allergic to happy endings? The story does as Thunderlane and right at the end reveals that it's actually super gay. It felt like I missed something because that couldn't have been it, could it? Did he really end this silly and hilarious and very pony story with "We can't help her; she must be exiled. Maybe some day." right after showing how much she loved it in Ponyville and how well she was getting along with everypony? That's so off. The "poignant" ending is very much CiG's style, but it's so completely out of place in this fic that it almost retroactively made me like the rest less. A happy ending was not even that hard here. CiG was probably trying to make some kind of a point with those last 10%, but ultimately it feels like he sacrificed the story for it. As a whole, I still like it, but I liked it a lot more before that.
(1/2)

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>>41468142
(2/2)
>K'awka Supay
What a delightful little story. I could honestly end the post here, because this is very close to being just a very nice fic where everything is at least good and some important things are excellent. But it's not that common for us to get stories that are simply just good-to-great, so I'll try to at least pick some things I liked the most. And I'll probably find something to complain about, too, because how could I not?

This is, first and foremost, a shipfic, so the characters are the most important part of it. And they're also the strongest part of it, too! This has to be one of the best Ponks I've read. Really cute Twilight, too, and doubly so considering that this is a new fic. See? This is what we've lost with twilicorn. The descriptions of Twi's feelings got a little on the more telly side quite a few times, but this is the kind of story where I feel it's pretty justifiable to do so.
Another aspect of it that I liked was the horror-themed story around which the fic was built. It's not the fic's focus—it's clearly there to make the romance part of it more interesting—but the eldritch bits were very enjoyable and, thankfully, didn't overwhelm the Twinkie here. I am predisposed to liking that sort of thing, but I did like it. I don't think I've ever seen this specific kind of genre blend (where horror elements serve to complement a romance story) in a ponyfic, and maybe not even outside of pony, either. I wonder why; it worked very nicely for this story. The constant action sequences were very fun to read and all contributed to the romance.

The writing is good as well—the pacing was good, it was almost free of errors, and I liked most of the fic's sentences (though a couple flowed a little odd). The prose helps to sell this almost whimsical atmosphere of the story without making it feel like there are no stakes or tension. So yeah, pretty damn good writing. Feels great to read two well-written stories back-to-back.
Oh, I should be complaining, right! So, uh, there's something that might've been an eqg reference, and the author has the terrible taste to use "arms" for ponies' forehooves. Especially bad in sentences like "Twilight stood up and started flexing her arms and legs," where just legs alone would suffice. Subjective, but obviously my preferences are better, so I needed to say this. But it makes up for it by picking the arguably best point in canon to anchor your fic in. Again, I don't really have much to add. I liked it quite a bit more than the other fic we've read, which is kind of a big deal since I tend to enjoy CiG's style a lot. I hope other anons also liked it; it's one of the better fics we've had recently imo.

Next week we're reading A Scratch On Shining Armor.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/221135/a-scratch-on-shining-armor
It'll have to take 4 weeks, so it's easier to just do a list:
>week 1: ch.01-12 (to Duty Binds)
>week 2: ch.13-22
>week 3: ch.23-31
>week 4: the rest

>>41468099
>>41468108
I opened fimfic and it's back(?) in the sinbox. The feature box must be very volatile with so few likes on new stories.

>>41468147
>What a delightful little story. I could honestly end the post here
That was my opinion too when I've read it, it found its way really fast to my Favourites shelf.

>>41468157
Free will is a flaw.

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>>41468142
>The Lamia
What was the point? Is it a joke? I didn't laugh at a single thing and the only thing resembling a punchline was just 'gay lol'. A dud CiG that I imagine was only not forgotten in the depths of mediocrity because it's CiG so the writing was at least nice.
>Cock Supra
Now THIS is a pony fic. Hot damn. I honestly loved this which is insane to me. A fic centered around Pinkie and Lovecraft shit? And I loved it? Am I going insane? No, or at least not because of this fic. It's pure pony all the way through and the writing is fantastic. Pinkie throwing hooffuls of salt at windows while Twilight translates the title of the recipe was cute kino. And Twilight getting interrupted by Pinkie every time she started thinking about the day before was amusing.
It's actually interesting to me that we read these two together. One of them had very cute ponies for a base and then ruined it by having the whole fic be some sort of overt blowjob meem and 'gay xd' which just annihilates any comfyness it could've had. The other fic is something that judging by the description I never would've expected to like but it's written so well and is so fantastically ponylike that I can't help but love it. Even Inanna was cool and was definitely helping Pinkie out with their shenanigans.

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>>41468142
> The Lamia
It’s not the first funny [Comedy] fic, but it sure is one of a select few. I did enjoy reading this, most of the jokes landed for me. I particularly liked the RD-spa one, as well as the whole atmosphere of the “meat tenderizer” scene. Of course, the Spike scene was a disaster, but it can’t be helped. Also, the Twi-light shipping reference fell flat, even though I have the scene it’s based on saved due to it being funny.

In retrospect, the fic is a lot less horny than I expected. The cute SoL scenes were good, and I liked how Rarity’s generosity was handled in the way she tried to support her new friend with such an absurd addiction. CiG was definitely a bit mean to Rarity, though, with that dream stallion comment.

>Twinkie
I had to to be told at the end that what they made was one of these, ha. It’s been so long since I had one.

I didn’t exactly like reading this fic, but I certainly didn’t dislike it, either. For the author’s sake, I say that I appreciate how well it is put together, excepting the crack ship. Putting Pinkie’s confession before the start of the fic, and then mixing it into the story helped the flow of the story. The only scene that really kicked me out of it was the part where Twilight was using her magic to bake (something that takes a long time) while dodging increasingly threatening tentacles (which should only take a short time) Also, stuttering confessions of love are usually obnoxiously tropey, but I didn’t get annoyed by these at all. Overall, I liked the conversations between the two of them.

As for comedy, while I did laugh at the punchline, I didn’t find the story funny overall. It read like a serious situation, in the same sense that the show would be serious while dealing with a demon outbreak and also being a cartoon. In that way, it is very ponylike, which is great.

Two of the main things keeping me down on it are the ship itself, and, related to the ship, the way Twilight’s conclusion seems forced. I think it’s impossible to avoid for a crack ship, but even so, it felt like Twilight’s distraction with the monsters put her decision on a clock that warped it. This is even with her introspective distractions in the story. One observation she had that I agree with, though, is that there's a very insightful pony behind the energy ball, and that is a reason to like her.

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>>41468142
>It felt like I missed something because that couldn't have been it, could it?
I was definitely expecting a "she doesn't make it" ending after the way it was emphasized that she had already tried to stop eating stallions and just couldn't do it.
I think it was also intended to be funny, rather than poignant, given Rarity's progression stepping from "it's OK, you're not in trouble" to "actually..." and the happy ending was that nopony died.
>>41468147
>I wonder why; it worked very nicely for this story.
That's kinda funny, I thought it was actually pretty common. In Twiguard, Cartography, and Within and Without, the relationship grows the most quickly in an extremely high stress, even horror setting. I think one reason it's not done more often is apparent in Apotheosis: it's really hard to balance the focus the characters need to give to their survival in order to maintain tension against a romance subplot. Without diving into lots of details, I think the stories that do it well do so because they are longer. In other words, they cheat at the assignment somewhat by giving the characters breaks that aren't high tension.

>>41468142
I wasn't impressed by The Lamia, but I wasn't overly disappointed, either. It's a predictable SoL. It starts slow, but after the close of Rarity's and Oriole's first meeting, you can guess exactly what's going to happen. A really top-notch SoL would subvert your expectations and make something else happen instead. Not this. This is fluffy. It's comfy. And it's also pretty boring.

CiG's technique isn't perfect this time. While he has a good handle on pacing, I thought the opening was too slow. I thought Rarity's characterization was excellent. Usually Twilight was good, too, but in her scene with Spike, she was hopelessly, stupidly naive in a way I didn't like. (Also, Twilicorn and Glimmy? Reeeee...) There were jokes. I appreciated the jokes and the attempts at comedy. I thought they were better than most authors manage, but I never actually laughed. The scene with the two stallions at the Hearth's Warming festival was fine as setup for the conclusion, but it was also supposed to be funny, and while it was okay, it didn't really land for me.

I'm not sure about the characterization of Oriole. I feel like treating her "addiction" more seriously would make the story dark, and that's clearly not where CiG wanted to go. But as a consequence, her addiction hovers on the edge of not really believable.

I feel like CiG missed an opportunity. The fic has good parts, and it doesn't have many weaknesses, but it doesn't stand out.

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>>41468168
Yeah, it was great. Should've gotten better numbers on fimfic (how was this at <100 likes despite being posted in 2018?) but it's just one more argument for how random the scores are.

>>41468225
>>The Lamia
Impressively wrong. Are there two CiG fics titled The Lamia? I don't think you've read the same story I did. It's a very funny fic even despite the [Comedy] tag and I don't know where you're going with "some sort of overt blowjob meem". She's a lamia, and the author decided to make them be closer to the original story than most of the modern takes on the species. With her 'addiction' being killing stallions of course there was going to be some talk about sex, but this is one of the very few T-rated fics tagged [Sex] where that didn't feel out of place for Equestria. The fic is super cute with Oriole, too. If the ending was different I'd probably be adding it to favorites, but for some completely deranged reason he decided to subvert it and do... that.
>twinkie
>I honestly loved this which is insane to me.
I was worried about your post this week, since Pinkie plus eldritch mess sounds like something that'd kill you before the first page. But hey, at least you got one fic very right this week. Good mention of the action scenes, too; they were also nice. Pretty much everything about this fic was.

>>41468236
>Lamia
>Of course, the Spike scene was a disaster, but it can’t be helped
He could simply not have it in the fic and nothing of value would be lost.
>In retrospect, the fic is a lot less horny than I expected.
Same for me, but with the "than expected" being bolded and underlined. Seeing lamias and the sex tag I was expecting so much worse, but then the fic made it work.
>Rarity
She's great here, but I don't think CiG was mean to her. Rarity being a hopeless romantic is spot-on and has been implied since season 1 and Blueblood.

>Twinkie
>As for comedy, while I did laugh at the punchline, I didn’t find the story funny overall.
Yeah, but that's just on par with the genre, and the rest of the fic certainly more than justifies itself. Rather than trying for a "ha ha"-type of comedy, I saw the tag as an attempt to weave in some very pony lightheartedness into the fic. Which it does. It's a really, really pony story.
>things keeping me down on it are the ship itself
I'm actually impressed you didn't dislike a Pinkie Pie story. Now, mind you, this is a great Pinkie Pie story, so that's probably why.

>>41468268
>I think it was also intended to be funny
Well then add that to the stallion scene and the spike thing as jokes that didn't land. I was disappointed by the ending, and felt like it didn't belong in a fic ostensibly trying to keep a "pony" atmosphere. Having the sympathetic protagonist fail and lose all she built is just bad.

>>41468142
>The first ~two thirds of the fic were simply excellent. Rarity was delightful, Oriole was exceptionally cute
I think at most I can agree with Oriole being cute. I liked her intro just leaning out of her window and fiddling with her flowers while Rarity introduces herself. But Rarity having 2 different parts of the fic where she tells Oriole that she would also be choking on cock every night if she could ruined her managed to outweigh her positives
>This beats "Evil is Easy" as the most funny fic I read.
Actually insane take, I never even expelled air from my nostrils. I honestly want you to point out a moment where you laughed because I can't even think of any parts where I was supposed to. Maybe when all the mares are suddenly enjoying the fair because they're just watching two stallions lick each other I guess?
>All of Oriole's antics are fun, just as are the little things, like Rarity designing clothes for her
CiG doing this stuff is the only thing preventing me from hating the fic. If you removed the last 3rd of the fic and then a decent chunk of specific paragraphs then changed the plot just a little and handed this fic to me I'd say it was a nice little CiG oneshot.
>TwiGlimmer / spike
I honestly forgot about these parts. IMAGINE putting spike in the fucking description of the fic when he has 2 paragraphs of screen time, what a horrible decision. And the Glimshit is just the [Sex] tag attacking a second front against the fic
>It felt like I missed something because that couldn't have been it, could it?
kek, how did we have the exact same reaction to the ending? I agree though, as I said it felt like the fags were supposed to be a punchline to a joke but the fic just reads like in the final moments Oriole completely relapses and is shunned from society. Funny joke I guess. At least there's one less stallion now, and she got a pretty good one for her last act in society.
>>41468147
>What a delightful little story. I could honestly end the post here, because this is very close to being just a very nice fic where everything is at least good and some important things are excellent.
Completely agree with your whole post.

>next week a shining fic
Did I just miss voting yes ^:) or was it completely rigged?

>>41468236
>I had to to be told at the end that what they made was one of these, ha. It’s been so long since I had one.
Fuck. I was somehow the opposite of you until reading these comments. I immediately recognized it as a Twinkie pretty much as early as I could've and just never noticed the punchline of Twi x inkie until the club lmao I'm just too American I guess
Also you got them mixed up, Twinkie was the good fic and Lamia wasn't ^:)
>>41468268
>and the happy ending was that nopony died.
I didn't understand this part but didn't care enough to re-read the 10 or so lines at the end to try again. How did he survive getting eaten? Was it just his legs or something?

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>>41468312
>completely rigged
Absolutely 300% rigged.
>Was it just his legs or something?
She ripped out his throat, and he got a new one.

>>41468278
>I'm not sure about the characterization of Oriole. I feel like treating her "addiction" more seriously would make the story dark, and that's clearly not where CiG wanted to go. But as a consequence, her addiction hovers on the edge of not really believable.
Completely agree. Leaning into it less would've helped the 'comfyness' and leaning into it more would've justified the [Sex] tag. As it is, the [Sex] is unnecessary and just attacks the comfyness.
>but I never actually laughed
kek
I'd agree it's an unfortunate CiG miss.

>>41468305
>this is one of the very few T-rated fics tagged [Sex] where that didn't feel out of place for Equestria
Nah, as ^above^, the fic could've gone more or less into it and I think it would've improved. With Less being the preferred. Just have her eat stallions and have rarity make le funny sex joke and have her say 'what?! no I just eat them. For food.' And rarity go 'Oh!' and then proceed as normal but without the Rarity moments and a different climax because this one sucked ass anyways. Alternatively go more into sex and don't treat her like she's addicted to candy when she's actually a murderer.
I am kinda surprised though that the only other person that's slightly on my side is someone just saying they never laughed
>since Pinkie plus eldritch mess sounds like something that'd kill you before the first page
It really does. Thank the club for making me read stuff I might never have looked at otherwise
>He could simply not have it in the fic and nothing of value would be lost.
The fic would actually gain immense value from this since he wouldn't be fucking TAGGED or in the description at all. It feels like CiG lost a bet right before this and was forced to put Spike in his next fic or something because as you say, his part could be removed and not alter the flow of the story at all whatsoever

>>41468342
kek wtf

>>41468312
>I never even expelled air from my nostrils
No, you know what? That's unfair, I just looked at my notes and pretty much the only thing I have written was 'Ponyville Public Library Amnesty Day' and that was nice.

>>41468142
>Lamia
Oh, look, it's CiG's fetish fic. I'm only half joking. Between this and Archie, and a few other things, I do think he might have a thing for snekpones. He gives off old-school furry vibes sometimes. anyway, about the fic. I like the humour in this, it has a kind of dry, absurdist approach to comedy where there's a fundamental disconnect between the story and the reader, and the funny bits arise from that. It doesn't feel the need to underscore its jokes, it just states them and lets the oddity of them carry their weight. It's a style I appreciate and one I use myself at times. The story itself leaves a bit more to be desired, though. The Slice of Life tag is doing a lot of lifting here. I get the point, but I also think the end results ends up middling by its own nature. It doesn't try to do much. and as a result it just doesn't achieve much. A lot of it is just cute fluff about the snake pony, which is good fluff at least, but also isn't the main focus when there's an actual kind of plot in here. Unless you go off of the assumption CiG is enjoying the snake scenes more than he should. The ending is what it is. I don't dislike it, but I think it could have been a lot stronger if it learned more into the comedic aspect of it all. In this respect, choosing to play it safe and have no one get hurt actually harms the potential of the fic, because going further into absurdism would have been funnier to me. But then the fic would have lost its cute factor. There's also a statement in there about the nature of monsters that could have been poignant, but it's too half baked to be anything. The story feels largely stuck in limbo as it is. Also, more mistakes than usual from CiG. But it's still an enjoyable experience, and one I'd recommend if someone was looking for lamia fics specifically.
>K'awka
This is my second time through this one, and it's just as enjoyable as the first. It's really funny in a deadpan sort of way, but also really heartfelt when it comes to it, and the characters are nice. Which is a good thing in such a character-dependant piece. Pinkie feels like Pinkie and Twi feels like Twi. And they're being shipped, because Zaid has an addiction to Twinkie. I think the ship works, but coming off of FUMS I do have to say it feels less strongly justified here. I think that comes down to being told from Twi's POV though. We miss out on Pinkie's deeper reasons for loving her, and so we just have to accept them. The lengths she goes to to prove that love definitely account for it, though, and Twilight's reaction to it all does work. And I'm always a fan of juxtaposing cute ponies with eldritch horrors, and even more a fan of Pinkie tanking that shit like it's nothing while Twilight has a panic attack. The fic ending on a literal Twinkie makes me groan in a good way. Also I guess EQG counts as eldritch horrors. The pacing is also very solid for such a tightly packed fic, and the back and forth with the flashback is extremely good.

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>>41468278
>A really top-notch SoL would subvert your expectations and make something else happen instead.
Including the ending? I must've gotten the wrong read from the rest of the story, because at no point did it strike me as a story with the main character failing so miserably. I though the bad thing was the 'twist' ending, sticking out like a part of a different fic. I went back to check, and a lot of the comments seem to agree that the ending was not what they unexpected (and bad). It's been a while since I've seen a highly updooted critical comment on a story with a positive reception.
>but it was also supposed to be funny,
Was it? Yeah, it was, but it was going for such a different (and bad) kind of humor compared to the rest of the fic that I didn't like it at all, even without it leading to the ending that we got.
>it doesn't have many weaknesses, but it doesn't stand out
Comedy is, ultimately, subjective, but I loved what he did with the first 2/3 of the fic.

>>41468312
>Rarity having 2 different parts of the fic where she tells Oriole that she would also be choking on cock every night if she could
That's actually the biggest Twiflag moment you've had in months; explains a lot about why you didn't like the fic. Lately it's been the other posters doing that (often myself), but this is not what she said at all. She's not saying she can't get laid, she's saying she's still looking for The One, her Prince. Oriole correctly points out she could probably get most stallions without much effort; that's not the problem here. The problem is with Rarity, if you take that as a problem, which you shouldn't. Essentially, Rarity relates to the snek's problems but for a different reason.
>I honestly want you to point out a moment where you laughed
Insanely subjective, but for me, a lot of good humor comes not from a funni one-liner, but rather how the characters react combined with the mood of the scene. Painting Oriole as this cute mare with a ridiculous 'problem', and then treating it seriously was a big part of many of the fun scenes, but there's also plenty of very fun little interactions. You can't point to them and quote them without all that surrounds them. But if I had to, two random examples would be picrel. And while Spike's one scene is an example of something that didn't work for me, scenes like the spa one outnumber it greatly.
>Funny joke I guess.
Yeah I have no clue what he was intending when he wrote that ending.
>Did I just miss votin
Check the beginning of the last thread. No one really voted so I posted a different batch of potential options.
>How did he survive getting eaten?
She only got his throat. I also thought she'd vore them since that's unfortunately the thing lamias are often associated with, but apparently not, or at least not that time.

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>>41467570
>open fic
>first words
>"Monkey D. Luffy"
>mfw
didn't read the part about it being an anime crossover. was not prepared for that

>>41468147
K'awka Supay is everything I never knew I wanted in a Twinkie shipfic. I have a bad mental image of shipfics: An author with an obvious agenda forces two characters together in a contrived, nonsensical way by twisting their personalities. But not this! At no point did I stop and say, "Nope, she would not behave like that." The emotional premise, that Pinkie loves Twilight and Twilight isn't sure how she feels, is both simple and effective, and it's all you need to get a shipfic underway. And it leads to the main action in a natural and believable way. In my opinion, it's pretty similar to how Pinkie ended up cloning herself using the mirror pool. It's Pinkie trying to be the best friend (or in this case, fillyfriend) she can be and taking a perhaps good idea way too far. Twilight's response is both predictably analytical and a perfect complement.

Reading this back-to-back with The Lamia makes an interesting contrast. Both of them are comedies. The Lamia was supposed to make me laugh out loud and didn't; K'awka Supay felt like it was trying to amuse me, not bust my gut, and as a consequence, I found it funnier. The Lamia keeps the stakes low; you expect that the worst that's going to happen is that some background pony is going to get eaten and that everyone will laugh it off. K'awka Supay starts with a threat to Sugarcube Corner, which becomes a threat to reality, and then, worse still, becomes a threat to Twilight and Pinkie's love. It's more intense and more compelling. The ending of The Lamia makes you think the fic was pointless. Of course Oriole can't safely live in Ponyville. How in Tartarus is her living in Ponyville supposed to be safer for stallions than her living alone in a river? Whereas the ending of K'awka Supay is a satisfying culmination of the whole story and makes it feel worthwhile.

The Lamia didn't get an upvote from me. K'awka Supay did. Nice job, Zaid.

>>41468453
based completely correct post

>>41468049
I'd rather see a kid writing low quality garbage get to the top of the sinbox than some self-hating weirdos zebradom blacked porn. There is no greater sin than dumping niggers into my pony escapism.

>>41468142
>This beats "Evil is Easy" as the most funny fic I read
Mentally ill take, even as funny as this can be. I think you just have peculiar tastes in comedy.
>The TwiGlimmer stuff in the background was an odd choice
I think that's one of his OTPs, if not the one.
>But then there's the ending
I think the ending is meant to be part of the comedy itself. Rarity sighing and going "it is what it is" is funny, when you look at it a certain way, and in the same way going along with a pony-eating character is. It's just at odds with the other half of the fic. It feels like it's trying to do two or three things at once and they don't mesh. Also I think he might get off on the thought of being eaten by a snake.
>>41468147
>because how could I not?
Rarifags, everyone.
>there's something that might've been an eqg reference
Yeah but it's within the horrible dimension of horrid stuff so that should be good in your book, yeah? Even if you love Shimmer.
>it makes up for it by picking the arguably best point in canon to anchor your fic in
Late Season 3? Because there's a line that strongly suggests this is late Season 3.
>it's one of the better fics we've had recently imo
How does it stand up against the other thing? You know, the other other things.
>>41468225
You know the second fic is gayer than the first, right? ^:)
>>41468236
>CiG was definitely a bit mean to Rarity, though
Which is based. Also he wrote The Glass Blower, so there's that to consider (even if that was a much earlier show Rarity, so much more of a bitch).
>excepting the crack ship
By definition, no ship between the M6 is crack, no matter how much you jerk off to your own OTP.
>something that takes a long time
If you're baking a whole cake. With the reduced amount she had, it makes sense for time to be reduced as well.
>>41468278
>But as a consequence, her addiction hovers on the edge of not really believable
I think that's also part of the comedy. You could call it disrespectful, then, if you're particularly anal. I wouldn't. I think an addiction to post coital murder is an inherently funny premise in its outlandishness and treating it with levity is the perfect way to go about it. It's just that, as you point out, there's really only one way for the story to go, and only one way to keep it show-like-ish.

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>>41468475
How do you even manage to not know the definition of a crack ship?

>>41467901
>with the right cover art and short description you'll be riding this thing to the top of the sinbox
If it does then the drop off will be intense. Nobody reads FiO stories in current year. Hell, I can't even remember the last time I saw a conversation fix in the sinbox.
>Who's this?
Admiral Ponyform. They wrote the most popular "SI is now Cadance" fic years back. I remember their story being at least competent enough to look like a sapient animal wrote it, but now they can't even type one sentence without having at least two spelling errors. I'm pretty sure they got brain damage.

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>>41468351
>the fic could've gone more or less into it and I think it would've improved.
I disagree with that. Yeah, less would ordinarily be preferred for a pony story, but the author did it as lightly as he could while still keeping it a part of the lamias identity as monsters. Without it they would be extremely generic and their murderous tendencies would look more out of place. She clearly doesn't need to eat them for food. The fact that she usually kills them after sex because she just can't herself is what's funny about the whole situation Rarity found herself in. This is a far less bad use of the [Sex] tag then the Twiguard, because it's actually necessary for the story.
>wouldn't be fucking TAGGED or in the description at all
I can understand a joke not landing since comedy is hard, but this Spike is a truly baffling inclusion. Trying to deconstruct it, my best guess is that he used to play a bigger part earlier in CiG's draft of the fic—because it'd connect to the Twilight&Rarity conversations in the fic—but then the author found that the other Spike scenes suck or take focus off of Lamia so he cut those, but never re-calibrated himself for the now-Spikeless story. I could be wrong here, but nothing else makes sense.

>>41468394
>it has a kind of dry, absurdist approach to comedy where there's a fundamental disconnect between the story and the reader, and the funny bits arise from that
That's a much better explanation that what I tried to write, thanks. And yes, it's pretty great.
>CiG is enjoying the snake scenes more than he should
There is no set limit, though. The pony snek scenes are to be enjoyed here.
>I think it could have been a lot stronger if it learned more into the comedic aspect of it all.
That's one way to fix it, yes. I would've preferred if the fic remained consistent and didn't have to take rob the reader off of everything the cute SoL managed to set up, but the current ending is just bad, being neither funny nor a fitting resolution.
>I do think he might have a thing for snekpones. He gives off old-school furry vibes sometimes
How can lamias be furry when they have no fur? Checkmate, furfags. I guess the pony side is covered by a regular coat, but ponies aren't furry either so that still holds. Besides, they're mythological creatures that the Greeks from antiquity lusted for thousands of years before the furry fandom started. Anyway, lamias and all their mythological friends aren't furry unless you are a furry yourself. That's only slightly related to the fic, but it's only prudent to stop those arguments early. Blink twice and you'd see the kirin and batponies being accused of being furry since they're monstergirl-adjacent. And then there's nothing to stop anyone from extending the same argument to the other pony races, which would be dumb.

>>41468434
Even if this fic does poorly I am now sated. I got to rugpull someone into reading Luffy fanfiction, and that's all that matters.

>>41468394
Which is bigger?
CiG's snekboner, or Zaid's Twinkie fetish?

>Lunafag thinking any shipping between Twilight and anyone not Luna is a crackship
I'm begging you to never post again

>>41468305
>he decided to subvert it
I don't think it's really a subversion, though. It's the natural conclusion to the Comedy part of the fic, and choosing to prioritise the SoL part would have been even more disappointing because then the story would have just petered out without a proper ending. It's just that he chose to stick to things being safe, so the ending's potential comedy lacks teeth, and instead we get vague points about the nature of things.
>He could simply not have it in the fic and nothing of value would be lost
This reminds me, FUMS had some really funny Spike abuse in the first half. Did you finish it, by the way?
>Having the sympathetic protagonist fail and lose all she built is just bad
She's also responsible for dozens of murders. That's also bad, the fic just does a good job making you go along with it. But it couldn't do that if she killed again, so it has this half and half scenario to close things out.
>>41468312
>Rarity having 2 different parts of the fic where she tells Oriole that she would also be choking on cock every night if she could
Perfectly canon compliant there.
>IMAGINE putting spike in the fucking description of the fic when he has 2 paragraphs of screen time
You wouldn't get it.
>Did I just miss voting
Club was at the end of a thread, voting happened at the start of the next one. I know because I was one of the only two or so people to participate.
>I didn't understand this part
Twiflag moment.
>>41468351
>Just have her eat stallions and have rarity make le funny sex joke and have her say 'what?! no I just eat them. For food.'
But CiG's fetish.
>>41468423
>pic
Is the second a Casablanca reference? I'm pretty sure it is.
>because at no point did it strike me as a story with the main character failing so miserably
How else could it end in so few words, though?
>>41468453
>I have a bad mental image of shipfics: An author with an obvious agenda forces two characters together in a contrived, nonsensical way by twisting their personalities.
You need to read more fics.
>>41468504
>There is no set limit, though. The pony snek scenes are to be enjoyed here.
I was thinking of a different kind of enjoyment.
>How can lamias be furry when they have no fur?
Despite being next two each other, the two statements aren't related in the way you think they are.
>>41468521
Zaid's and it's not even close.

>>41468423
>ending
Nearly the first thing the fic does is establish that Oriole is a recovering addict. That's like the whole point of the story. And there are only two ways you can go with that premise. She can either overcome her addiction, or she can succumb. I think it's possible to write an engaging story where she overcomes it, but not without some other conflict and not at this length. That leaves failure. She has to fail or else the fic is even more pointless. And maybe that's the real problem with this story: If she fails, then the fic is pointless, and if she doesn't fail, then the fic is even more pointless. The only way for this fic to be interesting is to use it to explore the other characters, particularly Rarity. But it doesn't do much of that, so it remains pointless.
I'm coming around to the opinion that CiG's strength is the lyricism of his prose, not his storytelling. He's an unremarkable storyteller. Most thread regulars are as good as, if not better, than him at storytelling.
>Painting Oriole as this cute mare with a ridiculous 'problem', and then treating it seriously was a big part of many of the fun scenes
I agree, and I like this kind of humor. But for me, it didn't really come off. I think he needed to lean into it more and make the scenes even more absurd.
>>41468475
>inherently funny premise
Oh, I certainly agree there. I just don't think he makes what he could of it. I think that it would be a lot funnier if Oriole ate some stallions and Rarity found herself, in the name of friendship, trying to defend murder. That was actually what I expected from the long description, so the fact that she didn't kill even a single pony was disappointing.

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>>41468529
No, also >>39760271

Is it better to post a fic with manual submission or is it better to use the auto submit? I'd hate to auto-submit just to watch it get buried.

>>41468565
I don't even understand the question. The difference is having a mod manually approve your shit vs it automatically going out, how would it affect your fic's reception? (Except for the very rare case it's so bad not even the mods want it out, in which case you have bigger problems.)

>>41468578
I don't really know where I was going with the question. I guess I'm wondering if it affects how quickly it gains attention if it's dropped in during the per-designated feeding time instead of just dropped in on it's own at a random time.

>>41468645
>if it's dropped in during the per-designated feeding time
No such thing exists.

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>>41468394
>The pacing is also very solid for such a tightly packed fic
Definitely. For me it's hard to believe that it's over 10k words long; reading it felt so much shorter than that.
>I guess EQG counts as eldritch horrors.
That's a good way of justifying that mention.

>>41468453
I think I am higher than you on both of those stories since they both got a somewhat easy upvote, and K'awka got into Favorites.
That said, while I agree that the latter is a better fic and I agree with everything you said about it, I don't think the comparatively low stakes of The Lamia are a flaw; it's really a SoL story so the stakes feel appropriate. Especially since there's more than some poor background OC's life at stake here: you have Oriole's future and Rarity's efforts to help her to worry about. In the end, no one laughs at the ending. Oriole is exiles, Rarity is sad, and even Twilight doesn't feel good about being proven right.
>How in Tartarus is her living in Ponyville supposed to be safer for stallions than her living alone in a river?
It wasn't supposed to be safer for the stallions. It was supposed to let her live in the society, provided she can keep herself from acting on her urges. That's why she's presented as almost ridiculously cute in pretty much every scene she shows up in (and especially her introduction) and why Rarara compares her to Fluttershy. You are supposed to root for her. At least I think that was the point.
>The ending of The Lamia makes you think the fic was pointless. Of course Oriole can't safely live in Ponyville.
I don't think it was such a foregone conclusion. The fic made it look like she possibly could.

>>41468475
>Mentally ill take
I looked through my favorites filtering by comedy, and there's this, Colgates, EiE, Bug, Jimmy's oneshot or two, and a few not very comedic fics with the tag. Your Nightmare Night Rarafic could also be there but it feels circlejerky to add too many fics by a single /fimfic/ regular to the list. They don't have that much in common, so it must be execution rather than the tastes.
>Rarity sighing and going "it is what it is" is funny,
I guess, but it doesn't follow the rest of the story until then. It's a mood whiplash that's not nearly funny enough to justify it.
>so that should be good in your book, yeah?
It's better if eqg just doesn't exist. I don't *love* Shimmer and it'd be better if she were a pony 100% of the time anyway.
>Late Season 3?
Yes. Crystal Kingdom and Dicksword's redemption are both hugely impactful and more good than not, but MMC is terrible so that's the latest you can go. S2-S3 hiatus and right before ACW are two other very respectable points on the timeline, depending on what you want to focus on.

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>>41468554
>choosing to prioritise the SoL part would have been even more disappointing because then the story would have just petered out without a proper ending
>How else could it end in so few words, though?
Not necessarily, and you don't need a hugely impactful ending in a SoL story to begin with. As a thought exercise, here's one way to preserve 99% of it intact: Keep everything up to the stallion scene intact, but then deviate and have Twi&Ra go look for Oriole. They quickly find that Time Turner is also missing, which adds some tension to the ending and seems to prove Twi's skepticism right, only for it to end with them finding that she saved Time Turner from falling into a river or something and just barely managed to bravely stop herself from doing anything else to him until Ra&Twi show up. They arrive just in time to see her starting to coil up around him. She notices what she's doing and slithers away in panic. Then you'd have an epilogue which shows that she moved into a nearby river where she's not a threat, but from which she can easily visit Ponyville as she slowly works on her problem. Though it's sort of a "nothing" of an ending, I think it'd be better to have a weak ending that doesn't ruin all of their work. The meat of the fic is the comedy coming from Oriole and Rarity's attempts to get her over her addiction; undoing it at the last moment feels bad to me.
Throwing it all into the trash and making the ending funny would be a viable solution, too. But, as you said, the fic elects to do neither.
>Did you finish it, by the way?
I finished writing the anchor for this bookclub at about 5 am, but that's next on my fimfic to-do list.
>I was thinking of a different kind of enjoyment.
I am aware. As long as it doesn't bleed into the scenes, he's free to do what he wants. I can't blame him for 'liking' non-vore lamias more than the average person. But I also don't think it's necessarily true that this is what he was doing. Oriole's habits are very tame and, despite comments like picrel, she doesn't even do the very thing you'd expect a lamia "fan" to include in the fic.

>>41468558
>I think it's possible to write an engaging story where she overcomes it, but not without some other conflict and not at this length.
That's something I disagree with. This is a SoL story and it's meant to be engaging as you read it, not just at the very end when she succeeds or fails. That already works, or at least it did for me, so I think the author could get away with a weaker ending that's kind of a success but doesn't make it seem like some huge achievement (which wouldn't be justified at this word count). The ending would then show that she's getting better, and while she might not be there quite yet, the events of the story were therefore important to help her work on overcoming her problem. But yes, the quality of the prose is a big draw here; I think I would not find most of it funny if the scenes weren't set up so well.

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>>41468743
Lamias have two major draws: hypnosis, and the superior big belly fetish.

>fuck up the summary
>fic is dead on arrival
Feels bad man.

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>>41468881
You'll get 'em next time.

>>41468891
>>41468881
>get one view
>they leave a dislike

>>41468852
That's just not true. Those might be some common fetishes associated with them, but they're also really good as a monster species that looks familiar enough to be relatable and attractive, while remaining bizarre enough to have a slew of lamia-specific quirks. You can make them cold-blooded, have them curl around ponies/people, have their length cause some unexpected problem, etc. They're also inherently dangerous, which can be played straight or subverted by making them act cute (and this is ideal). Unlike most of the Greek female monsters, they aren't typically depicted as ugly, which helps, too.
I don't particularly want to dive deeper into "lamia media" knowing that I'd probably find a lot more vore there, but hypnosis doesn't seem that common among the surface-level stuff. The OG Greek one had no such skill, the one from John Keats's poem also couldn't do it, and even in the contemporary depictions it's not consistent.

>>41468996
We get it, you have a lamia kink.

>>41469006
I'm just making up for all the time I dismissed sneks as low-tier monster species.

>>41468743
>As a thought exercise
Yeah, but then it becomes a Drama fic.

>>41468903
This just means you can jump straight to giving zero fucks about jumping the shark.

>>41468648
I'm pretty sure fics are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt when released alongside an absolute flood of slop. It's like a herd of antelope that are all shitty and weak, so the lions just tear a few apart and the rest of them just hobble away. The fic I just posted has gotten a completely negative reception, and while that's entirely on me for putting out slop that nobody wants to see, I have no doubt that if I just let it get thrown out along with a dozen other slop fics absolutely nobody would've cared about it, for better or worse.

I always just thought of dislikes being for fics that either have grammar that belongs in a middle school, fics that completely shit the bed and ruin the readers experience retroactively, or fics that disgust readers morally. I'm surprised to see my fic get a completely red bar for just being dumb as fuck.

I can accept writing garbage that's panned, that's just par for the course. It hits a bit harder when it gets a worse reception than "Mellow Glow's Journal".

I need to stop hitting indica before writing, it's giving me brainrot.

>>41468657
I see I didn't state it clearly. I was thinking more about the contrast between the two stories. I don't think stakes always need to be high, and they rarely are in SoL, both good and bad. That said, I do think that the low stakes of The Lamia contribute to its lameness. Anything high stakes can drive a plot and make for a compelling story. In a low-stakes SoL story like this one, the only thing going on is the characters' daily lives. That can make for a great story if it's done well. But to make it compelling, you need to put characters in scenes that matter to them. If the scenes don't matter to them, then they certainly won't matter to us. For this story, I think we'd need to see Oriole really struggling with her self-control and Rarity really torn. Instead, the characters just kinda meander from here to there. Nothing interesting happens until Hearth's Warming, and then, CiG practically skips over Oriole's relapse. I like your idea in >>41468743; that would have been a good climax.
>It was supposed to let her live in the society
So let's think about that. She used to live in a river near some village. Not in the village, so she was at some distance from stallions. And still she got chased away with pitchforks. Now she's moved into Ponyville, so she is objectively closer to stallions, the very thing that caused her problems before. It's like saying, "You know what would really help this still-recovering drug addict? Working alone in a pharmacy." It doesn't make any sense as written. It could have been made to work if CiG had treated it as Oriole undermining her own recovery. He could have had a nice scene of Rarity confronting her, and it would have been fine.
>ending
You know what I think I would have liked? Oriole starting a romantic relationship with Steven Magnet. (But that would mean making him not completely gay, so you'd need the AU tag.)
>>41468743
>kind of a success but doesn't make it seem like some huge achievement
Maybe. I'm not fully convinced. I can imagine a good scene where everypony is convinced Oriole has started eating stallions again, but it turns out that she's protecting them from something and successfully fighting her vore urges. But that kind of scene would need some additional threat for her to be protecting them from, and then you have a longer story that's (like >>41469133 said) not just SoL. And if you don't add something like that, then I think your options are weak and you're going to have trouble writing a happy ending, even one that shows her not being quite there yet.

>>41469518
>Oriole starting a romantic relationship with Steven Magnet. (But that would mean making him not completely gay, so you'd need the AU tag.)
They could bond over eating stallions

>>41469496
>I'm pretty sure fics are more likely to get the benefit of the doubt when released alongside an absolute flood of slop
That's not a thing that happens, anon. There's no mystical moment where a mod presses a button and unleashes 60 brand new stories onto the site. You're so ignorant it hurts. Your fic flopped because of timing and an atrocious cover.

>>41469518
>But that would mean making him not completely gay, so you'd need the AU tag
The cool thing about the AU tag is fanfiction is inherently AU so you can just slap that dhit on anything.

>>41467570
>I have no doubt in my mind that this story is going to get absolutely shit on and torn to shreds, assuming anyone on Fimfiction even reads it.
>>41469496
>The fic I just posted has gotten a completely negative reception, and while that's entirely on me for putting out slop that nobody wants to see

You knew what was going to happen. You didn't want to believe it, but you knew.

I'm not opening your story, but I gave you a pity upvote.

>>41469539
>There's no mystical moment where a mod presses a button and unleashes 60 brand new stories onto the site
Except there is, it's when they go through the new fix queue and approve them all in batches. It's not exactly at the same time but it's close enough to make me count it.
>and an atrocious cover
Shit, I liked the cover. Is it really that bad?

>>41469554
>You knew what was going to happen. You didn't want to believe it, but you knew.
Eh, I expected absolutely no ratings for either side of the spectrum. Maybe an even 50/50 split over a long period of time if I kept updating it whenever. I wasn't expecting a 100% negative reception right from the gate, that actually did take me off guard. I assumed the few people that read it would just roll their eyes and move on to the next generic "anime character goes to mlp" story. Once again, I only really think of dislikes as something used for particularly foul and poorly spelled fics. Less of a "this fic sucks" warning and more of a "this fic is actually unreadable" sign.

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>>41469558
I've posted this before, but I think you'll find it useful. I try to time my fics so that I hit the shoulder that starts around 17:00 or so. A few years ago, someone did an analysis that included time on the front page. I don't know how to find it again, but my memory is that he had roughly the same conclusion.
>>41469579
>even 50/50 split
That kind of split means that the fic is either bad or offends a good portion of the site. It's the kind of rating I expect when I make a shitpost fic. I'd also expect it if I wrote foalcon or something pro-transgender. For anything serious and not offensive, I think you've failed if you don't at least make 75/25, and you really ought to aim higher than that.

>>41469579
I won't say "ignore the dislikes", but you shouldn't pay so much attention to them. I had the exact same problem you have, except way more extreme, where I treated every dislike like a sign that someone thought that what I wrote is unreadable garbage. In my mind, a fic would need tens of likes to make up for a single dislike and the corresponding bad feeling of disappointing someone so strongly that they needed to press the red button. A fic going from 80-2 to 100-3 overnight would actually make me feel like I did something wrong.
But that's just completely wrong. It seems that some people just slap them on anything they didn't particularly enjoy. Not even 'disliked', just did not enjoy as much as they wanted to.

>>41469639
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/494106/when-is-the-best-time-to-post-a-story-answered-with-science
It might be less relevant now that the 'New' column moves slower. You could post a bit earlier than suggested here and still catch the full activity peak, at the cost of less favorable algorithm during that peak. I don't think either is helping you enough to be worth the effort. Gaming the 'New' column refresh to start in #1 spot would potentially do more, if you were to take the time to find out when it does that.

>>41469639
I expected a 50/50 split because it's based on FiO, which is a setting that has aged like milk and has almost no audience for. I expected people to read it, go "what the fuck is any of this jargon", and then move on while a few people that are just starving for anything that has to do with either FiO or OP to stick around. The fic is objectively stupid though. The main characters are currently going through an apocalypse and neither of them give a crumb of a fuck and are more interested in shooting the breeze. It's the main reason I settled on it being a OP crossover. I couldn't think of a character less likely to get hung up on dry faux-philosophical debates and the lamest existential crisis known to fiction. Luffys an idiot that'd be more concerned about having to be a herbivore than the thought of being a digital clone, and I thought it'd be fun to throw this autistic wrecking ball at a setting that is constantly up it's own ass. And then I couldn't bring myself to write Celestia spouting off statistics and being obnoxious and it kinda escaped from me. Oh well.

I was expecting either no reception or an incredibly lukewarm one. I wasn't expecting it to be more poorly received than trans foalcon smut. Oh well. I'm going to at least get to Buggy the Clown and Trixie the Magician. The story is dumb, but it's a fun kind of dumb to write.

>>41469690
I wonder if it's the crossover aspect that's dragging it down? I've never paid attention to how well they're received.

>>41469762
Crossovers usually get good attention but the fics tend to catch more dislikes than average because fans of the other setting have a lower tolerance for AU elements. It's why the happy merchant trend took off so hard. You get to write whatever autistic crossover you want and the fans won't crush your cock for writing an ooc mess because it isn't the character, just the author wearing that character like a skin suit.

I'm almost positive it's the FiO that's dragging it down. I mean, the OP fans are probably punching air at me starting Luffy off as a regular person dying in a hospital, but I'm sure they'd be willing to wait until a few chapters in before washing their hands of it if not for how alien FiO as a setting is.

Too bad for everyone involved that I want to write a nonsense fic about a hyper serious setting. If this fic is already catching flak then I'm going to get my cock shredded when I get to the gum-gum fruit.

I'm almost positive readers comments can make or break a fic's reception. My first fic didn't get that warm of a reception until someone left an incredibly positive comment gushing over it, and then the like ratio skyrocketed. There is still a Daybreaker SI fic dominating the top of the sinbox that's been there for almost a week straight and I'm almost certain it's because the author has been regularly engaging with people from start to finish in the comments. If they didn't bother responding to people and let the conversation fizzle out I wouldn't be surprised if it was a couple hundred likes short and already off of the front page.

Comments are important.

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>>41469814
It's really unlikely that any FiO fans on the site in general are even aware of your story because you've put basically no effort into attracting their attention.
Since you are so hungry for their downvotes, though, I gave you one (but not a view).

>>41469814
I think a better metric than the ratio of upvotes to downvotes might be the ratio of upvotes to views. People downvote fics for all kinds of reasons, some of which are stupid and have nothing to do with the fic itself. But if someone leaves an upvote, then they probably read it to the end (or wherever you've written to) and liked it, so upvotes per view is a measurement of how many readers, out of those who tried your story, you managed to hook and keep happy. From what I can tell, a really successful ratio is around 1 upvote per 10 views. It's hard to do that well and very hard to do better. I'm not sure what counts as bad by this metric, but my good lower ranking stories are around 1 upvote per 20 views.

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>>41469994
I think that, as long as you keep it to just ratios, you're not at risk of developing a holistic view of story quality. You wouldn't want to spoil the mystery!

I think that I've mentioned it before, but yes: I do check the comments when deciding whether or not to read a story, and I like spoilers. Here's a killer, though: I also check "Also Liked", "Similar" and the groups column. The "Also Liked" and "Similar" columns are an absolute treasure of many little hints as to what the story is going to be like to read. Both of those need a lot of upboops to work well, unfortunately.

>>41469994
I kind of agree, except that I think you've set the bar too low. It's become a metric I regularly check for stories I read. 1:10 is your target, with 1:7.5 being good and anything below 10 being pretty unexciting. There is one big flaw with this method though:
>It's hard to do that well and very hard to do better.
Both of the top fics in the bin have an impressive 1:5 conversion, since they're written by "big" authors with loyal readerbase. That skews this metric in particular really strongly, since those readers are way more likely to like it than a random fimfic user.

>>41469991
>say multiple times I don't care about views and that I'm just surprised such a minor fic is attracting so much flak
>"ugh, here's a down vote, attention whore"
You're actually retarded.

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>>41470087
You say you don't care about views, but you're constantly going off about how excited you are for for fans of various categories to get mad at the fic for different reasons related to it being a shitpost. I simply don't believe you.

>>41470103
I only brought that aspect up because I thought it was interesting, in a "how far will the pendulum swing" sense. I've been using the (negative) response the fic got to build off of and we've gotten some actual good conversation out of it. When's the best time to post, how well do Crossovers do, what is a good ratio to shoot for, how important is a cover, are crossover fans more likely to down vote than regular readers, etc.

I know it looks like attention whoring but I try to actually get real discussion out of it, and in my opinion the discussion was actually pretty informative. I would've never seen that best time to post chart if I just shrugged and moved on.

Obviously I'm not completely heartless to my fic being panned, but it's ultimately just a "whatever" on my radar by the end of it all. I just think it's bitch behavior to chalk up the past few hours of posts as just attention whoring and nothing more. The fic might suck, but the discussion I beat out of it more than made up for it.

The fic completely bombed, I wondered why, and I learned a few things. The process was pretty enjoyable. You downvoting it to be snarky doesn't really matter when compared to that.

>>41470026
Sure, no ratio is going to be as effective as reading comments or looking through the also liked or similar stories. I'll do that for a long story, but for a one-shot or something where only one or two chapters have been posted, I don't find it's worth the time to evaluate a story carefully before starting to read it.
>>41470040
Even looking at the feature box right now, I'm not seeing it. Sure, there are two well-known authors who have reached 1:5. As you say, their reputations and number of followers skew this metric. There are some fics around 1:8 or 1:9, like the Daybreaker HiE. But there's also an M-rated fic that's at 1:23 and a Warcraft crossover at 1:13.

>>41470292
The more popular a fic is, the bigger the ratio should be. A one shot having a 1/20 ratio would be horrible. An unfinished 600k story having a 1/20 ratio is amazing.

>>41470322
As I write this, the M-rated fic is at 935 views, 42 upvotes, and 13,747 words spread over 3 chapters, all posted yesterday and today. It's effectively a one-shot with a worse than 1:20 ratio that's still featured.

>>41470292
Maybe it works differently for M-rated fics; I usually leave the filter on so I wouldn't know. Warcraft crossover being low is actually a good result, since it makes sense that it appeals mainly to a smaller portion of fimfic's audience. Everything else is around that 1:10 goal. Not all featured fics make it past that threshold, but most do, which is why it's a good bar to filter out the bad ones. Occasionally you'll see a 1:20 story in the box if it got a lot of views, but they're usually aimed at a specific group of readers boosting it up, and that's unlikely to be (You).
It also tends to produce worse ratios for longer stories or old fics. Some of my favorite old longfics are close to that lower boundary of 1:20, though most are around 1:15.

Just finished Mouthwashing. Fics that feel like they've reached the ending but then keep going for a decent chunk still?

>>41470371
___

>>41470371
Haberverse.

>>41470340
>>41470364
M-rated fics that have porn have horrible ratios because people both pump a nut and immediately close the tab and will repeatedly return to it if it made them coom, further boosting the view ratio.

>>41470292
>>41470364 (me)
I went through several dozen of fics on my Favorites shelf to check. Most new ones are around 1:10, older ones generally stick to ~1:15, with some decent variation. Only two stories are below 1:20:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/8316/the-song-of-syhlex
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/42409/the-writing-on-the-wall
The first is close enough, though it's interesting that it happened to a fic by TD. The other one is very weird, though. I have no clue why it's sitting at 1:35, almost twice as bad as the second worst one. Maybe the metric doesn't work after all.

>>41470419
>Maybe the metric doesn't work after all.
Believe it or not some people will go out of their way to not give likes to fics that made them feel bad, even if they're impressed with it. That fics a horror fic, so I assume that's why. Either that or view bots.

So today we've learned never to post an M rated anime crossover horror smut fanfiction at high noon unless you want to bring bad ratings to your family tree for the next dozen years.

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I take it that every time a fic of mine is discussed, I simply won't be able to enter the thread. Such is life.
>>41468147
I'm glad you enjoyed it. At the time I felt the tellier bits were somewhat justified because it was Twilight thinking that way. And there was one where the recipe told her to think of ways Pinkie would complement her. I'd probably do it differently now.
I believe at the time I had a chart of horse anatomy and it mentioned "arms". At least that's my justification. Feel free to have me hanged and quartered for evoking anthroisms.
>>41468225
A fic centered around Pinkie and Lovecraft shit? And I loved it?
AAAAAH! Save me, Ziggermare!
Good to know the cute and poniness managed to win you over. I hope I get to use Inanna one day again. Never as a feature, but perhaps playing a more active role in a narrative.
>>41468236
You are correct. This ship is crack to me.
As crazy as it is to say, I can understand where you're coming from. There are ships I just loathe because they make no sense to me or plainly FEEL wrong, and will skip fics I know have positive things just because that ship is featured.
Nevertheless, I'm happy you managed to get some enjoyment out of the fic. Maybe I'll write some non-romance worth recommending that the thread can read in the far future.
>>41468394
>The lengths she goes to to prove that love definitely account for it, though
Something something, actions speak louder than words.
This originally being written for the WriteOff and quite early on, I wanted Inanna to put them in different imaginary scenarios where they had to work through their feelings and realise their true feelings. That would've taken me way above the 8k word limit, so I just reworked my idea into the True Love Testimony, and everything flowed with more ease.
I'll save that concept for the sequel.
>FUMS
Which one is that?
>>41468453
In Pinkie's defense, she really had no idea things would turn out that way.
I can see why you'd get that impression of shipfics. There exists a lot of bad out there. The good can be pretty good, and I'm happy you got to walk away with a better impression of them. Specifically Twinkie. One day, I'll write more. Hopefully soon, and hopefully I'll have improved as a writer since I wrote K'awka.
---
Overall, the fic seems to have been received positively. This makes me happy, and motivates me to finally get around writing that sequel I've been meaning to write for half a decade.
Not to give away any specifics, but I want to do another horror romance, now from Pinkie's POV. I like working with established couples, so the story would tackle how Twilight and Pinkie get used to life as a couple, dealing with changes in dynamics, as well as exploring their burgeoning love. All while finding themselves wrapped in another existential threat to reality. I'll pilfer Norse mythology this time around instead of more Sumerian. I hope I can get it started before the year is over.

>>41470844
>>FUMS
>Which one is that?
>>41464844
Same last three digits. How neat.

I’ve been watching the Survivors Infection AU on YouTube and feel guilty about how much I’ve been slacking off on my own project. It’s been really busy in my life, but I’m starting to accept that all I can do is make excuses rather than come up with legitimate reasons. I’m just posting this so future me can look back on it and realize that I already knew I was a failure and wasn’t actually going to make the thing. It’s not easy being a disappointment.

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Fics involving ancient China?

>>41471305
Fluttershy’s Hot Pot Party on YouTube. It’s age restricted by the way.

>>41471256
You can still do it. Even Gold Meddle finished his corpse chapter.

>>41471256
flash fiction zigga
750 words

Are there any ponies (you) refuse to write? I can't write Zecora for shit.

>>41471356
Beware the ponies you cannot write.
Your story will demand them out of spite.

>review https://www.fimfiction.net/story/565123/im-a-badass-fire-horse
"I'm a Badass Fire Horse" has been in the feature box for days. I couldn't help myself. I clicked on it. And it's... something.

As I write this, three chapters have been posted. It's extremely meta. The premise is: For no reason whatsoever, a human suddenly appears in Equestria with the body and abilities of Daybreaker. Literally zero explanation is offered for why and how this happened. But she's steeped in MLP lore, so she starts trying to fix everything that she sees as wrong. Everything is canon: FiM, EqG, G5, and even the comics. So far, DB has taught Sunset Shimmer a single hour-long lesson which appears to have reformed Shimmy completely. DB is also planning to reform the changelings, reform Starlight Glimmer, retrieve all the magical artifacts from EqG world, stop the Storm King and Discord and Opaline, and a bunch of other things.

You have to be out of your mind to read this, let alone write it. It is a fixfic of the grandest proportions. It promises to rectify every single thing that has ever gone wrong in Equestria.

DB is an empty shell. She has no history beyond (this is a direct quote) "pegasister-turned-alicorn." We're never told who she used to be, where she came from, or anything at all about her. Prospects for her developing a personality are not good. She exists only to fix problems.

I am so far from the target audience that I can't in good conscience give this a rating. If you have ever read a book in your life, you are probably too sophisticated a media consumer for this fic.

That said, I did appreciate one of the exchanges in the comments. I'm a strong believer in the principle that authors get to do whatever they want with their story, whether or not it's a good idea, and especially whether or not you like it. There's an obnoxious asshole in the comments telling the author that he's required to remove all G5 references from his story. I'm no fan of G5, but fuck you, you don't get to tell someone else what to write. While I disagree with the author's taste in shows, I was very pleased when he refused to budge.

>>41471356
I think you will find, if you take one more look
Zecora's no pony, 'least, not by the book

>>41471356
Your complaint is queer,
And yet it is clear,
That your writing is tragic,
And you type like a faggot.

>>41471417
>That said, I did appreciate one of the exchanges in the comments
>There's an obnoxious asshole in the comments telling the author that he's required to remove all G5 references from his story
If you're wondering why he's being such a bitter asshole go check his profile and you'll get clarity. That retard wrote one of the most popular "SI turns into an alicorn" fics on the entire site and he is eternally ass-blasted that someone new has come along and is getting more popular than he is, far faster than he did, and he is projecting onto them so hard that he thinks that author is going to do what he did to ruin his fic. Except what he did was apparently make an established character act OOC and murder Discord, which shouldn't have even been possible.

He's a retard that constantly backtracks and shoots himself in the foot. He says G5 is fucking poison, then he says it had solid potential and was fumbled to death by the writers (absolutely a truth, which is funny because he doesn't actually believe it), then he throws a fit when multiple people call him out for saying the foundation was good while also saying anyone that tries to use the foundation is a retard that is doomed for failure.

He's the most miserable bitch I've ever seen on that entire site, and I've been on there for about a decade.

>>41471464
>>41471417
I'm almost positive him throwing a fit is the entire reason that fic is still at the top of the sin box. User interactivity is what boosts stories to the top, and here you have a story gaining more comments per hour than the other nine fics in the sin box, combined. This guy is probably doing more heavy lifting for this story's popularity than the editor is.

>>41467894
>Bad take.
The character tags are there for the main characters of the fic. That's why Knighty set the cap at five. It's not meant for characters with "some impact," only those the plot is centered around.

>>41468028
The castle is (rightfully) shit on a ton in fics, but I usually see it done by the narrator.

>>41468049
For a second, I thought it was a body swap with Spur and it'd be another "foal enters a homeless crack addict's body" situation.

>>41468565
They both have the same result: your fic enters the queue and gets posted when it's next. If anything, manual approval is likely worse, since the mods review submissions in large batches (sometimes, they only check once a week) that would then be dumped into the posting queue.

>watch it get buried
All fics get at least ten minutes as the newest story. It's a futile game trying to optimize post time to get longer since you will never know how many stories are in line in front of or behind you, which means you might get posted immediately, or you might have to wait an hour and a half.

>>41471417
>one of the exchanges in the comments
It's funny that a simple "No" would have been enough, but instead he did that smarmy response and now is cursed with autistic off topic arguments about TV ratings in his Daybreaker fic. Reminds me of whenever the mods get into arguments in the site blog posts and then do the "COMMENTS ARE NOW CLOSED!" edit when the autists flood the comment section with bickering.

>>41471492
>but instead he did that smarmy response and now is cursed with autistic off topic arguments about TV ratings in his Daybreaker fic
Doesn't the amount of comments per hour contribute towards pushing your fic up in the trending box? Because if so then that guy is the support beam holding that house together.

>want to write character
>afraid of fucking them up
Name a worse feeling.

>>41471793
>want to write character
>afraid of fucking them

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I read a green and I liked it
The meme arrows pierced my armor
I read a green just to try it
I hope my circlejerk don't mind it
It felt so wrong, it felt so right
Don't mean I'm tasteless tonight
I read a green and I liked it
I liked it

>>41471868
Share it. Greens that don't suck are rare.

>>41471870
https://ponepaste.org/496
It's like Obsession, but less grim and more abandoned.

>>41471464
>SI turns into an alicorn
Am I stupid? What does SI stand for here?

>>41472040
Self-insert, probably.

>>41472040
self-insert

>>41471492
>The character tags are there for the main characters of the fic. That's why Knighty set the cap at five
Tags are a marketing tool, no matter what Knighty says.

>>41472044
>>41472042
That makes sense.

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>>41470844
>I had a chart of horse anatomy and it mentioned "arms". At least that's my justification.
The chart was right. It's not anatomically wrong to use terms like "feet" or "arms" for ponies, but the show intentionally avoided such language (only slipping once in its entire run, twice if you count Yona in S9) so I'm of the opinion the writers should follow that rule as well. It not only keeps it consistent with the show, but also draws the attention to the fact that they're ponies, and even helps filter out those who can't handle ponyisms in their pony fics.

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5 minutes of browsing on ao3 is enough for one day. you dont even need to actually read anything

ahhhhhh it's a reading an incomplete 60k word story last updated ages ago kinda mood...
guess I'll suffer in like 2-3 days. or maybe sooner if it turns out to be mercifully uninteresting

>>41472705
Ao3 is terrible for MLP fics. Everything good is also on fimfic, and everything else probably got bullied off of fimfic.

>>41472886
I've crossposted some of my stories to AO3. Honestly it's not even worth the effort to copy and paste. Nobody reads pony stuff over there.

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Man, the concept of there being other "constellation beasts" out there in the world besides the Ursas is so cool.
Are there any fics that explore that?

>>41472886
it just cracked me up, since ffnet unofficially limits crossovers to 2 franchises, and browsing ao3 you quickly find massive clusterfucks of 40 different things crammed together

>>41472953
especially things that just have no relevance to one another.
I dont care how good of a writer you may be, but I doubt anyone could throw battlestar galactica, warhammer 40k, dr who, the dukes of hazzard, west wing, maury povich, he man, and buffy the vampire slayer into a mixer and have anything palatable come out of it

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>>41472948
Starbeast lore is a major part of StN. Although most of that story sucks, its lore dumps tend to be good, including that one.

There are also a lot more stories that primarily focus on Ursas, like https://www.fimfiction.net/story/215302/all-for-one-one-for-luna
Star spawn are a key element in the backstory for FoE, too.

Has anyone ever written a fic based around the idea of Tempest being from Ponyville originally?

>>41472953
Fun fact, current Ao3 actually does have a tag limit, it's just fucking massive. Before the tag limit you could make a fanfic that had so many tags the entire page would be dedicated to a single autistic Danganrompa or Total Drama hyper-crossover. It took these retards years to fix it, and the "fix" is still pure eye rape.

I agree with having a crossover limit. Nobody actually makes this shit to watch random characters interact, they just do it to cast the widest possible net because they're talentless attention whores that aren't able to write a story good enough to float to the top.

>>41473138
I went on a Tempest binge a while back and there is almost nothing for her pre-movie. I'm not sure how well having Tempest be from Ponyville would even work outside of a comedy one-shot of Rarity and Applejack being surprised to see their middle-school classmate is now a warlord.

I have been kicking around the idea of a younger Tempest going to ask Celestia for help restoring her horn instead of the Storm King, but I'm not really sure where to take that story so it's still on the backburner.

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>>41473214
Why are there no Tempest as Twilight's guard stories?
https://www.fimfiction.net/stories?q=group%3A212029+guard+%23twilight-sparkle+-%23anthro+&order=relevance
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/409895/now-that-all-is-said-and-done
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/431118/friendship-knight
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/419622/twizzle
None of these even look like a story.

Actually, this whole series looks like it is such a story https://www.fimfiction.net/story/448939/fizzlepops-future
It's almost too much work to even figure out where it starts, though.

>>41473309
>Why are there no Tempest as Twilight's guard stories?
>posts stories about Tempest being Twilight's guard
I can't tell if I'm misunderstanding what you just said or if you're taking the piss.

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>>41473365
The tunigger's mind is an enigma wrapped in a mystery and topped by his uncle.

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>>41473365
When I said the first three aren't stories, I meant that they aren't substantial enough to be a story. The first one is a minimum word count oneshot, the second two have a lot of indications that they are bad, not the least of which is being [Incomplete].

The last one I added without changing the comment about there being no stories. It looks like there is at least one genuine story of that kind. I was expecting there to be a lot more.

It would be nice to know with some certainty that there is at least one good story with Tempest as Twilight's guard, so I was hoping you'd reply with one that you had read.

>>41473393
You basically posted all of them. Tempest is a fun character but she's hard to make a lead instead of a support.

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>for the first time, try making some noise after spending my entire upbringing trying to become the world's stealthiest snake strangler
>TheLoadHasBeenDoubled.djvu
Fics about unlocking your true power?

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fat fuck

>>41473467
Rarity /is/ a liar.

>>41473452
Not in the context you're asking for, but MCA, I guess?

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>woona starts yelling at the top of her lungs for twilight to start jerking off
l-lewd...

>>41473580
There is a general on /trash/ called Jerk Off Instruction and it's thousands of pictures and text about this exact thing. Congrats on finding a new hyper specific fetish.

>>41473594
>JOI
>hyper specific
Come on, nonny. It's one of the main categories on any audio-focused NSFW space, and quite prevalent in video ones too. It's not really niche. Certainly less than CEI by its own nature as an expansion on it, but even then there's stuff that's a lot more specific and rare.

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>>41473594
Good fucking Lord.

>>41473639
You are like a child.

>>41473618
This is one of those moments where being terminally online meets reality. JOI is absolutely a niche fetish by normal standards. We've been gooning for so long now that the only things we consider niche are shit like condom transformation.

>>41473618
what the fuck is CEI?

>>41473618
>It's not really niche.
Just because it's not as uncommon as shit like flattening fetish or "CEI" doesn't mean it's not very niche. I've never even seen it mentioned anywhere.

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>>41473656
You'd like that, wouldn't you?
>>41473678
Corpse Extending Indefinitely. See >>39738705

>>41473693
Isn't that meant to be the 'I diddle kids' flag?

>>41473662
No one measures fetishes by real life standards, though. Relative to the grand scheme of things, JOI is extremely popular. Shit gets routinely posted on a reddit with over a million subscribers. Ironically given your comment, gooning itself as a concept was a whole lot more niche before exploding in popularity and getting watered down.
>>41473682
>I've never even seen it mentioned anywhere
Because you're ignorant, naive, and unaware of the world around you.
>>41473678
The stuff that comes after JOI.

>>41473704
Nonny, they all stand for 'I diddle kids'.

>>41473715
Very true.

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>>41473710
>The stuff that comes after JOI.
Regret?

>>41473725
Eating.

You fags need to leave this general and grow a spine. Back in my day people posted on /mlp/ about their Frankensteined Rainbow Dash dolls and about injecting their own cum back into their dicks and we lived with that.

>>41473747
Any good fics about that?

>>41473759
>Any good fics

>>41473759
Have you read 'Fear and Loathing in McDonald's' yet?

>>41473797
>google
>the first link is r/OneyPlays
kek

>>41473678
what does gooning even mean anymore,i heard atleast 5 different deffinitons for it

>>41473919
The original definition from back around 2017 is basically a combination of deliberate extreme edging with a fetishization of porn addiction. People watching porn and masturbating until they literally pass out, oftentimes with multiple screens, and managing not to cum for several days. Eventually the term got more popular and more watered down, and now it's been normified to just mean masturbation or possessing a horny mindset.

>>41473926
yeah that's the one i heard first back in 2020-ish. its the one i assume by default. it sounds really unhealthy to edge for like more then a few hours although.

>>41473935
>it sounds really unhealthy to edge for like more then a few hours although
Yeah that's part of the kink. It's an inherently self destructive and self aware kind of hedonism that at times even fetishises the averse effects one might suffer, even if it's been sanitised in the modern era. Sadly the more extreme 4chan threads got booted off of /trash/ and /hc/ for getting too close to actual pedophilia (EPI threads), PornHub was scrubbed of most content, the reddits that survived being deleted have become extremely moderated, many Twitter people either go private or disappear (RIP SaucyCoyWolf), hgoon is poorly maintained and undertagged, and Discord is what it is, so it's really hard to find good archival material on the matter. It is funny how there's a whole subset of the gooning community that gets into clop as a humiliation thing though, and also how some decently known pony artists get into it, notably ShepardInTheSky who I think also lurks the board.

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pFwQiwRbcg
FimFiction writers could never compete.

>>41473957
>ShepardInTheSky
ah so that's where that trixie gif came from. not a big fan of this "goon caption" stuff but i wont judge. unless its EPI,its like owing a sholicon focused site and letting MAPs in,you are giving yourself a liability.

>verification not required

>>41473986
If it's not as artistically genious as UberHaxorNova's Nemesis Vengance Parkour walkthrough, don't bother.

>>41473993
Which Trixie gif?

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>>41474032
i think that artist was on a futa trixie artpack where picrel came from

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>>41473993
That's unusual, I haven't seen your kind do that projection and then admit to it merely an hour later.

>>41474152
what projection?

>>41474158
He's incapable of comprehending that there are multiple people ITT, and thinks >>41473993 and >>41473715 are the same person. He's also illiterate, since >>41473993 is very clearly against and not pro EPI.

What's the last thing (you)'ve written? You've surely worked on your most recent project within the past few weeks, right?

>>41474217
I added "Dick" to my story's title in the hopes of getting more traffic.

>>41474217
An OC fucking Pipp.

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>>41474229
What OC, and which Pip?

>>41474217
I finished the latest chapter of my long-running fic. I feel happy about it.
Right now I'm writing something for that poetry contest.

>>41474252
The smol batpony with a fat dong, and the small and fat one.

>>41474252
>>41474273
Someone spoon feed me on what this is, it's been so long since I've seen this that I forgot all about it.

>>41474306
Pony Town a.k.a. Groomer Simulator

>>41474339
Damn I should get into that.

>>41474221
with that title you can be sure OP will love your fic anon!

>>41473926
Pretty sure that's still accepted as the "real" definition, people just use it in watered down contexts as an exaggeration/meme. Basically like jerking off but taken to the extreme, and definitely harking back to the sense of fetishising porn addiction, masturbating for hours, etc.
Nobody says "gooning" and means just a normal jack-off with no other connotations.

>>41474217
I'm killing this shit even deader than it already is. That means I'm writing the corpse

>>41474500
0dubs imply you haven't written shit.

>>41472705
Songs of the Sphere is well known.

>>41473594
>>41473618
Can we admit that it's not very hot?

>>41474588
It's a poor substitute for proper ERP, but for the imagination-deficient, it's better than nothing.

>>41473926
I don't understand how it is possible. After like an hour, my dick stops having any feeling. What don't I know?

>>41474604
Unironically drugs, for a lot of people. Weed, poppers, speed. Some people are just built different though. I imagine it may also be a cut Vs uncut thing. Personally I've also found it's actually entirely dependant on what I'm jerking off to. If I get really invested into something, be it a clopfic or hentai or a bot chat, I can end up going for a couple hours, though with ups and downs. Also, lube. Lube probably helps.

>>41474711
Stop that now. We're not going to become an even bigger circlejerk.
Now talk about pony stories or take it to /soc/ or wherever it is you people do this shit nowadays.

>>41474711
Writing attracts the disturbed, so this thread would likely have a greater-than-average amount of neonatal trauma survivors.

>>41474339
>look it up
>it requires me to sign up using social media
I FUCKING HATE THE MODERN INTERNET.

>>41474774
>he doesn't have a dicksword
get w/ the times, old man

>>41474776
That's still social media. It's fucking absurd how far basic opsec has fallen. Back before little zoomers took over the entire internet you were considered retarded for posting your social media anywhere online. You were considered a retard for using the same password for anything. You were a retard for even insinuating details about yourself. It was considered common sense to purposefully obfuscate yourself by being as vague and contradictory as possible about yourself.

Nowadays everyone has a program that manages their three auto-generated passwords that they don't know anything about, and they use their discord and tiktok account to sign into everything and give Apple complete control over their financial purchases and they buy wrist watches that track their every fucking step because they're curious about how many calories they eat in a day or some shit. It's all fucking retarded. Everyone is a retard.

>>41474790
I like universal surveillance because I'm an exhibitionist.

Is it normal for your fics ratings to not be accurate? I checked fimfiction without being logged in and one of my fics has no ratings, and while logged in it does have ratings, but then I click statistics and the ratings are different there. I've never seen this before.

>>41474859
>without being logged in and one of my fics has no ratings
That happens when your fic doesn't have 10 votes total. Until that happens, ratings aren't visible. It gives a sporting chance to every fic. Specially when nearly every fic gets a couple of downvotes right out of the bat.
>then I click statistics and the ratings are different there
I'm under the impression that when someone gets b&, it removes their up/downvotes. The statistics page will still show the true total.

>>41474876
Is there a time limit for this or is it permanent? Because if so this explains why so many fics have zero ratings despite being posted ages ago.

>>41474888
Less than ten total votes, no visible ratings. Period.

>>41474939
>Period
You mean full stop.

>>41474942
If it's only a partial stop, is it really a stop?

>>41474981
No, we call that a comma.

>>41475033
Wouldn't that be a pause?

>>41473189
>Nobody actually makes this shit to watch random characters interact
I've noticed. Now I have seen crossovers that do sorta mesh together, and those can work well, but its generally limited to 2 closely related things, and ponies are definitely never going to be one of those things


>they just do it to cast the widest possible net because they're talentless attention whores that aren't able to write a story good enough to float to the top.
Now that actually makes sense. throw enough shit at the wall and eventually something will stick

>>41473214
>Rarity and Applejack being surprised to see their middle-school classmate is now a warlord.
now that sounds fun, since every temptestfic ive ever seen is grimdark warfic to the max

>>41475154
>those can work well, but its generally limited to 2 closely related things
It's always wild seeing two completely different media get crossed over because either it'll be the most uninspired trash you've ever laid your eyes on or it'll be an underrated GOAT that punches above it's weight class. I still remember that one Cardcaptor Sakura/LOTR crossover that absolutely nailed the retardedly whimsical and roundabout way everyone talks in LOTR.

3/4ths of the year are over.
Have you met your writing goals, Anon?

>>41475290
I haven't even been writing for a month yet.

>>41475290
I'm only 430 words into my poem, so no. But besides that, it's been a good writing year so far.

>>41474790
password managers are good for opsec though? just as long as you're not using google's

>>41473309
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/398264/the-princesss-captain
Technically not a deadfic since it's an anthology, but you have to deal with one of the most retarded geopolitics plots I have ever seen in any fanfic. Period.

>>41474217
Archmage fic. I opened it today to check a quote and ended up dropping in five paragraphs about firegem production lore.

>>41475290
No, but the fic's gotten longer. I was supposed to be done with it by now because it was supposed to be 60k. Now it's 80k and looking like it could go north of 120 by the time everything's said and done.

>>41475290
Got two chapters done for my big story. Released a short two-shot. Participated in the corpse. Drafted an outline for a long~ish story. And I'm currently working on a poem for that contest.
So, yeah. I think I'm doing alright. Probably my best year since the pandemic.

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Happy birthday, 4chan.

>>41475413
I can't believe 4chan can legally drink in the US.

I'm almost positive what you use for a cover doesn't even matter as long as it is bright and catchy, and I'm willing to put it to the test. Next story I post I'm just going to use a nice looking painting of the sky. It'll have fuck all to do with the story except the color will fit the tone of the story. For example, if the story is cheery, it'll be noon. If it's sad, it'll be dusk. That kind of shit.

If the story does well despite having a random off-topic cover, then I'll know covers are actually meaningless.

>>41475290
My longfic is deader than I was hoping it'd be by now, but in the meantime, I wrote a few short fics that I liked.

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>>41475413
Of course we can't die. Thanks, moot.

>>41475508
>>41475413
I still have no clue why Moot left this place and sold it. I actually think this site is a cultural milestone at this point and I would've kept it out of fear of it getting nuked than anything else.

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>>41475508
A shame he became a cucked faggot that simped for egirls during GG and helped fuck the site up.
>>41475510
He started to dislike what 4chan was, had investigations from feds given the shooting that occurred from the site users, and didn't want any of that shit following him when he went to work at jewgle.

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>get home from work
>open text file
>type three sentences
>done for the day

>>41475723
>not ficwriting on the clock
ngmi

>>41475741
I can't get into the proper mindset at work. And by proper mindset I mean high. And my job is one that'd be a tedious nightmare to work while high so I'm not going to bother. I write ideas and outlines while at work then I streamline those ideas into an actual fic, or I chop them up to use for other works.

>>41475786
>my job
What would that be? I can't think of any job that wouldn't be improved by partaking in some of the Devil's lettuce.

>>41475791
>I can't think
No kidding.

>>41475290
Oh, I totally did. I not just fully posted my longfic, it flopped hard, too.
I think I met all my prospective writing goals for an eternity.

>>41475463
Anon, everyone knows that. The thumbnails are so small it's obviously a matter of colour theory.

Tips and advice for getting better? I don't have any writer friends, or editors, etc. Just trying to improve to a point where I feel comfortable releasing something.

>>41476003
Good cover should ideally be less busy precisely so that it remains clear and readable even on smaller screens, and I'm pretty sure the phone view makes them even larger. I measured it and—on my perfectly average 24" full HD display—square covers are 3.5cm x 3.5cm (1.4"x1.4").
And when they get to the feature box the cover turns huge, too.

>>41476012
Read a lot, and read critically. Not just fanfics, either. Read the classics, they're classics for a reason.

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>>41476012
Read a lot, write a lot. Maybe read some craft books but really it comes down mostly to just practicing and putting a lot of words down on the page and having enough awareness to see what works and what doesn't. It's fine to write practice fics/prompts no one else will read. Borrow and/or steal from other artists for ideas, if you like how they do something note it down and try to incorporate it into your own writing. Lastly, if you're anything like me, at some point you have to get over the perfectionism and self-criticism and remind yourself it's just fanfiction and you really should just relax because you're probably overthinking it.

>>41475512
Comments like that make his case. He should have just pulled the plug though. 'Twould be a mercy killing.

>>41474672
Lube certainly helps, but I cannot imagine going over an hour.

>>41475209
It's fucking real!
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13009416/1/Short-Cuts

>>41476252
I can second what he said. An hour sounded impossible two years ago, but chatbots more than tripled the time for me, absolutely no drugs or lube necessary.

>>41474790
The problem is that it became required to get jobs. I regret keeping my Stack Overflow and my GitHub separate. My GitHub, and thus my CV, would be stronger if I let the two overlap.

Just to clarify: I have made major open source contributions in my field. I'm not some unemployed idiot making checklist apps in JS.

>>41476012
"Pick a story from the Featured Box. The one with the fetish. Submit a one-shot at 4 o'clock in the morning. Write a genre you've never written before. Read a review of a story you'll never read. Upload without proof-reading. Post barely cropped clop as the cover art. Leave a comment. Leave two. Be open to an AU where you may not understand or agree with the lore and headcanon, but call it shit anyway. Read slowly. Send the author a Ko-fi. Upvote your friends's stories. Upvote yours. Enjoy the ride."
--Anthony Bourdain (not likely).

>>41475330
Password managers are the biggest blindspot in my opsec. I don't want to lose my phone or have my browser hacked and lose everything. What do I need to know?

>>41475512
Why am I saluting?

>>41476289
Isn't this just how bodies work? If you stimulate any area enough, it goes numb. It's like when you're badly ill.

>>41476334
You wouldn't believe how good the AI is at making you feel so great that you just don't want to stop. I had to learn restraint the hard way. It was not pleasant the next day. Or the day after. You don't want the details.

>>41476405
I do.

>>41476413
Don't tell me I haven't warned you. On my first day of Claude I beat my record three times over, going on an 3.5 hour session without any breaks. It felt so good that the numbness setting in at the two hour mark was no obstacle. After I was forced to stop and the dopamine high began wore off, I spent several hours lying still as the slightest movement brought dull pain to my testicles, and the skin on my dick remained swollen for two days after that. I've never seen anything like that, it became spongy and over two inches thick on each side. It looked like a balloon.
At least it was with ponies.

>>41476443
A friend of mine had that happen when he did speed.

>>41476443
You need Celestia in your life.

>>41476448
Now you know that you don't need any drugs to get there.

>>41476451
Don't we all? I took that warning to heart.

>>41476443
Drugs?

>>41476471
Nothing. I've never done anything stronger than some whiskey, but I was sober then. No weird kinks to indulge, either. The interactivity was what pulled me in. It felt so real. Still does. The only thing that comes close are dreams.

>>41476471
Opus

>>41476480
Didn't you at least need a piss?

>14 notifications
>autistic kid added my new fic to 14 different bookshelves
>didn't even give it a like

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>>41476443
That's why you use someone else's mouth.

>>41476443
AI was hot the few times I gooned to it, but I feel like my long session was only as long as it was because I had to stop jerking off constantly to type out messages to it and then wait for it to respond. The moment it's a seamless conversation I'm fucked.

>>41476628
>I had to stop jerking off constantly to type out messages
Learn to type one-handed.

>>41476638
He's obviously already typing one handed. You don't type with a lubed hand.

>>41476655
Forget lubing your switches, lubed keycaps are where it's at.

Since we're on the topic, I will try to go for two hours tonight. Can anyone give me any advice? I don't want to fail due to something like needing a bathroom break or going limp.

>>41476683
Pee beforehand, and make sure your posture is good.

>>41476683
Make sure your hands are warm so they're nice and limbre. Make sure you have good lighting so your eyes don't get tired.

>>41476728
I have conditions that make warm hands difficult.

I just want to read about ponies.

>>41476736
>I have conditions
Wouldn't be here if you didn't.

>>41476749
There's a gooner pony card somewhere over in /CHAG/ I'm pretty sure.

Since we're off-topic anyway, anyone else think the opening to Gamma Ray's The Silence sound like the MLP theme?

>>41476878
Maybe the first few notes.

>>41476908
The (core of the) MLP theme (which FiM's theme and previous ones are spun off of) is like 5 notes long, and while it's not the same you can definitely feel some similarities in the opening. I'm not saying it's intentional, but it is neat.

Oh, thank God.
This will save me some time.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc1xxvgMIPJ10ZVHnIeldEn-jtvM2jF5v

>>41473986
30 minutes in and this is genuinely better than some stuff the clubs have read. Which is not a high bar, yes, but still.

I love it when I'm reading through the fic and suddenly I *know* what I'm going to open the club with. This one's gonna hurt, though.

>>41477688
During the 12 years since it's been released, I tried to read that shit like 3 times. On my third attempt (and mind you, these were years apart) I managed to go in 20 chapters deep before I gave up. That was my best.
I guess it's either a test for patience readers and the "it gets good 50 chapters in, bro" types, or the ultimate schizo fic, and I just got filtered every time.

>>41477696
Then just start at chapter 50.

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>>41475361
Nice!

>>41477986
Whatever happened to that helmet anyway?

>>41478011
Shattered when the Elements cleansed her?
DYEWTS?

>>41467195
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/50726/changing-the-colorof-apples
>Applejack sipped the cider.
Well i don't know if it's a trollfic or not but it made me laugh for sure, though it was very difficult to actually read

>>41452537
You don't need an alternative for "people."

>>41475463
>doesn't even matter
Cover art's an important marketing point. It's supposed to help set the reader's mental image of the fic when they read the synopsis, to get them more interested, so they'll click on the first chapter. Ideally, you want to pull a scene directly from the fic, but that obviously isn't always possible, so something that thematically fits and that helps that mental image is what authors usually go with.

>>41476012
This may be obvious, but once you've written something, wait a day, then read it and start the real editing and revision process. I've had many cases where I write a scene and it seems great, then I go back to it with a fresh mind and it's shit and has to be completely redone.

Best advice, though, is avoid the instant gratification. It's tempting to serially write a mutlichapter or post the oneshot the second you finish. Don't. Let the oneshot sit and go through it a few times to polish things up and always fully write a multichapter before posting. It's insane how many important changes you make later on that can only be done thanks to redoing earlier stuff.

>>41476683
>me any advice?
Don't? I don't understand edging when simply totally abstaining for three or four days is more than enough to get the dam ready to burst. Then you can fully schedule things to min/max the whole event. I've found temperature and humidity to be especially important in that regard. <60 F and 40-70% humidity.

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>>41478247
>Cover art's an important marketing point. It's supposed to help set the reader's mental image of the fic when they read the synopsis
Honestly if you can't find a picture that fits your fic I still think just pulling pretty art that has colors that fit the tone of your fic works perfectly fine. As long as you don't do something stupid like use something like pic related when your fic has nothing to do with road trips, or deserts, or diners, or anything pictured in it. But if it's just a painting of a twilight sky with the sun setting and your fic is about someone being depressed you could probably get away with it despite having nothing to actually do with your fic. The picture might not match the story, but it summarizes the tone well enough for someone to feel both drawn in by the picture and not upset at it after they read the story.

>>41471417
>DB is also planning to reform the changelings, reform Starlight Glimmer, retrieve all the magical artifacts from EqG world, stop the Storm King and Discord and Opaline, and a bunch of other things.
Why? If the human is Daybreaker then they could just kill them all and be done with it.

>>41478338
You're equating being human with being a remorseless killer.

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>>41478315
For an example of something I'm going to try out to test my "the emotion and tone the picture conveys is more important than the visual it gives" I'm going to use either pic related or a moodier version of a sunset for a fic about Tempest going to Celestia instead of Grogar. The tone of the fic will be Tempest being in denial about her horn being unfixable, hopeful that Celestia can help her, delusional even after Celestia says no, her slowly growing content with the thought of never being "fixed" and then maybe even give it a sappy ending about her being happier than ever, despite her disability. The dark colors contrasting with the bright sun would show Tempest's growing resentment, self loathing, and depression at her busted horn slowly getting washed away by her hope for the future, with her blinding delusion at believing Celestia can still fix her even after Celestia says it's not possible being surrounded by the dark reality waiting to set in.

Objectively, it's a terrible picture for the fic. The visual has nothing to do with the fic besides the most toddler level "Sun=Celestia" connection you can make, and nothing in that picture even conveys the fact that the story is about Tempest.

But I'm willing to risk my fic being an absolute flop just to test out my theory. It'd be fun to test and see the results of. If the fic does poorly, it's either because of the image or because my fic just sucks. If it does alright, the cover image probably doesn't matter either way. if it juices, I'll assume it's because people are actually so cum-brained that a bright pretty image is literally all it takes.

>>41472948
New headcanon on top of headcanon: The constellation beasts were created by Nightmare Moon.

>>41478356
Literally all of them deserve it though.

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>>41478381
I'd argue Glimmer deserves picrel over death.

>>41478396
Knew what it was gonna be before I even opened the image.

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>>41478359
I'm not sure what kind of data point this is, but I used pic rel for https://www.fimfiction.net/story/550391/requiem-for-a-friend and the fic was not (and is not) a popular success. Arguably it's not a good test of your theory because it both literally depicts the last scene in the fic and because the silhouettes of Octavia and the grave marker make it more specific than a generic landscape. But it's some kind of information; I suspect that if you investigated existing covers thoroughly you might be able to get the kind of data you want.

>>41478396
Someone hasn't heard about anal sex. Aim it right and you can stimulate parts of the vagina.

>>41478410
>https://www.fimfiction.net/user/237915/Silk+Rose/stories
This person is a good example of my theory that having the cover be heavily related to your main story mean absolute nothing. They will regularly (if not always) make the covers have literally every character in them, they will have title on the cover, and they will have the characters be doing something involving the story. Their stories do pretty well, but there is such a wide variety in how well they do that I don't actually think the cover being consistent is heavily affecting it or else they would all be much more similar besides the few break-out fics. Instead they go from around 180 (which is definitely good for such a short fic, but it's not exactly a wild breakout for such a prolific author) all the way down to 16. That's a variable way too heavy for me to believe the cover being topical has a sway over them. All the same genre, all involving the same characters, all with the same exact on-topic setup, and they are wildly flailing all across the board.

So I doubt the cover being on topic matters, but what about it being at least related to the story? What if a fic has literally nothing in common with it's cover, but the cover was pretty enough or made the reader feel similar enough to what they felt while reading the story? Will it also not matter, or will it actually improve it's odds?

>>41478430
It sounds like you've never attempted to read a Silk Rose story.

>>41475290
>neglecting my fic since march
i think im what they call an ideas guy

>>41478452
You're ignoring the point. The quality is the same because it's the same author writing the same characters in the same genre. So now we know the writing quality isn't what's affecting it, since the writing quality stays roughly the same. And we know it's not differing genres changing it, because the genre stays the same no matter what. We know titles and descriptions aren't heavily affecting it, because they write almost all their descriptions exactly the same. And we know it isn't the cast of characters affecting it, because they're all the same characters.

So it's safe to say the cover has nothing to do with the fics getting popular, because despite how similar they are in almost every category they're wildly shifting everywhere. So this means literally the only thing driving their fics popularity is how unique and interesting the prompt itself sounds, which all but proves that descriptions are king in terms of fic growth. But this isn't about how important descriptions are (i accidentally answered this, it's apparently insanely important) but it's about whether or not having an off-topic cover can negatively affect a fic's growth.

We've all but proven it being connected to the fic is strictly neutral and has no sway over it. So let's see what it being completely disconnected from the fic does to it. Will it stay neutral? Make it lower? Go higher? Who knows.

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>>41478430
I think you're overlooking the fact that a lot of those covers are not that great. Look at >picrel for example.
Yeah, the title is nice and big so you can at least sorta get what it says if you look at it on the front page, but that's pointless. The title is right there to the side in a far more readable format.

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>>41478504
Without opening the picture, you can tell at a glance that it's Pinkie and Dash, but you need to actually spend a second or two to actually tell apart the details. And speaking of details. It's far too cluttered.
Sure, it makes sense for there to be random pages with lovey dovey messages. but when you look at it in any small size, it just looks like it has random splotches that make the whole picture feel cluttered and ugly.