What do you find objectionable in a story? · 1:53pm Sep 9th, 2014
This is a followup to a previous blog post, since I saw a lot of people saying they thumbs downed offensive or objectionable stories.
To me, what I consider objectionable in a story falls into a few categories.
-Malicious OOC (Character Assassination): Celestia is most often targeted by this, but I see it in Twi, too. Characters made OOC not through any lack of talent on the writer (characterization is hard!) but because they specifically want to write a story about how stupid/evil/awful these characters are. For some reason people seem to think that these characters couldn't possibly be actually good people. No, Celestia has to be secretly an evil ruler that exercises mind control to the extreme, and Twilight indifferent to the welfare of others to the point of being a magical Mengele. I give comedy stories a bit of a pass, but only a bit, because you can write comedy without reducing ponies to three-stooges slapstick.
-Postmodernism: Some of you probably have no idea what that means, and some of you are probably rolling your eyes. I'll try to explain. In postmodernism, the noble virtues do not exist. People are not kind or loyal or selfless. They're only selfish and self-interested. Not evil per se but incapable of greatness. And the world is devoid of wonder. Everything sucks forever, even if it's not actually a dystopia. This has been sort of the normal status quo of fiction for the past decade or two and it's really, really annoying. And completely opposite to a magical world where friendship is magic.
-Ponies are evil: For some reason there's an entire set of "Ponies enslave humans" and the like. This is sort of the character assassination above, but applied to the whole setting. Conversion bureau apparently is like this? Regardless, it's completely disregarding the setting to make something that seems like a form of revenge porn against a setting that makes them feel inadequately virtuous. They can't live up to it, so they have to drag it down.
While I personally don't read dark much, I don't object to it in theory. It Spills Over is a wonderful Dark story that absolutely still fits, for example. And my own stories have plenty of content that could be considered pretty dark, at least in passing. But so does the canon - Chrysalis and Tirek are pretty terrifying. It's not a shiny happy nothing-ever-goes-wrong world. There are dangers and terrors. But they get overcome.
I discussed some of this in "The Desire To Degrade." Short form: My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (and really, every other version of the show, even My Little Pony: Tales) is a show about heroines. Admirable, virtuous characters who do great deeds. There is a certain mentality who does not believe that such people are possible, so its reaction to seeing them portrayed is to Degrade them into something viler, meaner and thus more manageable by a small-minded soul.
Oh gosh you won't like either of my stories, then. One is about a unicorn with a medical condition who dies in agony, the other is about heretics, gods, and what it means to be immortal.
I'm so OOC and postmodern it hurts.
geekgirlmanila.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Crying-Anime.gif
2440818 That's a good post, mirroring my own take on the matter. The issue is really that people run on stories, and for a while stories have done their best to stamp out the idea that Great Things exist.
2440838 No offense meant, but why? Or rather I should ask, why use a setting that doesn't really fit with the stories you're wanting to tell? I would think original fic would be a better setting for themes that fall too far from the tree. Unless it's just because with a fandom you have a pre-built readerbase, which is something I certainly understand. I'm guilty of writing ponyfic when I should be doing original fic...
Gosh. Those examples.
I will say I am with you in most regards (especially the first and third criterion). The postmodernism one... I would never write such a story, but I have enjo— endur— read a lot of them and sometimes they are good. And by 'sometimes' I largely mean 'written by Bad Horse.' There is something to be said about bleakness, and to be fair, most Bleak Horse stories that seem to be postmodern suggest, perhaps, that the bleakness and grey-world-ness are in the head of the protagonist. Also he wrote Moving On, which would warm the heart of a marble statue.
I tend to find something objectionable if it is horrifying, but not intended to be horrifying. A fic that celebrates something disturbing, as if it wasn't.
So, dark fics that are labeled as such are fine, because they're trying to be disturbing and succeed. Those can be scary and unsettling in a thrilling way.
The other thing I'll downvote for based on content is really obnoxious Author Tract.
2440855 A sufficiently skilled writer can turn almost anything into a good story. Even something utterly ridiculous. There is a particular beauty to tragedy, especially tragedy in slow motion. Or inevitability. But most of the stories that fall into postmodernism are devoid of beauty at all.
Hmn, objectional content.
Well there was that Randian Rainbow Dash fic a while back, that got downvoted pretty firmly for, well, the entire thing.
There was also a series of stories I read and downvoted a while back that was full of incestuous royal family shipping. But that's not the reason for the downvote, it got that for the princesses being violent sociopaths who left Blueblood in a permanent auto-healing torture spell as his punishment for a failed coup attempt. After I called the author out on his characterization issues, the next chapter had everyone having a come-to-Jesus moment where they decided the violence was because they were all being overly emotional. Yeah, no.
I also have a very specific pet peeve about legal systems and laws that exist not because they make sense but because of the needs of the plot.
It's a pretty wide spectrum, actually, depending on the specific author and TCB 'verse.
2440845
It would be too much of me to ask you to read my stories, or to assume you know my 'claim to fame'; so I'll explain here. I mean it's not much of an explanation but we'll see whether it's adequate or not.
My first every story was published back in December 2012. "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life," a story which depicted the failings of a unicorn named Awry in the midst of a dystopian society that did not want, nor care, for his happiness. It was a spark I suppose. A one shot about a unicorn with a voice in his head throwing himself in front of a bullet train. It was a time in my life when I just wanted to vent.
But it got big.
I was featured and people wanted more. Some people ripped into my errors and pointed them out in an offensive manner, those people being folk from Train Wreck Explorers; whilst others were amazed and stunned. I'm not sure why it became such a smash hit but from there on in my 'fanbase', so to speak, was one of dark expectations.
One day I plan on rewriting Last Night. Truly it was my greatest work thus far from the raw emotion it poured into people. I have fans turn friends who to this day regard that story as the best thing they've ever read. I'm not trying to sound boastful, far from, but that really... it really meant something to me.
Nowadays my writing is very low-key, morbid and often times depressing. It's made people cry, it's made people think, and it's even made them feel 'all hollowed out'. Shiver, my 'oldest' story published, was the tale of an unnamed man who lost his wife; friends, family, home, and sanity. This was all thanks to a medical condition he had which caused him to leak raw magical power into his surrounds, warping objects, freezing land and developing a cancer in his wife.
That sounds pretty harsh, right? "Holy damn 2D, you edgy son-B" I bet you're thinking to yourself. However, if I might, I would say that Shiver was a story of very high calibre. I wasn't writing the scene because I wanted to punish ponies, or because I think life is bleak; I wanted to share that feeling. A feeling of hollowness, helplessness, and utter loneliness. Society did prevail, people did live on after the Shiver. However it was an event which occurred and was horrible, so horrible, and the ponies had to live with that.
Path to Infinity, on the other hand, is a story I'm writing in a more tactless manner. Whereas in Shiver ponies were able to destroy the world around them subconsciously, in Path to Infinity, they are perhaps the weakest species around. They have a delusion that the world is pure, kind, and delightfully holy. Their religion bans all kinds of magic and they turn potent unicorns into Saints.
However this isn't really just a story about ponies. It's a story about Spike and the world that he encountered. He has seen a great many things throughout the world which is by no means a nice place. It depicts a world where gods can be born and made. Those born are cruel and spiteful; or perhaps they are kind in unknown ways. Gods made often times use their power to right wrong, stamp out injustice, learn secrets untold or even lead religious cults.
At the end of it all, though, everyone has to die. Although gods are made through the workings of black magic and the universal whim they are not immortal. Immense power comes with immense price. Spike will not live forever. The ponies he walked out on are now barraging him with questions and nearly all of them are better left unanswered; lest their perfect society be shattered from the ground up.
Anyway I'm rambling... my point is that I don't think OOC, AU characters and postmodern views are all bad. I enjoy playing devil's advocate and using harsh, tragic, and dark themes to make people sit down and think. Fimfic is the place where most people know me, and while I am in fact writing a book, I'll be here a while yet.
Maybe I'm egotistical to assume my work is different, but after reading your blog, I can't help but think that my ideals for the things you dislike are different from those who wrote them. You get me? I'm not post-modernistic because I believe the world sucks - I merely enjoy writing about situations that suck.
After all progress cannot come without suffering, in my opinion.
Objectionable content I don't often downvote because I can avoid reading it in the first place, unless the description and tagging were intentionally misleading, vague, or incomplete. If the tags and description were correct, then continuing to read it when I knew I'd find it objectionable would be my fault, not the author's.
2440845
Is there such a thing? We're talking about a cartoon aimed at 8-10 year old girls: almost any mature (in the adult sense, not the FiMF rating) discussion of sex, violence, addiction, abuse, crime, war, or any similar theme is out of the scope of the setting. Yet a vast number of authors have made it work, time and again, in every conceivable combination. Perhaps it's more the author's execution of their concept rather than the fitting-ness of the setting.
2440881 I understand that. As I said to GhostOfHeraclitus, there's a peculiar beauty in the bleak and the haunting. In inevitable tragedy. Shiver works for that; bad things sometimes happen. But Path to Infinity as you describe does feel to me like destruction to destroy, rather than destruction as art.
I'm not trying to condemn you as a writer, I just don't like those types of stories myself and don't exactly see what place they have in the MLP universe. As I said, original fic is probably a better place for something like that.
2440902
I'm glad you can appreciate the idea behind Shiver, that story is particularly dear to me. You're right, too, there is a certain beauty in the bleak and bland. Winter fields with a light dusting of snow, urban streets left deserted save blown paper and industrial stench... it's beautiful in a unique way.
However, while I can understand your dislike for the idea, I cannot understand why. Why is depicting ponies as an inferior race with a religious society such a bad thing? Why is it, in your opinion, unfitting for there to be gods of malice and spite that ponies ignore? This isn't a story about how their society is bad it's a story about how it's wrong. The world doesn't revolve around them as much as they think it does and it's not as nice as they think it is. I don't see a problem with such a story. In fact the reason I wrote it was because I believed it would be a great story. What better way to show how great a happy society can be, than to reveal the darkness of the world, and have it stand resolute? Or perhaps it will crumble as the foundation of lies becomes apparent?
That's what I find so delightful about this kind of story. The nature of sentient creatures is exciting to write about in tough situations.
2440893 That's a good point, but here's how I see it: as fic authors, we're not writing the stories the show portrays. The show is a specific slice through a universe that is meant to be self-consistent. In the MLP universe sex and violence and death happen (we've seen babies, funerals, and slavery, not to mention battles and actual fighting), they simply aren't the focus of what we see. That doesn't mean that, so far as the setting is concerned, they don't exist. We can discuss them without rejecting tenants of the canon or setting "feel."
However, so far as the setting is concerned Celestia is an unaging, relatively benevolent ruler; she might be a bit impish but it's clear she's not some evil tyrant. There's a definite difference between the two.
I mean ultimately I'm not the arbiter of What Makes Good Fanfiction. I wouldn't want to be. These are my opinions and I think ones that I've considered and are defensible. In the end, people will do what they like.
2440917 At the risk of turning things into a derail -
The two main issues are self-consistency and assumptions. If the world is a bleak and bad place, then how can you get a happy, healthy, thriving civilization? You can't built a civilization on a foundation of lies. Especially not one stable for over a thousand years. And if nobody, nobody recognizes these lies, then what does that say about the individuals involved? Either there's no noble sentiment among any of them, or they're all about as sharp as a bag of bricks, or there's a cabal of horrible monsters keeping the secrets. With of course Celestia at the top, which falls into character assassination again.
Thing is you can do that without destroying the intrinsic strengths of said society. And it also assumes the world is a dark place, which I find to be unreasonable. Especially when friendship literally is magic.
2440989
Technically Celestia is dead in my fic but I have a feeling discussing that will digress us even farther.
Let's just agree to disagree.
None of what you posted would warrant an automatic downvote from me (though liking any such story would be very doubtful). Given that I know that there is an audience for such stories, and that theme and tone aren't automatic indications of quality, it would require something above that for me to downvote the fic — too many errors, plot holes, attempted blatant preaching, etc.
As for the things that really irk me:
- Character assassination. Mostly what you have already said, but with one caveat: if the deviant characterization can actually fit what was shown in the series then I not only have no issue with it, I might actually enjoy it. For example, I really love the idea of Celestia and Discord as masterminds that covertly pull the strings to keep ponies happy while maintaining the illusion of free will, or of Fluttershy having a buried toxic personality that came to the fore when Ironwill influenced her.
- Non-pony disguised as pony. Many of them look like someone just picked a fic with humans and changed hands to hooves, perhaps changing a few character and place names too. When I'm reading pony fic, it's because I want something that feels pony, not something that feels like a second-rate fic with a few pony masks.
- Blatant errors when referencing show events in a story not marked AU. Pet peeve of mine, but I hold internal consistency fairly high, I hold fanfics as requiring consistency with the show, and I have most of the show still fresh on my mind. If a story describes something that was explicitly shown in the series, and gets it reasonably wrong, it likely lost any chance of an upvote or favorite from me.
- Mary Sue, extended to mean stories where all adversity melt with little or no effort from the character. This is another one that will prevent me from giving an upvote.
Histories that are sad, tragic, horror, or otherwise delve too much on loss itself deserve special mention for two reasons. The first is that I watch the show, and pick associated material, in order to have something upbeat; I'm really not looking for things that can depress me when I look for anything pony, so the chances I will enjoy, or upvote, anything pony that is not uplifting are slim indeed. The second is that I have some kind of block when it comes to negative feelings in fictional material, one that kills my suspension of disbelief regardless of my will; on the upside I've never, ever, had a nightmare due to fictional content, no matter what I read or watched, but on the downside it utterly prevents me from feeling anything about any story that crosses certain thresholds.
2441011 Oh sure, as I said I wasn't trying to condemn your writing, just explain my position. Opinions, in the end, are still just that.
2440925
Also a good point. As authors we choose how much "reality' we want to restore. For example, we've seen foals, but the ponies holding them were shown as anatomically blank. We presume MLP ponies are a sexually dimorphic species who engage in sexual reproduction. I can accept a relatively normal our-world-with-magic-ponies interpretation of Equestria. When things diverge too much without explanation, then we're getting into no-vote or downvote territory.
Also, good call on the Tyrantlestia example. I detest that one, especially if it isn't called out up front.
For myself, hmm... I'll give a bare bones list.
1. Character Assassination, especially when it's a 'hidden gift' to the reader within the story. Also if it's treated as canon(the Author asserts the distorted character is in line with the shows portrayal
)
2. OOC(but not necessarily 'assassinated') characters, in a non-AU setting. That's sloppy writing...
3. Blatant Author Tracts, especially out of nowhere.
Lesser things...
Unnecessary bleak points, specifically personal tragedies or character deaths that add nothing too the story. But are meant to shock the reader(a cheap trick to grab their attention), or act as a mechanism for the Author to vent his/her hatred of said victim characters.
Most other things that bug me are based on pointlessness or terrible execution.
Though to be honest I ran into a story that tackled with a horrific subject matter in detail and had massive amounts of character assassination... But had the characters eventually 'salvaged' themselves, and give a happy ending(without it being forced or an ad hoc addition). It did manage to fit extreme nastiness within a generally good and happy world. The juxtaposition worked.
A good but painful read. I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone else out of the blue though...
For me, it's extremely disturbing things that don't attempt to subvert or deconstruct, such as rape or gore that only functions to exist rather than to have any meaningful theme or narrative, that really causes me to become frustrated. Still... their existence I believe to be a kind of inevitability given the nature of the internet. Also, I like to remind myself every now and then that I can't take everything too seriously.
As for philosophy, I wouldn't consider myself well versed in any name or concept. I've found that generally I very much dislike themes where characters are irrevocably subjected to terrible fates by some divine or god-like will. I don't feel like mentioning any fics by title, but a specific Lyra fic I enjoyed basically ruined itself with it's ending for me. I suppose it's just because I read stories to watch characters conquer. If I wanted to see a character get crushed by the realities of existence or something and never get a resolution out of it I'd just go downtown. We have enough examples of that in real life.
I feel like OOC is a weird space for me, cause a lot of MLP characters have developed this weird metapersonality because of the fandom in general. Not to mention, longer fics with development would probably result in changing characters, so my mind gets all tangled up in confusion after reading several different fics so I kinda gave up trying to spot OOC unless it's particularly glaring.
I don't really get the "ponies are evil" trope at all so I tend to avoid those.
2441142
Are you referring to simply telling the reader that the character is like that in canon when what is shown in the series can't support it? If so, that is a gross error called "informed attribute", one of the nastiest kinds of telling possible when what is told and what is shown don't match.
2441215
If you are talking about the behemoth of a fic with over 400K words, that one is my single exception, the only fic that I downvoted despite thinking that the author writes well. I hated it enough that I avoided reading any fics with Lyra for a couple months, and haven't been able to read anything from the same author ever since.
(Though, on second thought, I could justify the downvote by the absence of a "Tragedy" tag, which I do consider to be a gross mistagging for that fic...)
2441256 I agree with you on "informed attribute" being one of the worst instances of tell in a story.
Within the context of my comment I also wanted to included an Authors out of story justification for in story content. The ponies as xenophobes trend(trope?) in some stories are a big example of this.
My understanding of post modern philosophy is that it denies the existence of objective morality or observation. Everything is subjective. According to its strictest interpretation one persons actions or observations cannot be said to be "better" than another person, because we are so colored by our own experiences and beliefs that we cannot place our minds outside of that frame of reference.
Post modernism as a literary style is usually characterized by techniques such as an unreliable narrator, fragmentation, or paradox. I don't believe that post modern literature is associated with any particular themes. While many post modern works are dark or depressing, they could just as easily be uplifting.
As to what I find objectionable in a work of pony fiction I can't stand misanthropic stories, or stories where I feel that the ponies have been portrayed as vastly overpowered.
IIRC correctly the original TCB and the stories that followed were very positive and mostly wish-fulfillment. I'm not sure how the whole grimdark invasion/Tyrantlestia branch started, but it seems to be the most prominent one left.
2441013
Wait, how does that one work?
Even when I watched the show, all the characters felt extremely human. Heck, they often used human gestures, human technology analogues, human science fiction, human faults, etc. Besides, how relatable would the show be if none of it was human?
Do you mean American disguised as pony? I suppose that makes sense, but it's still also in the show. Some human cultures lack sarcasm, but ponies don't. Some cultures reverse the traditional roles of males and females, but ponies don't. Heck, I think you could take some small towns or farming communities and imagine the people as ponies, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference for a decent amount of time.
2443031
It's a bit more complicated.
Take, for example, a typical western. The scenario, tone, technology (or, at least, the prevalence of guns), culture, about everything feels different, even if you compare it with a story set in Appleloosa or some other western-like place in Equestria. If you pick a typical western story, and simply have ponies as the characters, it will not feel like a MLP story; deeper changes (or very good explanations) are needed, as can be seen in the episodes Over a Barrel and The Last Round Up
This does not mean that anything that deviates from the scenarios shown in the cartoon automatically runs afoul of this restriction; rather, when using elements that aren't present in the show, extra care must be taken to convey the feeling and tone of the show through the remaining elements. It is possible to write fics that still feel like MLP set in the far past, the far future, settings more in line with the real world or with some fantastic universe, with a full cast of OCs, etc; but doing so is harder than when taking the whole package.
(And I need to find the references, but I believe fics that are not pony enough are frowned upon by the reviewers, though they intentionally set the bar on how pony a story needs to be quite low in order to allow a wider variety of stories.)
The last two stories that ran afoul of this for me, though on another site (the Writeoff event), were incidentally a western and a story about the succession of gods, neither of which really felt like MLP stories.
2443132
Ah, I think I know what you mean.
Really, it all boils down to this:
And that makes a lot of sense. After all, we come to this site expecting My Little Pony fanfiction. I think the most important part of this is keeping the theme of Friendship, or something close to the characters in the show.
I mean, you could have a Phoenix Wright style pony fic, but have it set in Canterlot court without or with very little supervision from Luna or Celestia. Even though it's something that could legitimately happen in Equestria, the setting in that fic would still be as removed from the setting in MLP as possible while still technically being an MLP fic.
>Character assassination
This makes me curious. I recently read a story that would never be possible to write if one stuck strictly to canon interpretations of the characters. I'm mainly referring to the first chapter. However, while it doesn't represent Celestia as an evil tyrant or chessmaster, it unquestionably paints her in a bad light. Mistakes or no, she comes off as a bad, or at the very least a cold pony to start with.
There are some more extreme examples. What if Twilight and friends never succeeded in Friendship is Magic (the episode)? What if the characters were gender-swapped? What if it was Celestia instead of Luna who went mad? What if Celestia cracked during the years after she banished her sister? What if Twilight got stuck in a time loop? What if Twilight was simply crazy and had imagined her adventures? What if Equestria became a hostile wasteland?
Some of these require more separation from the characters the show represents, and the setting as well. You could argue a good few of these stories might work better as pieces of original fiction, and you might very well be correct. However, with original work, you have to get your readers invested in your characters one way or another. With fanfiction, you already have characters the readers know, and care for. You can save a lot of work on creating and telling the backstory, since you have an universe your readers are already familiar with, are invested in. Some might call it lazy, cheap or a crutch; I'm not one to judge that, not even being a writer myself.
Personally, I find such thought experiments interesting. Yes, they don't strictly adhere to the rules and setting of the show, often not even the tone. But because of them being fanfiction I don't believe they should all try and maintain the integrity of the setting the show has shown us. Some do, and it is fantastic to read such stories. Some don't, and they might be just as impressive and enjoyable to read, just in a different way.
All that rambling and I didn't even answer the question :P
What I personally find objectionable in a story are
* blatant soapboxing and agenda pushing that aren't relevant to the story being told, or the world being built;
* canon characters acting completely out of character without any justification being presented. Yes, I did say I'm okay with shaping the setting to better suit your needs, but you have to put in the effort to make it work
* inconsistent internal consistency. Dear Luna, that's so annoying when the story doesn't even follow its own rules
* unnecessary hatred and misery and gore porn. If there is a story you are telling, I can put up with some bad stuff if it makes the story stronger. If it's there just because you wanted to make ponies or other characters suffer, though...
* I guess it's a bit silly, and unfair to some, but plain bad and horrific English. Mistakes are fine, everyone makes those, but you should at least try to show some respect to your readers. It's not often applicable, but still worth mentioning.
Anywho, random ramblings of a random ponyfan, opinions and stuff. And of course, I suppose a lot of this comes down to what any individual wants out of said fanfiction. If you strictly want stories that could seamlessly work within the confines of the show, it's no surprise you wouldn't be as big a fan of thought experiments some stories are.
2443387
Those are What-If scenarios, which are fine. A character assassination is when the story states that nothing else is different, the show as we know it is the same, but, say, deep down Celestia is a tyrant. No one has caught her at it because she's just so darn good at manipulation, but she's an iron-shod dictator nonetheless. This does not line up with all the information presented in the series and is, at best, someone's cynical head canon.
You could write the same version of Celestia as a What-If scenario and have it work by going back through all the presented canon and tweaking it to fit her new persona. That would immediately be AU and, while not to the tastes of all, not a character assassination, either.
It's something of a fine line, but any gross re-casting of an established characterization should be handled with a certain level of aplomb. A poise that I find lacking in most such attempts.
This is an interesting topic. I have to say that I don't find any of these things objectionable on their own, instead preferring to judge such things by what I perceive as being the intentions of the author, which, as I'll explain, I usually tend to give the benefit of the doubt. "Character assassination" could just as easily be an imaginative "what if" scenario rather than a far less optimistic interpretation of the characters, "setting assassination" would be subject to the same, and "postmodernism" is only as pessimistic as it's best outcome. If frienship and goodwill prevail in the end, (The Immortal Game) or even if they're simply acknowledged as the only thing worth saving, even at the expense of one's self, (Background Pony) I can't really call these stories truly postmodernist. (Though I can't claim to fully understand the definition of postmodernism either) I realize I've chosen very high rated and not neccessarily representative examples above, but they do represent what I tend to read, which is mostly things that have been recommended quite a lot.
I think dismissing some writing as having been pony because it has a built in reader base is taking a decidedly postmodern look at the motivations of the writers involved. There are plenty of reasons to tell a story within the context of Equestria. The author might just be really into ponies around the time they discovered they had a story to tell, or their story could require elements of the setting in order to work at all. (cutie marks, sun gods, what have you) The setting of Equestria is vast, much more so than the slice the show explores, with enough unique elements to inspire a lot of authors to explore it in more depth and in their own way. Our own world contains enough disparate places where the local value systems are wildly different enough to make them more fit for a completely different universe by the relatively narrow standards of being within "show tone". Plus, given that at the opening of the show, the Elements have been dormant for a thousand years, I can't really buy that friendship-as-literal-magic saving the day is the rule and not the exception, though perhaps a somewhat routine exception in recent history.
Maybe I have a decidedly optimistic view of authors in general here, but I don't think very many of the stories here are written out of a desire to be objectionable or out of a true disbelief in the values of the setting, and especially not out of a desire for a "guaranteed readerbase" which I think a lot of people overestimate about this place. There's simply too many stories for that to be a reasonable explanation for the setting's popularity.
It's interesting that I say OOC characters don't bother me when if I go over my story comments, my most common critiques tend to be centered around how well I think a characterization matches my conception of them. So maybe I do find those things objectionable, but I try not to, I guess?
If the story has the alt tag, deal with it and move on, don't downvote it because you're trying to enforce your own ideas about what is allowable in fan-fiction.
If it doesn't have the alt tag, think hard about whether it really is OOC. Twilight three hundred years from now? Difficult to predict who she would be. I'm radically different than I was 30 years ago. IMHO one of the main purposes of fan fiction is to explore fridge horrors and possible hidden interpretations.
2440855
I'm sure you mean that as a fond compliment, but remember I'm the guy who wrote "Literary modernism explained" and half a dozen other blog posts about problems with modernism and post-modernism.
I'm not convinced there's a clear distinction between modernism and post-modernism. Some people were already using the term "post-modern" in the 1920s, and Toynbee said post-modernism began with WWI, which pretty much everybody in literary theory would call the beginning of literary modernism. I think the best we can do is equate modernism with structuralism and post-modernism with deconstructionism, though that plays hell with the timeline, as structuralism was big in linguistics the 1950s, about the same time post-modernism was big in art.
That's... sorta true, but sorta misleading. (Also, try the past 40 years.) I think the main defining characteristic is that modernism and post-modernism are both always about isolated, lonely individuals who don't have a socially-dictated place in the universe the way people did before the 20th century. Modernism is about how to live with liberty. The modern era gave us all sorts of freedoms--freedom of religion, freedom from gender roles, freedom from family, freedom from class slavery, and more--but doing so tore apart the rules and lies that gave everyone a place, a role, an ethics, even a persona. Modernism is the search for meaning and place in a world with liberty.
Post-modernism is, roughly, about what you do when you think the search is important but unsolvable. In post-modernism, there are no absolutes, so virtues may exist, but are observer-relative and context-dependent and kinda arbitrary. Acceptance of some traits as virtues always surreptitiously supports somebody's power structure. People are psychologically complex and conflicted; Freud was one of the accidental creators of modernism. But that doesn't necessarily mean the story is bleak. Consider Catch-22, which is a post-modernist comedy. The world is screwed up, and the good die while the wicked prosper, but the wily responses of Yossarian to these conditions is held up as a new kind of virtue in a crazy world.
"The world sucks" is the result when someone with an unadmitted nostalgia for 19th-century order (almost everyone) writes 20th-century fiction. They think there ought to be a God and a list of Do's and Don'ts, but isn't, and that makes the story bitter. But somebody like Jorge Luis Borges or Italo Calvino can write post-modernist fiction that isn't bitter. And Don Quixote is pretty post-modern. The world does suck in Don Quixote, but the Don isn't incapable of greatness. It's just that greatness requires madness.
Of my own stories, I'll admit "All the pretty pony princesses" (which has a warning to the reader not to read it!), "Pony Play", and "Long Distance" might be post-modernist. They're about people trying and failing to make connections with each other for reasons that seem beyond their control. But I think some of my bleakest stories, like "Twenty Minutes", "Happy Thoughts", "The green hills of Equestria", "Fluttershy's Night Out", and "Burning Man Brony", aren't post-modernist. I think BMB might be the one you're thinking of when you said the bleakness is in the protagonist, and that's right. "Alicorn Cider" is anti-postmodern; Big Mac's tragedy is not that he is lost in the new modern world of freedom, it's that he's still lost in the old feudal world and unable to make use of the liberties modernity provides.
2460638 Well, if it's Alt, it's alt. There was a bit of discussion further down about what constituted character assassination and what didn't.
I'll bow to your elaboration on the postmodern/modern definitions but I'll stick to my breakdown of what bugs me. This is what I've observed in the all the fiction I've read, pony or nonpony, and what I'm damn tired of. I don't really buy that a lack of wonder or noble virtue have anything to do with social definition or power frameworks.
2460920 The word "noble" originally described a social class and a set of social roles, and never lost all those connotations. Some early realist and modernist stories--Tess, Wozzeck, Brecht, maybe Flaubert but I don't remember now so don't quote me--highlighted that, arguing that 19th-century virtues were only possible or important for the privileged classes. If you think that everybody agrees on what's virtuous, imagine writing a novel that had to agree completely with Victorian ideas of virtues (sexist, racist, social Darwinist, violent, macho, disciplinarian, rabidly nationalist, fanatically religious, intolerant). That was the situation the first modernists were in. They went off to fight in World War I like good boys, and discovered that "virtue" produced evil. Modernism is about isolated people feeling lost in a changing society, and one of the things they felt most lost about was not knowing anymore what virtue was.
So there is a connection. Modernism started off denying that it was important for people to have virtue, but that was when society had obsolete, harmful notions of what virtue was.
The lack of wonder may be a lack of false wonder, by people who actually have no sense of wonder, but only of amazed befuddlement at their own ignorance, and who miss that feeling when their ignorance is taken from them.
But, yeah, that sort of despairing fiction is the only thing literary magazines will publish, and I'm sick of it too. I don't like isms. There are plenty of different kinds of good stories, but every ism tries to say there is only one kind of good story. I don't dislike these stories individually, but I'm sick of the suppression of all other kinds of stories.
Post-modernism has been playing this game for 60 years where authors compete to see who can strip out the most things formerly thought to be required for a story (action, tension, sympathetic characters, plot, understandability). It began as stylistic experiments, yet the entire body of work produced by the top literary magazines over the past 30 years appears to me to have less variety of style and theme than the works of some individual fan-fiction authors.
2460638
My apologies. I did mean it as a fond compliment, but my use of terminology was sloppy because I didn't want to get into the issue of how to define postmodernism.
I interpreted what Daetrin said as evocative of the recurring motif of people being trapped in your stories in a world that seems grey and unutterably bleak. Sometimes the trap is personal, sometimes the trap is universal (like in the horrifying 'Twenty Minutes'), but there is always the sense of the characters struggling in vain against a cloying hopelessness. And normally I don't like that sort of thing. Except that you write it well and I wanted to point it out.
Apparently, I didn't do it particularly well. I'm sorry.
2440818
There is a mentality, that believes that such characters are possible, but are close to worst possible thing IRL, especially in upper echelon. While some idealistic people are nice as long as they have same values, give them a point to argue about, and they will readily degrade into bloodthirsty fanatics. Maybe not always, but often enough. Cynical and egotistical people can come to compromise much easier, so when compromise and peace is a must, it is better to have such people to talk. Sure, they will get their payment, but they won't be distracted by shinies of poorly understood ideals.
While pointless malicious OOC is definitely bad for a story, it can make a good story if used for purpose. Moreover, malicious interpretation of a character may be fully consistent with the original. As long, as MOOC is not taken on all characters, it is mostly OK for me. Consistent malicious interpretations are something I enjoy if they are done well.
Moreover, OOC on itself may be actually good, if canon depiction ruins potential of the character, be this OOC Malicious or not.
2551292
Yes. Neville Chamberlain as opposed to Winston Churchill. The hopes are always blasted, since a superior ability to compromise with evil usually leads to such evil taking advantage of it.
2551315
The very same mentality looks with great wariness on people, rambling about 'good' and 'evil' . While the things certainly exist, they are very subjective and inapplicable in general considerations.
Could you please rephrase your post without 'good' and 'evil' mentioned?
2551339
"Good" can be understood as an overall strategy of preferring to play positive-sum social games; "Evil" as a preference for zero- or negative-sum social games. Attempting to compromise with evil is at best normally an exercise in futility; because evil will interpret one's attempt to play positive-sum games as an inept playing of a zero-sum or negative-sum game, and will choose Defect over Cooperate.
"Good" and "evil" are useful shorthand for whole suites of strategies. I'm not giving up such valuable abstractions when discussing reality, any more than I'd give up X-Y-Z coordinate systems when attempting to navigate three-dimensional space, and for the same reasons.
2551342
Ah.
The funny thing is, that egotistical cynical people do not have preferences you described as "Evil". Well, actually they prefer positive-sum games with zero-sum as last resort as better strategy in long terms. It is idealistic people who often play negative-sum games, like infamous Crusades (essentially killing many people in Middle East without real profit for Christian Europe), the Cold War (which had deep ideological roots), WWII (essentially an attempt of Germany to carve out a piece of the world for themselves in response to humiliation of WWI) and so on.
This, however, is behind the point, as definition of 'positive' and 'negative' sum in social context is often very subjective as well and relies on shared values in context of specific consideration. Such values often do not exist, they often may be in sharp contrast for parties involved. The above paragraph is written from modern skeptical humanistic point of view, some Christians would justify Crusades as inherently right because they were sanctified by Vatican, so everything is permitted; same for other examples.
Given that, a strongly idealistic character with strong, undiscussable beliefs (a hero) is often closer to evil spectrum by your definition, as he is much more prone to negative sum games than any reasonable egotistical character. This is where Knight Templar and Well Intentioned Extremist tropes are rooted.
2551368
Who said that I considered egotism or cynicism "evil?" Please note that two of my favorite characters to write in this fandom are Trixie Lulamoon and my OC Piercing Gaze, who are both rather "egotistical" and "cynical" in many ways. (Though they are also both capable of compassion and idealism, especially toward one another).
First of all, it's interesting that you regard the Crusades as evil but not the far more aggressive movement to which it was a reaction, namely the Muslim Jihads which were why Muslim Arabs and then Muslim Turks were ruling the lands against which the jihads were launched. The Crusades were fought entirely on soil which had not been Muslim until after Muhammed's death. I think this is among the gaps of a modern Western education.
Secondly, I never claimed to be a big fan of the Crusades anyway. Nor did I claim that they weren't evil. In particular, the "kill `em all and let God sort it out" approach to the conquest of Muslim-held cities was not only evil but stupid, as the Crusaders frequently killed the local Christians who might otherwise have provided them the reinforcements they could have used to hold their conquests.
Had we been less idealistic in World War II and the Cold War, we would have lost those conflicts. Such defeats would have led to the domination of the world by the Nazis and Communists respectively, a domination which would have been accompanied by mass killing on a scale which would have dwarfed the actual wars. I am very glad that we didn't give up the fight in either case.
Human societies differ on the details, but cultural evolution ensures a rough similarity of values, especially when one gets to the masses of people in a society. (The elites often have the extra time and money needed to do some very generally counter-survival things in the name of status-seeking). This is because we all live in the same Universe and are subject to the same physical laws.
The usual consequence of trying to pretend Good and Evil don't exist is that one becomes completely vulnerable to exploitation by Evil. Hence, this is in itself countersurvival.
2551368
You seem to have made a few key missteps in crafting this ideological framework of yours. You've idealized cynicism as the only rational means of dealing with the world, as the middle grounds between the optimist's blindness to reality and the pessimist's glum acceptance of the world's faults. Fortunately for all of us, this isn't the case.
You've conflated being good with zealotry. It's an easy mistake to make. Those who shout loudest about how good they are rarely match that with their actions. We all have ideals, it's intrinsically human to craft archetypes and pull from them when confronted with situations. The zealot seeks to more closely match the world to their ideal no matter the cost, and this separates them from the rest of us, who share that basic desire, but are constrained by the costs of doing so. The zealot's beliefs are never open to discussion. A strongly held belief or ideal is no proof of fanaticism, nor is it inherently negative.
Being cynical is no shield against poorly planned words or actions. No life outlook is. It is disingenuous to assert that a hero is more prone to negative sum behaviors and outcomes on the grounds of their determination to do good. Rather, the egoist is more risk averse, and will therefore have less overall impact - good or bad - than a hero.
You're right that good and evil, positive and negative sum interactions, are often subjective. It's easy to lack understanding and do things which you believe to be helpful but which are instead quite damaging. That should not prevent anyone from trying to do good. Your vaunted self-centered cynic would pass by the scene of an accident, knowing that to interact with it opens them up to consequences, be it litigation, disease, injury, or whatever sense of responsibility they might bear for the outcomes of that scene. A person with a good-intentioned or heroic mindset is not so self-absorbed and will stop to help. This opens them to all the aforementioned dangers, but also improves the likelihood of positive outcomes from the situation.
Heroes represent the best of us. Those willing to take on risk in an effort to effect improvements. They are human, and will make mistakes. Sometimes with catastrophic results. The cynic represents the bulk of humanity. Those not willing to risk their comfort and safety. They make mistakes, but change little or nothing in the world. Both, I would argue, are necessary. But the hero is not a villain simply because their actions reverberate more profoundly across the human stage.
2551429
You took it too personal, though. Don't overthink it, I took three random examples that are famous, no any ideological reasons behind it. Given that, I would ignore the rant about their value and morality, no offence implied.
Still, I claim that all three conflicts begun mostly because of ideology, so how ideology affected their execution is mostly irrelevant in the context of the discussion.
This only applies to the very basic, fundamental things, that, frankly speaking, are considered self-evident in any developed society. On the other hand, freedom of speech for example, is threated very differently over the world. Some modern society scold those who publically dissect flaws of cultural systems, some (almost) do not, and some employ double standards of various level of hypocrisity. Family values, degree of tolerance and so on - the list can be continued indefinitely.
On the other hand, beliefs that objective Good and Evil do exist lead to wars and intolerance.
2551486
If you are in a desperate need to apply some shortcut to me, it would be nihilism with shades of existentialism and skepticism over it.
Actually, we have laws for that, that implie basic cooperation in such cases. Also, even blackest cynics usually have some compassion and empathy. Complete lack of emphathy is very rare. So, said self-centered cynic would not pass the scene, but will offer help. Even if allowed to help, he will not expect any thanks, though, and will do it not because he believes it right, but because it makes him feel good. Humans have plenty of mechanisms that promotes cooperation and altruistic help based on self-esteem and feeling of belonging.
Heroes represent what current society promotes in an average member. Sometimes it is in direct conflict with what is expected from specific members. Say, we expect an average member to feel something about death, gore and so on. Still, we expect medical people to deal with it on day-to-day basis, essentially not feeling much about it. Kinda hypocritical in my opinion.
Granted, heroes are usually shown to have integrity and sometimes (but not always) intelligence, both worthy respect in my opinion, but the impression is often poisoned by their other traits.
2551678
It's not, because ideology is a weapon like any other -- it's just a cultural weapon. If we claim that ideology is inherently evil, then only the inherently evil will have ideology -- and then the good will stand mutely mourning as the evil take over the world.
Furthermore, the content of an ideology is relevant. An ideology of reason, liberty and freedom is better than one of hatred, slavery and oppression.
2551805
You need ideology to protect your home from intrusion and your freedom from taking? How... funny.
Value of freedom and liberty is derivable from pure reason, and reason is inherent for humans and very usable in everyday life, so one do not need ideology to value reason, freedom and liberty.
2552672
Yes, you do need ideology to do this, or you are standing alone trying to defend your home and freedom from a whole horde, while your neighbors watch apathetically.
2552703
>or you are standing alone trying to defend your home and freedom from a whole horde, while your neighbors watch apathetically.
*raised eyebrow*
So, the idea that you can make a pact with you neighbors, reinforced by economical and social ties, is inherently alien to you? This is quite disturbing.
2552706
You theoretically can make such a pact in a totally dispassionate fashion. Someday we may discover a species who actually behaves this way. It's not true for either Humans or Ponies, though. They normally need some sort of sense of solidarity with their neighbors to stand up for them.
2552740
*with interest*
And why you believe that compassion is impossible without officially adopted unified common ideology (OAUCI © ®™) ?
2552764
Compassion is not enough to provide unity against a foe. And without such unity, one is defeated.
And the ideology need not be imposed from above. It may be organic to the culture. But a culture without a unifying ideology goes down before a culture with such an ideology. That's how history works.