Frankly, I'm shocked · 5:07am Apr 2nd, 2014
"The Ballad of the Last Arch-Magus" has such... depressing numbers. It's the most "literary" thing I've done in a while. Yet I get better responses to quick clop.
I think it bothers me most because I put in genuine effort and I wanted people to say at least "you wasted the effort because of..." and then explain. I agonized over the stanzas, rearranged a few a few times, rewrote a couple a few times, busted out the rhyming dictionary and did all I could to dodge slant rhymes (even though they were judged good enough for Emily Dickinson.) That's 80 stanzas, of eight lines each. 640 lines, with a consistent structure and a scheme A-B-C-B-D-E-F-E.
I thought at least some of my watchers actually liked literary works like poems. I mean, maybe the subject matter scares some folks but I promise I do hate Fall of Equestria and what I write is against it.
Won't anyone give it a chance?
Link please. Doesn't show up anywhere for me. I do hate poems taught. Shit always sucks.
I think the problem is that my refusal to read the original story leaves me without a point of reference.
1976115
It should be my newest story. If it doesn't show that's a shame.
1976122
I tried to make it so that it could be read with only the barest idea of it (I myself have seen very little of it.)
http://www.fimfiction.net/group/674 welcomes you.
1976139 O it's a chapter name, not story name.Read some of it, was pretty meh.
I'm getting to it, been busy.
Welcome to the internet.
So where's that link? And just a thought, did it ever occur to you that there's more to a piece of literature than how it rhymes?
I ain't a fan of poems but I gave some Maude poetry stories a try and was surprised how profound they were.
I do prefer smut though. I do have a fancy for engaging stories that make you think.
Sure, I'll give your thing a shot.
You'll get bonus points if there's any gothy themes in there ;P
Then I learned what you were mentioning is a sequel.
This Phantom character reminds me of someone from a grimdark universe. Someone who haunts the night and let's his tall tales precede him.
Those tales are cruel and terrible, yet the acts done in them with righteousness in mind. So scared was the population that they even stopped committing acts of crime in fear that the Night Haunter would come and skin them alive.
Yeah, you've got my attention.
Careful, dude. This is what did in darf. You gotta remember that most fimfiction readers wouldn't know good writing if it slapped them in the face. Clopfics of any quality will nearly always get more attention than the most lovingly crafted fics.
Just know that we love you, and write what you want. Ignore the crowds that propel shit fics like stuff by Aku-whatever to the top of the box but shun quality work.
Oh, and please never stop writing against Fall of Equestria. I love seeing its destruction.
1976424
More classic themes. It was based on a poem that itself was made as praise for ancient Roman history and legends.
1976500
I'll always stay and write. Sometimes it just takes a bit to get my head on right.
Ungh... this is bull and I want to fucking sleep I just got home from a midnight shift... but I feel you deserve some sort of response, Gabriel. I'm posting it here cuz I'll be talking about a few topics.
I guess I should let you know where I'm coming from. My usual fare of good reading is usually comics and manga, with maybe a sci-fi novel thrown in here and there. Oh, and smut fanfiction. I don't consider myself too intelligent with only a slightly higher attention span (maybe). Shakespeare bores the fuck out of me. Yeah, pretty much your average blue collar joe blow. Although, I do try to keep an open mind. In flirting with both good and evil, light and dark, you have to at least find appreciation in both of their ways. So please bear with me. I'm pretty much gonna give it to you like some regular fimfiction jackoff.
When both these stories entered my feed, I dismissed them. Why? Pretentious title, foreign language, je ne comprende pas.
Why no English? Boo! No cover pic. Doesn't catch my attention. Hey, parasprite's being a dick. And so is metaknight. I'll have a look. Someone wrote about buttsex yay! Ooo, Bad Horse has a new blog. Far more interesting than some friggin foreign crap I can't understand. Fuck, never mind. It's about classical music.
I guess my point is that the surface of your stories didn't catch my attention. Ok, it's not helpful that someone wrote about buttsex and that really catches my attention, but still... maybe you could use a cover image? The title's good, now that I've read the stories, but I have a feeling others would pass it up simply because of the title. Not that you should change it, oh no. It's your creativity and to bow to the whims of others would be defeating in writing from your heart.
So yeah, I shouldn't say much about the title, but a cover image would draw some eyes.
Groups... I'm on an iPhone so I can't really see if they're already in there, but adding the stories to a few groups might help. Maybe there's one for poetry? I bet they'd like this kind of poetry a lot.
Maybe put them in the Fall of Equestria group as a sneaky F you? *chuckles* Although, they'd prolly dislike bomb them from being unable to comprehend any of it. Yeah, I'm joking with this idea.
In regards to both stories, it feels a bit like you should know the base material to fully know what's going on. I read your blog post about maturity and Fall of Equestria, not completely understanding much of it. I haven't read the story. It sounds interesting, but disgusting. I mean, forced gender reassignment?! It's a choice if one feels the need to, but to have it forced is so vile. I like Bronystory's crap cause he sprinkles it with so much humour that it's absurd and funny. Fall of Equestria sounds just vile. Stuff like this is amusing, but Fall of Equestria seems to go beyond my tolerance, even if it's fictionalized. The misogyny levels seems to be beyond horrifying.
If I hadn't tried searching for the Fall of Equestria (unsuccessfully), I wouldn't have known the Stag King was a caribou.
There's a bit of Bad Apple and your own mythology in there (I think). Eheh... I've only ever read about Bad Apple in that short you had with him and Luna have fruit leather clothing sex. If I hadn't, I'd have absolutely no clue who Bad Apple was.
So, there's a bit of mythology mingling, OCs, and a whole universe I haven't read about in Fall of Equestria. It was a rather intimidating for me to try to understand, but I managed to piece together things enough. Yeah, a regular will probably get confused. It is a whole new universe, after all.
Etiamsi Omnes, Ego Non is prolly the first non-smut fic I've read of yours and it makes your writing style shine without sex to draw attention from it. I dunno how to describe it other than it's... romantic? It felt like my thoughts were being reeled in and I was being kissed deeply by virtuousness.
I especially liked the talk about food. I love food. I love desserts. I love rich desserts. Their tastes are so strong. Reading about them made me think and smell of soft chocolate... mmm...
I like the small twist at the end with the changeling. This story was very well thought out. I regret not reading it when I saw it on my feed.
Etiamsi Omnes, Ego Non-The Promises... I'm not going to lie. I didn't like the style of telling a whole story through poetry. I actually had to grind my way through the middle and I'm pretty sure half the details flew over my head. I'm very sorry. I have a short attention span and it was extremely difficult for me to piece together the story through the poetry. It only got my attention back when Shining Armor's name got dropped. Then I began to actually enjoy what was going on from there on. I'm sorry, I didn't like the way it was told. The poetry distracted me too much. Too hard to read. That part just wasn't for me. I gave it a shot, but I'm sorry, it's beyond my understanding. Hopefully you can find your target audience, eh? I did enjoy the actual story. Well, at least the parts I managed to understand.
When I saw footnotes in the story, I was like, "Fucking goddamn. I get enough of this bullshit reading massive walls of text from GhostofHeraclitus and Blue Paladin." I rather dislike footnotes on my iPhone. I end up having to scroll back up, which is a pain in the ass, to figure out what a particular footnote is talking about because they didn't bother to put the context at the bottom and lose my place. I end up giving up reading what the author was trying to convey. Glad that you reiterated what words the footnotes were trying to explain.
I found the part where the arch mage tells them to promise to not hurt females to be hilarious. It's their way of life and they ain't going to give it up for one person. The arch mage retorted with such an awesome insult.
1976500
How the hell does Aku have over 100 stories? I followed him cause I found the novelty of an Samurai Applejack story to be rather amusing. Then my feed got spammed to hell. Not with blogposts, but with FUCKING STORIES from ONE FUCKING PERSON.
The few of them I've read are... novelties. I like novelties. Smut is novelty... junk food. Enjoyable like eating bag after bag of potato chips because you have an unending urge to binge on their cancerous tasty potatoey goodness. But I enjoy the meat of character and soul even more.
I hope I've made you happy, Gabby. I gave it a shot, not really knowing what I was walking into and for the most part enjoyed reading your two stories. But I need to fucking sleep. It's almost fucking 12 and I intend to try and write my own shit later today before I head to work on another midnight shift, cursing my forced nocturnal existence. Being insomniac is fine, but it blows if you can't have fun.
Peace.
1976998
I appreciate your honesty, and I understand your points. It's rather a lot.
The image thing is that I couldn't think of what to use. The poetry was a style choice. I like the poem "Horatius" and the subject matter (holding a narrow opening with a small force, like 300, but Horatius did it with two other guys, holding the bridge to Rome against the entire Etruscan army.) so I made this my love letter to/homage to all of that. Plus a slap at Fall.
By the way, your request is done.
1977282
And I do actually appreciate that you made this blog post in the first place. Sometimes, to be open to new things means that someone shows to you that they exist.
Eheh... I've noticed that over 40 of your fics have no cover art. I guess fanfiction has become a bit of an arms race; I know that they weren't around when I first browsed fanfiction.net in '03. Hell, I doubt they have an effective cover system if they do have one on the site.
I think some form of cover is better than no cover. It's an option, why not utilize it to get a bit of a foothold in the masses?
You could go the expensive route and commission some custom art. It would certainly let people know that anthro is involved and really draw in people.
SusieBeeca is sometimes open for commissions.
Sev, the writer and artist for the poni tumblr Stories From the Front doesn't do any commissions, but he does do nice world building, anthro, and it's all NSFW in a rather cutesy universe. I mention him because I bet you'll find him interesting. Oh, and he's a furry.
Mixipony who seems to do most her stuff on tumblr is usually open I believe. Her art is cute.
Braeburned, also on tumblr, delivers some really shiny squishy ponies but I think his request waiting list is bonkers. In fact, I think he draws names so everybody has an equal chance. His style would match your stories perfectly.
Foxinshadow on deviantart has a bit of a Victorian gothy feel to his stuff, but is über expensive.
There's even an art request group on this site. Some artists there even do it for free. I dunno how well, but still...
I recommend researching more artists if this path is appealing. Scout some Drawfriends on Equestria Daily and contact some artists you like and see if they do commissions.
Now, I know you've been having money issues, recalling you had to cancel of your phone data. I do read blogs on my feed, I just don't comment unless I have something somewhat intelligent or extremely retarded to say :P
I know throwing money at people is a bad way to make good friends, but fuck it. I'm willing to pay for one piece you may end up commissioning in the future (of reasonable pricing. Like, not over $40 or whatever). I'll be willing to pay especially if it's Braeburned lol. Think of it as a thank you for being fascinating and amusing to talk to. Just PM me if the urge to fancifully customize stories overcomes you.
I've also considered taking pictures of RL with my phone and using those as cover pics. I mean, if I could sneak a pic quickly, a pic of a real stripper pole would prove useful. Also, I've considered using MLP minifigures to set up small (crude) depictions of scenes.
And the most cheap and least time consuming might be to google up images related to scenes. Eheh, The Parasprite's Twilight Makes Love to Multiple Explosive Devices utilizes its cover of a nuke explosion to hilariously excellent effect.
Etiamsi Omnes, Ego Non could make do with a picture of an interrogation room. Or better yet, a rusty interrogation room
Etiamsi Omnes, Ego Non- The Promises could make do with a picture of a rocky pass or narrow gorge. Even the one from the Best Pet episode.
Just ask permission where necessary. Maybe add the story title to the pic.
Bad Horse had a blog post regarding cover art awhile back. Oh, and he gives excellent advice in regards to fanfiction. I recommend following him. He's a smart one and his stories will crush your soul. I love him <3
Actually, observing a lot commenters of anything of his, I can say a lot of them would enjoy your poetic piece. Now, getting it to them... well, I have played the part of (obnoxious) messenger boy plenty of times in my life. People really like blaming messengers, I should say. Throwing that out there, too.
Or groups again. They're good for exposure. There's even a poetry group. I tried to add your story, but alas. My phone and fimfiction were like, "fuck you" to each other.
Sorry if I come off as arrogant, especially if you already knew of these things, Gabe. I'm not trying to be. I'm trying to spread out options and many options are always good. Always better than some and 100% better than none.
Oh, and thanks again for the request. It was definitely fun thinking up the scenario ^_^
1985628
The primary issue is, as you said, money. Most of the commissions I get tend not to be usable. Most of the cover art I do have comes from screenshots, or MSPaint. I have plenty to choose from.
My other problem is image access. My computer is strictly offline six days a week. All I can do is Google images on my phone, save them to the album then transfer them to the computer and adjust the size. It's time-consuming. But I should do it more. Lately my allergies have been knocking me for a loop. When my day looks clear I go hog wild on the writing with little time for anything else.
I want to thank you for all your advice and suggestions, your attentive reading and for you enjoying my rendition of your request.