Bespoke Ghostwords! Fresh off the spectral keyboard!

Hello my readers lovely and likeable.

Well, you know how the wonderful and talented Bookplayer has set up a system by which you can chip in a few bucks to support her (and her lovely Trixie) while she regales you with marvelous blogposts? And if you chip in a certain larger amount you can pick what she writes about?

Well...

It's not what you are thinking. There's no Ghost Patreon or a tipjar[1]. My purpose is slightly different.

Here's the deal: Henceforth, whenever someone gets the right to pick a blog post subject for Bookplayer, they also get to pick a blog post subject for me[2] using the same method—sending a PM to Bookplayer who'll then inform me. The posts will be published at the very least on a biweekly basis, or quicker if my schedule permits it. I can't offer any guarantees as to length[3], but I'm a verbose bastard[4], so there shouldn't be any trouble.

As for subject matter, I ask only that your requests respect the boundaries of reasonable good taste and avoid profoundly controversial topics. I reserve the right to reject a request and renegotiate something that's acceptable to the both of us. That all said, I don't expect there will be any trouble whatsoever. You are, after all, my readers and as such have the most refined of tastes.

As to why I'm doing this, well, it's because Bookplayer's awesome, Trixie is the most adorable baby in all of existence, and my impecunious nature prevents me from supporting them directly. Short money, I'm trying to make good the lack with words.

[1] Well. I am GhostOfHeraclitus, so it would be more of an urn, surely, which you would be expected to fill with spectral obols.
[2] It can be the same subject or a different one.
[3] I can offer a guarantee of quality, though: I'll be writing it, so there won't be any. Guaranteed.
[4] Verbose Bastard could actually be a pony name, I just realized. I mean, if 'Filthy Rich' is allowed...

Comments

[MrNumbers]

Yes.[1]

[1] Yes, yes, yes, yes [2], yes, yes, yes, yes-[1][3]

[3] That footnote just got recursive, broh.

[2]
iambrony.dget.cc/mlp/gif/131327147782.gif

[bookplayer]

Once again, Ghost, this is wonderful and I can't thank you enough.

If people are interested, and I can't imagine how they wouldn't be, here's a link to the blog post with more information. The reward level he's talking about is $50, and is honored whether it's through Patreon or paypal.

[Gildomar]

I now want to read a story with Verbose Bastard.

[Tchernobog]

2526498

I wonder if one could setup a debate between the two of you in that case. Same topic for both, one argues for it, one against.

[bookplayer]

2526603
I suppose one could, though I have no doubt Ghost would trounce me. He has footnotes!

[Tchernobog]

2526617 I don't even know what I'd ask, in any case!

[Emptybee]

2526426 Footception?

[Bad Horse]

This is an excellent idea which cannot possibly go wrong. I look forward to your analysis of this story.

[Georg]

Reasonable good taste? Well, that leaves me out. Let me see if I have a couple bucks left in the PayPal account though...

[Blue_Paladin42]

I'm broooooooke!

[GhostOfHeraclitus]

2526823
Here. This one's free of charge.

I have read it two years ago, almost to the day, and I still get the occasional nightmare. I cannot remember it without becoming nauseous, and prolonged thought about it makes matters worse. When I first read it I spent a week unable to focus on anything else or to write a single word. I cannot recall a single work of literature that has hurt me half as much.

It is an unflinching portrait of the moral equivalent of a deep dark pit, of banal all-encompassing evil, and the limits a grim uncaring world places upon virtue. It is bleak, painfully so, and the pain is felt all the keener for the author having set this exploration of the hopelessness of compassion in the most relentlessly optimistic and sunny setting in contemporary popular culture.

This attack on a peaceful oasis of sun and laughter, almost unique in the fundamental honesty of its central sentiment, provides stark illustration of the power of fanfiction, for no invented world could have this sort of impact, and no depiction of reality could be as bleak. An invented world's fall from grace would not move us as much, and a description of reality, no matter how vivid, could not but permit a glimmer of hope. Even the pessimist cannot claim that this world, as wretched as it is, is completely fallen. There is hope in it, and the author can't tell us different with the sort of iron authority he can employ with this violated version of a cherished shared universe. Fanfic, then, combines the best of both worlds: it can be instantly convey the sense of a great good being lost, of the depth of horror being inflicted while simultaneously being under the author's absolute control.

It is without a doubt well written, a fine, fine example of early Bleak Horse, but I cannot in good conscience recommend it. I can't imagine anyone whose life is so filled with untrammeled joy and sunlight that admitting this much darkness into it is advisable. Caveat lector.

I'm going to go drink now. It's 7AM, and it may be a bit early to start but... *shrug*