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* * *
Still Cleaning This Crossbow
by Spike the Dragon Twilight Sparkle Jeffrey C. Wells
because why the hell not at this point
* * *
"So," said the Collective Body of Equestria Daily Pre-Readers, leaning back in its rocking chair. "I hear you're interested in writing something for my little Readership to peruse. Is that so?"
Spike tapped the tips of his claws together, nervously. He hadn't expected things to be so, well, awkward. Like any hot-blooded young male with a healthy lexicon, he was full of the frustrated, barely-constrained urge to write, to put pen to parchment over and over and over again, until his quill was blunt and his inkpot was bone-dry. And he was one of the lucky ones! How many of his peers in Ponyville actually had a job as a professional scribe? And not just to any ordinary pony, oh no. He was the personal secretary to Miss Twilight Sparkle herself, whose appetites for dictated memoranda were the stuff of legend. Every day, Twilight worked Spike to a frazzle, forcing him to write letter after letter, sometimes not stopping until far into the night, when Spike would finally drop from exhaustion. (And even then, Miss Sparkle often remained awake, availing herself of the assistance of her pet owl as she continued to scribble on.) Yes, it was all very technical and erudite, but think about it! He was getting paid… to write! How many ponies could say that?
But sometimes… sometimes, in the small hours, Spike would get strange urges. Urges to write really crazy stories about stuff that didn't actually exist. He even kept a couple writing manuals under the cushion in his basket, so he could take a few furtive glances at them from time to time when he was all alone in the library. A few years ago, he had gone on the Canternet and was thrilled to find that he wasn't the only one with this rather bizarre fixation. There were even entire groups out there dedicated to it.
On the Canternet, they called it "fiction". Spike was seized with a desire that day, a desire that had never left him: to get extremely, profoundly fictional, and to do it with the most eligible Audience in Ponydom, to wit, the entire Readership of Equestria Daily.
There was only one problem, only one thing standing in his way.
Spike cleared his throat and affected as deep a voice as he possibly could. "Yes, Mr. Body of Equestria Daily Pre-Readers," he said.
"Please," said the Collective Body of Equestria Daily Pre-Readers. "Call me Collective."
"Yes, Mr. Collective, sir," said Spike. "I would very much like to show something I've written to your Readership. Because… um… it's… very…"
Large, thought Spike. The Equestria Daily Readership was large, absolutely huge, in all the right ways. But you can't say that to the Pre-Readers! They'll think you're just in it for the fame!
"Your Readership is very… discerning," said Spike, instantly happy with his choice.
Collective nodded. "Good," it said. "Good."
Then it leaned in close, its eyes glinting like coal.
"Tell me, boy," it said. "Do you have a spell-checker?"
Spike coughed and nearly choked. "Sorry?" he said, not quite believing his ears.
"A spell-checker," repeated the Collective, more slowly. "You can't tell me you don't know what one is." The Collective leaned back in its chair again. "For in case you make… typos."
"Sir," said Spike, "I wasn't planning on making any mistakes with your Readership's work, typographical or otherwise."
The Collective chuckled, without humor. "Oh, you say that," it said. "Nopony goes into a piece planning on making mistakes. But mark my words, you'll be there, writing, getting all enthusiastic, and you'll feel like you're on a roll with the passage you're in, and then, suddenly, you'll want to use a word like 'metonymy', and you won't feel like getting up from your work to get a dictionary. That's what a spell-checker is for, son."
"I would never use so complicated a word with your Readership," said Spike, politely, who had in fact planned out an extensive passage that rather hinged on metonymy, both the word itself and the linguistic concept it represented.
"Mm," said the Collective. "So you like simple words, then."
Dang it all to Tartarus! Talking to the Collective was like navigating a trap-filled temple in one of those "Daring Do" novels that Twilight kept around. (Incidentally, the very books that had introduced him to the concept of written fiction in the first place, though he would never admit this to Miss Sparkle's face.) Spike frantically assessed the Collective's impassive countenance, hoping for a lifeline. He found none.
"I think you should use the right word for the right situation," said Spike, practically squinting in anticipation of the backlash. "Whatever complexity it might have."
Silence, but for the noise of the Collective's chair, rocking slowly back and forth.
"Good," said the Collective. "I think you sound like a promising young author."
Spike tried to hide his sigh of relief. "Thank you, sir," he said.
"So," said the Collective. "How extensive is your piece? How long is it going to be?
Oh, Celestia, thought Spike. Right, sir, as if I'm going to tell you that it's a one-shot. Yes, I want to get fictional with your Readership, but I don't want any lingering commitments. I was planning on marking it completed after tonight. How do you say that to the Pre-Readers?
Thankfully, this time, there was a lifeline. "I see that look on your face, boy. I know what it's like to be a young author. So many ideas, so little time. You just want this out of the way so you can get on to your next masterpiece."
"Sir, I—"
The Collective held up a silencing hoof. "Believe it or not, son, I don't have a problem with it. So long as your initial submission clearly states that this work is complete. Do you follow?"
Spike scratched one clawed toe against the boards of the Collective's front porch. "Yes, sir," he said.
"Good," said the Collective, lighting a pipe and puffing on it thoughtfully for a moment. "Too many authors out there leading my Readership on with promises of future updates. They talk a good talk, but then it just peters out. The author attrition rate is quite staggering — especially if a fledgling writer is at the helm. I can't count how many times my dear Readership has come to me, crying, wondering when the next part of its favorite piece is coming out. I don't have the heart to tell it that it ain't coming. I've had my fill of that kind of interaction, do you hear me, boy?"
"Yes, sir," said Spike.
"Good, said the Collective. "So long as we all understand one another. You have fun, treat my Readership right, and get it home on time. And don't you worry about getting me up, because I keep late hours. I'll most certainly be awake when you get back, just doing some regular maintenance and upkeep on my old pistol crossbow, from back when I was a sniper in the Equestrian Royal Guard. If I make myself clear."
Spike gulped. "Crystal," he said.
"Mm," said the Collective. Then it turned its head back toward the house. "All right, Readership, you can come out now! This gentledragon has some plans with you, if I'm not mistaken."
The front door swung open, and there it was, the entire Readership of Equestria Daily, in the pixels. Just looking at it standing there, so big and comparatively responsive, put all sorts of six-star thoughts in Spike's head. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.
He couldn't wait to get fictional with it.
The Readership gave the Collective Body of Equestria Daily Pre-Readers a quick peck on the cheek, causing the old assembly to smile a little. "See you when we get back, Pre-Readers."
"I'll be waiting," said the Collective.
When they were finally alone in their carriage together, the Readership let out an affectionate, but exasperated sigh. "I'm sorry if the Collective Body of Equestria Daily Pre-Readers raked you across the coals a little. It's a little old-fashioned, but please understand that it only wants the best for me."
"No, no, it was tough but fair, tonight."
"I'm glad," said the Readership, snuggling up to him, causing Spike to nearly swoon.
"So, um," said Spike, as the carriage pulled away. "I was thinking… um… if you didn't have any other plans… maybe-I-could-show-you-some-of-my-writing?"
"Oh, sorry," said the Readership, pursing its lips in a heartbreaking little pout. "I'm set to 'no fanfiction' mode today."
"Oh," said Spike, quietly.
And then, "So… hypothetically… if someone, I mean, not me, but someone, were to post a piece of fanfic today, you wouldn't see it at all."
"Nope!"
"Not even a little."
"Absolutely not," replied the Readership. "It's all blocked."
"Oh," repeated Spike, his eyes fixed on the floorboards.
Several moments passed, with only the noise of the carriage's wheels to mark them.
"Well," said Spike, "how about we just make out, instead?"
"Sure!" said the Readership, cheerfully.
And so they did. All night long.
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No other response is adequate (I am referring to the audio only):
This was even funnier than the original chapter.
I'm pretty sure "Mr. Collective" and I have tangled. He doesn't like me very much, always promises to get back to me, but never does. Thankfully, Mr. FIMFiction is a bit nicer, even if his Readership is a bit more wild, she's at least twice as fun and only bitchy once in a while.
Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/sillyfilly_Derpy_Hooves.png
"hot-blooded young male... "
*Cough* Spike's a reptile/lizard, therefore cold-blooded but I won't bitch about it because it would ruin the entire joke*Cough*
On the ending, however, I can safely say...
Image: http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/001/253/everything_went_better_than_expected.jpg
Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_TwilightWut.png
Liked, faved, and incredibly humbled. Perhaps a few of us have already messaged you on this, but it seems the pre-readers haven't been this turned on about a story since White Box. Some of us are willing to fight to have a day of posts be nothing but this on the blog, because oh my god, you've nailed our process in the literature.
. You kinda scared me with bringing spike into the story though that would been awkward to have him go through what twilight went through.
Did I just type that?
Fine. You want to know why this is thumbed down?
You Misspelled "Skywriter" as "Twilight Sparkle". Obvious self insert is obvious.
Maybe you need to watch Boast Busters again, but the characterization of "Twilight" is fricken awful. Twilight doesn't care about faceless masses approving of her. She cares about Celestia's opinion and her friends'. The "Twilight" here is far closer to Trixie's personality, but doesn't quite match hers either. As stated above, the only conclusion I can come to is you wrote a self insert and named it after a canon character.
Totally unexpected?
Image: http://www.myfacewhen.com/i/519.gif
>>586833 I feel as though I should say this, and really I don't mean to offend. But this is clearly marked as Random and Comedy. So to that end.
"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
and other science facts,
Then repeat to yourself, 'It's just a [fic], I really should relax'"
>>587237 the Author admits themselves this is "satirical metafiction"
Also, I really don't want to sound mean. But she's having metaphoric sex/something with the abstract concept of "Audience" , which is odd enough in and of itself, and you're kvetching about how Twilight isn't Twilighty enough? Really? That's what bothers you?
Yes, I understand your point, but frankly, I don't think you should care this much...that is, if you don't mind me saying...
Yes. That is what bothers me. Because he could have used Trixie, tweaked the dialogue a bit, and it would be in character. If you take most fanfics with this level of reception and remove the characters' names, you can still map them back to their canon names based on how they act. Even truly absurdity like "Elements of Awesomery" has, at it's core, several key characterizations. Without the name "Twilight" (and I guess Spike), this isn't even pony fanfiction. It's a story about how writing and the public review process makes the author feel told through absurd metaphor. I can dig that. The insistance that this is Twilight is what makes me dislike this.
Few people seem to agree. I wouldn't have bothered leaving visibile feedback because I don't particularly like pissing on others. Except for the bit in the fic about wanting to know why.
You're welcome. Sorry it's not more positive.
To be blunt, it's a sentiment I feel too. My issues are pretty much
1) Twilight
2) Not pony fiction as it really has nothing to do with the show, the settings, the characters, or ponies.
Were I reading this as a random story and not MLP:FiM Fanfiction, I would enjoy it. Take from that what you will.
Image: http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lvsvziLGeY1r7jy1ao1_500.jpg
Goodness, don't apologize for leaving thoughtful, constructive criticism as to why you didn't like a story! Thank you very much for doing it! This isn't my strongest Twilight writing, inasmuch as character and universe took backseat to satirical idea-writing and meta-commentary on the Pony community. Your contention seems to be that you wish the character-work had primacy even in a satire piece, and that's a perfectly reasonable, defensible, and frankly, commendable stand.
We're arguing merits of opinion right now. I like this because it's Twilight Sparkle. It's satire, doing something we wouldn't normally expect from her. If it was Trixie, admittedly, it would be in character, but honestly I'd find it boring. It fits with Trixie, but it's funny with Twilight. The humor here is in the absurdity.
Not to mention that the entire story can't have happened without the setup the brony community has. Is it a pony story? No. Is it a brony story? Oh hell yes. And it's a well-written brony story, as well, using a pony. The amount of pony this story is is like that of a crossover story. It's not fully pony, but it's still pony by some imagination.
See, I find it worse for it being Twilight. The absurdity is already inherent in sexualization of the fave system; there wasn't a need to cast her completely OoC. I feel the same way about Twilight in this fic as I would about a fic where Dash is embarrassed about her awesome flying or one about how much Fluttershy loves being a famous model. It is pretty much the opposite of how she is shown to act. Now, if the fic was lampooning the poor characterization, then it would work. As it stands, there is no reason (beyond wanting to use "Twilight") for it to be her.
>Not to mention that the entire story can't have happened without the setup the brony community has.
Not really. Stackoverflow, youtube, and reddit come to mind immediately as having similar systems. Albeit, stackoverflow is a bit of a stretch. To think this is unique to the pony community is silly. Hell, I feel this way about my freaking missile simulations and whitepapers. Not being a "real" author, I can't say if real writers feel this way about their work or not, but I imagine so.
>The amount of pony this story is is like that of a crossover story.
Only the, IMO, bad ones. The ones where we read them and say "wow, this is just an $other_fandom_fic with ponies grafted on." That is what I get when I read this. Had the pony been an OC, I probably would have just meh-ed on it.
Of course, I really do hate on bad characterization: it's one reason I can't stand another, very popular on fimfic fic. Though that one is an "actively hate it" fic and less of a "I just don't like this" due to the actual content too.
And thus we come to the reason I posted the 'Driveby argument' picture.
...Because I couldn't find a GIF.
You can have absurdity and absurdity. That's the point of absurdity. I'm using this word so much that it's losing meaning, so I'll just skip the rebuttal I didn't have planned and head to my final comment on the subject. Because I'm bad at arguing? Or just tired.
But seriously, I like the fic and it's use of 'Twilight', as you call her. I feel it wouldn't work with any other pony as well as using Twilight. The point here is that your dislikes here boil down to differences of opinion, which is totally fine, and I'm actually rather glad someone doesn't like this, even if I do. Shows the Brony Community is not made up of a single conglomerate that can only like/dislike 100%. Or whatever. I'm getting off track. Here's a picture of a pony
Bronies, BRONIES! Calm your girded loins, on both sides of this ridiculous out-of-place argument that doesn't even need to happen!
With that said, as a writer I can see this as being more Twilight's proper characterization than Trixie's, for the sole fact that Trixie would NEVER be as 'virgin' as Twilight was behaving during that first chapter. If anything, that's what makes Twilight's characterization so very 'Twilighty'. She's a book-geek with a small group of best friends, she's not exactly the life of the party, her being socially and, furthermore, metaphorically sexually awkward, makes sense.
Theirs is really just a discussion that spilled out from the pre-reader internal conversation. I believe kits said he wouldn't have brought it up here at all except for the story specifically mentioning the lack of comment for a (his) downvote.
***
Most of the pre-readers loved it, some hated it. It's been interesting to see how polarizing this fic was.
To be fair, this isn't really much of a pony story. It's an excellent take on our obsession (as authors) on positive reinforcement, but I do agree with kits: this isn't a pony story. Having the main character be Twilight didn't seem to serve any greater purpose than to use the audience's existing emotional attachment (to whatever degree) as a cheap buy-in that, really, didn't seem necessary, or at the least, seemed poorly explored.
I'm not saying that Trixie would have been a better choice (and in truth, I think that because she'd be so much more IC here, she'd be boring), nor would some other specific character or OC, but I feel that Twilight was just used as a gimmick when she could have been given more depth, more context for us to latch onto to add dimension for how OOC she was.
Reference here: Naked Singularity. It obviously has a fair bit of meta-humor involved in it, but she's given context for her actions and we see the resulting effects of what she does. She's OOC in a fun way that doesn't break me out of the story going, "Is that Twilight? It didn't seem like Twilight."
But like I said: I did like the story. I think it's fun, it's well-written, but it's just not really about MLP.
The problem inherent to meta-work, by definition, is that it's not about the thing we're all here for; it's about us being here for it. I loved "Naked Singularity" (#2 on my topfaves) because, yes, it managed to be commentary about the community simultaneous to being a fully credible story in-universe. This, less so. Hence the hoary "weird dream" framing device.
I guess I'm saying that I sympathize with the polarizedly opposed. Goodness knows, I don't want to see this sort of thing become the only thing that we as a fan community can produce. It'd be like starting every day with a feast of doughnuts.
Image: http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m17ihsCyeU1qza116.gif
Um, congratulations... you just got something that started as a meta in-joke for FimFiction featured on Equestria Daily...
What's happening? Is this real life?
Also, I guess that means it won't be leaving the feature box until the end of the week now... you clever bastard.
Yeah, this is getting really befuddling. I hadn't planned for the popularity of this one-gag piece or the eventuality that said popularity would start becoming divisive. Thankfully, it's been displaced from the feature-box, at least. I can't say I don't enjoy the attention, but we've obviously reached a backlash point where there's a decreasing amount of "Ha ha, funny joke, this guy seems cool, I'll keep an eye on him, now let me get back to some actual PonyFic!" (basically the desired response) and an increasing amount of "who the (BUY SOME APPLES) does this clown think he is?!?" (pretty much the opposite).
In short, I'm glad if this made you laugh! Super! But if it didn't, and you want something that's closer to actual honest-to-goodness Pony fanfic in its place, read "Observatory Hill" or something. Because I'm really kind of proud of that one.
Guh, this is why it would be useful if Fimfiction had an option to give an automatic notification if any single-chapter story you've read that was marked Complete suddenly gets an update. I never track stories that look to be one-shots, but occasionally, days or weeks later, I discover that one of them got a second chapter anyway.
(Huzzah for making a comment that has nothing to do with the story on a meta fic.)
Biologic Orthodoxy sounded a little too pleased, and I had just read the entirety of "Romance Reports"; my brain was in a weird place and the two things crashed into each other.
On the one hand, I found this a moderately entertaining story about what it's like to be an author publishing your work to this site. The imagery was silly and over the top, but quite appropriate for what it's like to have your work put out for public consumption. Good job with that aspect.
On the other hand, I cannot believe that EQD featured this story, or that you allowed them to. This isn't a story about My Little Pony, it's a story about "Fimfiction.net", with Twilight Sparkle's name copy-pasted in. You didn't even capture her *character* in the story, just her name. Because of that, I honestly feel that the (current as I type this) 2.9 star rating on the EQD post is still about a half star too high. It just does not belong on that site.
I don't generally wish 'pain' on anyone, but perhaps this negativity over on the other site will help reinforce (for both you and the EQD pre-reading team) the difference between "a good story" and "a good *pony* story" and help all involved to maintain that distinction in the future.
Also, yes, I'm sort of shocked that they put it up there. While I will admit, I did point 'em to it, what I was hoping most was that the pre-readers would see my little love letter to what they do in Chapter 2, and couldn't figure out how best to show it to them. I pondered just gDocsing that chapter only, but then it was like, is that long enough for a submission? And what if the people on FiM who enjoyed the original posting want to see it, too? Do I need to put it in two places?
So then I was all like "screw it, give them the FiM link, be done with it, maybe people will laugh." When burbles that there was a division in the pre-readers came up in the comment thread here, I thought that was the end of the matter, and heard nothing more until it went live. This whole thing has been surreal in a not entirely positive way, but I'm not going to ask them to take it down. It feels too much like unpublishing, which is basically anathema to me.
Eh, chalk it up as a learning experience, I guess? "Dear Princess Celestia. . ." and all that jazz. I mean, it's not all negative, either - several detractors, myself included, still felt that the story is pretty good for what it's trying to do; we just didn't think 'what it's trying to do' fit the context of the other site.
Image: http://static.tumblr.com/hhayxxx/6f9lqgmz5/39467_-_bucket_pail_rainbow_dash_rainbow_dash_always_dresses_in_style_wat.jpg
I LIKE THE CUT OF YOUR JIB, SIR!
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