My Story, Cozy Glow: Author’s Notes, FAQ, and AMA · 3:08am Feb 5th, 2022
Spoilers for My Sister, Cozy Glow contained below. You can read the story here.
Acknowledgements
I send my thanks to all the regular commenters who stayed with the story over all these 2+ years, like Ninjadeadbeard, Ice Star, Motodrop, silverMEGAalicorn, TheDriderPony, Dragon Turtle, Wiimeiser, StarlightisVERYcute, Thought Prism, Cyana Flame, and more! (Sorry if I missed your name!)
Also, thank you to the 500+ people who bookshelved this story!!! (And thanks for bearing with me during the times I exploited this story tag to get more blog views, haha...
)
And very special thanks to Thought Prism for commissioning the last three chapters. That was really the motivation that got me to finally bring this story to a close! 
If you would also like to commission a story from me, click here for more info. I offer short stories for a $35 flat rate.
My Journey in the Fandom
I only started watching FiM in early 2019. I remember going to BronyCon in August 2019, having barely watched the show, and feeling so lost by all the memes and jargon of the fandom. I was still very socially awkward at the time, but I made huge steps in social skills while I was there. That was before I wrote My Sister, Cozy Glow (MSCG).
MSCG means a lot to me, because its publication in October 2019 is what really cemented my identity as a “MLP fan fiction writer”. Seeing the slew of positive comments and being on the Featured Box made me feel like I could make a name for myself on this site, rather than simply hiding in the shadows. I only became known for my MLP writing well after G4 had ended, which I think is incredible. I guess this makes me a “late bloomer” of sorts? 
I used to regret not joining the brony fandom earlier, back in its heyday. But now I feel like I joined at the right time. Entering the brony fandom at the age I did, I feel like I viewed MLP with a more mature mindset, that allowed me to write quality fan fiction. (Side note: The best part about joining a fandom late is that you can binge watch old episodes like crazy.)
And now, an FAQ!
My Sister, Cozy Glow FAQ
I’m really creeped out by this story?
Well, yes, I wrote this story with the intent that the reader feels repulsed, or at least uneasy. I do not condone any of the immoral or illegal activity in this story or any of my stories.
I myself am shocked by how many dark stories are in my writing portfolio. As much as I try to write light stories, it seems that subtle dark themes find their way into even my lighthearted SoL stories. It's just what I end up writing. It's got to be my destiny. Cause it's what my cutie mark is telling me.
How do you feel about writing one of the very, very, few fics with Spur in it?
The character tag for Spur doesn’t exist, so I’m not sure exactly how many Spur fics are out there. I know of at least one other.
Because there’s so little canon info about Spur, I had to fill in a lot of the blanks about her personality. Add to that the headcanon of Spur being Cozy’s sister, and I’ve essentially created a de facto OC out of her. So I don’t think about it as writing about Spur as much as writing a pony OC.
I’ve created “de facto OCs” in some of my other stories, such as with the background kirin Winter Flame in this story. I'd argue that Sunny Starscout in The day that harmony died is also a de facto OC, since it was written before the G5 trailer.
Cozy being crushed into gravel? Like, what the buck, dude?
That detail about Cozy turning into gravel was actually an afterthought. I did not expect for readers to have such an extreme reaction as what I got. (If even people on 4chan are creeped out, then it must be really extreme.) In fact, the gravel was what seemed to shock readers the most about the debut chapter. So I built on that, and placed more emphasis on the gravel when I wrote future chapters.
Because I wrote and published chapters one by one for the most part, some of my writing choices were “reactive” to reader comments.
How did you decide on the story ending?
It wasn’t easy! 
At many points I felt like the story got into an endless tragic cycle of angst and misfortune, and it was so depressing to write. Spur's trip to Bitsburgh was my first attempt to "break out of the tragedy", so to speak, but that failed.
As the story got darker and darker, culminating in Spur killing Biscuit, I had to decide what I wanted: A truly tragic ending, with Spur descending headfirst into the annals of evil? Or a happy ending, with Spur bouncing back after hitting bottom? I'd say I ended up writing the latter. I didn't want to end the story in a total tragedy, but to suddenly turn everything into a perfect happy ending would have been too unrealistic without really building up to it.
Deciding on an ending I liked was one of the main reasons why progress stalled after mid-2020, and why I grew frustrated with the story. I still have bits of many different endings typed up on my computer. Some alternate endings I had considered:
- Before arriving at Canterlot, Spur has a dream where Twilight attempts to petrify Spur to stop the procreation of evil. Princess Luna saves Spur at the last minute, and Spur achieves an epiphany regarding Cozy’s petrification.
- Twilight is unable to reverse the petrification spell and Spur gets petrified forever, except she is transported to an afterlife where she lives happily ever after with Biscuit, Ma, and Pa.
- Spur writes a suicide note after killing Biscuit, but doesn’t jump because she’s pregnant with Biscuit's foal and that’s her reason to stay alive. Fast forward six years later, her foal’s name is Snug Light, and the story ends with Spur tucking her into bed, and Spur saying in her head, Good night, Cozy Glow.
What are the names of Spur's parents?
Ma and Pa. I'm always horrible with making up names, so I tried to write the fic in such a way that I would never have to write anything else but "Ma" and "Pa." 
What was your writing process for this story?
More haphazard than you might think! 
I wrote all of the chapters in Word before publishing to Fimfic. But in the Fimfiction text box, I would often make last-minute story changes and correct typos/awkward wording, to the point that what I published on Fimfiction was markedly different from the original Word document. A small amount of every chapter was written directly in the Fimfiction text box.
There were so many typos in my drafts! I’m sure there are still some still lingering in the current story…
Tip: One foolproof way to proofread is to have Fimfic’s text-to-speech read out your story to you. It is very time consuming, but you will hear virtually all typos immediately.
Any regrets you have? Things you would have done differently?
If I had the self-control and perseverance, I would have completed all the chapters before publishing. This would’ve allowed me to make the chapters more interconnected.
I tried my best to bring the whole story full circle, but I do feel like the direction of the story “drifts” a little. But overall, I think that this turned out nicely. This is my first completed, multi-chatper, longfic that I feel like is a cohesive and consistent story.
What’s next for you?
For a while, I thought that the day I finish MSCG would be the day I retire from horse words for good. One of the reasons why I stayed active on the site was because I didn’t want to leave MSCG incomplete. Now it is done though…
I plan to leave Spur’s story behind for a while. I’ll leave it to fans to create a sequel/spinoff to Spur’s story if they wish. Do send me the story if you do write something like that.
I think I still want to keep writing on this site. Not sure what, or when. Fimfiction is very special to me, despite its faults and drama. It’s a low-stakes platform where I can write stories in a competitive environment with other quality writers. It’s essentially a social media website based off of stories. Where else does that exist, in any fandom?
Regarding the future of this site, it’s curious to me why the number of new users on Fimfic increased dramatically in the past year, but the number of new stories are plateauing or decreasing. It makes me wonder if Fimfic is becoming less about stories and more like an MLP social media site. I’m not sure how to feel about that. What do you all think?
Questions for you (Yes, you!)
Now it's your turn. I'm always curious to know whether readers get the messages I try to convey in my writing. So in the comments, tell me what was one message or moral that you got out of My Sister, Cozy Glow?
Got another question for me?
Ask me anything below! Anything about My Sister Cozy Glow, my other stories, me, or just life in general…!
Although I’m not registered yet, I plan to be at BABSCon in April 2022, if anyone would like to say hello.
Happy Friday! 
Much of the increasing amount of new registrants is clearly due to spambots. Take a look here at recent registrations. The site needs a better screen for same. (Or IP bans).
Congratulations on finishing the story!
5633826
Hmm, I thought bots have always been an issue. You mean it's increased that much in the past year?
anyway thanks for the story, was great
/ 10
hoped you like comments I left~
Glad to have helped! Even though you popped into the fandom late, I'd argue you're one of the top writers still active. Wouldn't have been so hungry for the conclusion to this otherwise.
5633854
Short Answer: It's suggestive that spambot registrations increased in the past year because of the enormously small amount of 'true users' compared to the increase in total registered users coupled with the decrease in all site activity (not just story posting but also social posting, responses to news items, etc.). Better data would be best, but we can only arrive at conclusions with what we have.
While the best way to check is by automating and taking larger samples (I do not have a way of automating it and the site crashes if I look earlier than November 2021), here is a random sample that is suggestive of the problem:
(Warning, these pages will shift quickly due to new registrations. For posterity, I've also included bounding user numbers)
Page 49, sorted by date. January 28, 2022 registrations (users: 475603 to 475580) (24 users per page)
https://www.fimfiction.net/search/users?page=49&s=date-joined
- 16 of the 24 have visible spam on the search page due to their "short descriptions".
- 6 of the remaining 8 have spam on the user pages: https://www.fimfiction.net/user/475600/theexecutivegroup and https://www.fimfiction.net/user/475602/transportlasvegas (et. cetera).
- Only 2 have no ad: https://www.fimfiction.net/user/475592/jenniferpham458 and https://www.fimfiction.net/user/475590/drdione
And I wouldn't be surprised if either of them are spambots as well (though of those two jenniferpham at least seems a plausible name that at first look does not inherently seem spammy as opposed to an ad for some cosmetic surgeon--both of them logged in several days after registering).
Page 398, November 30, 2021 registrations (users: 466365 to 466388)
https://www.fimfiction.net/search/users?page=398&s=date-joined
-12 of the 24 have visible spam on the search page due to their "short descriptions".
-2 additional have spam on their user pages.
-7 have no visible spam, but of those one is "assignment expert" and another is "frshlabs", which seem suspicious as names.
-2 have pony avatars--probably real people interested in the site (or their dupes).
-1 additional one has a story posted.
The site regrettably crashes when I try to look beyond page 400, around November 30, 2021, so I can't properly compare the year 2021 to the year 2015, for example.
A cursory look through registrants on about 30 more pages indicates about 60-92% on every page of 24 users clearly are ads without even further inspection. Of the remaining portion only about 4-12% per page look like they might be actual users.
--
Also, re: the social hypothesis.
- I've only been registered here since 2021 but even over that time I've seen the "users online" go from usually around 1400-1800 (I think a 2000 peak around the G5 movie) to 1200-1600 to in the last month about 950-1200. Some of this *could* be seasonal, but I doubt it.
- There only seem to be about 50-150 'heavy personalities' posting on the site. We see the same thought leaders posting everywhere, plus about 200 people who probably chime in from time to time and a smaller percentage of one-offs--so consider this. In 2019 how many 'personalities' were often posting? In 2016? In 2013?
- Another analysis could be done of how many people donate to the site over time, of course, but that's beyond this analysis.
- Of course, people could be reading and not using shelves or the site's 'percentage completion' bookmark trackers and so they don't need to log in, but when engagement is decreasing, then the conclusion seems clear...
5633917
Dude, with the amount of effort you put into this analysis, Fimfic should hire you as a site admin or consultant
Which is a shame because it's tricky to find out who are the first users to join (after knighty).
Why the hay do spambots even want to spam Fimfic, anyway? I didn't know a nonprofit site about colorful talking ponies was worth spamming.
What's the incentive for them, other than advertising?
It may have to do with the decrease in active mods to police the spammers (it took almost a week for my story to be approved on my alt account). There should be an automated system, though, much like banks have. Maybe a code that will flag for review new users with hyperlinks in the short description, or non-grammatically correct sentences, or bizarre URL links.
This. Even if real users are increasing somewhat, the engagement on stories seems to be lower. It scares me to think that Fimfiction's heyday is now over, even with the rise of G5.
5633925
Thank you.
While a certain (small) percentage of the spamming may be to drive traffic from here to their sites, I think the greater reason is for SEO (search engine optimization).
At one time, Google weighed sites higher in its algorithm if they had a high volume of recent 'links' in. That is, if I was to search for "doctor in Thailand" or "doctor in San Francisco", Google would rate a hit higher if it received 20 links going into it that were created within the last 30 days since that shows other people consider the site to be pertinent and valuable.
Agreed. I think FimFic had an email requirement--to register, one had to confirm one's email address? But more advanced captchas and other methods could be added. Spammers keep improving their technology. (I also would not be surprised if a number of these spammers are actually real people who are paid 50 cents or so per "hit" they create online--thus, there's only so much captchas can do, so your idea may be a better one.)
It is sort of sad. As a plus though, there's more good literature on this site already than an average person can reasonably be expected to read in a five year period.
Non sequitur, but the declining engagement makes it all the more important for the site to continue to promote interesting well-written older stories that can't hit the feature box because of age. (E.g. to have a "curator's collections" button under browse containing embeds of "here's the 10 most famous stories from the site; or here's 20 stories about Holidays recommended by XXX... the automatically generated lists with most hits, most views, etc. are helpful but curation adds another, deeper layer--and it allows for curation of different themes).
5633925
A little more on this point. Here are a few ideas I considered:
1. For whatever reason, I don't get a RED number notice on my alerts when someone updates a story--but I will if there's a new one. The updated story shows up in my feed but it's not flagged--it should be, or at least there should be an option.
2. It would be nice if I could subscribe to a story or a blog post NOT just to see if it's updated but if a NEW COMMENT has been added to it (other than just comments that PING me). That could drive engagement. This could even be an auto-on feature that people could turn off. Every thread a user posts to would pop up in a feed. (People will complain if this is always on, but since it can be turned off, this should have more net benefits than drawbacks). This would also make blogs contain more conversation. I am sure people forget to check back after they've viewed a blog once or twice.
3. It is strange how there is not a clear section of the site for "site feedback". I realize people are directed towards the Discord or they might just post on knighty's profile or PM knighty or another admin.