How shameful do you think it is to not finish a story? Do you not read a story because its author has abandoned other stories?

>>43223617
Oops, messed up the club fic link. It should be:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/86542/winds-of-change

>>43223618
>>43222587
>Will there be a sequel?
No. Once he joined the military, I knew it was over. Then he got married and had a kid and hasn't logged into his account in three months. It ain't happening.

>Did you like it?
I liked it. Definitely the peak of the "magic is dying" far future genre.

>>43223618
>because its author has abandoned other stories
I almost never pay attention to who's actually writing the story and never "research" them to see what their other fics are like. Only time I click on their other fics are if the one I'm reading is really good and I want more like it.

>>43223618
Not finishing your story is the greatest shame anyone can have. How dare you.

>>43223618
My attitude is that you can end a story at any point with any kind of contrived happening (like your final chapter being everyone dying of a heart attack), so there's no difference between a finished fic and an unfinished fic. A finished fic with a bad, abrupt ending may as well be an unfinished fic that ends on a sudden point.

File: 1753708800959.png (166 KB, 969x1083)

166 KB PNG

Postan for non-Tuna Luna

>>43223617
>Writing only 200 words a day
I'm timing myself now. I didn't even write for an hour yesterday, but I wrote one thousand words. That's pretty good, I think.

>>43223617
>Find decent HiE fic
>Story is decent if a bit generic
>The usual 'Human is treated with mistrust initially' spiel.
>Out of nowhere, Celestia and Luna go from genuinely trying to help the MC, to being comically evil and actually hating him for an undisclosed reason
>MC flees Equestria and goes to either Klugetown or some OC town
>MC then becomes Super Emperor God King of location and gives them modern human tech somehow
>MC waxes poetic about how bad Equestria was and how bigoted the ponies were... while destroying Equestrian Cities and killing large swaths of the populations
>MC ultimately becomes the worst villain in Equestria but claims he's the hero
What causes this? Because without naming fics, I've seen this like ten times in the past week. Four of which were Anthro fics with a Human MC.

File: IMG_6830.png (1.25 MB, 2223x1251)

1.25 MB PNG

>>43223617
>watching a twitch stream and talking in chat while writing
There is absolutely nothing of value on that shithole of a website. No good entertainment. No nothing else.

>>43224037
>What causes this?
Author power/revenge fantasy. People like the idea of inflicting complete destruction against enemies who have wronged them for no warranted reason. Which serves as a justification for absolving oneself of any responsibility for moral conduct or reciprocity with them.

>>43223617
>watching a twitch stream and talking in chat while writing
It was an art stream on Picarto, but yeah, I'm getting better mileage out of just tweaking other things during streams now.

>>43223618
It's deeply shameful. I hate that I even let some get away with me, and now they've gone over a year without a new chapter.

>>43224037
>>Find decent HiE fic
>>>decent
>>>HiE
Your problem is a complete lack of judgement.

>>43224067
>There is absolutely nothing of value on that shithole of a website
Anison Matrix gets streamed there so you're wrong.

>>43224037
>>43224121
Don't forget reading FOUR (4) anthro fics in a single week

>>43224121
The HIE genre is not for the faint of heart. It’s not just about sending humans into the world of Equestria; it’s about transcending the boundaries of fiction itself. Just as you wouldn't expect to stumble upon a Shakespearean play in a high school drama class, or find the nuances of a Tolstoy novel in a community book club, you simply cannot expect mere /fimfic/ posters to grasp and master the profound depths and soul-stirring complexities of the HIE genre. It's the apex of storytelling. Too intricate, too delicate, too soulful for most to comprehend, let alone capture in writing. The problem isn’t with the genre. The issue lies in its towering grandeur, which is just too monumental for the average writer. We don't lack good HIE stories; we lack the literary giants to pen them.

>>43224125
I don't know what to tell you anon. Big tiddy anthro Celestia just does something to me.

>>43224148
You don't have to tell me anything but you also don't need to act all indignant when you dive head-first into a full dumpster and find some mold growing

>>43224148
Based. Read FiMC.

>>43224162
Link it.

>>43224166
Someone didn't read the OP.

>>43224125
what's the appeal with "anthro" fics? seems pointless.

>>43224174
Lack of imagination and a fetishistic attachment to human limbs.

2017 was almost 10 years ago

>>43224174
People have weird fetishes

>>43224174
Face blindness

>>43224174
I mean I kinda get the appeal.
>Anon likes character
>Anon also likes tits
>Give character human like form but with MLP pony feature(hooves, muzzle, horn, wings, fur, etc)
>Now character is best of both worlds
I also understand why people don't like it. But honestly, I can go either way, seeing as I've beat my meat to Krystal from Star Fox countless times. Both are fine to me.

>>43224199
Ah, but ponies have teats. The only thing ponies doen't have that anthros do is hands and feet, meaning anthrokikes like yourself are hand and foot fetishists

>>43224204
>The only thing ponies doen't have that anthros do is hands and feet
If an anthro pony has feet, the author is doing it wrong. Hands are normal but no hooves is stupid.

File: scientists.jpg (187 KB, 1200x831)

187 KB JPG

29th for best duo! Enjoy this conveniently packaged Tuna: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/429016/vertigo

>>43224204
If an anthro has feet then you just know it's foot fetishists, yeah. But from what I've seen that's usually reserved for visual porn, not literary. I've rarely seen stories of anthros without hooves.

Also
>hand fetish

Speaking of things in HiE fics that are retarded
>Human reveals he is an omnivore.
>Panic, name calling and potential violence ensures
In most instances it's Fluttershy that takes the most offence.. which is retarded because she's probably the ONLY one that'd immediately be understanding about it due to her having animals that she converses with that way meat. Hell she straight up feeds some with some fish that was IN HER DAMN MOUTH. Also, I'm pretty sure Griffins eat meat so yeah.

>>43224166
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/238368/friendship-is-mind-control

>>43224204
>>43224241
The only reason I occasionally enjoy anthro is indeed slender arms and hands. I don't know why but it has something that thick stubby hooves don't.
Also much more versatile for bondage, unfortunately. Ponies doing most things with a vague cartoony hoofgrip makes it much more difficult to restrict their dexterity in any sort of tactile detail and often requires resorting to equally handwavy methods.

>>43224204
I used to not be into feet but I'm warming up to them.

>>43224292
Gonna be real with you.. not a big fan of mind control.

>>43224372
You will be.

>>43224374
No. No I do not think so.

>>43224372
Read it anyway.

Thread's off to a great start, I see.

>>43224037
A large portion of HiE fanfics are influenced by isekai manga and anime, so you can expect there won't be much originality in these works.

>>43224372
Nobody has ever made a good mind control story, but a strange part of me still holds out hope that it isn't technically impossible.
Like how Lord of the Rings is the one good corruption story, I think someone could square this circle.

>>43224469
Yeah, but Celestia and Luna going from good to suddenly being the 'true bad guys' of the world is so fucking retarded. Especially when it happens out of left field with literally zero build up or implication.

File: exactly.png (59 KB, 588x476)

59 KB PNG

Okay but what if Benjamin Franklin arrived in Equestria? Which MILF mare would he get to cracking?

>>43224585
My mom's not a horse, she just gets ridden like one.

>>43224592
but that means she's a horse tbf

>>43224880
Only if she gets paid

>>43224482
What's wrong with FiMC iyo?

>>43224482
>Nobody has ever made a good mind control story
You need some Yu-Gi-Oh.

>>43224482
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/500819

>>43225034
That's clearly evil mind control.

>>43224037
>anthroquestria meets genocidal hfyfaggotry
Truly, a match made in Tartarus.

>144 likes on obvious AI fic
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/589899/hands-that-held-me

>>43224994
It's porn. It's pretty bog standard corruption slop that hinges on OOC. The stakes and tension amount to an uninteresting "mind control chess match" arc with a disappointing ending. I don't like seeing noble characters brought low, which is what so much of the genre hinges on.
Frankly, the bare minimum for even fetish/porn MC for me to read it is if the character has the power foisted on them against their will and proceeds to either
a) not use the power ever, but it's open knowledge they have it, so it hangs over the characters' relationships and pollutes them with gross tensions and unwanted intimacies, or
b) would never voluntarily use it, but are forced by external factors (best of all is natural, blameless ones for which no villain can be pointed to) into doing so and have to responsibly navigate the process with their victims of varying willingness.
In either case, the art requires the requisite angst and tears or I cannot masturbate.

>>43225006
I will give YGO that it's getting there at times. Unfortunately, it is manga.

>>43225034
I choose to believe that you knew I was the dipshit from 2 threads ago who got sucked into rereading Celestia's Relaxing Vacation and are baiting me amidst that awareness. I'm perilously close to being retarded enough, but in the end, nobody goads me into reading torture porn twice in a row.

>>43225163
>I choose to believe that you knew I was the dipshit from 2 threads ago who got sucked into rereading Celestia's Relaxing Vacation and are baiting me amidst that awareness. I'm perilously close to being retarded enough, but in the end, nobody goads me into reading torture porn twice in a row.
It's, without a hint of irony, a good fic with mind control.

>>43225163
Don’t worry. If he goads you into reading torture porn, then that just means that two separate people have done it, not that the same person did it twice in a row.

>>43224037
>decent HiE fic
>Four of which were Anthro fics
>What causes this?
Having shit taste, primarily.

>>43224174
They're the critical porn bridge for normies. It goes I Would Never Masturbate to Ponies > Humanized > Anthro > Pony.

>>43225163
>my bare minimum for fetish porn is for the fetish to never actually be in the story but just be weirdly implied in the background or for the characters to sign detailed consent waivers at the start of the story
That sounds really retar--wait, you're the "I hate torture snuff porn but I read a 400k snuff fic TWICE" anon. Never mind.

>>43225163
Imagine being this retarded.

>>43225627
>or for the characters to sign detailed consent waivers at the start of the story
hey, woah, do NOT put that faggotry on me nigga

>>43225163
>Frankly, the bare minimum for even fetish/porn MC for me to read
These are specific tropes and plot elements you want to see for your personal preferences, not some objective mark of a "good mind control story".
FiMC does have a real OOC problem plus obviously it's anthro. But the rest of your ramblings are pretty much entirely detached from the idea of finding "the one good mind control story".

>>43226021
I figured it was implied that we were delving into preference territory after I said "fetish/porn" and "for me". Genuinely good MC in the literary sense would be none of those things.

>>43226021
>FiMC does have a real OOC problem
Not if you assume the spell is fundamentally evil.

>>43226045
Sure, but that only solves the problem of whether or not it was OOC because the author made a mistake.
It's one thing for a character to act out of sorts to accentuate something being off, another thing entirely for a story's reading experience to just barely feature the presence of the original characterization at all. We read stories about this canon for a reason.

>>43226045
It's been a million years since I read it, but did the spell have any effect on Twilight initially? If so then I suppose it's technically OOC but in a way that is honestly completely natural in a, you know, mind control story.

I suppose you simply cannot achieve in-character characterisation when the entire premise is that every character is under mind control influence.

>>43226078
I feel like this is where I would want to go into a spiel that ICC / OCC are completely arbitrary and matters of perception not concrete reality but the last time I did that a resident poster here got really mad.

>>43226080
I personally don't care about ooc but I don't read some kinds of it. Speaking from personal experience with fanfiction. It depends on my mood and what I'm looking for and I think some people take it too seriously.

>>43226080
I think they can be fuzzy and there are grey areas, but that does not mean that they are arbitrary. Characters have some established personalities and traits; effectively, IC/OOC means "is it believable and natural for this character, with its known and established personality and character traits, to behave this way or do this or that?".
Sometimes a character will act in a way entirely unlike in canon or source material - because the story places the character in brand new and unfamiliar environments. The definition is not about "does this character act exactly like in canon", it's "does this character act in accordance with its established canon personality".
There's also leeway in that in extreme circumstances, or under heavy shock etc., people can genuinely act "out of character", or their entire personality can change due to some extreme emotional event (e.g. grief, distress, stress). This happens IRL too. For one-off events of shock this basically makes them OOC but in a "realistic" way, i.e. not as a flaw, as long as the departure is indeed believable (e.g. Twilight Sparkle committing a serial murder spree due to the mental anguish of failing an entrance exam would still be severely OOC in a bad way). If you're writing about some event that so far undermines a character that it affects their personality then IC/OOC stops applying from an in-universe perspective, but IMO can still be used in discussion in the sense of "I wanted to read fanfiction about Twilight Sparkle, not about the author's 'Twilight Sparkle except striken by grief and therefore basically an OC now' custom character".

Mind control is very directly in the latter category except even lazier in that the character's personality is changed not by some believable traumatic event but basically just by author fiat. It's OOC, not in the sense of being "you should have written it better!", but in the sense of "you set up a story that would make the personalities intentionally unrecognisable", which is fair enough, and also fairly can push away people who are interested in reading about the actual named characters and thus expecting IC writing.

I don't think any of this is arbitrary.

>>43226120
>Twilight Sparkle committing a serial murder spree due to the mental anguish of failing an entrance exam would still be severely OOC
That's what she wants you to believe.

>>43226131
Any fics with this premise?

>>43226143
I guess secret life of rarity, kinda? I don't think exams are involved but otherwise it's kinda that

>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/274373/national-geographic-presents-big-princess-week
This was funny and got me wondering what else there is in the "carnivore alicorns" department? Besides the obvious joke, I mean.

>>43226120
>I don't think any of this is arbitrary.
I think you have a common-sense position, but not one that actually holds up under scrutiny. As in, like, it's very common sense to be like "of COURSE some behavior is believable and natural for this character! Of COURSE sometimes the character will act not exactly like they do in canon, but the question is whether they act IN ACCORDANCE with their established personality!" However, I think any attempt to codify this would fail utterly, and therefore it is arbitrary.

Take Twilight for example. Try to make a rule book defining exactly what behavior IC or OOC. Not only would the spectrum be too vast, but there would be constant argument and debate on more fuzzy areas or even some areas you thought were inarguable. It would become clear that different people have different conceptions of the character. In fact, it may become clear that Twilight within the show was presented in different ways based on who was writing here there. Even in terms of extreme examples - people in REAL LIFE can go on murder sprees and act psychotically in ways nobody would expect. Even their own mother may say, "That was a nice boy. It makes no sense he would have done this. Something had to have happened..." And if real people are this impossible to summarize and predict even for extreme examples, how could cartoon characters?

The more you think about this and the more you try to lay it out in objective terms, the less "common sense" it becomes and the more impossible it is. Like Wittgenstein trying to define the world in his Tractatus. One will find that different people have wholly different ideas on something you thought was obvious. And then it will transform into something very arbitrary indeed: "I know IC and OOC when I see it. If it feels IC to me it is, and if it feels OOC to me it is, and anything which doesn't isn't." And you may be very assured in those thoughts, but it will remain arbitrary.

>>43226848
>However, I think any attempt to codify this would fail utterly, and therefore it is arbitrary.
I'm not really content with "actually exception, therefore no rule", just on the basis that that's a counter to rules existing at all, given that no map perfectly grasps the territory.
Who was talking about codifying this? The point is that you can only have rapelight sparkle slutify her friends so much before many people of any discerning taste would feel *from the perspective of the satisfaction they derive from the story* that they are no longer consuming MLP content about MLP characters in the truth of the thing. That this is a concern is evident without the manufacturer's documentation.
Also it is common advice for new writers to abandon the false appeal of making characters reflect real human complexity, which in its totality is deeply chaotic. A story, as well as a canon of stories, is a thematically focused slice of events and ideas.

>>43226866
Rules and codification is what makes something not arbitrary. I'm about to quote a word, but I do so with the aim of increasing understanding, not with the intention of beating someone over the head with definitions:
>Arbitrary is defined as, Definition 1: chosen decided, etc. seemingly at random or on a whim rather than in a reasoned or methodical way. Definition 2: based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than be necessity or the intrinsic value of something
When I say it's arbitrary and matter of perception, I mean quite literally that it is "decided on a whim" and by "individual preference or convenience" rather than reflecting truth-based analysis. Determining whether a character is IC or OOC is not done in a "reasoned or methodical way" (e.g. codifying what counts or not), but on individual whims, and therefore is arbitrary. If one can't codify or explain through consistent reasoning what determines IC vs OOC behavior then the reality is that one will always just be judging it on a case-by-case basis on whims and personal preferences rather than hard facts. It may be that others of discerning taste will share your preferences, but it doesn't cease to be arbitrary as a result. Just like one may arbitrarily call blue the best color and others may agree.
And the only problem with this is where one mistakes their arbitrariness for "in the truth of the thing." As in reading a mind control fic and making hardline judgments of IC or OOC while losing sight of the fact it was arbitrary all along.
(It's also fairly reductive to say "A story [...] is a thematically focused slice of events and ideas"... That can be a useful framing for beginners, but a story can be anything. Some stories try to represent something in its entirety, some are not very concerned with themes, etc. I wouldn't exactly say that it's a false appeal to make characters reflect real human complexity. That seems like a rather noble goal to me and something which can bear much fruit.)

File: BWOINK.png (688 KB, 2008x2312)

688 KB PNG

>ick ock
what is this, spess?

>>43226848
Fuck me I typed a whole response and then closed it.
>codify
>try to make a rule book
You can't "make a rule book" about anybody, in general. That's retarded. Obviously it's fuzzy and subject to interpretation.
But the fact that it's fuzzy doesn't mean that the entire concept is useless or arbitrary. It's literally the heap/bald man paradox. You can't write a rule book saying whether X grains of sand is a heap or not a heap. But if you take few enough grains, it's not a heap, and if you take enough grains, it's a heap.
Similarly people will have different interpretations. But most reasonable people will broadly agree, and will just stretch each other's grey zones different. Someone's bold interpretation might be someone else's clear OOC, but that's what fuzzy grey zone means.
And there will always be retards who think Twilight Sparkle is literally a trans negro muslim with vitiligo or whatever, but to everyone else this is clearly completely unreasonable. Just like how someone can be deeply convinced that a single grain of sand is actually enough to make a heap, that doesn't make it a heap for anyone else nor make the concept of a heap useless.

>people in REAL LIFE can go on murder sprees and act psychotically in ways nobody would expect. Even their own mother may say, "That was a nice boy. It makes no sense he would have done this. Something had to have happened..."
And they are saying that literally because they recognise these actions as OOC, which is my point exactly.
People can act OOC to themselves, due to internal psychological issues, due to trauma, due to suffering some shock, or whatever. But as you pointed out yourself, this is literally recongisable as OOC - otherwise people wouldn't say "it makes no sense for him, he was a nice boy".
And here you have to take the Doylist perspective: if you're reading a story about Twilight Sparkle and then suddenly she snaps and goes on a murder spree, that's probably not what you as the reader would expect or enjoy from a Twilight Sparkle character. So it might be realistic, some people do snap like that, but it's still OOC which is what matters for the perspective of the story.
I even brought up in my post less extreme examples: like a story about grief changing a pony to be unrecognisable, or a story about mind control (the source of the conversation). These are even more plausible than just randomly snapping into a murder spree. They're still OOC for the purposes of discussing the story, just like a "nice boy" who is at the end of his rope and gives up will proceed to act OOC according to what everyone else knows of him. Realistic but still OOC.

Having a grey zone, having some room for subjectivity and having some debatable cases, does not make the entire classification arbitrary.

>>43226873
>Rules
Rules can be subject to interpretation
>codification
Something doesn't have to be codified to be not "seemingly random or on a whim".

There's a lot of room between "classified subject to interpretation and some debate" and "random or based on a whim". You seem to be taking this as a false dichotomy and saying that if you can't make a rigid legalistic rulebook that can be followed to the letter, this means the decisions might as well be literally random.

Fimfiction has already worked for awhile and the rules seem fine to me. Don't fix what isn't broken

>>43226908
And I'm talking about characterization stuff. There is no reason to start going into the weeds on this stuff. Don't like, don't read.

>>43226886
The arbitrariness appears within your post in subtle ways. First of all, it is completely absurd to say that "People can act OOC to themselves." "Character" is defined by action, so ones actions retroactively define their character. It becomes "in character" the moment someone does something, even if people didn't expect it. There doesn't even need to be a specific reason "changing" them - a boy could always have had a sociopathic streak their mother didn't notice in them, and then acted on it for the first noticeable time in a murder rampage. It makes no sense whatsoever to say that something is OOC merely because one could not expect it. That would make natural progressions of characters like Twilight in the show "OOC" even when canon and logical if one wasn't observant enough. And at that point, one really is just nonsensically describing whatever whim comes to them.

The main arbitrariness I perceive here is "most reasonable people will broadly agree." This almost definitely presumes that you the speaker are among the reasonable, but in any case it assumes a consensus that may not exist. I'd say even reasonable people will often have significant disagreements on basic ideas of IC vs OOC, and that the grey zone is pretty massive. It's important to note here that I'm not calling the concepts of IC or OOC useless - rather, I am calling them arbitrary. It's useful as a way to describe how something feels to an individual - however, it's NOT useful as a descriptor of reality. Calling something a "heap" can be useful in conversation, but if one mistakes their understanding of what a heap is as something truthful or rigorous rather than a whim based on experience, then it becomes a problem. In a sense, I think you are describing various ways in which IC or OOC is arbitrary, but then not feeling comfortable making that leap to accepting that it actually is arbitrary. It comes off a bit like this to me: "Sure there's flaws in this and that way, sure it's impossible to codify, sure individuals will disagree with no means of resolving this disagreement due to it being based on personal perception... But it's not arbitrary!"

My tl;dr would be that, it's not a case of there being "some room" for subjectivity and "some debatable cases," but a HUGE amount of room for subjectivity, and a MASSIVE number of debatable cases.
>>43226892
I think that one should be being to reflect if they imagine themselves to be objective and grounded in reason while unable to codify their positions. I think one shouldn't reasonably be able to say "My observations on something being IC or OOC are grounded in facts and logic" while also being unable to codify them or make consistent rules; clearly one is making a jump from feeling strongly something is true and actually justifying it. There may be more room in the middle than I'm implying, but the human race as a whole would gain a lot from leaning more towards an understanding of their own arbitrariness than not.

>>43226918
>"Character" is defined by action, so ones actions retroactively define their character.
It defines it the moment it happens, but it's OOC based on what everyone knew up till then, if you want to phrase it that way. People recognise "this does not match the person I knew", which is the definition of OOC.
Their character is redefined by this action and the next time they go on a murderous rampage again people won't act like it was unexpected. The only difference here is that fanfiction doesn't redefine the canon character, and in general fiction has different rules to real-life - strange and random things can happen IRL to the detriment of everyone and it's just life, but if an author jumps the shark and writes in something random for no reason to the detriment of the story then we say it's bad writing.

>that boy could always have had a sociopathic streak their mother didn't notice in them
>That would make natural progressions of characters like Twilight in the show "OOC" even when canon and logical if one wasn't observant enough
Was the boy's sociopathic streak that part of his character, or is it just part of his inner world and never surfaced until then?
When talking about fiction, there is no actual brain with neurons firing and defining a psychology; the character is defined entirely by the visible elements of the story. Those elements don't depend on whether you notice them or not (barring retardedly hidden foreshadowing that might as well not be communicating anything tangible - assume the elements are actually present in the story).
The difference with an IRL person is that someone IRL might have something in their psychology that is literally invisible to anyone else, and just act seemingly at random to anyone observing them.

>The main arbitrariness I perceive here is "most reasonable people will broadly agree."
This is basically the concept of "normality". In fact you could define IC as "acting normally, for that character". What is normal, in general? You could have massive arguments here but I strongly reject the notion that normality is arbitrary and "random or based on a whim".
Eating food every day is normal. Some buddhist monk might subsist air, meditation and one meal a week, and that might be the "normal daily life" for that monk but it's not normal in the broad sense.
Twilight Sparkle being a gay negro woman is not normal, no matter how a tranny on tumblr might be convinced that it is.
I don't intend to go into a deep philosphical discussion about normality here, if you truly think the definition of things like "normal" and "reasonable" are completely defined by anyone's whim and fancy then we might have to agree to disagree here.

>>43226918
>Calling something a "heap" can be useful in conversation, but if one mistakes their understanding of what a heap is as something truthful or rigorous rather than a whim based on experience, then it becomes a problem.
Are you saying that the concept of "heap" is arbitrary?
I think we might have different understandings of the word "arbitrary".
>chosen decided, etc. seemingly at random or on a whim rather than in a reasoned or methodical way
A concept defined seemingly at random, or on a whim, cannot be useful for communicating. But people can discuss heaps and broadly agree. People can discuss baldness and broadly agree. If the concept of "what's bald" could be answered seemingly randomly, then discussing anyone's baldness would be utterly useless as you could just answer anything you'd like based on your whims or convenience. But if a clearly bald man states "I'm not bald!", everyone around him will know he's wrong, even though it would be very convenient for him to be correct.

>but the human race as a whole would gain a lot from leaning more towards an understanding of their own arbitrariness than not.
Yeah, I really think you're underestimating the meaning of "arbitrary". Practical communication depends on understanding of broadly accepted concepts. Some of them are context-dependent, some are subjective to a degree. But for millenia, people have gotten around just fine communicating with subjective concepts of things like "hot", "cold", "near", "far", "tasty", "pleasant", "bald", "big", and more. None of these can be "codified", all of them have some degree of subjectivity, all of them have some fuzzy grey zones, and many of them are highly context dependent. Winter in Italy might be cold to an Italian but warm or even downright hot for a Scandinavian.
That does not mean that the meaning is decided "seemingly at random", "based on a whim", "based on personal preference or convenience". It just means the meaning is complex, context-dependent, and somewhat subjective. Not random. If you walk into a sauna and say "this is cold" on a whim, arbitrarily, you will be simply wrong.
Language itself is complex, context-dependent and subjective, and we humans are pretty good at understanding most of it most of the time. If anything that couldn't be rigidly codified was treated as practically random - arbitrary - then communication would be completely impossible.

>>43226972
He's bald?!

>>43226074
Yeah but it's really not that OOC for mid season 3 Twilight to get way too caught up in something and up her own ass about stuff. The only added bit you have to arbitrarily accept is the unaware lesbian premise, but from there it flows as a rather believable "absolute power corrupts" story that's not even that out of line with early show Twilight. If anything the story is rather good at keeping everyone else in character even while under mind control.

Is there anything with Nightmare Rarity and Sweetie Belle?

>>43226886
>Twilight Sparkle is literally a trans negro muslim with vitiligo
Fics for this feel?

>>43227121
Twilight Sparkle is literally a fat retarded autistic schizophrenic adhd ocd anxious trans negro muslim with vitiligo and heterochromia and erectile dysfunction who got all of their limbs blown off by a suicide drone and is now a crippled cucumber.

Lots of discussion over a shitty fetish fic, you mind control fags can get quite pretentious huh

>>43227128
Cripple Cucumber is my favorite filly.

>>43227228
At least it's pretty in-character for them.

>>43227284
>Scootaloo meets her own Lightning Dust when there's a filly who is even more orphaned and disabled than she is

How is that writing going, Anon?

>>43227451
I wrote a space shanty for it

>This mind control story is bad because the characters act OOC
I thought it was a joke/shitpost until it spawned a twenty post argument.

>>43227451
I'm still writing the Daring fetish fic. Every time I get ready to post the next chapter, I end up "editing" in another five hundred words about a fetish thing that happens to the antagonist. Thank god I didn't do that "invincible antagonist that always beats the protag" fetish thing because I'm getting 3x as much fap material from the villain as I'm getting from Daring.

I'm also increasingly thinking the meta strategy is wrong and you actually should post during off hours. When you post during peak, you end up competing with the eight hundred upvote HiE autism crossovers. Might try off hours for my next multichapter.

File: Spoiler Image (750 KB, 1500x1500)

750 KB PNG

>>43227451
My story about a humanized Queen Chrysalis is 4,415 words so far. I added 818 yesterday, but I wasn't writing much, only about an hour overall again. I'm planning between seven and eight thousand words for the first chapter, and I'm confident I can get it finished before Mother's Day.

I also finished something short with Fleur-de-lis I'm publishing tomorrow to go along with a great animation I commissioned.

>>43227496
>a great animation I commissioned
How much did that cost you?

File: Spoiler Image (3.19 MB, 2700x3300)

3.19 MB GIF

>>43227892
Since you asked, I may as well link to it first:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/568567/4/sweaty-short-stories-with-pregnant-pony-workouts/fancy-bouquet

I paid $150 for the animation, but she was originally huge, so I paid another $40 to have her made more svelte, and I used that version as the artwork accompanying her story. Ikakins is the artist, and I highly recommend him.

>>43227958
The trotting looks fine, but I think it's kind of odd the belly moves as if it was its own thing, not attached to the front or rear.
But I'm not the expert in horse pregnancy.

>>43223617
>>/fimfic/ Secret Book Club
>The one hundred and seventy-third book is Winds of Change:
>https://www.fimfiction.net/story/478767/kaidan
>If (You) want to participate, read the whole story by Sunday, May 10th.
Wait which one is it, the story that is named or the story that is linked?
Also how do I participate in the super secret book club once I've done the required reading?

>>43228486
>>43223622
>how do I participate in the super secret book club once I've done the required reading?
You wait until the Raraflag does his opening post with >/FSBC/ and you reply with your thoughts about the story, and then you reply at the other posts mocking them for their takes, or congratulating them if they agree with you.
And always ignore the Lunaflag.

>>43228509
thanks, friend!

>>43228486
The story is being read on its second half rn, you might wanna wait until a new one starts next week

>>43228486
>Wait which one is it, the story that is named or the story that is linked?
it's this >>43223622
you better hurry if you really want to participate, the discussion happens on sunday, and you'll need to read 42k words by then.

>>43228729
>you better hurry if you really want to participate, the discussion happens on sunday, and you'll need to read 42k words by then.
the absolute state of the club. Fri is when I would usually start my reading and do 25k each day while at work kek

>>43228914
>Speedreading
Makes a lot of sense, really.

>>43225163
Okay... Code Geass?

>>43228729
>>43228663
Thanks, I finished the story now and will take some notes, hopefully I can contribute to the discussion on sunday. Looking forward to it and of course next week as well.

>>43228952
That's not even close to actual speed reading speeds tho.

I wonder if there's an MLP version of that "the six types of mind control" image.

>>43228988
>the six types of mind control
The original for that is porn on Pixiv. You need an account. https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=111253709

>>43228995
For me, it's 5 or 6.
4 can be good depending on the character.
Not a fan of rape, or rape-adjacency, so 2 and 3 are a no for me.
1 seems like a high maintenance sex doll.

File: IMG_8922.png (768 KB, 608x900)

768 KB PNG

You think celestia/the equestrian government keeps an archive of information about weird and unsatisfactorily explained phenomena that’s been seen over the centuries?

>>43229161
You just made me think of Celestia's secret archives actually being super mundane explanations for their world, which she hides so her ponies don't lose their sense of wonder.

>>43228973
Never dabbled, but I guess I'll go check it out.

File: the tale on canvas.jpg (359 KB, 1200x1600)

359 KB JPG

>>43228984
The first half's discussion is here, btw: >>43217299

File: qoute.png (5 KB, 342x54)

5 KB PNG

>this is in the top half of the box (currently 4th place)
???

>>43228973
CG is unfortunately shit in terms of writing which is why I didn't bring it up.

>>43229161
Stop trying to make me want to write a pony version of The Creepy and Freaky.

>>43223617
What the fuck is The Quiet Rune Scribe and why am I always seeing it in the featured box?

>>43229226
Thanks! I will be sure to catch up

>>43229240
A consistent writer.
Has some stories that are pretty good.

>>43229233
What do you hate about CG
You can't tell me Lelouch isn't peak protagonist

>>43229360
It's entirely held up by theatrics and aesthetic to mask a plot that just doesn't work. I like it but objectively things fall apart if you actually think about them enough. You can even tell they didn't have a plan while writing it.

File: Image.jpg (85 KB, 1170x495)

85 KB JPG

>>43229240
Several months ago I pointed out that that guy started making all of his chapters the same length and then soon after he uploaded a new chapter that was one word greater and then later changed it. I’m have a hunch that the author then tried to gaslight me into thinking it wasn’t him as he told me that his fic was popular on /mlp/.
https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/42816069/#42832503

>>43229438
They didn't have a plan for the last half of season 2 maybe, but I don't agree that the entire plot doesn't work. It's an actual elaborate ideological conflict story, you don't see many of these with any degree of finesse in pop culture.

>>43229262
>Has some stories that are pretty good.
Quiet Rune Scribe, however, is not one of them.

>>43229438
>>43229442
I haven’t watched it in years but iirc the show kind of fell off in season 2. A lot of s tier anime are like that where they fall off near the end.

>>43229475
The ending itself after that string of mediocre episodes is really great though.

>>43229481
Yeah.

>>43228486
https://desuarchive.org/mlp/thread/43105977/#q43106129

>>43229240
It's endless, meandering HiE autism. A human is isekaied into Equestria, where he does millions and millions of words of... stuff. Every day, precisely at noon, he does precisely 4,000 words of stuff: "I did this. I did that." Does that sound like the kind of story you want to read? If so, you know where to find it.

>>43229230
It's gone up to 3rd place. How?

The long description says the title's going to change tomorrow. Maybe he means that's when he's going to fix the spelling.

>>43229230
How does this guy have 300 followers

If a colossal fucking retard can make into into the sinbox, so can I!

>>43229759
That's the spirit. I loaded up the front page this morning and didn't know what I was looking at for a moment when I saw mine in the bottom spot reserved for updates. Once you reach the top of the box, you can opine on its meaninglessness without thoughts of sour grapes.

>>43229240
4000 words per day, 2.6 million total, of HiEslop
>human reincarnated as pony
>made up magic system as a major focus
>time progresses slowly covering like 8-10 years in universe and is only now nearing episode 1
>lots of navel gazing
>lots of other characters talking about how great the protagonist is
There's not much narrative to it. It drifts around the protagonists various projects, interests, and random encounters. He works on new spells, researches plants, makes custom gifts for his full friend group literally every year, chats with Celestia periodically, bumps into canon cast members occasionally, takes mini arc vacations to a random place, adopts a bird, does wannabe shonen weapon training, etc. How the story navigates the huge paradigm shift of reaching the show start after so much time will be interesting though.

As a meandering popcorn slice of life thing I don't hate it, but holy shit does the dedication to word count hurt it. You can't possibly write 4000 a day and fit every chapter length so neatly without adopting some horrifically bad habits. The amount of excess small talk and padded out or redundant narration is brutal. You could conservatively red-pen delete 25% of the story's word count and have it be a strict improvement without any actual rewriting.

>>43229779
40,000 comments and readers... It's just like I said: plop a human in Equestria, write one word at a time, and you have a story.

I ended up busy and didn't get back to the guy who said that sounded like the groundwork for a shit story, but the problem is that even planning a lot can lead to a shit story. It's intuitive to think more planning + effort = better story, but that's not always the case; quality is mysterious and it can be that putting in that effort can result in something being worse. Therefore, in a vacuum where one is uncertain of their abilities anyway and doesn't know what to write, "plop someone into a setting and go one word at a time" can actually turn into a pretty beloved story.

>>43223617
Anyone else hate Ebonics (AAVE)?

>>43229779
>slop
Please avoid using mindless slang, this is a reading and writing general, and it is the least one should expect.

>>43230040
I think a proper writer is not likely to be so prescriptivist as to deny slang outright. It's not like you would reject old slang you are used to, and soon enough new slang will be old. It's language, the same as anything else.

>>43230018
Planning doesn't make a story better, it just makes it more consistent. This story I'm writing right now is a mess, but it was also a planned mess.

>>43230047
It reflects on the user a lack of thoughtfulness. Always think about every word you use, and you will find your acuity sharpened. And behead all relativists.

>>43230035
Of course not! All cultures are relative, and /fimfic/ is a very tolerant community. :)

>>43230061
The accurate antonym there would have been descriptivist. And using modern slang is not particularly thoughtless. A word does not increasingly reflect thoughtfulness the older and more mundane it is. You are just having a negative kneejerk reaction to new language and exploiting it as an opportunity to feel superior just like people have throughout all of history.

>>43230018
Go back.

>>43229262
>>43229447
He's got three stories: A Quiet Run Scribe itself, and two abandoned one-shots. What the fuck are those "pretty good stories" you guys are talking about?

>>43230054
Why did you plan a mess?

>>43230035
No more than I hate Zebrican Equestrian Vernacular Ponish (ZEVP).

>>43230711
Because I wanted a thing.

>>43230543
I don't know, he's the one claiming that this guy's truly autistic slop is somehow coming from someone who is capable of producing something else, which I doubt.

Authors should have to disclose if they have autism or are under the age of 18, like a little jew star next to their name so you can know to avoid anything they post

>>43230018
He doesn't have 40,000 readers. There are 40,000 people who have looked at at least one chapter, but the story's statistics page makes clear that he has no more than 3,000 actual readers.

And the story is garbage. It's a way for autists to waste time, nothing more, and I'd be ashamed to have written it. He's written at least ten times as many words as I ever have, maybe more; but compared to his, my words are actually worth reading.

>>43230966
pretty sure every single person writing pony fanfiction is some flavor of autistic. that autism doesn't have anything to do with most of them being bad at writing. they're just bad writers

>>43231117
So what you’re saying is that actually, we’re all Jewish.

>>43231124
The ponyim know, shut it down!

>>43231117
Not me, I'm ADHD!

>>43231117
I mean actaul diagnosable Chris chan level autism. Not 'haha I'm so quirky and have weird fandom interests I'm so autistic', I mean 'I dont understand how social interactions work at all and I'm incapable of functioning in a normal society without assistance'

>>43231279
So pignat

>>43223617
Newtard here.
What is the difference between green, yellow and red tag?

>>43231959
Green = E = Show-appropriate
Yellow = T = Roughly what's allowed by a US PG-13 movie
Red = M = 18+, often either edgelord trash or porn

>>43231965
>often either edgelord trash or porn
there are m rated fics that are neither of those?

File: sparkly back shot.png (750 KB, 1000x1350)

750 KB PNG

>>43232023
What do you think "often" means?

>>43232046
not the same thing as "always".

File: fox dash.png (353 KB, 850x850)

353 KB PNG

>>43232048
And M fics are not always edgelord trash or porn.

>>43230538
Go back where? I'm curious where you think I belong. Not even mad.
>>43230969
I don't think you're wrong to feel that way, but for a starting author (well, the guy who was posting here a few days ago), having 3,000 people regularly commenting and leaving up to 40,000 comments on his work is probably exactly what he was hoping for.

>>43232353
Sure, that's probably what he wants. He might even get there. If he's a good enough writer, though, he won't. I admire BlueDragon64's dedication, but it's impossible to write 4,000 words every day and have them be worth reading.

>>43227496
I just had my most productive day of the year, lads. I managed a little over 1,600 words today. Having Mother's Day tomorrow as my deadline certainly helped. I timed myself, and see I only wrote for about an hour and a half today, so I can definitely get even faster. I'll pass one hundred thousand words written in a single year without worry.

>>43230543
>one-shots
>abandoned
Wut?

>>43232662
One-shots by length, I meant. One is 7k words (technically four or five chapters) another is 4k words (technically two chapters). One is "On Hiatus" and another is just in progress but hasn't been updated in ages.
I count anything below 10k as a one-shot

>>43232994
This is pure semantics, but one-shot is not a word/phrase used to mark overall length. It just means something completed within its singular release, aka 1 chapter or what have you. A one-shot in manga for example can be anywhere from 20 to 200 pages or more really as long as it comes out at once and is self-contained. I don't think anyone else in the world is thinking "one-shot = 10k words or under" so it's quite confusing and even wrong to use it like that.

Of course, nobody in the fucking world particularly cares about their language game having quirky rules, but I'm pointing it out since this thread has a particularly high density of language autism so why not.

>>43231279
I have diagnosed autism and still write good.

>>43233152
I agree that I was using it wrong, yeah.
>I don't think anyone else in the world is thinking "one-shot = 10k words or under" so it's quite confusing
I thought it was commonly used (incorrectly) as just a shorthand for a short story basically. Is it just me?

>>43232353
Outside this thread, wherever you tasteless swine congregate.

>>43233152
>>43233176
It isn't strictly correct, but desú "one-shot = short story that your read in one sitting" or even the very specific "one-shot = 10k or under" are probably among the most common meanings of the term in the fimfic land.

>>43232994
Unironically retarded, 10k is well into novelette territory.

File: 737938_small.png (3.2 MB, 2500x2419)

3.2 MB PNG

Chryssie calling out ponylovers in,
>/FSBC/

Before I glaze this fic, I feel obligated to say that it's not some peak of fandom literature or anything close to it. It's fine, good even! Buuuut... I kinda like it a lot more than that!
I don't know how much of this was deliberate and how much was the author merely channeling the spirit of the age, but I do really enjoy how straightforwardly "ponyfic" this whole thing is. Luna shows up often and is awesome; X is a changeling; ACW fixfic moments (but not as bad as usual); bug reformation; and all the A/Ns and more. But more than that, the pace and the tone of the situation fit that archetypal "pony adventure" genre to a T. It's also unapologetically pony despite some elements that probably don't immediately belong in a pony-maxing story. And I'm there for it!

I think the fic got significantly better in week two. Well, some of it may be the lack of the quite horrible beginning, but even without counting that, there is way less of this weird "this should be a serious scene, but it is not" dissonance. The author decided to discard most of that failed gravity and embrace a consistently lighter tone despite serious subject matter. Not even the sex jokes felt too out of line this time. This approach has been largely successful imo, and while the one "super srs" scene (the funeral) didn't quite elicit any particularly strong feelings from me, it was an order of magnitude better than the prologue.

I shouldn't have been expecting major twists, but when I was reading the mindrape chapter, for a moment I really thought that Luna was a bug all along. This would somewhat fit with her being so inexperienced with modern pony culture, like this fic often has her act. Alas. The chapter was confusing, but not bad, and I'm not docking any points for ambition.
Speaking of ambition, Chrysalis! I like her here! And I mean both in-universe and the meta decision to write her thus. I really enjoyed what the fic did with the bugs. This was highly unexpected, but in a great way. Of course, like everything in the story, it has some issues, but on balance, it is not bad at all, and the decision to go there in the first place is commendable. Combined with the ponyness, this is great!
And to add on a less ridiculously positive note, this is probably the most abrupt 'alicornization' I've ever seen in a ponyfic, which is saying A LOT. Like, wow. I understand why the author needed to do this, but when that exchange happened, I was shocked. Oh, and I have no clue what the assassins are a reference to, though I suspect they are. It's disappointing they didn't quite get Spike, but at least they helped the fic by taking him out of the story.

5/7 did not dump hostages into the sea

Next week, bluefast in a different light:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/519321/sorry-we-missed-you
First three chapters, then three more the week after that.

>>43233271
I thought the story picked up this week. Last week I complained that the story felt fluffy. While I didn't get that this week, I can't say that it had much more emotional depth. I did think the argument between Luna and Celestia was good. There was a nice moment when Bon Bon said it was Rainbow Dash's death that changed her and made her leave the hive, but it was only mentioned in passing. Beyond that, though, it was pretty much a straightforward adventure story.

My predictions were pretty accurate. Last week, they hinted at mental magic, so I thought they were going to use that to confirm Bon Bon's story. I didn't expect them to dig up Rainbow Dash's corpse. (In part that's because an unembalmed corpse would have rotted away in the intervening years, so it'd be hard to confirm it was her. But the author solved that problem by saying she was cocooned.) That was the first surprise.

The other surprise was Rainbow Dash becoming a queen. I get it, she was an ordinary changeling and the author wanted to make her 20% cooler. I don't think of Rainbow Dash as leadership material, though.

There were some things I missed. What was going on with Spike, and who the fuck are the Mukade? The story acts like we're supposed to understand this and I never had any clue what was going on. The Mukade come out of nowhere and disappear. Then they're mentioned again at the end. What? I got the feeling the author is referring to something from another fic they wrote, and I wondered if this was explained in the comments. I found this in comment #1,263:
>>"Wait... the Mukade are real?"
>This came out of nowhere and I don't know why it is here.
And #1,494:
>>"Wow. I knew Chrysalis had pinned the blame on somebody, but theMukade...we got off light, all things considered." Bonbon shivered. "If they'd had gotten their hooves on Spike--"
>I missed something, I think. They were the messenger for something, but I never caught what they were for, wanted, or did.
And #1,598:
>Are the Mukade a reference to something I'm not getting? Does this author have another story I haven't read that explains why the Mukade want Spike? I really want to know.
So I think the author inserted some lore, never explained it, and then dropped the plot thread.

Pinkie is still written weirdly:
>Thirty seven minutes and fifty three point seven six five two seconds
What? That's not a Pinkie line.

I feel slightly positive but not enthusiastic about the fic. It kept me satisfied for a few hours. That feels worth an upvote. If someone said, "I want a story about Rainbow Dash being a changeling," I wouldn't feel ashamed to mention this one, but I don't think I'd recommend it otherwise. I expect that in six months, I'll forget that I read it.

>>43233271
Still somewhat unsure on this whole piece. I reread the second half last night and still feel like I've already forgot a bunch of stuff. The pacing moves so fast and it almost feels like the author was getting tired of the story and wanted to get it done at the end here, but maybe it was like that the whole time. There's not much that sticks out from the madcap pace of the second half for me, other than the delightful image of Celestia in full armor reporting to Twilight and the single-sentence ending paragraph in that same chapter.

Something I completely forgot about was the unresolved bit with the Mukade "messenger." I'm assuming this is a reference to something, but all I could find was the Japanese centipede/yokai from a quick search and it only gets referenced again for an explanation of Spike's disappearance so it just feels out of place.

The funeral scene is pretty ass though. It just feels like the author needed a way to infodump more backstory and Fluttershy's dialogue feels wonky. Another annoyance is that the only description of the scene is the weather, it leaves me grasping for something to anchor the image to. It's basically just ponies walking up to an empty stage to deliver a monologue one at a time and it doesn't do anything for me.

Chrysalis is interesting at the end here, but mostly in the confusing way. There's a lot of worldbuilding that gets thrown at me and it's sometimes hard to parse whether she actually believes something or it's just a joke (see her not understanding why ponies care so much for children). I just really wanted these concepts to be explored more than basically throwaway lines, more or less.

Rainbow Dash becoming a changeling queen was just as abrupt as I remembered it. This fic is more or less the equivalent of mediocre fast food to me. There are enjoyable bits here and there, but I'm still hungry for real food afterwards.

>>43233292
>What? That's not a Pinkie line.
Hyper-specific time keeping is a classic, but I agree that going all the way to tenths of a millisecond is way too much.

>>43233321
>like the author was getting tired of the story and wanted to get it done at the end here
That wasn't exactly the feeling I got. I thought it was because he wasn't a good enough author to pace his story. The story as a whole (both these chapters and last week's) is fast. The author goes straight from plot development to plot development. He doesn't let the characters have any down time; it's all bam-bam-bam, gotta-keep-moving, go-faster-go-faster-go-faster, the kind of ADHD pacing that Rainbow Dash herself would like. He barely pauses to describe scenery (like you point out about the funeral), and if characters are ever introspective it's only because they're talking with someone else in a way that advances the plot. He doesn't know how to let the story slow down and breathe. In a way, I think it's kind of charming, because it feels like he's saying, "I am 12 and what is writing," and it makes me go, "Awwww, you are so *cute*!"

Tee bee desu I don't know if I really understood the changeling worldbuilding. At some point I realized that I didn't care enough to stop and think about what it implied. I don't even know if it made sense. It might not have, because (again) the frenetic pace never slackens, and if something isn't leading straight to an important plot development, then the story doesn't include it.

>>43233271
when i said last week that if the fic suddenly got significantly better it might be saved for me, i wasn't expecting it to actually happen, but here we are. this week was a lot better than last time, and i think a lot of it does have to do with, as you mentioned, this set having a lot less of the odd tonal whiplash of the first half.
i am curious why you say that the second half had a generally lighter tone than the first, when we got four slightly darker chapters in a row, 10–14. maybe the lack of whiplash is making it feel darker for me, or lighter for you, but all four of those chapters have some pretty serious stuff going on, that i remember the fic taking basically fully seriously. i also liked those four chapters the best of any chapters in the fic, and i don't think that's a coincidence. although some of rainbow's parents' dialogue in the funeral scene is pretty telly about how they feel towards changeling dash. i'm not a good enough writer to explain how that information could have been conveyed better though, and speeches at a funeral are a place where characters just talking about how they feel does make sense, so it could have been a lot worse.
i agree with everyone that it's weird that the mukade are introduced and barely amount to anything, but i also can't bring myself to care that much since they barely amount to anything. they don't ruin anything with their (lack of) existence, it's just, why introduce them if they barely exist anyway.
i also kind of wish the whole "rainbow becomes a changeling queen" plot point wasn't there, but that does seem like a very 2013 way to end a fic. i can easily imagine the author thinking it wouldn't be epic enough to just have dash go back to living in ponyville, now aware of who she really is, and shoehorning the queenification in to give dash a "proper" ending that wasn't needed. ultimately it's not that bad though. there are certainly much worse ways the fic could have ended.
ellipses time!
for three dot ellipses: chapter 9 has 35, 10 has 49, 11 has 76, 12 has 66, 13 has 17, 14 has 28, 15 has 36, 16 has 32, and the epilogue has 38, for a total 884 three-dot ellipses throughout the whole fic.
and for four-dot ellipses, chapter 9 has 5, 10 has 7, 11 has 15, 12 has 9, 13 has 5, 14 has 2, 15 has 7, 16 has 3, and the epilogue has 4, for a total of 118 accross the entire fic.
compared to week 1, there were significantly three-dot ellipses this time at only 377, but only four less four-dot ellipses at 57.
ultimately, i liked this fic. there were a lot of things i didn't like about it, but none of them ruined it, there was a lot here that i actually did like quite a bit. and the whole thing was at its very worst, still entertaining if nothing else.
also, reading the last author note, i saw there was a sequel, and i was genuinely shocked at what part of the epilogue the sequel follows up on. that would not have been my first guess.

>>43233380
>there were significantly three-dot ellipses this time
*significantly fewer

File: 1399494.png (493 KB, 1280x1900)

493 KB PNG

>>43233292
>I did think the argument between Luna and Celestia was good.
Oh yeah, right! I'm in near-complete agreement with your whole message, but that part deserves being highlighted. Not that it was something insanely good.
>who the fuck are the Mukade?
Seeing that you (and the commenters, apparently) also didn't guess it, I think we'll just never know.
>It kept me satisfied for a few hours.
It's also a very easy, fast read. I didn't precisely measure my reading time or anything, but it went by in a flash. This is a decent and very fanfic'y rendition of "X is a changeling", so I suppose the author achieved his goal.
And because I forgot to mention it earlier, I'll also add that the LyraBon parts were fun, too.

>>43233321
>maybe it was like that the whole time
I think so, yeah. It's very fast, and I don't think a slower pace in the second half would help, not without a different writer at the helm. It's nice enough as an adventure story, but even with all the woooolrdbuilding in it, I don't think I'd like it in an XL size. We get just the scenes that "matter" to the plot, and the story is mostly stable like this.
>it just feels out of place
Worse: it feels like a media reference you're not getting.
> really wanted these concepts to be explored more
See above, I doubt that this story could have given you this exploration. I think it's best enjoyed at face value.

>>43233370
>I don't know if I really understood the changeling worldbuilding
Yeah, exactly. There is something going on with the hive and how they're connected, and you're left with some idea of it, but I also didn't care enough to actually work out what was going on there or what the full implications of Luna's offer/monologue were. It really didn't seem like a good use of my time, and I didn't think that the story wanted me to engage with it in this way.

>>43233380
>all four of those chapters have some pretty serious stuff going on,
You're right that they're more serious. On a second thought, I did like the C&L chapter. The funeral... not so much, but it might just be that removing the extreme tonal whiplash just helped the story in general. There is still some humor in a slightly "dark" context, like when Luna dumps the dead assassin on Shiny's table, but it doesn't take me out of the story at all, and it feels much more intentional here.
>that does seem like a very 2013 way to end a fic
Ha, that was exactly what I thought when I got there!
>the sequel
Oh nice, more LyraBon! Unless...
>[Incomplete] sequel dead for 10 years
Staying faithful to the 2013 way, I see.

>>43233271
This story was rather interesting from a historical point of view. It really exemplified how early fics had lower standards from a purely storytelling point of view, but (partially) made up for it through sheer autistic passion. I want to be clear: I /wasn't/ a huge fan of the fic. It's filled with malapropisms and outright misspellings, and the tone flops around like a trout on the hood of a Ford F-150 with a broken radiator. It also has a few stupid, jarringly quirky phrases like the previous metaphor, there. But, you know, I suppose that's forgivable when you consider that the author was clearly having a lot of fun with the story. Like some Anons said last week, he did start out with a clear plan, and as the author's notes indicate, he was at least somewhat careful with foreshadowing &c.

Really, I think the story could have even been pretty good if he'd leaned harder into making the fic a pure comedy. The comedic parts were the best written, and they were only brought down by frequently following dour and serious scenes, often with very little signposting that a change of tone was even supposed to happen. Further, it's hard to put my finger on it, but the more serious scenes felt ... too melodramatic? Like the author were writing a parody of a sadfic or something. Kind of similarly, I think they would have worked better if they weren't juxtaposed with really lighthearted and stupid 2012-era comedy. I was never really engaged and mostly skimmed over them.

Now, as some indicated before, the author deserves some respect for having the guts to kill off a filly immediately, and then to dig her up later to parade the corpse around. The sexual references didn't bother me so much, and they actually managed to be slightly relevant, at least with regards to Bon Bon and Lyra's relationship. They would have made for better and more interesting main characters than Rainbow "I'm not real" Dash. Overall, the story felt like something you'd read from someone's "early days", which I suppose is to be expected from a 2012 fic. Lots of passion, not a lot of restraint, and a healthy dose of sex and edge in an otherwise-wholesome story.

>>43233421
>mentions of 2012
*2013, my bad.

I still wish you fags would actually link or mention the fic you're discussing when you dump all these out-of-context walls of text

>>43233408
I would never have realized there was a sequel if you hadn't pointed it out. For the convenience of others:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/214653/lyra-is-crazy-many-months-of-mommy-madness
Just looking at the chapter titles, it seems like it might have been almost finished? Or at least one major story arc was finished? I doubt the story is much better, though.
>>43233421
>the tone flops around like a trout on the hood of a Ford F-150 with a broken radiator
While I see where you're coming from with this, it didn't really have that effect on me. I never got invested enough in any scene to feel like the story was committed to a particular tone. The melodrama was too shallow and the comedy was too cheesy, so I could never take any part of it seriously, and that meant I never experienced the whiplash effect myself. Certainly the story would have worked better if it had committed to a particular tone; but I don't think the author had the skill to consistently pull off any tone at all.

>>43233458
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/500819

>>43233271
Let me preface my thoughts on this fic with the fact that I am very, very German and that I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

The fic definitely improved in quality in the second half, which I in part attribute to having the author use mostly (at the time) less established characters or once he could put his own stamp on more easily, which lead to everything feeling more organic for me.

I still think that the story could have benefited from more focus on it's core. The whole side tangent with everyone worrying about Twilights mental state after the wedding is something that's worth exploring but probably was a bit out of the scope for a fic where there is a life shattering revelation for a different character at the same time. The Mukade-Spike assassin plot comes in goes nowhere and reappears at the end without resolving anything and it's inclusion is at best a confusing mess and at worst a detrimend to everything else in the story.

The timeline feels a bit all over the place. They excavate filly Dash's corpse and instantly have a funeral organized in Canterlot with her parents. At the same time no one has seen the CMC for days at this point, but this conveniently only gets brought to everyones attention after the funeral and the emotion it creates have been mostly resolved.

Speaking of the funeral scene, I am sorry if this was meant to be an emotional beat but everything about filly Dashs cutie mark is silly. It makes little sense, both in how that could possibly have been Dashs special talent and how Changeling Dash knew to copy/create Dashs actual cutie mark. This escpecially bites itself when considering some of the authors Changeling lore that the author introduces at the end, but more on that later.

Dash becoming a Queen at the end is unexpected and to be honest really unnecessary. The only bearing it has on the story itself is that it helps solve a plotpoint that gets introduced in the same chapter, but I guess the author just wanted to make his character feel a bit more special and that can be excused.

What I really did enjoy was the author introducing his own take on Changelings as a species. The hivemind and the resulting unique social structure is something I would have loved to have been explored more, but I understand that it wouldn't fit in the scope of this simple story. It does create some inconsistencies within the story. For example: When Chrysalis first has her isolated talk with Dash while disguised, shouldn't she have instantly known that Dash was not connected to her hive and instead wondered what hive she was with rather than ask for her rank? The strangest inclusion has to be when they introduce the Changelings ability to swap into other Changelings bodies and it's not really clear how far that goes.

I actually read the sequel to this story in the hopes some more of the authors Changeling lore would be explored, unfortunately I was disappointed.

The story is clearly a product of it's time, but enjoyable.

>>43233475
>At the same time no one has seen the CMC for days at this point, but this conveniently only gets brought to everyones attention after the funeral and the emotion it creates have been mostly resolved
They're enjoying the unexpected calm and don't want it to go away. They'd be happy to leave the CMCs with Chrysalis.

>>43224186
Not yet actually

>>43233271
I'm not sure if it was the break between clubs or not, but this week was far better and the serious parts of the fic actually managed to not seem like jokes like they did in the first half. The chapter between Luna and Celestia was maybe instantly better than all of week 1 (except the page of scootaloo screaming) and I think the rest of the fic also managed to maintain that. I particularly like Luna this week. Competent princesses are always nice and I think Luna's dream magic exploiting a backdoor into the hivemind is a great idea. I was afraid Luna might get whooped, since that always seems to happen when she fights a villain inside their mind in fics, but she just seizes control which was nice. Also Chrysalis thinking of all the other races as beasts because they don't share thoughts with each other is kino. I think the only thing really lacking this week was Lyra and that's more of a whole story issue than just this week. She is really just too much of a memer and it really doesn't add anything. I think that's just an early fic symptom though. Also the random throw away assassin crossover. Anyways I liked it.
>chryssi mind controlling fillies
How topical
>just dragging flittershy unexpectedly to a filly rainbow dash's corpse
Fucking wew, wtf kind of idea is that
>ch11 each line was on the exact same spot one page apart
wow im curious if that was a coincidence or something to do with calibre or something
>Luna kills paparazzi on sight
Based
>random assassin plot
>dying and getting a changeling cutie mark
Fuckin wew, that's cursed
>random swearing
bad as usual
>"Luna's running the hive now,"
>"Now I am a mindless beast."
kino
>cmc questioning why the m6 are all there
this just doesn't make any sense but the fic needed them to ask

>>43233271
>Luna shows up often and is awesome
Yeah this is a good early fic trend
>I think the fic got significantly better in week two ... way less of this weird "this should be a serious scene, but it is not"
Definitely agree, and I think the week in between might've helped distance the later scenes from the early ones which probably helped
>for a moment I really thought that Luna was a bug all along
is this a fic yet? I don't recall Luna being a changeling yet but I'm sure it exists. I feel like it would be in the same vein as PCCQ but would probably work even better
>It's disappointing they didn't quite get Spike
kek

>>43233292
>I did think the argument between Luna and Celestia was good
Yeah, that felt like the fic getting serious and setting the tone for the 2nd half
>But the author solved that problem by saying she was cocooned
I also thought they were forcing Fluttershy to identify a decomposing filly kek
>I don't think of Rainbow Dash as leadership material, though.
The Equestrian hive is definitely gonna be a little fucked up
>Pinkie is still written weirdly
Yeah, I did not like Pinkie in this fic. I think the majority of her lines are her getting uncharacteristically philosophical for some reason or another

>>43233321
>other than the delightful image of Celestia in full armor reporting to Twilight
That was definitely a kino sequence. Doubly so because of the weird/fucked up idea that the reason Twilight has anyone here at all is to dig up a dead filly and then it ends up being Celestia herself carrying out the orders
>Another annoyance is that the only description of the scene is the weather, it leaves me grasping for something to anchor the image to.
This did suck lol, I don't even know where they are. Canterlot? Ponyville? Under Cloudsdale? In Cloudsdale? At least it's sunny I guess.
>I just really wanted these concepts to be explored more than basically throwaway lines, more or less.
Yeah, their were cool concepts near the end, but unfortunately they weren't that important to the fic. Everything about the Hive was cool and their society. Also Luna being able to take command and her reactions were cool as well
>food analogy

>>43233370
>The story as a whole is fast
Agreed, stories like PCCQ (which the author directly mentions in an A/N) have over 100k on this fic for exploring the same concept just far more in depth
>the kind of ADHD pacing that Rainbow Dash herself would like
>the fic is actually a retelling of the story inside the Equestrian Hivemind by Queen Rainbow Dash herself
kino

>>43233380
>when i said last week that if the fic suddenly got significantly better it might be saved for me, i wasn't expecting it to actually happen
kek, it feels like this is surprisingly common in the club
>i also liked those four chapters the best of any chapters in the fic, and i don't think that's a coincidence
I think I agree as well
>sequel
what part was it?

What was early Luna like in fics before her season 2 episode anyway

>>43233408
>And because I forgot to mention it earlier, I'll also add that the LyraBon parts were fun, too.
ehhh, I didn't mind them together, but if Lyra was in a scene and bonbon wasn't, then she was the worst part of the scene
>Worse: it feels like a media reference you're not getting.
I'm 90% sure it's this. Didn't the A/N say something about a crossover?
>Luna dumps the dead assassin on Shiny's table
I kept expecting him to just wake up. Again, this is because of the many sub-par Luna's that are in fics. Luna straight up killing a pony in the library and bring the body to the guard captain is the kind of kino we need more of. Reminds me of the fic where Celestia gets 'kidnapped' where Luna should've instantly mindraped (and thus killed) the ransomer who showed up, but no, they all fall for him or some gay ass shit. Luna needs to kill more bad ponies!
>>the sequel
>Oh nice, more LyraBon! Unless...
wtf
>[Incomplete] sequel dead for 10 years
keeek

>>43233421
>Really, I think the story could have even been pretty good if he'd leaned harder into making the fic a pure comedy.
Extremely dangerous game to play
>the author deserves some respect for having the guts to kill off a filly immediately, and then to dig her up later to parade the corpse around
fuckin kek, that is a bold move though

>>43233469
kek, the accursed 500819

>>43233467
>I never got invested enough in any scene to feel like the story was committed to a particular tone
This is a nice way of putting it and I think I was the same. The first half probably set that up very quickly anyway.

>>43233475
>The whole side tangent with everyone worrying about Twilights mental state after the wedding is something that's worth exploring but probably was a bit out of the scope for a fic where there is a life shattering revelation for a different character at the same time
It is weird that it comes up at difderent parts, and the whole Luna & Celestia chapter is about that, but then no one actually ends up talking to Twilight about it. To me it kind of mirrors how no one really ends up talking to RD about if she is still going to be RD or not. We don't really even know at the end what she thinks about all of this. Is she just going to be a changeling queen walking around Ponyville? Or just learn how to turn back into Rainbow Dash? And who the fuck would be interested enough to read a Lyra sequel to find out
>but everything about filly Dashs cutie mark is silly. It makes little sense
I had those exact thoughts. I thought at first Bonbon fucked up when the marks were different, but getting a mark like that is retarded in the first place and I guess she just made up RD's mark
>I actually read the sequel to this story
lmaoaoooooo

>>43233535
>They're enjoying the unexpected calm and don't want it to go away
same reason they didn't even realize assassins were trying to kill spike kek

>>43233677
often times just the designated badass

>>43233695
>And who the fuck would be interested enough to read a Lyra sequel to find out
It's even worse, none of the questions that are left open after the original fic are answered in the sequel at all. I was waiting the whole time for the author to pick up some of the changeling lore and expand upon it, but nope!
>lmaoaoooooo
yeah...
To be fair, it only took me about an hour to go through the thing, since it's about as deep as a puddle aftert a summer drizzle, but still. It's not even finished, it just ends in the middle of something and then there is an unconnected epilogue that makes no sense. 3/10 would not recommend.

>>43233271
>I do really enjoy how straightforwardly "ponyfic" this whole thing is
>Luna shows up often and is awesome; X is a changeling; ACW fixfic moments (but not as bad as usual); bug reformation; and all the A/Ns and more
I want to point out that there's a very important distinction between a fic being "ponyfic" and a fic being "pony" in the way we usually say, but I agree this fic has lots of tropes without it feeling like the author is checking boxes for what a pony fic of such-and-such era is "supposed" to be like.
>The author decided to discard most of that failed gravity and embrace a consistently lighter tone despite serious subject matter
In my initial post, I was describing the fic as a whole, but certainly yes, the second half of the fic was much better and not nearly so tonally dissonant as the first.
>I really enjoyed what the fic did with the bugs.
Hard agree. For as disorganised as the prose seemed, the worldbuilding with the bugs and their society was well thought out and interesting. The whole "replacing foals with baby changelings" thing was even close to the original myths of changelings replacing babies in their cribs.
>>43233292
>I did think the argument between Luna and Celestia was good
Luna definitely overshadowed Celestia in this story. Not that that's bad, but I didn't get a lot out of their argument as a result, since Luna continues just doing whatever she wants, and Celestia decides to become a guard for some reason.
Oh my goodness, but Luna's early modern English was absolutely butchered. It ranks among the worst I've seen (e.g. "thy's", "miffed with thou").
>But the author solved that problem by saying she was cocooned.
To be honest, there were many parts in the fic where it felt like the author had a clear idea of what was going on but didn't communicate it well, so you had to pause and get your bearings pretty often.
>who the fuck are the Mukade?
And this might be the most obvious example. I suppose it doesn't really matter who they are beyond "secret assassin clan", but it was a little bothersome to need to consciously skip over it.

>>43233751
>a very important distinction between a fic being "ponyfic" and a fic being "pony"
Can you expand on this? Because I feel like I agree with this distinction but don’t know how to put it into words very well.

>>43233321
>The pacing moves so fast
Yeah, and it doesn't help that important things like changes of setting or character introductions often happen in single sentences embedded in larger paragraphs.
>the single-sentence ending paragraph in that same chapter.
Really? I kind of hated that. It was awfully angsty, especially with Fluttershy laughing and crying and breaking down in the short paragraph immediately before it.
>The funeral scene is pretty ass though.
I agree with this, too. I remember, when reading, thinking that Fluttershy's voice didn't sound very much like Fluttershy at all. The worst of the funeral scene, though, was probably Rainbow's parents bickering and making snide remarks at each other and Bon Bon. Although, saying that, it was uncomfortable, but maybe that was the point.
>>43233321
>Chrysalis is interesting at the end here, but mostly in the confusing way.
>>43233370
>Tee bee desu I don't know if I really understood the changeling worldbuilding.
The way I read it was that the hive mind is naturally formed by a bunch of changelings, and the queen is something like an administrator. The changelings can all telepathically talk to each other and feel each other's emotions intuitively if they so choose. One effect of that is that their culture is far more collectivist than ponies', and many changelings view ponies as inferior because ponies allow themselves to squabble amongst themselves. I especially liked how the author leaned hard into the culture clash aspect of pony-changeling relations. It really sold the differences between them as well as raising the question of why ponies would want to join a hive mind in the first place. There were also the hints that Chrysalis's personal views were shaping and being shaped by the hive mind in turn. Overall it was a surprisingly sophisticated take on the changelings in such a silly story.
>>43233380
>ellipses time!
The author must have learned what an ellipsis is right around the start of the fic.
>and i was genuinely shocked at what part of the epilogue the sequel follows up on
I, for one, am glad that Bon Bon and Lyra get a follow up (if only the epilogue weren't unfinished and abandoned!) I said it before, but their story was more interesting than Rainbow's, and they had better chemistry, too.

>>43233751
>Luna's early modern English was absolutely butchered
I wish authors didn’t try to do this. Luna sounds better speaking normal English than when she’s saying shit like “I art butchereth thine ye olde Ponish.”

>>43233778
>Because I feel like I agree with this distinction but don’t know how to put it into words very well.
To me, intuitively, it feels like the difference between engaging with the show ("pony") and engaging with the fandom ("ponyfic"). Rariflag cited common tropes in ponyfics as evidence that the story was "ponyfic". However, not all of these ("Luna is awesome!", "X is a changeling", ACW fixfics) really have anything to do with "pony"-ness itself; they're just fandom tropes, even if they're common in works that are otherwise "pony". "Pony"-ness, on the other hand, is how you'd describe elements and themes that are characteristic of the show, especially the early seasons. For example, and these are just some that come to my mind, ponies being named after silly puns or common phrases, a generally lighthearted or whimsical tone, the "magic of friendship" winning out in the end, and the "horsiness" of characters being emphasised.
So, like, you could have a gritty ACW fixfic about Luna being a badass and Rainbow Dash saying "20% cooler" all the time, and it might be a very cliche "ponyfic"-ish story, but it wouldn't necessarily be "pony"-ish.
>>43233408
>but even with all the woooolrdbuilding in it
I harp on worldbuilding, but I think it was handled well in this story precisely because it relates so closely to the narrative, it's interesting, /and/ it isn't hugely over-the-top or elaborate. I guess you might say it's because it really has a single idea (the hive mind), with depth in exploring the implications of it, and that also already fits neatly next to canon.
>See above, I doubt that this story could have given you this exploration.
Ironically, I think there is room to explore it more, but we're also already walking a very fine line and I wouldn't trust this author to do it competently. It's also solidly sequel territory, so actually, yes, I agree with you that it wouldn't fit in /this/ story.
>>43233467
Well, I see what you mean, and
>so I could never take any part of it seriously,
is honestly where I was sitting, too. For the more serious parts, like the funeral scene but especially in the first half of the fic, it felt to me like the author was asking me to be invested in a darker story immediately coming off of cheesy comedy. I did attempt to get invested, but it was too dissonant, hence the whiplash.
>Certainly the story ... to consistently pull off any tone at all.
I absolutely agree.

>>43233271
This story got better even though I still wasn't loving it. People are saying they didn't like the funeral scene but I actually liked the tension between Bon Bon and everyone else there. The awkwardness of knowing that Bon Bon was the last person who saw Rainbow Dash alive and was the one who buried and replaced her *and then* also gave a speech about how Rainbow Dash changed her life ended up really sweet.

I kind of feel like how other people are saying the changeling background lore was confusing. Maybe it was cool but it was complicated and not necessary to follow the plot so there weren't a lot of reasons to try to understand it better. Also the Mukade were just kind of there? I give this story a 6/10.

>>43233475
>The timeline feels a bit all over the place. They excavate filly Dash's corpse and instantly have a funeral organized in Canterlot with her parents.
Agreed, and in fact this might be the biggest factor in making the story difficult to follow.
>It makes little sense, both in how that could possibly have been Dashs special talent and how Changeling Dash knew to copy/create Dashs actual cutie mark.
It's /destiny/! No, but I don't mind it when cutie marks end up being totally serendipitous like that. Destiny is something that canonically exists, as far as I know. It's similar to how ponies end up being perfectly named for their profession or role in life.
>Dash becoming a Queen at the end is unexpected and to be honest really unnecessary.
I agree, but it might arise less out of wanting to make Rainbow special and more out of needing to do something to replace Chrysalis. With the author's changeling worldbuilding, changeling society needs a queen, and who more suitable (in a cliche sense) for a replacement than the distant scion who discovers her origins and makes a return?
>>43233603
>Also Chrysalis thinking of all the other races as beasts because they don't share thoughts with each other is kino.
Certainly one of the more interesting takes on changelings we've seen.
>>43233603
>She is really just too much of a memer
I would contest this just because the story is already highly memey. In a more meta sense, the author tends to rely on her as a crutch to quickly switch gears back to a funny tone, but I don't know if alternatives would be better.
>>43233695
>Extremely dangerous game to play
It is dangerous, but like another Anon said, I really think he just needs to pick something at all.
>>43233714
>It's even worse, none of the questions that are left open after the original fic are answered in the sequel at all.
This is devastating.

>>43233791
Agreed. She stops speaking like that after her first episode anyway.

>>43233421
>I want to be clear: I /wasn't/ a huge fan of the fic.
The fabled return of Glimflag? Ah, but only to shit on a perfectly fine 2013 story. Typical. Reeeee. You're not wrong about what the fic did 'wrong'. But I just don't think it particularly matters, at least to me. You could ask me to compile a list of a 100 fics to show to someone not in the fandom and this would never in a million years make it, but when you reach for a ponyfic, you can do MUCH worse than this, and I think that's valuable, too.
Thinking about it a little more, I think I separate most fics into two kinda distinct categories: how good of a story it is, and how good of a ponyfic it is. This is very clearly getting most of its score from the latter, and any flashes of ambition are only a cherry on top.
>more serious scenes felt ... too melodramatic
I can appreciate it to some level, but it's not even good melodrama. Yeah, that sucks, but (...).
>at least with regards to Bon Bon and Lyra's relationship
Stuff like Luna saying 'based' to discovering BDSM wasn't that. But regarding LyraBon, Lyra telling Rainbow "stop possessing your mom's body so I can have sex with her" was definitely a Lyra moment. Maybe she was just trying to hint at some oyakodon action.

>>43233458
It's in the OP, or in the previous post. All you need to do is read the OP once (1), which you should already be doing to appreciate the funny itt that the baker writes. Tradition is tradition.

>>43233475
>more focus on it's core
It'd probably be a better fic considering how things ended up, but I can appreciate what he was trying to do with multiple interwoven plot threads. IMO the LyraBon one integrates into the RD story decently. The other ones, notably the ACW angst that you mention, are worse, yeah. Also the Mukade lol.
>this conveniently only gets brought to everyones attention after the funeral
They've already gotten rid of Spike at this point, so axing the CMCs was the next on the list. Achieving better equestria one step at a time.
>filly Dashs cutie mark is silly
I don't think it's totally implausible, but bug!RD having a different one is never explained. And yeah, "your destiny is to be replaced by a bug" is kinda grim.
>unfortunately I was disappointed.
Thank you for taking one for the team.

>>43233535
Kek, this exactly.

>>43233603
>Luna and Celestia was maybe instantly better than all of week 1
I don't know. I liked the LyraBon banter and the start of the jail scene, too. But that was right at the end of week 1, so the point holds.
>She is really just too much of a memer
She's okay when she's with Bonnie. Or when she's talking about her instead of >muh humans.
>Fuckin wew, that's cursed
Yeah, really messed up if you think about it.

>>43234078
>It's in the OP
There's two fics in the OP reee.

>which you should already be doing to appreciate the funny itt that the baker writes
Also it's down in the various links section. Obviously I read the itt, but nobody ever reads any of the other links.

I have a headcanon that celestias manner of speech and sheer existence significantly slowed down the rate of linguistic evolution in equestria. Ponies would adopt her manner of speech as a high culture / honoring the princess sort of thing, which would then percolate through the population from the top down, stifling regional variation, Though it still occurred. As a result evolution only occurred if she changed how spoke first or of some other external pressure was great enough to override the stasis and force evolution.
She eventually noticed this and started deliberately shifting how her ponies spoke over the centuries, usually by finding some external factor to give her a justification in doing so and/or plausible deniability which covers her wanting to change how ponies speak out of her own self interest. The equestrian government in general being a constant variable people has to deal with for over a millennia also would have slowed linguistic evolution down. Institutions like to stop linguistic evolutions for consistency and making work easier.

And this is my explanation for why lunas ye old equestrian was still essentially intelligible even though it was from 1000 years ago.

>>43233458
But then it wouldn't be a secret...

>>43233650
>is this a fic yet?
It definitely is a fic, but the fact that I can't think of any examples suggests it's probably not a good fic. I mean, the NMM stuff overlaps with it somewhat, and NMM is generally a better direction than bugs for Lunafics.
>The Equestrian hive is definitely gonna be a little fucked up
It's surely just Luna playing 5D chess to spite the traitors who join them. She force-fed RD bugmom's hair, no doubt.

>>43233695
>Didn't the A/N say something about a crossover?
Did it? I don't think it was mentioned underneath the chapter where they appear, and given that literally no one seems to "get it", I'd bet it's not a reference? It certainly reads like one, though.
>then no one actually ends up talking to Twilight about it
It's weird how the fixfic plot dies despite having so many words devoted to it, but...
>no one really ends up talking to RD about if she is still going to be RD or not
...it is even weirded that the fic declines to give us an answer there.
>they didn't even realize assassins were trying to kill spike kek
Oh, "didn't realize", right! Definitely! (We can continue this conversation once Spike leaves the room.)

>>43233751
>distinction between a fic being "ponyfic" and a fic being "pony" in the way we usually say
Yes, but I do actually think it's decently "pony" on top of that. Less than I'd like, but while the setting is kinda dark and goes into places a very "pony" fic wouldn't go to, there seems to be a clear intent to have ponies work out everything in a pony way. The way they treat RD, how Luna lets Chryssie go instead of executing the whole nation after winning, how RD gets reintegrated, how they feel bad about Twi, etc.
>Luna definitely overshadowed Celestia in this story.
This is very common and expected.
>Luna's early modern English was absolutely butchered.
It's a 2013 fic. Of course it's totally wrong. I just assumed it was and treated it as something done "for the vibes".

>>43233787
>It was awfully angsty,
It was delightfully amateurish in that exact 2012-2014 way. My first thought was "you probably wouldn't see this in any half-decent fic today". So it was bad, but also fun.
>the author leaned hard into the culture clash aspect of pony-changeling relations
>surprisingly sophisticated take on the changelings in such a silly story
Not the first time we've had a bugfic go there, and maybe that's because it's the natural direction to pick, but it is probably one of the first fics we're read to attempt going for this angle. But it indeed was unexpectedly good.

>>43233877
>The awkwardness of knowing that Bon Bon was the last person who saw Rainbow Dash alive
I can't say why it didn't work for me too well. I can find several things that the scene does well, and the previous serious scene (C&L argument) DOES work, but here something about the dialogue and the actions just felt a bit too empty.
>6/10
That is probably what I'd give it, too. Definitely deserves a like, but not even I can favorite it.

File: LLL.jpg (2.39 MB, 1500x2268)

2.39 MB JPG

>>43233271
Weird, when I write a club post at this hour, everything's usually been said.

It's pretty crazy that 98% of the character development for this story's central changelingified M6 happens offscreen. It felt like I had skipped a chapter between Dash's running away from the funeral and her rainbooming Chrysalis. Well, I kinda had: it was also the one in which the CMC rescue was planned. And the other 2% was in the "btw you have 10 minutes to resolve your relationship with Scootaloo" so Dash does it in 30 seconds and sorta awkwardly gets cocooned for the next nine and a half minutes?

Apparently, the argument I was praising between Luna and Celestia last week was in this week's reading.

At first, I was going to say the second week's reading was worse than the first, but after reading the praise in the club posts, I recognized that the feeling mostly came from Chrysalis's terrible villainous monologues and "banter" with the CMC. I think those were the places where the story fell most heavily on its face with bad voices. Simultaneously, Chrysalis was giving the CMC too much respect and the author was giving her too little.

That being said, I agree with several of the club posts:
The funeral sucked
>>43233787
>Overall it was a surprisingly sophisticated take on the changelings in such a silly story.
Uh huh. Too bad we didn't get a story out of it: the hive mind stuff matters little outside of the chapter in which Luna pwns Chrysalis. I really like bugfics and I've read a bunch, and none of them had a system quite like this one.
I'll add that I remember Fluttershy being given a late monologue that was completely outside of her character voice. And Pinkie was bad, as well. Generally, the author didn't do well when there was a scene in which every one of the M6 were obligated to donate a line.

I think I'm only going to remember this fic as having an interesting but unexpanded changeling hive mind headcanon and RD being absent for basically the whole story.

>>43234115
Cool

File: look up at the card.jpg (2.34 MB, 2000x2000)

2.34 MB JPG

>>43233695
>often times just the designated badass
I'm not sure I've even seen any pre-Luna Eclipsed fics with that depiction. I've read a few at this point, and she's pretty consistently a blue Fluttershy, but with no redeeming qualities.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/9767/moonbeam
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/922/common-sky
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/552/the-eversleep
She usually has little to no agency, is very timid or has no unique characterization besides maybe "there were two pricesses I guess" which is appropriate for her not being an actual character in The Elements of Harmony

>>43233650
>I don't recall Luna being a changeling yet but I'm sure it exists.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/565229/the-setup

>>43234129
>I think I'm only going to remember this fic as having an interesting but unexpanded changeling hive mind headcanon
That really feels like a waste. Although when the last chapter introduced the changelings ability to just assume direct control of any other changeling linked to the hivemind that felt kind of over the top. I also thought it was kind of weird how Rainbow could still perform the rainboom in Bonbons body but could not morph her own cutie mark. Actually with that in mind couldn't chrysalis basically have done the whole invasion from back in the hive and just jumped bodies whenever she got beat until she eventually won?

>>43234150
>I also thought it was kind of weird how Rainbow could still perform the rainboom in Bonbons body but could not morph her own cutie mark.
she's been flying all her life, but only transformed for the first time a couple days earlier. i think it works.

File: lava dancer.jpg (1.24 MB, 3074x4096)

1.24 MB JPG

>>43234150
That wasn't introduced in the last chapter, I'd say it was introduced when Chrysalis forced Sweetie Belle to eat her vegetables.
>and just jumped bodies whenever she got beat
Firstly, it's hard to find fault in Chrysalis's ACW invasion because it basically worked perfectly until she got Deus Ex Hearted, but more importantly I'd say it's not in her early seasons character to be so cowardly. She gave herself the most difficult and important role in the infiltration, and she also committed her entire hive to the effort. What advantage is she holding herself back for by keeping her physical body out of the infiltration that isn't offset by the advantage of having her physical self there, if not to convert Shiny's cum directly into laser beams then to provide morale support to she changelings she risked in the first place?
>feels like a waste
As a story, it doesn't, to me. The point of the writing was to be silly and fun, a fanfic. If it were taking itself seriously, it would've been
>>43234128
>one of the first fics we're read to attempt going for this angle
In Sheep's Clothing

That was fun, I enjoyed my first secret book club, looking forward to next week.
Have a good night everyone!

I think Hailey Potter is gone, lads.

File: watch your wife sleep you(...).png (939 KB, 653x654)

939 KB PNG

>>43234335
Gone as in cancelled or gone as in it's been deleted like a knockoff Lego entry on a third party database website?

>>43233650
>>food analogy
I wouldn't be a shitty reviewer if I didn't. If you want I can do autistic car analogies for the next fic.

>>43233787
>Fluttershy laughing and crying and breaking down in the short paragraph immediately before it
I agree that the Fluttershy bit right before it is bad, but I guess I'm just a sucker for a run-on sentence crashout.

>>43234293
nighty night, anon

>>43234348
Cancelled.

Fics with erotic elements that are executed tastefully and that are not just porn?

>>43234348
AJ's and Pinkie's look the comfiest to me.
I get the feeling Twi and Dash's rooms would be cold.
Rarity and Fluttershy's would probably smell the worst.

>>43234348
Fucking China gets all the good shit god damn.

>>43233877
>but I actually liked the tension between Bon Bon and everyone else there
I mean, I suppose I can appreciate this. It would have been much more enjoyable with better execution, though.
>>43234078
>Ah, but only to shit on a perfectly fine 2013 story. Typical. Reeeee.
I am not "shitting on it"! I am making a perfectly reasonable critique.
>Lyra telling Rainbow "stop possessing your mom's body so I can have sex with her" was definitely a Lyra moment.
It's ironic, but I must have totally memoryholed the sexual part of that. Lyra's gonna Lyra, but it's not nearly as bad as Celestia Code.
>but bug!RD having a different one is never explained.
Isn't it obvious? It's the cutie mark pony-Rainbow would have had, had she not died during the accident. The changeling Rainbow isn't just mimicking pony-Rainbow but actively usurping her place.
>>43234115
I like this and it makes perfect sense.
>>43234128
>but I do actually think it's decently "pony" on top of that
I'd honestly agree, and the tonal shifts kind of having a common element of "pony" is a bit of a saving grace.
>Of course it's totally wrong. I just assumed it was and treated it as something done "for the vibes".
You thought the author had Luna mixing up tenses on purpose? You must have much greater faith in him than anyone itt.
>It was delightfully amateurish in that exact 2012-2014 way.
I wonder to what extent the "amateurish" nature of early fics affected the prolificacy(?) of the early fandom. Is it merely a consequence of there being so many amateur writers, or did a community of people writing in amateurish styles somehow increase productivity?
>>43234129
>outside of the chapter in which Luna pwns Chrysalis
That whole sequence felt like Light's death in Death Note.

File: do youwant the twipie leg(...).png (164 KB, 414x477)

164 KB PNG

>>43234389
Just order it off AliExpress.

>>43234293
Good night, don't let the /fssbc/ bite.

>>43234391
>Is it merely a consequence of there being so many amateur writers, or did a community of people writing in amateurish styles somehow increase productivity?
I think more of the former since I'd wager most of the early fics are from first time/younger writers, though I could see the argument for blasting out first drafts with minimal planning and only editing for grammar (if that) increasing proliferation of the early fandom.

>>43234379
Come on, Anon, do I even have to link it again?

>>43233591
What does almost mean?

>>43233176
>Is it just me?
It's just you. "Oneshot" basically exclusively means "a complete story told in a single chapter". While they're commonly short, "novella" length oneshots aren't unheard of, either.

>>43233677
There were two main personalities: shy and timid, basically another Fluttershy; and the atoner, a pony wracked by guilt and desperately trying to make up for it.

>>43234348
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1127781/in-another-world-in-another-fandom
He's doing light novel HP crossovers over on AO3 now. Keeping to form, he's abandoned all of them in favor of his next idea, an original FDVRMMORPG webnovel, whatever the fuck that means. Hailey Potter Anon will need to join Mud Anon to get his fix of futile pony fanfic ventures.

>>43235197
>Mud Anon
Hey, Pignat probably has mud anon covered and then some.

You all failed crimsonequine, you never once explained what's wrong with his writing.

>>43223617
Why is Twiggle always portrayed as a CAESAR·AVGVSTVS·EQVORVM?

>>43235219
Is there anything new?

>>43235284
There is nothing new under the sun.

File: compact tuna wrap.jpg (152 KB, 1280x989)

152 KB JPG

>>43235788
That's why it's so good to be under the moon.

>>43232994
I just wanted to chime in that I was confused by your wording too to add to the peer pressure to not use one-shot in this context again

>>43235856
me too.

Luna is imprisoned on the Moon and as luck would have it an redeem Discord variant took pity on her and decide to give her something to prevent her millennial boredom.

>t. feature box

>>43236082
Update box, technically.

>>43236093
It's still the feature box, even if it's the slots reserved for existing stories. The update box is below that ("Recently updated").
And the story is fucking 14k words, so it's not like it's some autistic epic with a dedicated reader base ensuring every update is featured or something like that.

File: morning.jpg (76 KB, 685x700)

76 KB JPG

>>43236099
>dedicated reader base ensuring every update is featured
>>43236093's point was that once a longfic (by the feature box's definition) is featured, all updates to it are automatically featured (excepting obvious abuses).
If the update pulls that hypothetical reader base in, it could climb out of the update section, but unless that actually happens all the placement means is that it has updated. Like the update box.

>>43236393
Oh, really? I thought the update box was a pity-"featured" box for updates, basically competing on heat but only with other updates and not new stories. I didn't realise it would auto-feature any update from a story that had been previously featured in the past.
Does this ever expire? Or will an autistic 2M word fic get featured on every single new chapter if it happened to get featured at any point in its lifetime?

File: nmm presentation.gif (1.33 MB, 616x450)

1.33 MB GIF

>>43236397
I doubt heat enters into it at all, I think the pity slots are strictly in update order. And no, I don't know of any evidence to suggest a story can lose its auto-feature'dness after gaining it.

Actually, thinking about it, A Quiet Rune Scribe probably has enough heat to stay in the feature box perpetually, so it may be blocked from escaping the pity slots.

>>43236397
It's entirely based on whether or not it made the featurebox on its initial run

>>43223617
You're

>>43236393
>>43236433
>>43236393
>all updates to it are automatically featured
This is easily disproven. Go to the front page and go down the list of recently updated stories. You will find plenty that have previous been featured (i.e., are on bookshelf 1). Some of those will not be featured now and were not pushed out of the feature box by another fic. You can prove that they were not pushed out because there will be other fics, lower down on the recently updated stories list, that are still in the feature box.

Right now, I see the thread's own Daring Do and the Curse of Avarice in the Recently Updated box. It was previously featured, but it's not currently in the feature box. None of the fics above it were ever featured. QED.

Sir another "random guy gets turned into Celestia's baby" fic has hit the website.

File: cat democracy.jpg (1.37 MB, 1500x1500)

1.37 MB JPG

>>43236698
Damn, you don't even get auto-featured in the pity slots. Rough.

>>43236698
It's also worth noting that there have been stories that got featured AFTER it had been published and only made it into the box after several updates.
If you look up "Finally made it into the box!" in the story description, I'm sure you'll find at least something like that.

File: Spoiler Image (2.91 MB, 3000x3000)

2.91 MB PNG

>>43227496
What the hell, I'll link to this after all:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/590619/holes-in-her-heart

I wrote nearly half the story in two days, kek, across something like four sessions each day. I'm getting much faster now that I'm in the proper mindset for it.

File: Screenshot 2026-05-11 9.3(...).png (8 KB, 318x224)

8 KB PNG

yaaaay

>>43235219
>what's wrong with his writing
It had all the standard fanfic problems: bad characterization, horrible pacing, plots a beginning writer absolutely cannot handle well (the "Dash works as a driver for a pony meat farm as an allegory to Tyson chicken farming" story immediately comes to mind), and he had a total, complete inability to learn and grow as a writer.

>>43236393
>all updates to it are automatically featured
It's not a guarantee. Depends on the timing. If 200, 400, 500, and 700 upvote stories all post updates within a few minutes of each other, that 200 upvote one's getting crowded out. Used to happen more often when there more fics getting posted/updated. Now it's pretty rare.

>>43236397
>was a pity-"featured" box for updates
It was implemented as a way to buff longfics. Previously, your 100k fic would only get one chance on the initial upload to get in. After that, you were screwed and your story would rot. It let fics have the chance to "grind" their way into popularity through dozens of updates building readers until it hit the magic number needed to break in. It also had a "rich get richer" side effect as longfics that did get in on the initial upload had a gravy train every time they updated.

>would auto-feature any update
It doesn't. It operates under the same "heat" algorithm the main featuring does. It seems that way now because of how infrequent popular fic updates are these days. The third story is always "cool" enough to get bumped off the next time a popular featured fic updates.

>Does this ever expire?
Based on what's known about the algorithm, there's a time penalty that increases that'll eventually push a story out. Knighty didn't account for autism, though, so I believe every time you update the clock resets. In theory, you could permanently have your fic featured if it's popular and you time the updates right.

>>43236698
>It was previously featured
Huh. It must have gotten in for a fraction of a minute because I didn't notice. Certainly proves the point as it doesn't have nearly the traction needed to get "hot" enough to get in the update section.

>>43236999
Reminds me when I thought my fic was "locked" at 77k when I started posting it. Three weeks later after doing final editing on each chapter before posting, it's now at 80k.

>>43237803
Quit spying on her from the bushes and go finish your fic, buddy.

>>43237843
What if his fic is about spying on Rarity from the bushes?

>>43237846
He's done enough research and is just procrastinating at this point then.

>>43235197
>He's doing light novel HP crossovers over on AO3 now.
I'm a little drunk but I can't even find them.

>>43238224
Do you really *want* to find them?

Writing is really fun. I'm probably writing like shit, but its fun.

>>43223617
I’m planning on writing a story in the style of a radio drama where some of the incidental dialog involves travel advice that is given to our little ponies, but most of this advice could also apply to people like us. Would this be considered a “meta story” even if this isn’t the central topic?

>>43238809
It's true. Hope you keep having fun, fren.
>>43238813
It depends on how blatant it is. Can you give an example?

>>43238822
The story as a whole involves a series of events that makes travel in Equestria more and more difficult as the story progresses and the advice given to ponies changes to accommodate this. For example, it starts out with things like “book a refundable fare in case your flight gets cancelled” and goes to “have a flexible travel plan in case of mass delays and cancellations”.

>>43238834
NTA, but I like the concept. It reminds me about those PSA horror videos on youtube.

>>43238822
It is. Although sometimes it feels like I write way too slowly, or that if someone read it they'd wanna shit on it.

>>43238834
You'd be safe. Hell, the show itself ended with morals that people could apply in the real world. You know, back when it was good.
Follow your dreams, Anon. Have ponies give us advice.