Fimfiction Authors are cheating(and that's okay)

Well with that clickbaity title out of the way, time for my actual thoughts. Now to begin with, when I say "cheating" I don't exactly mean it in a malicious way. I mean it in such a way to suggest that Fimfic(and other fanfiction authors) authors hijack our emotional investment into the show. If this seems like a boring topic or something to you, now would be the time to turn back.

What I am trying to suggest is that people's enjoy stories based on the amount of emotional investment and payout is in that story. While that may seem obvious, I believe it goes a lot deeper than most people would think of. If people didn't like a story because it has bad grammar, I think that it can be attributed to the emotional investment you allowed yourself to put in it. Think of your favorite story. Now think of it in an unironic very badly written way. I don't think many people would enjoy it. Some more astute commentators would say things like, "Oh the blah blah blah was fine, but it really needs an editor and some stuff." Now just to be clear, I'm not talking about just a couple of errors here and there, I'm talking about if a third grader vomited spaghettios and his twin brother rearranged them to form a story. Overall, I think the disconnect as you struggled through the words would cause you to not enjoy the story as much as you would have.

Another reason somebody could not like a story is because they don't find it "realistic" which, again, I think can be attributed to emotional investment. Based on your background, if you don't think something can work in a story, you won't believe it to be a a good story. Like it or not, everyone has their own biases coming into a story. Just to be clear, by background I mean everything before they read the story, including other stories they liked and everything else they've experienced. For example, Past Sins seems to be a fairly polarizing story (even if the like counter doesn't reflect it) and I would like to believe it is because some people don't find it "realistic" while others find it touching based on how they portrayed Nyx as being innocent, causing a greater emotional investment. I think that all of these elements blend together to create a story that some people would enjoy and others won't.

Now in this section, I'll be talking about the setting and Humans/Hie/Poe(pre eqg) I think that the reason Humans/Human elements(and by human elements I mean human things not aspects that are similar in pony and human society) are so polarizing is because of emotional investment. Here is a famous example, My Little Dashie. One of the most beloved(and sometimes hated) story on this site. It combined elements from MLP(which anybody reading would have a prior emotional investment in) into the real world(which I hope everyone has an emotional investment in). This double investment created a story which evoked strong emotions from people, and it also came out at a perfect time, which I will touch upon later. The people who liked it thought it was well paced, as even if it was a one shot, it spanned a great number of years using time skips, which gave the illusion of time passing and more investment. The ones who didn't, called it unrealistic and a cheap, emotionally manipulative ploy, which can be because they don't think that the characters acted realistically or for whatever reason. The central point to that idea though is that the people who disliked it felt a disconnect and felt no emotion for the character, making them view the sad points as "manipulative". Or they invested too much and when it doesn't turn out well, they feel cheated or whatever feeling they get. As for all other HiE and stuff, the same things apply. Double investment in the characters and study(especially when the mc interacts with the main 6) create a fairly strong response. I think that is part of why Chess games of the gods was so popular. You could contribute to the story, or just read multiple story with the same universe that you have already previously invested in. This also seems to be the same reason crossovers are so popular. If you are emotionally interested in thing A and Mlp, the two things combined in any which way can work to great effect, positive or negative.

Overall, I am trying to suggest that a lot of things come together in a story to try to get a person to emotionally invest in a story. These things are one of the main, if not only, thing that affect whether somebody likes a story or not. Emotional investment in fanfictions use our initial investment in different Universes, Mlp itself, and the characters we know and love. Because I feel like this blog post is too rambly, I'll write out my thoughts on characters on another one.