Fanfiction Reading Update #179 · 4:20am Jul 12th, 2020
It’s been quite entertaining watching Derpibooru completely implode in on itself as TSP, the site’s owner, completes this strangely riveting villain arc and has a full-on villainous breakdown. Reminds me a lot of those dark magic Twilight fics, in fact. A slow burn of questionable decisions until the madness is fully revealed (through leaked chat logs) and leaves you wondering where the train hopped off the tracks.
It’s also sad, too, though. I remember those bygone nostalgic days fondly. Where politics didn’t poison the landscape, Twitter users didn’t roam like packs of wolves waiting for the next limping animal to reveal itself for the slaughter, and Derpibooru was an upstart with a hot interface and a depth of optimistic and excited staff ready to give the fandom a home for all of its fanart, not just the art that offended the fewest wolves.
At least it hasn’t hit Fimfiction yet, though I can’t help but think certain numerically minded users would love if it did. While I wait for Knighty’s villain arc to get going, I better keep reading. Who really knows how much longer some of these fics will stick around for. At least Fimfetch will always have them.
I get around to reading Sunken Horizons most recent chapters as the siege arc finally wraps up, Dash continues to act like a reckless moron, and we’re reminded that the Crystal Empire’s a thing, but everything imploded before the S3 premiere, so Sombra’s still around.
Another few chapters of Rites of Ascension are burned through and things are still crawling with Twilight finding yet another vague clue that will probably lead into the next 70k long arc. The pacing’s definitely been Rites’ biggest weakness, as has the lack of tangible progress. Even now, 600,000 words in, I still feel like the overall plot is still where it was 30,000 words in.
It’s Springtime for Aryanne and Oneshots.
The oddly titled May God Bless Your Soul takes a short dive into the world of Halloween oneshots four months early. Speaking of dark magic Twilight, it follows the classic “Twilight reads a corrupting book” genre, but stumbles somewhat in its brevity. It just strains belief Twilight would read a fairly basic story and immediately descend into paranoid assassinations.
The early Halloween continues with I’m Digging a Hole, a story where AJ digs a hole with a cursed shovel and murders Twilight with it. The story’s narrative structure is quite odd, reminding me of a standard fanfic with a slightly rushed pace and simple descriptions. This detracts from the horror of the whole thing quite a bit.
And that's all I read for the month.
# of story updates remaining: 559.
# of “Read Later” stories remaining: 1,212.
Okay, I missed something: What’s going on over at Derpibooru?
5306706
Long and short of it is first they said they were banning racist imagery, then they took it back, then they took that back, now they're debating just how much racism is okay. It's hilarious and also sad for such an easy question to answer.
5306721
Ah. Thanks for letting me know.
5306721
So people don't like changelings being shown in an unfavorable light? Or are people having an issue with green ponies? Racism and ponies just doesn't really compute in my headspace.
5306731
No it's actual real life racism stuff, unfortunately.
5306706
The derpi staff folded to pressure from a small number of people on Twitter and a poorly-made article run by the Atlantic that used a fallacious interview with Wootmaster (the guy who has been doxxing people to get his way) to say that the entire site (derpi) has 'a huge nazi problem'. Raptorshy then tried very hard to keep everything sensible while the rest of the staff acted like literal nazis: marking users for harassment for being "channer scum" (owner's words), the owner threatening to "nuke the site" if things didn't go his way and ignoring all of his staff and the community, maintaining hidden moderators and lying to the community repeatedly. All on the pretense that this was about pictures that had been on the site for years and no one had a problem with until the Atlantic article came out, and which correctly sparked significant concerns among artists about censorship.
But you know if thinking isn't your thing, then racism hurr like the post above me.
Politics isn't poisoning anything. Hatred is.
Why don't you ever leave me any comments, xTSGx? I always like hearing from readers.