Underappreciated Author Spotlight: Impossible Numbers · 6:31am Jul 7th, 2018
Hola, amigos! I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya. (Many, many internet points to those who get that reference.)
I lamented in a blog post some time ago about my ability to drive people from the fandom by editing their long stories for them. It seems that featuring them as underappreciated authors can have the same effect! But this time it's not my fault! See why, after the break.
It's not my fault, since Impossible Numbers already preemptively signaled his possible-but-not-saying-definitely-so exit from active participation in the fanfiction community. But hey, a person doesn't have to be active for you to continue enjoying their stories, right?
As I write this, IN has 194 followers. Through this series of blogs, I've made speculations about why this or that author may have not attracted as many followers as I think they deserve. I'm at a loss here, though. IN started publishing stories in 2011, well before the fandom's peak. Hell, this is even more of an advantage. Stories from that early can catch fire as the first in the fandom to do something in particular, then live on as legends. This was a prime period for getting eyes on stories.
It's not the character tags either. His first story uses 3 Mane 6 characters plus Big Mac. Next one uses Pinkie. Next is Twilight, plus Cheerilee, Zecora, and CMCs. Then... okay, now we hit a streak of less popular ones: Commander Hurricane and Private Pansy; Flim and Flam; Gilda and Iron Will (hey, Gilda's always seemed fairly popular, though); and Daring Do. Maybe there's something to that? But then we get Twilight, AJ, Granny Smith, and Big Mac, then Twilight, AJ, and Spike. Then back to the more obscure ones: Daring Do; Flitter and Cloudchaser (somehow carrying both the "Flitter" and "Cloudchaser and Flitter" tags); Pinkie; Sombra, Changelings, and Crystal Ponies (now there's a tag I feel bad about how few stories use it, and I once made a write-off entry specifically for it, though I've still never ported that over to this site); Big Mac and Winona; OCs only; Rarity and Sweetie Belle; Cadance, Diamond Dogs, and Crystal Ponies.
So maybe it's the long string of stories with few to no major characters? I don't know. We're only up to 2013 at this point, right smack in the middle of the fandom's peak, where you could get plenty of readers no matter what you wrote. And I appreciate a writer who devotes attention to a lot of these lesser-used characters. I've done a fair amount of that myself. Plus, y'know, you gotta write what you want to write. Through that same series of stories I'd listed by the most prominent character tags they used, IN starts with about 2k, 3k, and 2k views, but then only two more of them top 1k by much. A bunch of them are under 1k. I mean... really? A 5k Rarity and Sweetie Belle adventure/comedy published in 2013 can only get 384 views? Though it is marked as incomplete, so maybe people were waiting for it to finish? A 2k sad Pinkie from 2013 only gets 918 views? Madness.
The only things that stand out to me from these 18 of his oldest stories are the aforementioned dearth of major character tags, 2 of them don't have cover art (which can explain a lack of views), and what may be the biggest issue: the short descriptions just aren't that enticing. If I expanded the view to see full title cards, maybe the long descriptions would sound more interesting. Well, as I do switch to full view... no, they don't. Many of the long descriptions are identical to the short ones. In itself, that isn't a problem. I usually do that, too. But it does mean the bland descriptions I saw in the list view are still bland descriptions in the full view.
So if I were to wager a guess? IN has a marketing problem. He writes well, which I'll get to shortly, but he doesn't put a cover on stories that makes people take notice.
Ah, and then there's the long skip. He had a lot of stories to his name by mid-2013, but then published nothing in the last half of that year, nothing in 2014, and only two stories in 2015, both in the middle of the year. Finally, things picked up in earnest again at the beginning of 2016, and there have been a bunch since then. So yeah, I think we have our culprit. Kind of niche characters (which isn't an author fault, mind you) with bland descriptions, then not following through the fandom's peak when people would have been looking to see more output. He's been prolific from 2016 on, but in that period, it's been hard to gain many more followers. 194 may not actually be too bad a total for that profile, but he does deserve more, so I'll highlight some stories that show why.
Wait, I actually have read "Griffon a Load of Bull"? It isn't marked as read for me. I barely remember it, and as I skim it now, it looks like one of those inconsequential fluff scenes that a fair number of readers like well enough, but that doesn't really tell a story. So I guess it's reasonable that it didn't stick in my head. There's definite skill in the writing, though. Even if that story didn't strike me, it still showed plenty of promise.
The first one I remember reading of his is "Rise of the Solar Wind" from early 2016. It's very atmospheric, and a nice AU take on the princesses. Discovering exactly what is going on here is kind of the point, so I won't spoil it, but we follow Solar during her rise through the civil service, seemingly driven by the desire to be closer to her sister. There's a heartfelt sentiment behind it, and I enjoyed it for that, but I just didn't understand enough of it that well. In what will become a hallmark of my experience with IN's writing, he likes to write about things that are very subtle and shrouded in mystery, and that's something pretty difficult to do, unless you employ a couple of good pre-readers. An author's never going to accurately gauge what subtle hints and clues a reader will pick up, since the author already knows it all. He doesn't get the reader's experience of going into it cold, and a fair amount of the time, I come out of his stories feeling like I only had a vague sense of the details, or that I had to read the comment section to decipher it. I'd recommend this one for the atmosphere and writing, but it was the first of many that I felt I didn't fully understand.
Next is "The King and the Changeling." Now, I don't normally like to say how I encountered any given story, because more often than not, it's because it came through Equestria Daily's queue. I at least start reading virtually every story that comes through the queue, even if I'm not the one who files a verdict. In this case, the story was eventually featured, so it's already obvious it was a submission. But I normally won't say, since if a story never did get featured, then it would be public knowledge it got rejected, and I consider that private information.
Anyway, I gather the final product I read wasn't the original version, and I could dig through the shared email archive to see what had changed about it, but that wouldn't be germane to this blog. "The King and the Changeling" takes a fairy tale approach, to good effect. Think more like the centuries-old ones that had rather serious and dark implications. This isn't a feel-good story of pixies and rainbows and hugs. It's a grittier take, like an original Grimm tale, on how a king of the Breezies attempts to outsmart Chrysalis, over Zecora's dire warnings. Zecora was a bit of a puzzle, but I think I managed to figure out what her motivation was in the matter. She does fit the "mysterious stranger" role well. I'm having to be a bit vague here—as much as IN likes to write about mysterious circumstances, it's hard to discuss them without revealing things, but there's not too much outlandish here. It follows a familiar fairy-tale formula, albeit in an enjoyable way.
I seem to have read "Rejuvenation," but it didn't ring a bell. A quick skim reveals some headcanon about Star Swirl's family line, but more from a genealogical perspective than actually telling a story with a point. Or if there was one, I didn't see it.
Ah, we finally got to the gem, "Lapidify: To See and Die." This RCL-inducted story tells us about Ambergris, who goes to attend a social event at an ambassador's house, only to discover that a cockatrice has invaded. He tries to warn the staff and help them evacuate, then is dispatched to fetch an experienced cockatrice hunter in the nearby town. When he returns, the place is eerily silent, and the hunter enlists his aid to find anyone remaining inside. I'll leave the rest of the telling to IN, but it's a nice, tense atmosphere, and it plays both the horror and mystery elements well. This is a story that should be on everyone's to-read list unless you just have an overwhelming aversion to thrillers.
I'm keeping these summaries short, since IN has written so damn many stories...
"Work and Play" is just a short, cute slice-of-life tale about Pinkie and AJ learning to find a happy medium between, you guessed it, work and play. Not much to say about it, really, just that it's fluffy fun that does manage to squeeze in a message. (And by now, the story synopses have improved quite a bit.)
In the same vein, "Splash Dash" is a lighthearted look at Sweetie Belle both wanting to escape Rarity's formalism and worrying that she's subject to a curse. It's very cute, but it does suffer from a fair number of repetition and perspective problems. I was asked to relay some notes on these to him before the story went up on EqD, and I see that none of them actually got addressed. ಠ_ಠ
"Practical Nightmares Only" is an incredibly cute story about Derpy—er, Muffins—wanting to make the best possible Nightmare Night costume for Dinky, and the very-put-upon Golden Harvest has to help. It too suffers from some perspective slips, so now I will bother to go check the e-mail archive, and... yes, these were also apparently identified as "we'll approve your story, but please tune up these minor problems while you're waiting" items, so maybe he just saw the "we'll approve your story" part and tuned out the rest again? ಠ_ಠ
"Her Song of Jubilation" features lots of good character work, but it never quite comes together as a story. It follows a Coloratura who's still struggling to find out what her music is post-Svengallop, yet the plot threads don't really tie up at the end. Between a potential rival who kind of disappears and a weird perspective change at the end to a character ancillary to the story's message, plus it's one of those that delays identifying the conflict until rather late in the story without presenting a motivation for the character to keep it hidden. The seeds are there, and it almost works, but I'd still make it recommended reading for the characterization.
"Stinging the Trail" takes a pretty nuanced look at Vapor Trail and Sky Stinger, and he still hasn't overcome his sense of self-importance. He's tried, but... well, I can really identify with him here. He likes to have all the answers, to be the one in charge, so when Vapor Trail is the knowledgeable one as they go through a museum exhibit, he just tunes her out, until he really thinks about it. Yeah, I can be the same way. Especially at work, I can feel like I don't have a lot of worth unless I'm the one with the information people need, and I often have to rein that in and let other people, who actually are the experts, be the experts. And Sky Stinger does exactly that. Once he can finally relax and let Vapor Trail drive, he gains a new appreciation for her as a friend.
"As Winter Dies, So Spring is Born" goes back in history to show an interaction between Commander Hurricane and Private Pansy (apparently the second time IN has done this). Right away, we find the commander in prison, and it's never that clear exactly what she did, and therefore how long she stands to remain there, but Pansy feels the need to reach some sort of understanding with her before... I don't really know. They part ways? Or just move on to a new phase of dealing with each other? Either way, there's good characterization, and it does a good job of building emotional tension.
"Transient." Man, what to say about this one? It creates a really good atmosphere. I found it genuinely creepy. But I didn't have the first clue what was going on, and I wasn't the only one to have that reaction. Remember what I said about IN skating on the edge of what subtleties the reader is likely to pick up? This one wasn't even close for me. Now, I'm not someone who reads between the lines well, but again, others had the same reaction as me. Some apparently did get it, though. If you do, more power to you, but this one, for me, exemplifies how IN can play things too subtly at times, to where I just get lost trying to figure anything out. I think if it does end up clicking for you, you'll find it a memorable read. Though on the back side of that, it does require you to take quite a bit at face value toward what motivates this situation to happen at all. Like why the characters need to subject themselves to it, why the cutie map is willing to risk them for a mission that doesn't seem to be in its bailiwick, and... well, it just left me confused more than anything.
Plus there are all the stories IN entered in the Flashfic 150 events, and they're included in his anthologies, but they're too numerous to go into.
And that's it! I haven't read anything more recent, even though plenty of it exists since "Transient."
Impossible Numbers has been around a long time, he's shown definite improvement over the years, and while I don't understand everything he writes, I never feel as if I've wasted my time reading it. He always has a strong foundation of characterization, and that makes even the confusing entries enjoyable on that front, but that's not a bad place to find yourself: either having a surprisingly good read (and less surprising all the time as more and more of these consistently stack up) or still appreciating great character work in a story that was a bit confusing. I don't know if or when he's going to continue writing, but you'll discover a lot of good work in what he's already written, so consider giving him a follow and checking out his numerous stories. He deserves it.
Check out my previous underappreciated author spotlights:
Casca
Lucky Dreams
Ceffyl Dwr
Miller Minus
You should read "Why the Gift is Given". It's deep, philosophical, with perfect characterization and moving interactions and dynamic between its characters, but sadly, also underappreciated.
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I did eventually read that story, but long after I'd forgotten that you recommended it. It may be my favorite story by him.
Jim Anchower!
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Excellent! Too bad they retired his column long ago. And T. Herman Zweibel's.
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I did enjoy just how improbable the world of the 150-year-old impossibly frail reclusive millionaire and his terribly named sons got. And the best Jim Anchower column was definitely the one from the future issue they did, showing that he keeps being himself pretty much indefinitely.