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First for best duo!
Enjoy some conveniently packaged Tuna: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/224306/i-watch-the-moon

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Second for best duo!

How's that writing going, Anon?

>>41658494
Good.

>>41658494
Not great. Rewrote a bit of an old draft I have but haven't moved too much further with it.

>>41658485
I can't believe Luna vored Twilight

>>41658494
About to finish my second chapter, but I feel I've had a good slow pace so far and now things are happening too fast.
I'll revise later. I'm too close to ending this chapter.

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>>41658527
An unconventional, yet undeniably effective method of consolidating power.

>>41656518
Hard to say given how shrunken Fimfic's gotten. I'm still in the old "anything under 100 likes is a forgotten fic" 2013 mindset, but most featured fics these days barely scrape together 100+ likes. Right now, I'd say north of 20 likes a few hundred views is pretty successful, but right on the border of the featured box and once featured, you cross triple digits and it's a roaring success.

>>41656877
t. HIV

>>41657777
Based quads.

>>41658494
Still churning along. I think I'm going to have to rewrite how the archmage kills his fellow mages on the council. It's quite brutal at present and doesn't mesh well with how his personality and the previous decade is shaping up.

>>41658814
>rewrite how the archmage kills his fellow mages on the council. It's quite brutal at present
Not sure why, but I just thought of the katana scene in Secret Life of Rarity.

>>41658551
I have the opposite problem. I took a break from a fic for a month or so and am getting back to it. It was pretty slow-paced to begin with and I'm having trouble kicking it into gear.

What's next on the HIE club?

>>41658494
>have three days where I can do nothing but write
>write nothing
>have an hour or two where I need to prepare for something important instead of writing
>write close to a thousand words

>>41658494
Poorly. I'm still unable to pull consistent time because of everything else going on. But those few scraps I've written for my current fic are good and I do want to finish it on time for the contests.
>>41659005
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/243795/arcadia + https://www.fimfiction.net/story/162395/pirate-hats-and-whatnot

>>41658494
It's going.

>>41658494
Not well. A few months ago I overestimated how much time I'd have, and I learned nothing from it. I hope to write a oneshot before the year's end.

>>41658814
>once featured, you cross triple digits
I don't know where you're getting that from. None of my featured fics have come even close to a hundred likes.

>>41659431
Learn to read, anon. The and you cut off is a substitute for if then.

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https://www.fimfiction.net/story/568063/11/little-nightmare/epilogue-princess-celestias-school-for-gifted-unicorns

And fic is done. I don't think I've ever written that much in this past month in my entire life.

>>41659589
Sweet. Now I can finally read it.

>>41659589
Sweet. Now I can finally put it in my Read Later shelf and leave it there for a couple of years.

>>41659602
Me with chrysalis fics.

>>41659607
how do I write ze bug without her becoming a self-insert?

>>41659627
Make another self insert and have THAT guy fuck Chrysalis

>>41659627
Are you ontologically evil?

>>41659654
I'm into logical evil.

>>41659598
And I can finally let it sink in that I wrote an entire fic about Twilight raising a baby nightmare moon. What the fuck am I doing with my life

>>41659666
>Writing a Nyxfic made Satan reconsider his life choices
Deep.

>g% fic written by Dogfucker
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/565067/thomas-the-tank-engine-in-a-new-generation
top zozzle

>>41659691
Why is it always thomas the tank engine

>>41659627
I don't get how this could possibly be a problem.

>>41659725
do you WANT to be the bug?

>>41659024
>a sad story by BlueShift
Well, fuck. I'm ready for it to get existential.

What fics, if any, are good enough to be hypothetically recommend to a normie and stand on their own quality?
That means being good enough on the level of real literature (not just random modern bullshit that's published for the lowest common denominator, but actually good real books), and also impressive enough right from the start to overcome prejudice of "oh it's just some silly internet fanfic".

>>41659589
>Past Sins but nobody is retarded
Pretty good. Not sure what the final chapter was but it was cute.

>>41659942
Twiguard is the first that comes to mind.

>>41659942
'Lost Cities' I'd say, because it takes an already proven concept and just ponifies it. And it's also written by a competent author who didn't fuck said concept up.

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>>41659942
A Boston university once put Background Pony on its recommended reading list. Wouldn't be my first choice but it makes sense, given that it's the best story on the site.
Slight joking aside, I think they're not too wrong: for normies you need something more serious. There are multiple fics that I consider on the level of real literature or above, but a lot of them rely on the knowledge of FiM's world and how it works. That's kind of the thing with fanfiction, you know? Bug on a Stick and Rise and Fall of Sassaflash are incredible in part due to how well they integrate into FiM's world.

If you want something short, Sundowner Season is a really good one, too.

>>41659957
>>41659958
These two as well.

>>41659961
Getting picked by a bunch of pretentious midwits in (((academia))) isn't much of an honor.

>>41659972
I mean, you obviously can and should question them since it's easy to circlejerk yourself into believing some astoundingly absurd opinions, but they're still like the only thing close to a respected authority on the subject. That's their area of expertise. They spend far more time on it than the average person so their word should be worth something.
At least that's the case here. I never quite got the burgers' hate towards higher education. I suppose it's because I'm from one of the countries where they still actually teach you things so I can't relate. And the lack of student debts means people don't get so bitter over it, I suppose.

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>>41659947
>Not sure what the final chapter was
Nightmare Moon is made up of Luna's worst impulses and hatred
The start of that was Celestia being a shitty sister to her
Celestia apologizes, Nightmare Moon merges back with Luna, who forgives her.

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>>41659987
The parenthesis mark the /pol/tard. Division over education is strictly a political issue in burger land.

>>41659942
Cartography of War is another such standalone fic, and exceptionally applicable because it is so representative of what "pony" fundamentally is.

>>41659987
I think it's because the publish-or-perish culture has been a disaster for academia, especially in the humanities. Hard sciences suffer from unreliable, poorly replicated or irrelevant and uninteresting studies all the time; soft "sciences" like psychology have outright replication crises; and humanities are basically at the whims of opinions.

And for things like literature, it's doubly easy for there to be a retarded disconnect. Books are written, primarily, for normal people to read and enjoy, not for academics to dissect - unless you're writing esoteric self-wankery. But that almost always means your wankery ends up being a bad book for normal people to read. What's more important, the three layers of metaphors and contemporary social commentary you've woven into your word vomit, or the enjoyment of an average educated reader looking for some entertainment?
Now if you have both a thoughtful and deep narrative AND are still readable and entertaining, that's great. But even then, a "literature professor" will probably ignore that second point almost entirely if they analyse your work.

That's not to say that that's always the case, or that literary critique is always useless, or whatever. Just that this is where the stereotype comes from; and honestly, if I want an opinion on a book for reading for my own enjoyment, I probably won't ask a professor of literature about it.

>>41660028
Right but does that mean that Nyx still has all her super magic?

>>41660068
I mean yeah but it's irrelevant? This was a one shot because Ohio sucks.
Luna absorbs the black Lost evil cloud monster instead of Nyx's Nightmare bits is the point.

>>41659942
Just take all of the popular stuff. That's what'll get the normalfag audience.

>>41660071
The most popular fic on the site by likes are Fallout Equestria and Past Sins though.

>>41660107
Exactly.

>>41659942
LiaL is the obvious answer but it's also the right one.

>>41659942
Damn, I really wanna say Dowas+FS but there's just a few things that make them not-quite-perfect enough to be recommendable to normies.

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>>41660050
>What's more important, the three layers of metaphors and contemporary social commentary you've woven into your word vomit, or the enjoyment of an average educated reader looking for some entertainment?
See, you're already making certain assumptions there, namely that "average educated reader" is the most important target group. That's just a completely subjective opinion, not a fact; you're assuming it's true because that's the group we're in. Just by being in this thread, you probably have at least slightly more sophisticated taste than the average person. The so-called "masses", if you want to be dramatic about it. But that average person could raise the same argument back at you and say that your examples of "good writing" are shit if it's not all laid out as plainly and indulgently as possible. To those academics, we probably look like the AiE enjoyers appear to us; only the bar is slightly higher. Coming back to your main point:
>Books are written, primarily, for normal people to read and enjoy
They're not. They're written for the widest possible group to read and enjoy. I don't think it's very controversial to say that the most popular books are intentionally written in a way that would lead to us calling them garbage, but you cannot do that while also claiming that the disconnected academics' opinion is wrong.

Mind you, I usually tend to be on your side of this argument. What slightly changed my mind was when I saw an article that stated that—I'm paraphrasing, though I'm staying true to its message—Lovecraft was a terrible writer because his writing is simply inaccessible to modern audiences. And this is the same Lovecraft who published his work in literal pulp magazines, literally the most "for the masses" form of writing there was (not that he didn't see the irony of it).
>if I want an opinion on a book for reading for my own enjoyment, I probably won't ask a professor of literature about it
Same, but to me, that doesn't mean that their opinion is "worse", just that I'm probably not educated enough to appreciate it. To provide a different example, I don't get a bunch of modern art. If you want to be cynical about it, you can claim it's all just social posturing and money-laundering or whatever, but I've talked to enough people who were really passionate about it to believe there's more to it than just that and you simply must spend more time learning to appreciate it.

>>41660261
Say more about the good and bad.

>>41660276
I said educated reader as a conservative concession, so you couldn't say "oh if you're writing drivel for the lowest common denominator your writing is worthless too". Change that to "average reader" if you'd like.

And I don't think it's the same argument. The difference is in deconstruction vs. enjoyment. An academic that praises a book for its deep layered themes isn't praising it because he read it over a couple of afternoons and had a good weekend because of it; he's praising it because it gave him a bunch of points to write in a paper or critique.

What a drooling normgroid reading pulp trash and an "educated" individual reading "sophisticated" literature over a weekend have in common is that they're both reading as entertainment, and would rate a book good if it was entertaining to them. You can argue (or not) who has the most valid opinions, but it's fundamentally different to a critic or literature professor who will read books as a job and try to find novel smart-sounding stuff to write about them, again, as a job.

>>41660302
Are the literature critics in the room with us right now?

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>>41660057
>check it again
>picrel is gone without a trace
I suppose Manblow learned his lesson with the Hillary panel.

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>>41660310

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>>41660289
It's a quarter million words.
It's a quarter million words, [Dark].

>>41660337
The difference is I'm right.

>>41660289
>the good
I found it very, very engaging. The world-building is phenomenal; it's nothing particularly esoteric or involved, but it's all very solid, fits together perfectly, and the author does a fantastic job of showing-not-telling and painting this vivid and detailed picture of the world in a very natural and seamless manner. This kind of stuff, IMO, is a basic requirement to classify as "good literature" (to a bar above "good fanfic", for which it's enough to be enjoyable while having excusable flaws), so what I'm saying is that Dowas does indeed hit that bar. I was immersed in the alien sci-fi world, with its unique rules and setup, just as seamlessly as I was when reading e.g. Dune.
The characters are great. Well, I actually didn't find the two MCs, Fusion and Gravity, particularly memorably stellar, but they're certainly great enough that I have no complaints; they do have good character growth throughout the fic, they're written in a very believable manner, etc. Where I think the fic really shines is with its dog characters. The fic mirrors the show in that the ponies are very human-like (because, in the show, they're of course meant to let the viewer connect with them directly), while the dogs have much more alien mannerisms - again, in the show it's because they're a gag species, but the books run with it and actually build up an entire believable civilisation with those slightly alien manners and ways of thinking. It's not much - ultimately their motivations and behaviour are not somehow eldritch or particularly obtuse - but just their unique speech patterns and small tidbits of their culture are enough to set them apart as fascinatingly unusual, all without being so much as to be jarring. It also fits absolutely perfectly into the framing of the plot; it highlights the sheer separation between the dogs and the "client species", and of course the ponies are the ones who survive and build Equestria in the end, and the ponies are the protagonists, so it adds to the immersion into the ponies' PoV of the dogs just being a fundamentally different, separate society; more than "just another species on the planet (that happens to be dominant)". Given the role of the dogs - with their society basically operating as slavemasters to multiple other entire species - the story also gives some very interesting opportunities for the dogs' characters to shine in how they deal with it. Korn, Vanca and Orgon all have such deeply different attitudes, but each of them is understandable and perhaps even empathisable with; and all the various other minor dogs are also very good portrayals, from the thoughtless ones (that believe they're doing absolutely nothing wrong) to the empathising ones to the ones just trying to survive the day (and who may never have worked with the ponies).

>>41660386
The action is pretty good throughout. This ties into my point about the worldbuilding, but I really enjoyed all the sci-fi fights, battles and action scenes. The magitech is great and very self-consistent (at least I never had any reason to stop and think about anything feeling illogical). Now I'm not a sci-fi connoisseur specifically, so I don't necessarily know how this measures up in the wide scheme of sci-fi tropes specifically, but to me it was the perfect balance between handwaving enough details to avoid either bogging down the narrative or introducing implausibilities, while also providing enough explanations to make everything feel very grounded and, generally speaking, awesome in the classical sense of the word.
Anyway, back to the action, another big point in favour is how dynamic the plot is throughout the book - the scale is constantly shifting, and so the action is constantly different. A small response team, a large and well-equipped gunnery team, a large reaction force with heavy vehicles, a military base with its equipment and defenses, a medium scale air force deployment, a large scale Hive military, a small superweapon, a large superweapon, a planetary bombardment, a multi-base concentrated fire Hive military engagement being used as a distraction... and it doesn't even end there, but you get the point. The situation is constantly evolving, in a very believable way, but as a result the action is constantly fresh and constantly new. New tech is used, new deeper aspects of the Hives' military, technology and culture are revealed, you gain more sense of scale of just what their society is like.
Speaking of scale, the geopolitics are worth highlighting as well. Really, it's a story about a conflict, and I think the conflict is laid out excellently. It escalates very believably, the leaders all handle it believably, it's just all very engaging and the plot is driven forward very, very well. The layers of politics permeating everything at the higher echelons are very plausible, and again the author excells at show-don't-tell by giving us a detailed enough understanding of both Hive and global leadership structures that we can understand very well the various forces in motion there, without ever there being any boring exposition.
Oh, and another thing to praise on the worldbuilding side is how well multiple hive cultures are shown. Well, two - I'd have liked to see more out of curiosity, but it just wasn't necessary for the plot and would've bloated it. But, while most of the story happens in Lacunae and we get to know it very well, the little we see of Baur is nevertheless evocative enough to really build a contrast and, through that, also highlight just how strong the global fragmentation into the Hives is.

>>41659453
>”and” means “if-then”
No wonder it makes no sense.

>>41660412
It's a very basic thing you'd be familiar with if you read anything other than HiE slop.

>>41660390
Now
>the bad
I think, for me, most of my complaints are going to be around the ending. Now don't get me wrong, personally I thought it was phenomenal, but there are still a few issues with it. As far as recommenting it to normies goes, obviously, because the stories are from pre-Equestria, there are tie-ins at the end that don't really serve much purpose except to demonstrate how things came about in the show; to a reader not familiar with ponies, they'd seem either as somewhat irrelevant asides (like the Baur Royal Guards), or in some cases as just outright unsatisfying lose ends. Like what happens to Vanca and the other dogs, with their newfound gem-obssession. To someone who hasn't seen the Diamond Dogs from the show, they're just be left with questions about wtf happened to the dogs, and what was the point of the gem brainwashing.
Or, like, the entirety of Discord.

The other issue is that the ending does have a few weird things about its plot. Most of the books are pretty watertight, self-consistent and leave little to no room to second-guessing what happens; but, in the last hours, as everything gets resolved, I can still think of at least two things I'm unsatisfied with. Yes, I'm the anon that initiated half a thread getting flooded with spoilers a week or two ago. And what I'm talking about are firstly Strix, and why they could't heal the horns; and secondly again the precise way in which Baur managed to cause armageddon, which I can kind of accept but still could've used more explanation I think.

Another thing I think might be iffy for the story standing entirely on its own is the entire framing with the Pattern: I honestly don't know if it's a fantastic worldbuilding device or an unnecessary cosmological distraction. Especially when, again, normies wouldn't have the connection to Equestria, which for us I think justifies it more because we get to see literally how Equestria was made; for a normie, it's just a plot device and nothing more. 98% of the plot is completely disconnected from all that; tweak a couple of small plot points, and a chunk of the ending of course, and you could have a story that keeps again almost the entirety of the actual meat, and everything that made that meat good, but with a very different overarching framing device without all the esoteric, lovecraftian cosmology.
So is it a good plot device? Maybe, it very well might be, but "maybe, it very well might be" is still a stark contrast to "excellent", "stellar" or "fantastic" as I've described the various other aspects of the story. I personally of course enjoyed it for the Equestria backstory, but - well, I'm repeating myself.

>>41660493
And lastly its length. It might be a good or bad thing, but at almost 650k total words it is very much on the longer side of things. I for one am a sucker for good long stories, but "real" books tend to be a good bit shorter, so I don't know if it would be a dealbreaker but it's definitely a departure from the standard. The entirety of the Lord of the Rings is about 450k. The six main Dune books add up to 840k but I don't know how many people treat them as one inseparable work; just Dune itself is like 190k.
So, to anyone used to IRL books, it will definitely seem very long.

>>41660499
Oh, I said lastly, but I forgot to also mention that I'm uncertain on whether I'd rate Fusion and Gravity as "stellar" at all times. Again, very good and no complaints, but specifically in terms of how they handle the conflict, the pain and losses and difficulty that comes with it - I don't know if I'm sold or not on it being up to an exceptional standard. As an autist, I think I'd need a second opinion here.
But for example, in the Lord of the Rings I found the portrayal of Frodo being burdened by the Ring very convincing, as was his suffering and mental degradation by the time of their reaching Mordor. In Dowas/FS, there's a few times where the sisters introspect or try to deal with the absolute whiplash of going from peaceful brainwashed slaves into fighting and leading what effectively becomes a war - but by and large the focus is on them stepping up to the role of warriors. Is it good? Are they portrayed as being too strong? Iunno. On a similar note, we see very little of the rescued masses of ponies dealing with the shock of their situation; we're shown some individual cases but precious little about how the big herd as a whole is dealing.
The story's focus is on the war, and the Sisters fighting it. Which is fair; lengthy descriptions of restless ponies getting pacified back home would've dragged it down, probably. Also, I do have to give credit where due: for the main characters we do get close looks at, their coping with losing the Blessing and the reactions to the deep worldview shock that that is are handled fantastically in pretty much every case, with impeccable characterisation. It's really just the Sisters' handling of war (and later global war, then global armageddon, then literal cosmic armageddon...) that I'm not 100% convinced by. Especially at the end of all things; the last chapter provides some timeskips so maybe we skip over any introspection, but it reads like the Sisters just decided "alright, guess that's what things are like now, I suppose we just have to work with what we've got!" and that was that. I dunno, maybe they're just built different so that's exactly what they did.

>Nyx fics
>No Dyx fics

>>41660534
There's one that's a Past Sins mini sequel but that's it.

>>41660444
Normally I'd say that trips win the argument; but since even you can't explain what you meant, I win by default.

>>41660534
Dyx is for dyx.

>>41660599
The sentence is equivalent to
>Right now, I'd say north of 20 likes a few hundred views is pretty successful, but right on the border of the featured box and once featured, if you cross triple digits then it's a roaring success.
This is not at all a strange or unusual construction. It's easily observed in a sentence such as
>you make a few cakes and no one calls you a baker, but you fuck a goat once and everyone says you're a goat fucker

>>41660645
Oh, I get it. The sentence is both ungrammatical and stupid. First of all, there's a comma missing after "featured box." Second, your example is irrelevant because it doesn't have a clause like "once" that introduces a conditional. Third, think about what this means:
>Once featured, you cross triple digits and it's a roaring success
I'll spell it out for you. It means:
>If you are featured, then you cross triple digits and it's a roaring success
It does not mean:
>After you are featured, if you cross triple digits, then it's a roaring success
And if it did mean that, you'd be saying that after a story is featured, then if it also crosses triple digits, then together those facts mean it's a roaring success. Which is stupid, because whether or not triple digits make it a roaring success is not contingent on whether it was featured first.

>>41660694
You're stupid.

>>41660700
>ad hominem
I win. No more responses from me!

>>41660710
You can smell the twitter on this post.

>>41660632
She's a foal.

>>41660694
>It does not mean:
It does actually. Consider:
>Once you leave Wales, fuck a sheep once and everyone says you're a sheepfucker; not so back home.

>you'd be saying that after a story is featured, then if it also crosses triple digits, then together those facts mean it's a roaring success.
That's exactly what he's saying.
>Which is stupid, because whether or not triple digits make it a roaring success is not contingent on whether it was featured first.
No, but practically speaking you will (almost) always get featured after 100 likes, assuming you get them soon after publishing. In fact, that anon literally says you just about get featured after 20 likes. So putting it all together, his sentence can be read as:

>At around 20 likes, you are on the cusp of getting featured. Therefore, if you get more than 20, you will get featured. After you get featured, if you then go on to reach triple digits, then it's a roaring success.
Simple as, and it should've been obvious to you on first reading, unless you're retarded. It's both perfectly grammatical and not stupid at all.

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>>41660518
That's an excellent series of posts, and I'm inclined to repost them with a few edits >reviews, since the review site could use it. Of course, without the comments directly pertaining to >>41659942

A couple things I'd add:
You already said the worldbuilding is fantastic, and it is, on many levels. One way you didn't mention is that that the magic system is exceptionally well developed and thoroughly thought out. Although it says this in the description, the specific blend of magitech in this fic is superb and I doubt there's any fic that even competes with it.

There are a couple issues with the worldbuilding. One is an excess of detail, there's too many prestressed concrete these things and monocrystalline those things. The metric time also is bad, and furthermore doesn't fit with the basically yard-and-a-half nonsense "lengths." Those specifically are not the right way to add alien units to your world.

Another thing that belongs in a proper review is the tension. The excess of tension is a problem, you already started on it with Strix, but the sisters plot armor shows up in more ways than just that. They get into impossible situations. Fusion should've had all the doors closed on her when she was paralyzed, and if either somehow survived that, well, the title "Nothing Gets Out of Naraka" should've applied to one of their successful traps. The dogs were appropriately prepared for a revolt, given the razor's edge they walk. I don't find that aspect of the story entertaining to talk about, because like Strix, there is a point A at the beginning and a point Z at the end, and they had to be connected, but the issues on the path aren't absent.

Going back to the normie discussion, though: besides the length, I know from experience that it's too dark to recommend with any meaningful freedom. "The pony will stand on the pad." is a powerful line, and I love it, but the fic immediately sets out to evoke powerful emotions. Those emotions are not the "safe" kind, either, and that's before Gunnulf joins the fray.

>>41660913
Consider instead:
>Once you suck a dick, you're a lifetime faggot and you won't go to Equestria.
It means:
>If you suck a dick, then two things will happen. One, you will be a lifetime faggot. Two, you won't go to Equestria.
It does not mean:
>If you suck a dick, and if you are also a lifetime faggot, you won't go to Equestria.
>triple digits
If I write a story that gets 100 likes, then as far as I'm concerned that's a roaring success (for 2024) and it doesn't matter whether it gets featured or not.

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>>41660493
About the other ponies, the rescues and Fusion's corral, I don't think the story has any issues there. Like you said, there are a lot of well developed characters from the corral already.

It revolves around the Blessing. Like Blessed ponies, the survivors have only two paths: they will implode or move forward. The story shows both cases, and it's reasonable to predict that almost all of them will move forward. It does require that they have immense psychological fortitude, but that is no problem because the Blessing would have already killed them if they didn't. Their compulsion to be useful combined with the community, the herd drive, is more than enough to keep them going when they've lost everything else. Maybe there could've been perspective within the rescues that's not already covered by Katabatic, Redshift, Spiral and Fusion's parents, but it's already pretty comprehensive. More of the royal guards, maybe? How much more would that add? I do think that a leader perspective would've added a lot, it would've been incredible if it was Merlon, but, you know.

Beyond that, it's similar to my commentary about the end of Cartography. Yes, I want the story to continue indefinitely, but continuing to follow the ponies who are not the sisters is not what the story is about.

>>41660941
Anon, natural language is not a formal grammar, use the fucking context and your brain to parse sentences. The meaning is obvious in both cases and you are a retard for not being able to figure it out.
Besides, "you cross triple digits" is something you do, lending itself well to the "you do X and suddenly consequence Y" if-then construction. "You're a lifetime faggot" is something that you are, so cannot possibly make sense in that construction.

>If I write a story that gets 100 likes, then as far as I'm concerned that's a roaring success (for 2024) and it doesn't matter whether it gets featured or not.
Yes but I explained in my last paragraph why this makes sense in the context of that anon's post. Again, he's saying you'll get featured at around 20 likes. Given this (it may or may not be wrong, but it's grammatically and semantically sound), "once you get featured"/"after you get featured" also implies "after you get 20 likes".
And if you write a story that gets 100 likes, it will necessarily have gotten 20 before that, whether you like it or not.

>>41660914
I did mention the magitech but might have forgotten to mention the magic, yeah. Absolutely agree there. When I wrote magitech, what I really meant to say is that both the magic AND the tech are fantastic. I agree with everything you said about magic, and I loved the tech too. Though this is where the disclaimer of me not usually being a sci-fi autist comes in, maybe the tech level and descriptions are pretty standard somehow or follow a common trope, I don't know - all I know is that I loved it and it works perfectly for the story as far as I'm concerned.

Though also reading it recently in 2024 made mentions of "expert systems" really funny. When Dowas was started in 2012, AI was mostly an academic subject and while expert systems are old, it probably didn't matter too much for readers' perception. Today, it suddenly seems odd the dogs don't have fully autonomous assistants. How the world changes.

>One is an excess of detail, there's too many prestressed concrete these things and monocrystalline those things
Funnily enough I almost agree with you, but for neither of those examples; for me it's everything being fullerene or some measure of ceramic that kind of stood out. But I didn't really mind all that much because some materials are just going to be the best they have and are going to be their manufacturing staples, and that's normal. If it was set in the real world, "concrete" would've been just as ubiquitous as "fused stone" and "armorcrete" is in the story, and "aluminium" some buzzword of "engineering steel" for a staple metal.
Maybe it just appealed to my personal autism somehow.
>the metric time also is bad
Major skill issue on your part. ...Though I suppose it would scare away normies, yeah.
Wait, are lengths some yard-and-a-half? Where is that explained? Throughout the entire story, I assumed a length was a meter, thinking the story was just using SI units in disguise (such as SI-prefixed time measurement).

>excess of tension
Right, good point I forgot to mention. The story is about conflict and escalation, but as a result you're reading 600k words of an ever-escalating conflict and there's very little room to just breathe.
The Sisters felt that way too, so I suppose it's a feature. But still, the story is absolutely packed and intense, and not necessarily everyone will enjoy that.
>plot armour
I didn't mind that too much; the entire story is literally about two ponies with plot armour. For goodness' sake, by the end of the story they become wardens of the universe itself (adjusting for the stuff they "knocked loose"), not to mention the closest thing to gods left alive after Discord. I don't really think there's any specific moment I can point to and say it was too much or too illogical or they shouldn't have survived this - as far as I'm concerned everything is plausible.

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>>41660983
Right at the very, very beginning, it says lengths are the average height of a Master. Simultaneously, the Masters as a species have the same degree of polymorphism as IRL dogs. So, like, what does that even mean? I do think most people reading it equated lengths to meters, just because it's bad in such an out of place way.

>>41660983
>too dark
I don't know, I don't think that alone is a dealbreaker. Dark is a genre; some people like reading trashy romances, some like reading dry historical fiction, why wouldn't a dark story be good?
Lolita is considered a classic masterpiece and it's literally about a child groomer acting unopposed. A bit less... world-ending themes than Dowas, but plenty dark on a small scale. Dickens wrote a grab-bag of absolutely miserable stories; Dostoevsky is regarded as one of the world's greats and his writing is basically about illustrating the depressive slavic life.

>>41660950
Fair points. I didn't necessarily mean having more individual viewpoints; but just more of a perspective on what it took for the ponies as a whole to move on. At times, it almost felt video-gamey: they obtained X units, passed a skill check to avoid revolts or unrest upon arrival, and now they have all these ponies they can use for base-building tasks no questions asked.

I don't necessarily know how to fix it. Maybe I wouldn't have had this complaint if, say, there were visible dissidents, and some ponies were busy with keeping the peace - rather than just everypony putting their heads down and getting to work under Grav and Fusion.
I suppose ponies do have a drive to be useful, and aren't naturally rebellious. (Hello, Gravity and Fusion? Maybe they're an exception, or driven to the breaking point by the circumstances with no other option, while the other basecamp ponies did have the option to stay quiet, I suppose.)
The gryphons come to mind - we see visible disagreement and a rebellious faction vying for power and having to be placated for order to be kept. And the gryphons were way better off, too, all things considered. But I suppose the gryphons are naturally more warlike than ponies maybe, can that explain why they all fell in line? Maybe, but still, that's where I'm coming from.

Surely Random couldn't have been the only one who wanted to "go back to the Masters". How many ponies might have decided they'd rather trot south until they find civilisation again? None, apparently, none wanted to go back enough to act on a plan like this. How many considered it, or something like it? How many talked about it and got dissuaded by their fellows, or had a similar stupid idea and had to be talked down? We aren't told at all; might as well have been none (even if it probably wasn't, but we're left guessing).

>>41661007
Ah, fuck, you might be right. Yeah, that sounds dumb - literally imperial system tier unit of measurement, in a super-advanced society that had eschewed even the sexagesimal time reckoning. Feels completely out of place if so.

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>>41660534
I've got one loosely planned, but the Dyx lore is a mess and I haven't done enough research yet.

>>41661027
There's no lore.

>>41660951
Unlike you, I believe that grammar exists and is meaningful. Here are some more examples:
>Once you've committed >rape, you get chased by the ponice and it's all over for you.
>Once you've published, you wait for feedback and it's a long time coming.
>Once you've sucked a dick, you become OP and your waifu leaves you.
I don't know why you seem to think that "and" means something other than "and," but you might want to stop humiliating yourself.

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>>41661017
>why wouldn't a dark story be good?
I'm talking about the slavery, it's not just any slavery. I think that, when it comes to dark stories, people are generally prepared to read about miserable people in miserable situations, but that's not DoWaS. Typical slavery stories are about robots, where the slave is up and coming, but not quite there yet. Or they're about regular slavery where the enslaved is a peer, an underdog just looking for a chance to break out.

DoWaS' first punch makes it clear that the ponies are better than their masters right from the start. Not only are they beautiful, inside and out, but their duress has made their culture beautiful as well, before even getting to their physically foundational role in society and the relative irrelevance and ugliness of the dogs. The second punch shows the callousness with which the ponies are spent, and a third is simultaneously delivered in the way the ponies have completely internalized their inferiority. And again, that is all with Fusion, her corral, Korn and Vanca, well before the rest of the cast joins. I expect you will have a tougher time listing media that will have prepared someone for that.

>We aren't told at all; might as well have been none.
To the limited degree that this is covered, I think that Fusion's last two conversations with Helium Flash give the answer to this. It doesn't exactly break down the mental processes of everypony, but it's not nothing. As to the rest: the herd.

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>>41661150
Just because this is such a good picture for this post and I just saw it.

>>41661027
Pen Stroke did a Dyx fic where she's called Helia but it's in the future when she's like 30 and a single mom. Cozy Glow tried to resurrect her, that's about it for lore.

>>41661184
>single mom
Such beasts do not exist in utopian Equestria.

>>41661227
Rarity

>>41661227
All of the mane 6.

>>41661228
Not much of a mother to her bastard 'sister'.
>>41661232
Dash? Maybe. Not the rest.

>>41661227
A utopian society would have plenty of milfs for you to fuck, guilt free.

>>41661239
I can do that just fine with their husbands sitting in the corner.

>anon replies to your post
>another anon replies to his before you can
>they proceed to argue with each other for a dozen posts
Probably my favorite 4chan phenomenon.

>>41661241
Then they're not a single mom, are they genius?

>>41661276
>are they genius?
They're certainly smarter than you.

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>>41661283
I know that's why I called him a genius.

>>41661049
>>41661184
Clearly, I'm planning to write a story where Dyx is pregnant with two of her little hellspawn, and there's very little information written down about the dozen or so OCs made from magical lesbian relationships.

>>41661227
Sure, but foals are left orphans instead

>>41660386
> The fic mirrors the show in that the ponies are very human-like (because, in the show, they're of course meant to let the viewer connect with them directly)
That's despite being literally horses (whiskers, eyes on the sides enough to see an enemy approaching from behind, no hoofual dexterity).

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>>41661274
Happened to me with Lunaflag and his regression stuff a few days ago

>>41660493
>without all the esoteric, lovecraftian cosmology
The Pattern is likely borne out of trying to find a believable justification for "Celestia and Luna literally move the relevant heavenly bodies around, and Luna controls the stars which is a headcanon but hey but it's still a cosmology where space exists". So the answer is pocket universe.
>>41660499
In this particular case the length is fine. It doesn't waste any of the words (besides the ending's copout which wasn't actually necessary, just give the ponies back their power and still have genetic component - can heal the horns and wings, can't give them back to the foals - or give back agelessness to the adults), unlike stories like FoE.

If you have ever written anything and published it online, it has been scraped by bots and used to train A.I.
(You) did it for free.

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>>41661601
And it's a good thing, no? Not that technically contributing a tiny amount to AI's knowledge is something to be proud of per se, but it's an oddly nice thought to know that a sliver of it will forever persevere in the networks. And since my writing is good, it also made them better, obviously!
>(You) did it for free.
Anon, we're writing fanfiction here. We're always doing it for free.

>>41661601
Your post was scraped too, btw

>I exercise corrective rape upon Tunafag, so he stops having his horrible opinions
Fics for this feel?

>>41661649
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/508109/

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/568040/indiana-jones-and-the-daring-daughter
>an Indiana Jones/MLP crossover with Daring Do
I didn't see that one coming, yet it makes so much sense. How comes it was never done tho, up until now?

>>41661668
Because it's doesn't just "make sense", it's a cheap premise. Do is already FiM's Indiana Jones and she's one of the most blatant references in the show. Crossing over with Indiana Jones feels lazy, more than usual for crossovers even.

>>41661668
One of the highest rated Daring Do stories is a crossover with Indiana Jones

>>41661148
>I don't know why you seem to think that "and" means something other than "and,"
It means exactly "and", you just don't understand "and".
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/and, 2a

>Here are some more examples
Anon please explain to me deeply how the fact that a word has one sense, and you can provide examples of that, disproves any other possible usage of the word

>>41661461
Oh I agree about the Pattern, but again, this was borne out of a question of "would you recommend it to normies". Normies won't have that context about Equestria.
Pocket universe is still cool, of course.

>>41660493
>unnecessary cosmological distraction
It's this. Certainly this.

>>41660518
The weakest characters are the griffins. You could skip every scene where they are a viewpoint character and the fic would improve.

>>41661856
I never really had a problem with them. Conceptually, I really like the idea of showcasing multiple "client species" to really drive home the dogs' modus operandi, and it also played off as a pretty nice contrast between the mind-controlled, docile ponies and the externally-controlled, resentful and freedom-loving but battered into submission gryphons.

In terms of characters, I think they're not my favourite - the three main dog ones are probably up there instead - but I didn't really have an issue with them either.

>>41661778
Can't we all just agree that you can't write and he can't read? Faggots.

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>>41661856
Cherin and Lakau are the weakest characters, but something tells me you wouldn't know.

>>41661951
NTA but I completely forgot they existed, took me a little while to remember who the fuck you're talking about
That being said, I don't know if a throwaway POV just to illustrate a one-off scene really counts. They might as well be nameless, as far as "characterisation" goes.

The weakest character for me definitely has to be Five.

>reread a fic
>notice major but of foreshadowing early on
It's a good feeling.

>>41662034
>When the fic ties its themes together at the end
Feels good

>>41661421
Scootaloo was better off without those two fuckers

>>41662088
Examples?

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>>41662091
>tfw forgotten

>>41662118
it's a good thing bright mac managed to impregnate his daughter before he kicked it.

>>41662110
my fic

>>41662186
Shill it so I can downvote it.

>>41662190
>he doesn't like themes

Fuck themes, fuck concepts. My characters exclusively communicate in the primordial song of early man.

>>41662230
>singing about men
kinda gay, bro.

>>41662233
Anything primordial is pretty gay man, haven't you read any creation myth?

Man early fimfiction must have been wild. You could write any old piece of shit and still get tons of likes.

>>41662245
>his world wasn't even created from a duck's egg breaking apart
Let's all point and laugh at him.

>>41662274
>rape baby world

My world was created by the sun sending his son and daughter to plunge a golden rod into the most fertile valley they could find.
Can't think of anything more straight than that.

>>41662285
>incesty half-futa
hmm...

>>41662281
Wanna read a fic about how duck sex isn't rape?

>>41662287
>half-futa
I don't know where you're getting that from.

Duck Dyx

>>41662291
if the girl has custody of the fertility stick, doesn't that make her a dickgirl?

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>>41662300
Sun God, no. She's just following her brother-husband's lead. He's the one with the rod.

>>41662301
>penis envy.jpg

>>41662304
There were no Jews in South America until well after the Inca Empire fell. So you take your Hebrew Mind Magic away from me.

>>41662301
Hi, Zaid.

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Wednesdays and Thursdays are tough for everyone, I see.

>>41663357
the post-nut clarity hit me like a bus of bricklayers today. I'm shook to my core and ready to vomit out some angst.

I wanna read a good long Luna romance fic.

>>41663473
This one's pretty good.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/213853/the-gentle-nights-audience-of-one

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>>41663473
Here you go, https://www.fimfiction.net/story/247622/twilight-good-night

>>41663473
This one's super old, but really nice.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/17909/lunas-day-out

>>41663519
Hey, Tunerd. Have you read this one?
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/338/spark

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>>41663551
Yeah, >>40234079

>>41663566
>that swerve
Damn. What a pity. The guy's other stories aren't like that. I suppose some weirdness was expected from someone's first fic.

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>>41658476>>41658494

Hello! I genuinely hope all your days are going well. It's been a long while since I posted anything, in that time, I've gotten a shit load of practice at writing. Writing by hand in prison, actually. But you should be thankful I went there, because I ended up writing this!:

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/568356/midsummer-meetup

I think it's a really good story, and I'm very self critical. But I must receive feedback! Did you enjoy it? Did you laugh? Did you go "Oh shit!'? Or maybe you thought it was shit? I want to know and I want you to enjoy it.
Once more, have a good day anon.

>>41663649
Did you find your muse in the big house

>>41663649
-HOLD ON!-
(It's still awaiting approval)
I'm sorry plz wait.

>>41663649
Why were you in prison? Did they catch you fiddling fillies?

>>41663649
>I must receive feedback!
It sucks. By the way, when am I going to be able to read it?

>>41663657
Well, until it's out, tell us what it is about. Sell us on your fic, Anon.

>>41663682
Thankyou for the interest! It's called Midsummer Meetup. Every year, friends and family gather at Apple Acres for a get together. They all bring desserts, it's pretty fun. The CMC are playing tag through the shrub when Scootaloo tries to fly and crashes into a bush. The bush goes: 'Oof' There's some freaky shit going on and the ponies don't understand. *Queue ancient aliens theme*

>>41663655
I didn't find my muse as much as I found ZERO distractions, extreme boredom and sensory deprivation, and far, far, far too much free time.

>>41663659
No. I was a troubled teenager who smashed and burnt things and they caught me as an adult, so I was charged as an adult.

>>41663681
Thanks for the preliminary psychic feedback anon!!!!! I don't know when you'll be able to read it, but the last time I submitted a story It only took <24 hours.

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I'm really pleased with how this comic based on one of my Flashfic submissions came out:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/526921/9/short-stories-with-pregnant-ponies/the-most-devastating-insult

Show me what you've commissioned about your stories.

>>41660493
>what was the point of the gem brainwashing
If you mean the part at the end where all the dogs are compelled to go to the temples and look at the EoH, that has a perfectly reasonable in-universe explanation IIRC. The Maker originally split its mind into pieces and gave one to each dog, which is what makes the dogs intelligent. Now something has triggered its failsafe and it's trying to reclaim those fragments (leaving the dogs brain-dead) so it can pull itself back together and see wtf is going on. There's a whole thing about Celestia, Luna, and Discord working together to kill it before it can fully reform because they're all pretty sure it will delete the whole pocket universe once it sees the state of its little experiment.

Or maybe you're talking about something else - it's been ages since I read the fic

>>41663705
>Every year, friends and family gather at Apple Acres for a get together. They all bring desserts, it's pretty fun. The CMC are playing tag through the shrub when Scootaloo tries to fly and crashes into a bush. The bush goes: 'Oof' There's some freaky shit going on and the ponies don't understand. *Queue ancient aliens theme*
I'm intrigued. I'll give it a read once it's out.

>>41663706
>and then I ATE HIM!

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>>41663706
I'm trying to extract value from this shit.

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>>41663706
There was a blemish on Rarity's right ear in the original.

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>>41663706
Done. The rest isn't worth it.

>>41663767
Yes exactly. The problem is that for the dogs that do survive (because Celestia and Luna interrupted the harvesting), we just leave them there and the story ignores them henceforth. Now if you've seen A Dog and Pony Show, you go "ooooh, so that's how they ended up in the state we see in the show". But if you haven't - if you're a normie who has never seen MLP - it probably just feels like a giant unsatisfying loose end that the story just drops for no reason.

We should all thank Tunafag for keeping the general alive.

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For whatever reason you think I Lunapost, you can thank me by putting on this, the best pony's flag and posting pretty Lunas!

>>41664615
But there's no Flurry Heart flag.

>>41664568
*blame

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>>41664062
>>41664068
>>41664071
Thanks for pointing that out. Here's the Flash project file, if you're interested:
https://files.catbox.moe/uzvu02.fla

Here's a version that experimentally replaces the text with doodles.

I just realised that I read Pandemic at like the very start of 2020
And now I just read Dowas right as nuclear war is about to break out

I'm so good

>>41661227
The other mane six were worried about Rarity becoming a crazy cat lady.