In Retrospect: The 63rd Rune · 12:36am Jun 19th, 2023
Hello, hey, hi, what's up, how's it going! It's me, Alexstrazsa, aka that guy who was deeply involved with the fandom but is now washed up, irrelevant, out of touch, and probably no one remembers him. That guy!
For whatever reason, I read one of my stories last night, and it made me realize that it's been about ten years since my last real fanfic submission. That feels insane to me, like wow, how the time has gone by. So it gave me an idea. How about I go back and read all my stories and comment about them? How will Alex's writing from ten years ago hold up for Alex today?
I think that's a fun idea, so let's get right into it, shall we?
Let's try to do this chronologically.
The 63rd Rune
This was my very first fanfic submission. I don't remember if I had written any fics in the past, but this was for sure my first major foray into it. A bit of backstory, I started writing this during a time where I had been displaced from my home. There was a huge flood in the area, which put like four feet of water into the house. I was staying with family friends while the flood subsided and repairs could be done. Hell, I was even borrowing a friend's incredibly tiny laptop. I was also attending college at the time, so yeah, it was a pretty crazy time in my life.
I don't even remember what sparked the inspiration for this. I just know I wanted to write a story about "what if the mane six became dudes" and so I did. And because I was a huge fan (and still am) of the anime Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann at the time, I wrote my chapter titles in the same style, using an "iconic" quote from the chapter.
And for the title, there's that whole meme about the "rules of the internet." I'm sure everyone's familiar with Rule 34, but in this case I was invoking Rule 63, which states "For every fictional character, there exists a gender-swapped counterpart of that character." All I did was invent a scenario where there were 100 things (runes) and the 63rd one went wrong and resulted in that "rule" taking place. To this day, I still think it's a fun concept!
But now for the fic itself. I'm not sure how to do this. Chapter by chapter? The whole thing summed up? I guess for longer stories like this I can go chapter by chapter. Might be a long blog post overall, but you can just... scroll down if you want. Not sure how much I'll have to say, but here goes.
Chapter 1
Ah, the first chapter. The place where all your readers will start, and in most cases, where you've got your hook to get people invested and interested in continuing. This is where the spell took place, and our cast woke up to find themselves as stallions. It happened to Spike too, just the other way!
Reading it today, I can say this chapter is... okay. I noticed some word repetition that probably could've been fixed with another editing pass, but what really stuck out to me were the generic ways I refer to characters. Like "the party pony" for Pinkie Pie. Maybe I felt like I needed to mix-up the descriptors to keep it fresh or something. Nowadays it reads weird to me, maybe it's normal, maybe it's amateur. Not sure!
Characters felt in-character, nothing stuck out to me in a blatant "this character would never say this" kind of way. I think I always tried to keep characters sounding like themselves and trying to pay attention and emulate how they would actually react or what they would actually say in a given situation. I remember that was always important to me when I was writing. Personally, I still think I did it in decently, though I'm sure some disagree.
It's also very evident that I wanted to take this story past just the funny situation of "haha they're stallions now!" because I made the spell permanent and affect the memories of those in Ponyville. It's almost like I had them teleport to an alternate dimension. I could've gone that route too, but I don't think I wanted to deal with the questions of "what happened to the mane six in the other dimension" or "if they both teleported to each other's dimensions, what did the other group do in our Ponyville." Y'know, stuff like that.
Anyway, next chapter!
Chapter 2
The sky blue stallion
The purple maned fashion pony
the animal friendly pegasus
Why was I like this.
Maybe it's not actually a problem, I don't know. It's just rubbing me the wrong way now. Surely there's a better way to do this, right? Barring that, another okay chapter. This time it explores all the changes that are going on with their homes. Dash is messier and now has lewd magazines, Rarity makes suits instead of dresses, Applejack... I didn't really explore that one too much. Just had her talk to Apple Bloom and Big Mac. Same with Pinkie, actually. And reading through Fluttershy's part actually had me thinking I had a blatant plot hole in the story, until I read further and realized I gave the spell a radius. The sign changing but not Fluttershy's animals is the only way they knew what the range of the spell was so, good thinking, past Alex? Did a bit of planning ahead there, apparently. Although I now realize I never really included changes for the library. Either that or I assumed Twilight and Dusk live the exact same way? At this point, not sure!
Dialogue still seems fine, and I started to add some sense of stakes to this, where their memories are starting to change a bit and they're becoming more comfortable with their new lives. A bit of a ticking clock, if you will. Not the most original way to advance the plot, but I'm okay with it.
Next.
Chapter 3
The orange stallion
I'm losing my goddamn mind. Anyway.
In this chapter we find the mane six entering Canterlot and meeting with Celestia. And let me just say, I fucking love Celestia. To this day she's still my favorite character, and I absolutely adored writing her. Now, I don't know if this is changed in later seasons, but my knowledge of Celestia is that she's regal and serious when she needs to be, but also witty and playful in casual settings. Not at Pinkie Pie levels, obviously, but in a more reserved way. Actually, maybe that's just fanon, at this point I don't remember. Either way that's how I tried to write her. So I'm pretty happy with her depiction here.
What I'm not happy about is mostly everything after they read the scroll.
So first off, some choices here I made make me physically wince. Rearranging books on the bookshelf to form an "L" opens the library? Really, is that the best I could come up with? And then, the scroll they use to find the answer is called "The Forbidden Scroll." Seriously? What was going on when I was writing this, why did I come up with the blandest and most generic name I possibly could've for a key item in the story?? It's baffling.
And then I absolutely hate that this stupid scroll gave them the answers in riddles. Why in the hell did I do that? They aren't even good riddles, I was reading this and thinking this was so unbelievably convoluted, it is a goddamn miracle that they figured out the right items. Speaking of those items, a feather from the pegasus king? Why in the hell would that even exist? An old gift from the gryphon kingdom, sure, I can roll with that. And then liquid magic, which isn't even explained in a good way. I just wrote that before magic was really harnessed, it was kept in a liquid state, which I guess is fine on its own, but I don't explain how that's possible. If I were to go back, I'd probably explain that magic was able to be extracted from the earth or form plants or something like that and processed into a liquid form that unicorns could use or something. I don't know.
All that said, this is stupid and it relies on quite a few plot conveniences to continue. Like the only way this works is if the grave of the pegasus king just HAPPENS to have one of his feathers there for some reason, and then there needs to be LIQUID MAGIC still existing in a crumbling old kingdom that no one has visited for hundreds of years. Also, the gryphon king's artifact or whatever still needs to be in the Everfree Forest and the only way that works is if no one at any point in time discovered the knowledge of its existence before and no one ever tried to steal it.
I'm sure I thought this all worked back then, but nowadays I just read this and I'm like "Why the fuck did I think it was okay to put the story in this direction."
I would honestly totally rework all these plot points. It wouldn't rely on stupid riddles and the items they need would be less insane. I'm totally cool with the locations and the characters. Like, the Pegasus King, cool, we can roll with that. Old Canterlot hidden in the mountain, yeah, I could see that being plausible. The old castle in the Everfree Forest, sure, that's a great location to explore. Love it. But goddamn did I really botch the things they were supposed to get and how they knew to get them. I am in shock.
Besides all that nonsense... I'm okay with how I wrote Luna being a bookworm and reading all the old stuff in the library. I'm not sure if this is pre or post Luna Eclipsed where her new design was revealed, but my descriptors probably work regardless? And I think her dialogue was fine. Same with the other characters, mostly.
Oh and then there's the part after the library where they decided to go to an inn. I made Octavia a semi-alcoholic unsuccessful musician because that's totally original and no one's ever done that before. And then, like, she hits on Blitz and hints that they're going to "talk" more later on in the night? On it's own I think that can be a plausible situation but this scene is not nearly long enough for that. She goes from complaining about guys hitting on her to wanting to visit Blitz's room in the span of like, one paragraph and a few lines of dialogue. Past Alex, I'm sure you wanted to create a funny setting and make some promiscuous jabs but my man, you needed to build up to that more. Like, a lot more.
I complained a lot about this chapter.
Chapter 4
The bartender was in the last chapter too, but I really have to bring it up here. I was absolutely trying to write this guy with the accent of a Dwarf from World of Warcraft. And it makes sense, I've always been a big fan of Warcraft, no doubt I'd try to get some kind of reference in a story of mine.
Less sense is the Apple Jacks reference I make shortly after. I'm just... confused by it. I don't know why I felt the need to add a one-off joke about Apple Jacks in this story, maybe I thought it was clever at the time. "Haha there's a cereal called Apple Jacks and a character named Applejack, what if they were in the same univese, woooaaaahhh." I hate this. I guess it's not blatantly awful, but it does make me question my past decisions.
Then there's the "conclusion" to the Rainbow Blitz/Octavia situation where surprise surprise, they didn't do anything! They really did just talk. What an insane subversion of expectations I pulled off on my readers there! I had to read Applejack's lines again because on first glance it seems like he's suggesting that Blitz should've gone all the way, but I think I was actually just implying that he was surprised Blitz didn't. It can have a very bad interpretation, that's all I'm saying. I guess the modern day term for this is "problematic." Nowadays I would've worded that differently so that it can't come across as Applejack talking like a college frat guy after a party.
I'm mostly fine with how the chapter continues. Twilight uses the fancy magic orb to talk to a hologram of Celestia, they go down to the entrance of Old Canterlot where Luna opens the door for them, then they go inside and find a big ol' cavern with a castle and city in it. Obviously supported by a lot of very old, very large columns. And of course, because I was such an innovative writer, this all ends with the columns breaking and the city crumbling to ruin. This obviously could be done better and in a more unique way, but I guess that was the natural conclusion I came to at the time. How fortunate that this never happened before they needed to visit, right? What a lucky coincidence. 
Plot convenience aside, they get the water, which has a ridiculous defense mechanism. It only hurts unicorns? So like, any pegasus or earth-pony at any point could've come up to this and used it. What was I thinking? Maybe that only unicorns would really be able to utilize so that was the only race that it needed to be protected from? But I never explained that in the story, so... yeah. Kinda weird. It raises a lot of questions and bothers me a bit. But at this point, it is what it is.
Not too much happens after this, they meet with Celestia and Luna, get a balloon to Cloudsdale set up, and then Luna happens to have a McGuffin which will help them rejog their "real" memories before the spell totally wipes them out. Luna does call it a simple enchantment, so maybe that's just something she can do. "It's magic, I don't gotta explain shit." You know how it goes. Although I wish I explained this a bit more, though.
Next.
Chapter 5
This starts off with a balloon ride to Cloudsdale and Pinkie trying to avert boredom with a game of Eye Spy, but then it takes a bit of a serious turn as Fluttershy reveals she can't remember parts of her past. None of them can, so at this point I guess I'm trying to hype up the stakes more. Twilight then reveals the special amulet, which she totally could've done at any point prior so I'm not sure why it took this long? They had like a whole depressing balloon ride and only after does she mention she has this magical McGuffin that can restore their memories. Like sure, it has limited use, but still. Twilight isn't that much of a dick, as far as I know 
Also I didn't mention this before, but why did I go so extra on the Pegasus King's name? "King Archimedes Darkbillow III." I did not have to do that. It could've just been King Darkbillow. Heck, I could've even had the III there. But why the Archimedes? I will never know.
Anyway they get to his tomb and surprise, more mysterious magic that prevents non-pegasi from entering and almost kills Pinkie with fall damage. I'm guessing for some reason I wanted Dash and Fluttershy to pair up by themselves, but reading through the segment, there's no real reason for it? In fact, I have them get separated and start frantically looking for each other which ends up having Fluttershy find the feather by accident, and Dash eventually finds her, so like... what was the point? I don't know why I wrote this as some silly maze they had to navigate when it was totally inconsequential and didn't actually add anything to the story. I think I just wanted some kind of arbitrary obstacle they had to get past?
I swear I wrote this like a generic adventure game or something. No character development, no purpose, just... filler. I somehow added filler to a 35,000 word story. Incredible.
Also this is apparently an important monument in Pegasi society but there's no guards or anyone here. I did not think this part through.
So they get the feather, and in a hilarious move, to leave they maze, all they had to do was keep going left! Comedy genius! 
I seriously regret writing this section, there didn't even have to be an obstacle. The feather could've just been there with no stupid maze and maybe they could've talked to each other about what's going on and have a character/bonding moment or something. Anything besides this arbitrary obstacle junk.
Twilight talks to the hologram Celestia again, and for some reason I do the memory loss thing again, which brings me to another problem I have: Celestia seems to know a lot about this spell Twilight casted and I don't feel I did a good enough job explaining how or why she knows so much. She figures out the memory loss thing with Twilight telling her, so clearly she knows a great deal about it. This is definitely something I would change, either make Celestia not know much about it OR explain her knowledge of it far better so that it... y'know, makes sense? Anyway, the story's ticking clock is going faster, chop chop.
Chapter 6
Ah, this chapter. I know one thing that happens in this chapter, but we'll get to that.
Twilight's pissed about her sprained hoof so they go to Zecora, and I'll be honest, I was real nervous about how well past Alex did with the rhyming. But you know what? I'm pretty okay with it. One of them was a bit of a stretch ("trick" to rhyme with "stomach?") but overall, it did the job. Not too much to say about this segment, really! I mean, the time crunch kicks in again as Twilight needs to use the amulet because Dash gets mad at Zecora for calling her a girl, but I guess I needed that sense of urgency. Or something.
So then they go to the old castle and navigate to the throne room, everyone splits up to try to find something to reveal the artifact, and then the certain scene begins. None of them find anything and this sends Twilight into a mental breakdown of guilt and self-loathing, where she's blaming herself and giving up hope on getting everyone back to normal. It's a pretty emotional moment where all her friends are trying to console her, but she's so lost in her head that she's given up entirely and doesn't even believe she deserves them as friends.
Reading it back, I personally think this needed more buildup, because the whole adventure so far, Twilight has been pretty level-headed and determined to fix things, but now suddenly she's a wreck and can't be broken out of her downward spiral by the words of her friends. This would've worked better if there was a better indication of her mental state prior to this, because it kinda comes out of nowhere.
So, as a writer, how do I resolve this situation? How do I get Twilight to snap out of this depressive episode and back on track?
Well naturally I make Rainbow Dash punch her dead in the face.
Now I'm gonna be upfront with this right now, this was not an original idea. This was a totally shoehorned in scene, and I am absolutely stunned that I did this. Remember how before I said I was a big fan of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann? Well an incredibly similar scene plays out in the anime, where one character is feeling heavy guilt and despair, and the moment they're at their lowest, another character jumps in and decks them in the face, gives some encouraging words, and snaps them out of it.
I don't know why, at the time I guess I felt really compelled to put that in the fic. It's just one of those ideas I was fixated on. Does it work in the story? Ehhh, kinda? If any character would punch Twilight in the face, it's most likely Rainbow Dash. Would Twilight respond as positively as she does in this? That, I'm unsure of.
But thank goodness that happened, because super conveniently it's exactly what the cast needed to solve the final puzzle, as Dusk hitting the throne was enough to push it back and reveal the final piece of the puzzle! Imagine if he hit the other throne or didn't hit either of them? Chaos!
Regardless, they get the artifact, take a sweet hit of the amulet, then get back to the balloon and head to Canterlot. A bit rushed, admittedly. But hey, we can move on.
Chapter 7
Here we go, the final chapter. What incredible events could await us as we wrap up this epic adventure and-
Oh, Dash and Rarity go shopping in Canterlot. Okay... 
Why did I write this...? Celestia does tell them it'll take time to prepare the spell (and I'm not sure why Twilight isn't helping her out, to be honest), so they do need to kill some time, but why was this the option I went for? Surely I didn't do this just to set up Blitz and Octavia having another chance encounter together, right? Because that totally happens and it's the only reason I can think of for Dash and Rarity into this scenario.
This also leads to the group splitting up again, with Pinkie and Fluttershy going off to tell Celestia what's going on while Twilight and Applejack search for Dash and Rarity. There's a moment where Applejack drops her accent and speaks like an upperclass citizen, which I still find amusing. I think that happened in an episode, which is why I added that? Or I just totally made it up, it's been a while.
So they find Rarity, who's memories got fully jumbled at this point, then use the McGuffin amulet to snap her out of it. Cool, I guess I needed some sort of conflict and to show that they were running out of time. Then they have to go find Rainbow, who's off at a coffee shop with Octavia. I do like the exchange here with Applejack and Dash, as Applejack just runs out of patience and shows the amulet before they can do any explaining. An amusing moment.
That's followed by a bit of drama as Octavia wants an explanation as to why Dash needs to leave, so Rarity gives her a summary of what happened. She accepts this information without any question, so she's either very familiar with the capabilities of magic or just incredibly trusting of Dash's friends. The rushed acceptance aside, this is kind of a touching moment where Octavia still wants to meet Rainbow when she's back to normal, but of course I had to absolutely ruin this scene with the goddamn ridiculous line of "gotta dash."
Oh my god. Why. 
Why did I think that was a cool thing to write?
Get me out of this segment.
So they gather everyone up, go to the castle and meet with Celestia, then teleport to Ponyville. All good so far. Twilight has to go get Spike, and walks in on him trying on dresses and makeup. Comedy... I guess? I mean, at this point Spike's memories could've totally changed so this could feel natural, but it's not written that way, and I even wrote that the makeup was applied poorly, so... he was just trying stuff out I guess? My best guess here is that I wanted a Spike scene because I knew he was technically still a character in the story.
After getting Spike, the two of them go back to meet up with the rest, but just as Twilight gets there, oh no! His memories change and he can't use the amulet anymore! This is terribly inconvenient and harrowing thing to happen right before the end of their journey, whatever will they do? Who would've guessed something like this could possibly happen??
I know I'm ragging on my old writing a lot, and I guess you could say this is the logical conclusion to all the memory changing shenanigans that have been building up the whole fic, but it feels like a really last-minute final obstacle. It also gets solved pretty quickly, as Applejack and Dash just have to get him lasso'd up and dragged back to the magic circle. This didn't really need to happen, but I guess it added some tension?
Celestia casts the spell, everything is back to normal, they all hug and Pinkie throws a big party. That is like... the most bog-standard kind of ending I can think of, to the point where it's almost laughable. I'm kinda disappointed that I didn't come up with anything better than that, maybe at that point I just wanted to finish it off, who knows.
Originally I wanted to do a retrospective of all my stories in this one post, but seeing how long just this one is, I can see I'm going to have to split it up. I can probably fit multiple shorter stories in the same post, but for longer ones like this, yeah, they'll be getting there own.
So overall, what do I think? I think it was... alright. Obviously there's a lot of things I would change, especially the entire plot line of how they undo the spell and how that's presented. I see in the author's note I touted this as my first fanfic, so I'm going to take that as truth and say I did I pretty decent job for a first attempt. At the very least, it's mostly error-free and my biggest issues with it are plot points. For a story that's eleven years old, it kinda hold up, but it's very clearly an early series fic.
To this day it's still my most viewed fanfic, and I'm chalking that to be a relatively early entry in the long history of pony fic, and maybe because people liked it. It does have a pretty good Like/Dislike ratio.
My final rating for The 63rd Rune shall be... 6/10. It's aight.
Join me next time for when I cover... oh christ, the next one is My Little WTF? Seriously? Do I have to do a retrospective on that? I guess I don't have to write much...
So actually I'll do a retrospective on Legacy of the Sun next!
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
This was really fun to see how things have aged and changed. I'm glad you're still around bud.
The 63rd Rune was definitely an early fic for me so my nostalgia bias is probably gonna be pretty strong. I still may try rereading it sometime, but I'm willing to bet it still holds up pretty well.
Looking forward to what else you have to say n_n
Hah, this was fun. I haven't even read the story, but I can identify with going through your old stuff. But the thing is: it's not that bad, not compared to the average story on this site. Compared to the best of what I can do, yeah, my first one is lacking, but I also don't want to trash it, y'know? Because, again, it's not that bad, and there were (and are) people who liked it, and who am I to tell them they're wrong? And not even some random person in the comments telling them they shouldn't like it, but the author himself saying, "Stop liking this"? It feels wrong somehow. I can lament the things I've learned to do better since, but all told, this is still a pretty good story.
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Glad you're still around too! Wild to see how many people are still in this fandom after so many years. As far as writing more, I know, historically, every time I come back to Fimfic I end up disappearing for another year or more, but I swear, this time's different! I will definitely re-read all my old fics and comment on them.
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Perhaps it's not actually that bad, but as they say, "you are your own worst critic." I don't think I explicitly said anywhere that I don't think people should like it/enjoy it, and I hope no one takes that message from this. This is really just me riffing on my past writing and trying to figure out what my past self was thinking! Also, good to see you still around, Pasco
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I didn't mean to say I thought you were bashing your story. I had occasion some time ago to revisit my first one, and even though I can clearly see its many flaws, I was reluctant to be overly critical, because that can come across very differently than I might have intended it to. So I was just in the same spot as you and trying to tread carefully.
And yes, I'm still posting stories! I still participate in Jinglemas, and the one from the past December is still my most recent one, but I do have another one imminent. (plus the inevitable pile of old unpublished writeoff entries that could stand to be revised.)
5733986
Ah, my mistake. That's fair then!
And cool! Maybe, just maybe I'll attempt to read some modern fics and see what that's all about. Although I might need to finish the show first...
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Not to mention caching up on G5...
I don't write much from later seasons, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the case for a lot of the older authors.
Yo, it's nice to see ya here again!
Yep, 10 years. Many have come and gone, and I treasure the experiences they left me, but it is always a treat when people come back around. We didn't talk much, but I'll always remember you. 
holy shit :O
first, Aquaman shows up out of nowhere with a finished novel-length fic
now Alexstrazsa is here?
what year is it? X_X
it's good to see you again :D I am chagrinned to see that my review of this story was apparently done from memory and basically amounted to "Well, it's better than On a Cross and Arrow." :| dumb on me
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Weird timing on that, eh?
And good to see you too! I'll have to give your review of it a look and see what you mean, I'm sure i've seen it before but... it's been a while.
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y.yarn.co/e45ca000-4a98-4a72-89d7-56ac9a4056aa_text.gif
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don't say I didn't warn ya! :B
I remember you. I miss you too sometimes.
Nice to see you checking in.
5734086
I can't even imagine what kind of rating it would get in 2023, lmao.
Surely this means you will reread it for a proper review, right?
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It's nice to pop back here sometimes and see how things are going!
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Probably a big ol' C like it's currently got. :B