Always Say No Featured on Royal Canterlot Library! · 11:57pm May 23rd, 2014
A few weeks ago, I was approached asking if I would allow Always Say No to be put up on Royal Canterlot Library. I said yes, of course (I don't always say no, haw haw), and I very much enjoyed reading what RCL's staff had to say about it, which includes their own personal rationales for choosing it to be added.
Of particular interest to me was what Present Perfect had to say: "It’s excellent sci-fi without necessarily being excellent fanfic." In the larger context, the debate was over how "pony" the story was. Now, of course I found it thrilling that someone considers Always Say No to be excellent sci-fi, but boiled down, no, it certainly isn't a good example of fanfiction. The story isn't very pony at all; the Celestia AI is not—nor was she ever intended to come off as—the Celestia, and all of the "ponies" seen are either uploaded humans, humans playing their pony avatars, or the Celestia AI role-playing as pony NPCs. With very little massaging, the Friendship is Optimal setting could have been built up for any number of pop-culture IPs. What MLP brings to it, however, are the themes of friendship being more important than anything else, at least to an AI, and in the evocative, yet foreign way that an AI would likely interpret it.
Anyway, I want to thank anyone and everyone who considered Always Say No memorable enough to feature! What a feeling it is to know someone enjoyed something you created so much.
Luckily, I have always valued "is a good story" over "is pony enough" in all my dealings. :V
It was a legitimately great story, and if maybe some of it could have been equally applicable to a universe without ponies -- well, life is like that sometimes. The Greg/Celestia exchanges are so good, they demand to be read out loud to be properly appreciated.
I'm the RCL's token Optimalverse fan, but yeah, when you finished this one I knew I had to nominate it even despite FIO's distance from the MLP source. There's some amazing depth here, and it's cool seeing such a strange reflection of the show still illuminate the show's core values. I hope it brings you some well-deserved good attention.
I think it was plenty pony once Greg emigrated.
Congrats D! An excellent story AND well written AND very deserving of inclusion in TCL.
Congratulations!
Congrats!
Congrats, dude: your story certainly deserves it.
And then there was not only the original FiO on the PFV but now also a Recursive Fanfiction based on it on the RCL! About time we got this little exclusive club of ours some well deserved attention!
Congratulations to you Defoloce, you deserve this.