Looking Back · 8:06pm May 20th, 2021
Do you remember what brought you to FIMFiction? How you came to be in this big, magical, confusing, sometimes disturbing place where horsewords rule? Was it a desire to read fanfiction? A curiosity spurred on by a friend? A desire to write? Maybe a need to explore the fanon or try to understand this whole brony thing?
For me, the one and only reason I came to FIMFiction was No Heroes.
My first encounter with fanfiction was back when the internet was in its infancy. Fanfiction was… not a big deal back then. My sister would rave about how ‘good’ some of the stories were. I distinctly recall her mentioning one called Acherontia Atropos, a Gundam Wing fanfiction involving vampires and a yaoi romance and I think a crossover with some vampire franchise that was popular at the time. I think my sister only liked it because she adored the Heero and Duo ship. It really wasn’t very good. I tried a few others, not all of them anime, and was profoundly disappointed every time. Bear in mind that this was in the late 90’s; I was 12-13 years old and I already thought this stuff was trash. It completely ruined my view of fanfiction, leading me to assume it was all the same. Back then, it might have been.
Did I have ideas? Oh, a ton of them. But I was convinced that fanfiction was a lesser medium and so avoided the temptation.
Then, at a low point when I hadn’t written anything in years, was unemployed, and felt lost in this thing we call life, I visited my sister in Japan. She introduced me to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic just after its third season had ended, and I was inspired. I saw so much potential, more than I ever had before, and I was almost desperate to realize them. A month after I returned home, I finally broke down and started writing No Heroes. No exaggeration, I finished the first book in only ten days.
I started uploading it to DeviantArt. I didn’t care for any of the options I was aware of, it’s just the one I chose. I was already hard at work on Part II when someone popped into the comments and asked why the heck I was posting on FIMFiction. My response: “femwha?” They provided a link, and the rest is history.
No Heroes. That was my start. Without it, I wouldn’t be here, with a long-running review blog, ~70 stories, ~2.7 million words, and 1,600+ awesome followers. No Heroes is responsible for all of it.
And it all started with an angsty OC named Fine Crime.
Confession: Fine was originally conceived specifically to be shipped with Fluttershy, who at the start was my favorite pony. This was, in fact, one of the main things that held me back for so long from writing the story. The absolute last thing I wanted to write was another blatant, mindless self-insert shipfic like every other fanboy undoubtedly would. I hadn't read any fanfiction in decades and still knew this had to be common to the point of inducing eye rolls. I was determined to be better than that. It wasn’t until I conceived of a way to make No Heroes about the characters rather than something trite that I decided to write the story.
Granted, I ended up writing another “Luna has her own team!” story, which is itself a trite, obvious, and overused premise. But I’ll take that over a blatant self-insert shipfic any day.
My ideas for what No Heroes should be shifted from time to time, especially in regards to the characters. For a period, Lightning Dust was my obsession for character growth. Book IV, which I consider the most “fanfictiony” of all my stories (and arguably my most flawed entry in the series as a direct result), was intended to be some epic conclusion leading to some dramatic changes for Equestria, at least one of which I retconned upon realizing how ridiculous it was (although I never provided in-story evidence of said retconning). I created the Fleur-verse timeline just for the sake of injecting some supernatural spookiness into the world without interfering/ruining the direction of the original series.
But Fine Crime was always the central character in my mind, and he remains to this day my favorite OC. Like myself and my writing, he changed and matured as the story progressed, his direction shifting as I recognized new opportunities and developed as a writer and storyteller. One of those opportunities came naturally, but still surprised me when I realized its sheer potential.
Her name was Pinkie Pie.
By Part III of No Heroes, I began to realize that the Fine X Fluttershy ship wasn’t going to happen. When they had scenes together, they weren’t the interactions of potential lovers struggling to find their way around one another. No, what I was seeing develop between them was an unrequited crush, with Fluttershy unaware that she was even the center of Fine’s attention in that way. It was becoming clear that he was getting set up for a big fall, and I wasn’t sure what that really meant for him. It wouldn’t have been against his character to take that hit and spend the rest of his life single.
Then I wrote the final chapter of Part III, in which Pinkie Pie finally revealed that she shared the same problems he did on a variety of levels. This was by no means a new thing. I had planned from the very beginning for Pinkie to be this way, and even dropped a few hints in Part II about it. But it was that scene, when Pinkie is finally able to open up to somepony and the two of them shared that connection, that I knew. I promptly adjusted all my plans so as to explore the concept of Fine and Pinkie as a couple.
There are certain expectations of authors, views and ideas about how we work. I’m sure many people who read the final three stories of No Heroes think I was planning every interaction down to the word, that Pinkie and Fine were guaranteed to be together because I said so. That’s not actually how it went down. I wanted them together, yes. But I also wanted Fine and Fluttershy together, and that didn’t work out. Their characters just didn’t mesh. It was entirely possible that I’d discover the same kind of problems with Pinkie and Fine.
Life of Pie was written for the specific purpose of exploring their potential. I was pleased beyond belief when I realized that Pinkie (as I had developed her for No Heroes) and Fine didn’t just work, they were practically made for one another. They rapidly became my favorite couple to write with their endless character growth, their ability to seamlessly bounce off one another’s dialogue and intentions, and the sheer chemistry they demonstrated. What had once been a franchise based on slow-grind adventure and worldbuilding shifted gears dramatically in the final act to become a self-guided romance, and I loved it.
I still love it. For all its flaws, for the many mistakes and the meandering nature of it, I love No Heroes. So when I realized that I was putting it away for good, I also realized that Fine Crime and his marefriend deserved a proper sendoff.
I must yet again thank Wanderer D for letting me handle that sendoff in the way I desired. It was a great way to say goodbye.
Obviously, Fine Crime’s story is a big one, and I don’t blame anyone for hesitating. All the No Heroes stories together amount to ~907,000 words, or roughly ⅓ of my overall FIMFiction word count. But it is, in some ways, a chronicling of my time on FIMfiction. From my eager but shaky start with Part I all the way to my meandering and uncertain path in Life of Pie, this series has been with me. I’m a little sad to see it done, but also happy.
I’m ready to do other things. There are plenty of other worlds waiting to be explored.
😮
Meanwhile I'm sitting here reading your blog instead of working on my own book.
I admit, I haven't even started that one. But I do look forward to digging into it. Congratulations or reaching a satisfying conclusion. Far too few people get there.
(In my case, I stumbled upon the site and figured it couldn't hurt to simulpost my stories here and on fanfiction.net. Then I realized the joys of working with a not-terrible UI and the rest is history.)
Eh, I found a link to a mlp version of Fallout New Vegas on a tumblr blog. Thats how I found myself here. Its a shame he never finished it, but maybe that's for the best. In his last update, it was a list of notes on where he was planning to take the story, He was going to make it very meta, to the point where I would have dropped out of the story anyway. Basically, the story would have revealed that Equestria was post nuclear earth and all the races in the world were create by humans to carry on their legacy. Its not the path I personally felt was good for the story.
I started watching the show during season 2, but I only got into the fandom after season 3. I had no idea FIM was popular with adults back then, and I legitimately thought I was weird for liking a cartoon for little girls. But then I found out bronies were a thing and thought, “Oh thank God, I’m not the only one.”
My first exposure to the show was when i had no other channels on the TV to watch and decided to watch MLP to make fun of it. To my surprise, edgy little me enjoyed myself watching it. MLP just held some indefinable charm too it I couldn't resist. So I watched some more. And more. And more. Then I finished what little I had available to me, which brings us to...
Fanfiction! I started reading fanfiction after learning of the crappy torture fic (think rainbow factory). Reading that was, unfortunately, my first introduction to the fandom as a whole actually. Not a good first impression to say the least. But through that nonsense, I heard of the classic fics like FO:E and my little dashie. So I thought "why the hell not, let's see what other cringy nonsense these weirdos made", and read the first random fic on this site who's description caught my interest, 'One Changeling against the World' or 'The Necromancer's Ambition', can't remember which. And I was hooked.
Honestly? I'm not sure. I believe the first thing I read here was The Laughing Shadow at my friend's request in the lull period between season 4 and 5, about a year after I got into ponies. Before then, I'd attempted to write several crossovers to fill the need for my drawings to have stories attached to them. I'd never considered sharing anything I wrote or even reading other fanfics until much later.
I wanted to draw a comic, so I wrote a few chapters to a yugioh crossover. I drew that first chapter, naturally without knowing anything about making a comic, and when I went to draw the second one, I realized I didn't have enough details to continue. So I wrote more. And then I never went back to draw the comic. I started posting things here, and at some point, that story hit 200K before I realized I wanted to do more than just what the confines of a children's trading card game would allow.
And from its ashes came, Sometimes They Call Me Super.
With that done, now I'm only here out of habit. Star Overhead is being made into an original fiction trilogy, and I'll still refer to my characters by old names as I'm writing on occasion. Six years is certainly a lot of time.
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Ain't gotta call me out like that, man.
This site was still pretty new when I started watching the show. A lot of fanfiction was still being posted on GDocs at the time and links shared through various message boards, IRCs and sites like EqD. I wrote my first ever fanfiction (well, I guess I did write a very short Star Trek fanfiction for an English assignment in high school) and sent it in to EqD and was told they didn't accept attached documents, but links to wherever the story is hosted. The pre-reader preferred this site to GDocs or ff.net and suggested I put it here. And now I have a 4-digit user number!
I discovered FiM in the middle of season 1. Then, season 1 ended and I tried watching some G1 and G3 to satisfy my pastel horse addiction. It didn't help. Someone on Ponychan suggested that I try reading some fanfiction. I expected them all to be craptastic cringefests but still decided to give it a chance. I went to Equestria Daily's Story Archive and selected the "adventure", "twilight sparkle" and "rainbow dash" tags. I found a story called Growing Pains, started reading and was blown away.
This led to an even stronger addiction. I'm not exaggerating! Fanfiction sites with their tagging systems make it far too easy to find stories that fit my taste. It was just too easy to fill my phone with fanfics and then read every moment I got. Even if it was just a short five minute break, I'd take out my phone and read. I forced myself to take a long break from fanfiction in 2013 by re-reading all of The Wheel of Time, but still managed to squeeze in a few fanfics in between the books.
I started exploring fanfics on Equestria Daily, which usually linked to Fanfiction.net, DeviantArt or Google Docs. Eventually, more and more people started using FimFiction instead. I joined in November 2011, around the same time that I finally managed to find some local bronies (as in the same country).
I've never written any MLP fanfics. I have a few vague ideas and outlines saved in a text document. English is not my native language though, so it'd be a slow and arduous process and still leave a lot of work for a potential editor. And I already have too many hobbies as it is.
I'll end by saying that one of the greatest gifts fanfiction has given me is teaching me to deal with disappointment. I've read so many amazing fanfics that were cancelled or simply abandoned. That includes Growing Pains. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I'll never get to know how it ends.
First, let me lay out the fact that I am guilty of not reading No Heroes beyond your last series of C&C posts and as such will gloss over the meat of your post after saying that those blog posts have been interesting and show the series to be no less than fascinating. If I weren't working on promised (some to others, some to myself) writing projects at the moment, there's a very real chance that I'd start reading it tonight to rectify that.
I don't know why I wrote all this, as you've asked what are basically Y/N questions… assuming you weren't asking them purely rhetorically.
To start, I'm gonna recount how I found the show, because it didn't take too long after that before I was on Fimfiction…
So I'd heard about MLP IRL since season 2 started airing, roughly. I didn't hear it from people whose opinion I trusted very much, and coming from them with a title like "My Little Pony", my interest for it just didn't exist. I did not look into it in any way after that; I am also like a professional under-rock-dweller or something online, so I didn't even encounter it there until later.
Cue Season 3 and the Twilicorn Crisis. Okay, really it was just about S3. MLP had the had the shiny banner of "New Episodes" on Netflix and this led to me catching a glimpse of a sibling watching it for the very first time.
Literally the first moment of the show, or of any rendition of any characters in it to my recollection, that I saw was Rarity's fantasy about meeting her Prince Charming™ in The Ticket Master.
"It's worse than I imagined!" I NOPE'd out of there pretty quick. And yet… I ended up exposed to enough of it to end up hooked, much to my bewilderment, over the next few weeks. And so I looked into it more. I found out that one heck of a fandom actually did exist, like I had been told way back when. I poked around on EqD a bit, talked with the locals a bit, and ended up thinking I was just being another idiot online in the end and kind of left it behind after a couple of months. I didn't know much about this fanfiction thing, but what I did know was that there was a busy, bustling fandom and they were doing things. Art, music, stories, more art, news stuff I guess, and even more art! I wanted in on it!
I sucked at art and my music skills weren't strong enough to make anything new with but hey, I knew how to put words together well enough. We're talking in a span of maybe 4 - 5 months I went from seeing the show to registering on Fimfiction now—so let me go back to maybe somewhere in the middle of that to touch on my first exposure to Fimfiction.
I'd seen the posts on EqD: Fanfiction existed. But it was fanfiction. I didn't have strong opinions on it, but I knew there was a stigma, so I kind of lightly avoided it. But, of course, one day I broke down. My family was gonna do something together with some relatives who had visited from out of town, but I had gotten quite sick, unfortunately, so I stayed home. With nothing to do, the barrier between me and opening a story had basically evaporated at that point, especially since I wasn't feeling up to much else. That day, the story that caught my eye and piqued my interested the most happened to be a story titled II. Probably the first fanfiction that I had actually ever read, knowingly at least. I've read better stories since then, but I've also gotten to know the authors and community a bit better as well, so that may be somewhat biased of me.
That was all it took. Once I picked it up, I just ripped right through it. And there were some other really good stories coming out at the time, like Heart of Gold, Feathers of Steel (well, sequels of that one) and the seemingly ever-updating Flash Fog. I mean, after those, how could I possibly believe that fanfiction was inherently anything less than 'more stories'.
I needed a username. I had a few handles from other places, but I didn't want to drag them along behind me because I didn't particularly like any of them.
I also like to prepare. I had decided that I wanted to try my hand at this writing thing, so I did some research. I learned all about what not to do and even found a few tips on how to write.
And so I made myself a promise: don't be that guy who does that thing. My handle, the one you see here and probably always will on this site, is not just a spiffy joke and fun reference; it is that promise.
And then it took me the greater part of two years to publish anything that I wrote. Some of which I swept back under the rug later. But in that time, before I published anything, even, I figured that I could at least proofread some stuff. I got a couple of those gigs, did a maybe kind-of-okay job at it, and reflected on the experience. Then Kwakerjak called out for another prereader because one of his had stepped down recently. I humbly offered to be passed over if anyone with even vaguely more experience stumbled into the area and got the job by beating out the competition with the fact that I put about the same communication/spelling/grammar/punctuation effort into writing comments as I do into writing more formal texts.
And so I entered the world of viewing myself as an editor (look, I just lump all the debated terms under that, okay?). It was his circle of prereaders that encouraged me to take what I had written and publish it for real. And now, here I am with…. a whopping <100k words published. To be fair, I have undoubtedly grown a ton as a writer (and editor) in that span.
So, to sum up my response to the block of questions at the beginning:
Yes
I do remember. Someone posted a translated fic on a forum I used to visit a lot. Me being me decided to poke at the source. It sort of snowballed from there
I remember that first one https://www.fimfiction.net/story/1610/causality
I made an account shortly after. So many things to read, it was glorious
it still is
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Had I realized everyone would focus on the "first time" bit rather than the "this is why ending this long-running series is a big deal for me", I'd have gone into much greater detail about it.
But hey, all these different ways people got involved with FIMFiction is fascinating, so thanks for sharing! It's neat to see so many people came into the fandom and this site from so many different directions. It always amuses me to see the ones that were like "nope, not a chance, not watching a show for little girls" and they end up following the siren's call to the rocks anyway.
Come to the Pony Side. We have belly rubs!
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Heh, true. My bad
I should get around and try reading that series of yours. Almost a million words got me interested,ngl
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Heh. I appreciate it! Just be gentle with Parts I through IV. They're among my very first FIMFic stories, after all.
So, late comment, but it was my pleasure to write with you again!
Wrapping up such a series is something to be really proud of, and I am honored that I was able to help a little bit with something so important to you. Thank you for that chance!