Why You Should Should Read "Blackacre" (if you haven't already...) - - - Middle Shelf #3 · 6:56pm Aug 11th, 2015
Blackacre
Hoo boy. This was fun. I don't think I've ever read a fic as... I don't know, "grown-up" as this. There's something about the narrative style, the attention to detail in every little construction of the world around the characters, and then the characters themselves, and the plot...
Okay, let's back up and break this down. A lot of people won't like this fic. I'll say it now. It's very unorthodox, and I'll explain why. But what it aims for, it hits perfectly, and if you can appreciate that like I did, you'll love it like I did. This is easily the least-viewed story in my entire library, which is really a shame because it deserves more attention. Go read it!
Did anyone actually watch my video about story structures? No? That's okay, it is an hour-long lecture interspersed with bronies being bronies with bronies, after all. One of the things I talked about was Orson Scott Card's M.I.C.E. Quotient, which is basically the four things a story can tell and focus on: Millieu (or setting), Idea, Character, and Event.
In general, the longer a story is, the more of these will be elaborated, and vice-versa. Contemporary novels almost always use all four. Modern Western storytelling relies very heavily on the Character aspect of every story, which is why we don't really react as well to 19th-century classics, as a rule. Characters written before about the 1950's (especially POV characters) don't really go through arcs like we're used to. Make sense? Instead, those stories focus on one or more of the other three elements to the relative exclusion of character.
In a way very similar to Friendship is Optimal, Blackacre is one of those rare novel-length contemporary stories that hardly gives any focus to the Character part of the M.I.C.E. Quotient. That's not a bad thing, but it does turn some people away. Blackacre instead focuses on the Event first, and Millieu and Idea close behind. It follows several disparate POV characters around, but it isn't their story; they're merely there to tell the real story from their perspective.
Like I said, this is the sort of thing you usually find in 19th-century war novels, not MLP fanfictions. So don't go in expecting anything like a character study and don't look too hard for character development, because that's not the point. The point is the big picture, which is a friggin' masterpiece.
I try not to give away spoilers in these blogs, so there's not too much I can give away about Blackacre, though the story doesn't have twists and reveals so much as gradual illumination. I still don't want to ruin that for anyone.
What you should know about this story going in is that it takes place about 30 years before the events of the show, and the world is much different than anything you've seen before. This is another thing that may turn people away. Weird things are different, like some ponies having normal human names and pegasi not being in control of the weather. When I say it like that it sounds like the author just made mistakes, but I really don't think he did. I strongly suspected sometimes while reading it that this was a professional author doing a writing exercise, and I still wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
While there are some things that remain unanswered at the end, there is a sense that every choice the author made was purposeful and thought through, and looking back over the wider story once you come up on the end makes you feel like you've been following a mouse on a breakneck chase through a maze, but then you stand up and see that the mouse was drawing a picture with its footsteps.
It's a very cool reading experience, though maybe not for everyone. Give it a try if you think you might like this sort of thing.
I've been awfully quiet recently outside of a couple contests and one chapter update that was about a month or two overdue. I've been home for the summer since April, and it's been a crazy summer. I spent a week in Puerto Rico and another at scout camp, then I moved in with my dad in another state where I slept on a cot in a tiny apartment while we figured out the house for the rest of our family to move in. I stayed there for a couple weeks and worked at a sock factory until I got laid off, and now I work nights at a plastics factory, for the next two weeks until I go back to school.
Night shift is tough. I feel like I have no time left because I sleep most of the day. On top of that, I only have my phone and my Chromebook, so the only things I can really do are read and type. I've got so much art stuff I want to do (not to mention TF2 I want to play), but it'll have to wait until I get a desktop again. Hopefully I can finally get some actual work started on those videos I keep talking about making, too.
It's really hard to sound engaging because I've been up since about 9PM last night, and I need to go to sleep, so sorry if I'm even less coherent than usual. Like I said, I was involved in two contests recently: the OC Slamjam which I'm pretty sure I've talked about already, and the big one itself, the Writeoff. I did okay in both, and I hope to have my entries up sometime for people to read without judging me. 
The Slamjam stories will have to wait until the finals are over (so another month or so) at least because the entries are published on fimfiction already by the contest account, but the Writeoff minifics are just waiting on me to be productive and spiffy them up. Those you might see soon.
In the ever-venerable other news, I'm a busy little editor (buzz... buzz?). Princess Celestia: the Changeling Queen finally finished some two years after publication and, what, ten months after I came on board as an editor? Sequel's coming soon, so no rest for the wicked. Maybe someday I'll learn to be punctual with my editing.
Prisoner of War continues to grow steadily in popularity, and continues to update fairly regularly. Props to Radiant, he's a natural. Jules Winnfield CheckMate343 The Human Sh*tpost He Who Has Yet To Settle On A Name has emerged from his spiritual journey of re-working Masks, and we may soon see actual progress on that. I'm still really looking forward to seeing where that one goes. Give it a look, it's still pretty early on and you can get on the hype wagon just in time for us to pick up some speed. Not the drug.
So yeah. Sense I make hope I. I wrote a song at work the other night. Any Reliant K fans out there? Mayday Parade? Maybe I'll record this someday. Maybe someone will buy it and do it better than me. Who knows. Good night.
Scout camp, like, the Boy Scouts? Part of me feels bad for not doing anything with them in over a year, part of me just can't really imagine going back as an ASM.
3312327 Yep. I was only along as an extra adult, with my family's local church troop. I used to work at scout camps, though, and we just barely missed out on going to one I worked at a few years ago. Had a lot of fun. Luckily I had just enough mobile signal to keep up with the Slamjam. That was a crazy round.