Kodeake's being melancholic again. Someone get the spray bottle. · 4:02am Jun 1st, 2023
So, I was looking through some stats on my stories recently. Just kinda looking at view curves and stuff. The funny spike on Diary of a Time Looper when Scribbler did a reading of it. That kind of stuff. When I spot something odd on A Mare's Needs.
Which is weird, cuz I don't really go on EQD much, let alone submit my stories.
Some investigating later, turns out someone at EQD scouts fics now, and at some point A Mare's Needs got posted there. Which is, like... A heads up woulda' been nice guys.
I remember when getting a fic on EQD was, like, a huge marker of quality. People put that shit in the description of their story, their profile. And frankly it was well-deserved, as only damn fine stories got accepted. I always wanted to get published there, one day, though I was too nervous to ever really submit my stuff, except one story I did submit (which got rejected) and I kinda... slowly stopped caring about it.
These days it's not really a big thing. EQD isn't the be-all end-all pony thing it once was, though I am happy to see it still going strong. I think a part of me will die when EQD dies. It was such a huge part of the fandom in the early days.
Although I won't lie, the teenager inside me hungry for success in writing is pissing his jorts right now at actually getting a story on EQD. The rest of me is kinda like... that's cool.
Which has made me think about other things like this. Remember when Twilight's Library was a thing? Those seals of approval really meant something for a while. There were others, the RCL, Seattle's Angels, things that highlighted real high quality fics.
They're all gone, now. The fics they've recommended still remain, and those seals and approvals still mean something, but... just because they aren't highlighting good fics anymore, doesn't mean there aren't any more good fics coming out.
I find myself wondering if some of my current work might be good enough to make it into some of those collections now. And it... hurts a bit, to never know, but also to know that I'll never even have the chance anymore. Or maybe, not that I don't have the chance, but that I missed my chance. Because it took me so long to develop my skill to where it is today - and lord knows I've still got developing to do.
There are a still people out there reviewing and rating (Looking at you, PresentPerfect), I think PaulAsuran is still doing stuff occasionally (is that how you spell it? I'll feel bad if it's not but also I can't be bothered to go check right now), and honestly? The true heros. Those who wade through this giant mound of fanfiction to find and feature the stuff that deserves it should be lauded for their efforts.
There's been a big influx of new users registered the last little while on this site, but not an influx of new stories to match. Is the incoming and outgoing rate matching right now? Are most new users just reading and not writing? I have no idea.
I don't think it's hard to say that those groups, and groups like them, are a thing of the past now. The guy that founded Twilight's Library moved on to a new group, which hasn't been active in years.
And like, I get it. That's a shit ton of thankless, volunteer work that no one has time for and even fewer actually want to do. I don't begrudge anyone decided that they've had enough.
It does make me sad, though.
I've got a couple big projects I'm working on right now - some medium, in the 50K word range, and two that I figure will be longer, and I... I find myself wondering, if Fimfic will even still be around when I finally finish them. Thinking about how many people left during my previous hiatus(es), and how long these fics could take me to write... I don't like the way that math looks.
I write for me, because I enjoy it, so they'll be written as long as I'm having fun with them, but... it will be sad, if I don't have a good place to share them anymore. Or at least, if I only have a very small, niche community to share them with. Some quiet, pony-filled corner of the internet, where only a few people linger, where fresh blood is non-existent and the old blood is dried and sticky.
Because our fandom isn't quite the same as others. We were a fad, a smash-hit tidal wave of success, but now that the shows over... where would knew people even come from? Of course, i say this as new accounts on here are nearly at an all-time high, which is super weird, but still. How will new people be introduced to ponies? How will they find us? I don't know.
I don't know anything, it feels like.
Anyway, this blog is disjointed enough as it is and frankly I'm just making myself depressed so i'm gonna dip. If you're one of my newer followers from the last couple fics reading this, sorry you have to deal with me, but I hope you enjoy my work.
Until next time,
Kodeake out
Hi, as one of the new users I wanted to give my two bits of insight. So personally I got into Ponys because of two factors:
The first reason is some youtube videos which discused this dying fandom, which piqued my curiosity. The videos showed the fandom at it's peak, which lead me to a few questions: Why had there been such a huge fad about a kids show? Being a huge disney nerd I wasn't about to discount a show, just because it was made for kids, but a show about ponys had gathered such a following? Really?
Though I honestly wouldn't have checked out the show if not for one other reason: Due to a worldwide health-related incident, I was bored, as much of the social interaction had been shut down. So I started to watch some shows, to stave of boredom, one being a certain show featuring pastel-colored pony protagonists and as you can guess kinda liked it
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Did other new users arrive a similar way and is this one last push due to reviews of an old fandom and extraordinary circumstances? Don't know, this was just my story.
Though being one to arrive last gives you an interesting perspective of the fandom: First on arriving in the fandom you have a massive amount of fan content (not only on this site of course), though many accounts are inactive, which gives you the feeling of walking through an ancient city, with most of its inhabitants gone. The people remaining, especially the one still here since the beginning are in my experience not only passionate but also very nice about it, though it probably helps that many have matured (let's be honest, most people are not the best in their teenage years). Looking at old posts, the fandom had its share of toxicity and though I doubt all is gone it feels most of the drama is buried.
I also am still learing of the former big places of pilgrimage for all pony fans, because as stated in your blog, their relevancy has faded. For example I learned of EQD only because some stories proudly displayed being featured. After learing about it I have been checking it ocassionally, but as you said it doesn't feel as important and central, as it apparantly was some time ago.
Well this got way longer, than i originally wanted sorry for rambling on
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unfortunately, the fanfic scouting means they specifically aren't contacting anyone :B they used to scrape my reviews for recommendations -- you could find stories popping up on the site within a week of me reviewing them for a while -- but I think if I'm not on stuff published in the last couple months, they stay away
well, and the big hiatus might have helped wean them off that habit ;P
For what it's worth, Sethisto "scouted" my fic How to Wing Hug about a month after it came out last August — 5731268 no PresentPerfect review scraping required, apparently :P — and while it obviously wasn't as big of a deal as it would've been back in the day, it's definitely something I'd still say I'm proud of, justified or not. It's just nice to know my stuff's entertaining enough that people'll want to drag it off-site, y'know what I mean? I'll miss the place if/when it's gone too. I thought about mentioning the distinction in the description, but I kept worrying it'd be seen as too tacky for 2022/3. Eh, maybe now I'll have bitten that bullet by the end of the day. Retraux, baby!
RCL and SA hang in kind of a weird limbo for me: I joined the site just before Season 9, long enough for me to perceive them as institutions but short enough for them to shut down by the time I started making stuff that could've feasibly been on the fringes of admission (a "post-finale + 2020 blues" lull I fell into didn't help matters either). Funnily enough, I think I might still have an old "Preemptive RCL Interview Answers" note buried somewhere in my phone; basically just a silly "visualize yourself where you want yourself to be"-type scrawl, mind you, but maybe its existence proves a point anyway. Nowadays, I'd say the closest equivalent to those groups would be getting a review/recommendation in a well-regarded user's blog series (Mike Cartoon Pony, TCC56, PresentPerfect, et al.), but that's just my perspective on things. Either way, I definitely wonder those same "Could I have gotten in?" questions from time to time. I suppose it's nice to know I'm not alone.
Also, most of those mysterious thousands of new accounts are spam/adbots; whatever account creation filtration system FiMFiction uses broke in 2020 and nobody's ever bothered to fix it (maybe they inflate the site's ad revenue or something, but I'd rather not spend too much time window-shopping for tinfoil hats). Remember that site-wide post about phishing scams from a year or so ago? That was 'coz of them. At this exact moment, if you pull up the site's "User Search" and sort by new, it takes until the fifth page for me to find someone I can say with confidence looks like an actual human — congrats and welcome aboard, gravegardens! There are better days than others and there's no shortage of newcomers seeing what there is to see, but I wouldn't say there's a massive contingent of shadow-readers, I'm afraid.
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If it makes you feel better, I did the exact same thing!
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Ahhh, of course, a certain world-wide medical crisis. Figures. Well, for what it's worth, these old ruins still have some life in them. And in this neck of the woods, that life is oddly Twidash-flavoured. Glad to still have some young blood around - and you're right, I was not the best when I was a teenager lol. I still cringe at some of the things I did.
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Ew... that just feel so... scummy. I guess you do what you gotta when people aren't chomping at the bit to submit their stories anymore, but the least they could do is like, I dunno, give some credit, or like, ask permission?
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Aw man. Of course it's the damn bots. I honestly had considered it, but I barely see them I kinda wrote it off. Like, the last few stories I published hit featured for a good while and I've only gotten one spammy comment total (linking to some weird valorent ranked thing? Super weird) and I haven't gotten any phishy DM's. I dunno, if it's a massive swarm of bots I guess I just don't see them, or they're active in a different corner than I am. Congrats on ur EQD feature tho - it may not be the big thing it once was, but I do believe it's still a sign of quality.
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Yeah, they don't go into fics' comments all that often. They usually just stick their junk in their user pages' bios and/or comment sections. Occasionally you'll get one that spam-posts a bunch of back-to-back blogs about whatever it is they're trying to sell; those are the only ones I really go out of my way to report, TBH. I never see them in PMs either — though, ironically enough, one of the first messages I ever got was from a since-deleted, pre-2020-breakthrough bot advertising "Dubai escorts". Um, no thanks… for a number of reasons.
Thanks for the congrats!
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Hey if nothing else you have incredible taste fellow twidasher