Can I write a clopfic without it devolving into a stream of terrible jokes?
Yes, but only in the same sense that I can lick my own elbow: it takes far too much work and impresses people even less than just sticking my fist in my mouth.
In any case, I suppose I should provide some exposition of particular obscurities. I think I might have done more research on this bit of nonsense than I have with any other of my fics thus far, perhaps with the exemption of Fifty Sheaves. I'll be updating this comment with explanations for every chapter as they come:
Qualia: what kinds?
With the preconsonantal unstressed 'to' being pronounced in American English with a schwa, I swear that it's genuinely a struggle not to turn all of Rainbow Dash's 'to's into 't''s.
—The conlang Twilight's working on is a theoretical creole of Old French (Old Lowlands) and Middle High German (Middle Northern Highlands Unicorn).
—'Engourdisry' is a butchering of the French word engourdissement, tossed willy-nilly into Early Modern English.
—Namadicus is the extinct genus modern Brahman cows are derived from. Ishpan is derived by analogy (oh my god I love that phrase so much) of Iran from Old Persian aspa, meaning horse.
—Ye Æcreponnyes Gwwedde to Unscaedwis Becaystræn bytwixt ye Cyorpfyolcyes in ye Courrynt Æra is a terrible mixture of Old and Middle English transcribed willy-nilly, literally meaning The Farmerpony's Guide to Indiscriminate Whores amongst the Commonfolk in the Current Era. The extract should be easy enough to get the gist of. Clawecunct was a real last name around the mid-1300s, possibly derived from the Latin cunctus (collective whole); the less subtle Fillecunt was also a real name in the early 1300s.
—Twilight coos I love you. I don't know what I would do without you, my love in Old French.
Quantacumque: how great?
Blame Margaret Atwood for this chapter. I think it might be one of the longest ones I've yet written, but that's probably a consequence of experimenting with different styles.
—‘Kopet’ is a pun on the origin of the English name of Tibet, (derived from Turkic Töbäd) from Turkish köpek, or dog.
—Iran went through the Islamic revolution in the late seventies; priorly, copies of Playboy and other Western pornographic magazines were left out in the open.
—aš-Šams is the Arabic word for ‘sun’; ‘Asham’ for ‘Celestia’ is derived by analogy of Allah (viz. al-`ilah). ‘Coverer’ is the literal translation of kafir, or unbeliever.
Quemadmodum: through what method?
Quantity—as Applejack so charitably exhibits—is never quality. I think I spent less time on this than the other two chapters each; bad writing flows trippingly from the fingers.
I originally intended for Twilight to say 'rape isn't sex' in an attempt to discredit Dash's admittedly terrible point, but then I realised that even she's probably grown out of that reprehensible semantics game.
—Country matters is a pun from Shakespeare's Hamlet, act 3, scene 2; stress the first syllable.
—Karl Marx's first name is etymologically derived from Carl, cognate with Charles, meaning freeman; the German word for 'freeman' is, of course, Ehrenbürger.
—la-Ville-des-Poneys-sur-la-Gorge-affreux-en-face-du-fôret-Everfree is essentially just Ponyville on the Ghastly Gorge across from the Everfree, or, literally, the Village of the Ponies on the Scary Gorge facing the Everfree Forest.
—There are no curved apostrophes on typewriters.
—Sundorcræft is Old English for 'private craft' or 'special talent', taken from Archonix's excellent Xenophile's Guide for Equestria.
—Chanfro is Portuguese, and in this case refers to the bridge of a muzzle.
—Quale is in fact English, and a term for an individual, subjective, ineffable experience.
Quatenus: to what extent?
Yes, ponies with guns. If they've got arcade machines and robots, I'm just going to presume they've got weapons technology on the level. Derpy as an distinct expy of Lawrence of Arabia in the Iran-Iraq War was just too good an idea for me to pass up.
I sometimes wonder what a field of dead ponies would look like; the pony body being so predisposed towards individuality, it must be quite a horrific show. Perhaps even moreso than a field of dead humans.
Relatedly, my search history's starting to look like that of a Confederate Neo-Nazi Muslim extremist's.
—Khishba is Arabic for fertile.
—Masum Muhriz literally means 'Innocent Victor'. Muwajahat, or 'confrontational', is inspired by the Arabic name Saddam, meaning strong commander, ill-omened confronter or one who frequently crashes.
—'Husharic' is a portmanteau of the Classical Arabic word ḥuṣān and the English word 'Arabic'.
Quomodonam: how, pray tell?
I like to think this chapter mirrors the disappointment of Judgement in its own, special way.
Also, for the love of God never ever Google Image Search 'female genital trauma'.
—'Follower' is a possible translation of the Greek name 'Icarus'.
—Apoparthenevomation and metionizonization are nonsense words derived from the Ancient Greek (no I don't know which dialect probably Attic or something) ἀποπαρθενεύομαι (to lay aside one's virginity) and μετοιωνίζομαι (to procure happier omens for).
—Ipparionic is derived from the Ancient Greek for 'pony', ἱππάριον.
—Iecur adamantinum is Latin for incorruptible liver.
Quamdiutinus: lasting how long?
This chapter was inspired by the profoundly touching Vagina Monologue The Vagina Workshop, by Eve Ensler.
I originally thought that I'd have Rarity have a normal high-school experience, but then I thought to myself: what's the fun in that?
—If you've taken science lessons in fifth grade, you by all rights ought to know what anthers and stamens and stigmas are. If you don't, I'd suggest doing some cursory reading on plant reproduction.
—The Pacifican Era is a reference to the Pax Britannica—by extension, the Victorian Era—during which mauveine was developed and purple became an immense fashion success.
Quemindignus: how indignified?
This chapter went through three iterations: one with Donut Joe, one with Trixie and finally with Star Sparkle. Trixie, in particular, was particularly annoying because I had to spend several hours finding the 'Laurentian' word for 'horse' to make a pun on Canada before realising that Jacques Cartier, the bellend of a man, had chosen to ask how to say 'cunt' and 'pourpoint' but had not undertaken the task of asking them about the things they rode around on.
Trivia: gangsters in general tend to actually be very bad at slapping, because they're not trained; they don't know how to focus their force, and so when you see one of them beating a woman, for instance, it often takes a lot of slaps to actually get something done, mainly because it's like getting hit by a whiffle bat.
—Métoikos was the term used in Ancient Greece to indicate free citizens of other city-states.
—Fragile X syndrome, the most common single-gene cause of autism, is caused by a trinucleotide repeat expansion in the fragile X mental retardation 1 (FMR1) gene.
—Steve Carrell was the star of the hit 2005 comedy 40 Year Old Virgin.
—The 'Proxima line' is not a real thing, but I'm presuming for the purpose of this headcanon that empathetic links go out to about one lightyear.
—A baculum is a penis bone.
—Riding the Bull at Gilley's: Convicted Rapists Describe the Rewards of Rape was an extremely influential 1985 study on the motives behind rape, considering it from the perspective that the question shouldn't be why men rape, but why they did not rape. 'Gillie' is the Scots word for a fishing or hunting attendant.
—Giuseppe Verdi's La donna è mobile begins with the lines la donna è mobile/qual piuma al vento; I'd imagine the Equestrian version would be something like la donna è mobile/qual pium' del pegaso.
Quamobrem: for what reason?
It took me for-fucking-ever to find out how to spell 'promiscuous'.
I had to google 'word for slutty' like a filthy pleb. I've never felt so degraded.
—The closing sentence to the Declaration on the Right and Responsibility of Individuals, Groups and Organs of Society to Promote and Protect Universally Recognized Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted in 1998 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, is Nothing in the present Declaration shall be interpreted as permitting States to support and promote activities of individuals... contrary to the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
Interregnum: between monarchs
Fuck jpeg artifacts.
—The comic is a Photoshop from Persopolis. The only thing it has left in common with the original is the black border.
—A 'fag hag' is a woman who befriends a great deal of gay men.
Quaraenam: why, pray tell?
For this section, I had to do painstaking research on both sensual and transformation-based pony pornography. If this arouses you somehow, I would like to be informed and fully briefed; the sort of person who would get aroused by something like this is the sort of person I study.
—The Zegarekski UH-60 Black Gryphons are a reference to the Sikorski UH-60 Black Hawk; sikor, literally 'tit' (the bird), is Polish slang for wristwatch (zegarek).
1638280 I originally had her said 'you're not autistic', but then I realised that that would consist of far too many syllables. 'Sperg' is the only American slang reference term I have for high-functioning autism patients. I'm aware of two other reference terms from my dialect of English—'zibi' and 'retard'—but I don't think either would issue from Dash's larynx.
If you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to receive them.
1638538 You are a genius and I will be the surrogate of your children, but I figure that I might as well hold off on explaining jokes until the story's over proper. Gives a bit more of a rush of understanding, yes?
"I don't know the first thing about getting laid and I'm putting up a fight because I'm too insecure to admit that my books can't tell me everything and I'm telling you my motivations because I might be autistic!”
I'm autistic and I don't act in that manner AT ALL!
I'm rather offended at using autism as an excuse for insecurity and blabbing secrets.
Amit, I'll have you know that I am very lucky that there just happened to be EMTs outside as I read ch 1... yes, I just about laughed meself to death! And I wouldn't think of Twi as a sperg; my best friend is one, and I can attest that Twilight would be closer to me in my manic moments.
Wow, just read chapter one and had to use a dictionary three times. I consider myself well read with an extensive vocabulary, but you just made my brain feel small. I'm going enjoy reading the rest of this.
Can I write a clopfic without it devolving into a stream of terrible jokes?
Yes, but only in the same sense that I can lick my own elbow: it takes far too much work and impresses people even less than just sticking my fist in my mouth.
In any case, I suppose I should provide some exposition of particular obscurities. I think I might have done more research on this bit of nonsense than I have with any other of my fics thus far, perhaps with the exemption of Fifty Sheaves. I'll be updating this comment with explanations for every chapter as they come:
A fine farce.
The whole "sperg" thing came out of left field, not sure how to feel about that.
1637448
Use footnotes - lots of fun.
Also, I don't always tumblr speak, but in my FimFic, goobby pls
1638280
I originally had her said 'you're not autistic', but then I realised that that would consist of far too many syllables. 'Sperg' is the only American slang reference term I have for high-functioning autism patients. I'm aware of two other reference terms from my dialect of English—'zibi' and 'retard'—but I don't think either would issue from Dash's larynx.
If you have any suggestions, I'd be glad to receive them.
1638538
You are a genius and I will be the surrogate of your children, but I figure that I might as well hold off on explaining jokes until the story's over proper. Gives a bit more of a rush of understanding, yes?
1642291 Dash's response is appropriate for the reasons you give, having the topic come up in the first place is what feels weird to me.
So yeah, I think this definitely counts as one of those stories.
I'm just gonna keep reading.
So much... Latin? Old-English? I dunno.
I'm autistic and I don't act in that manner AT ALL!
I'm rather offended at using autism as an excuse for insecurity and blabbing secrets.
Otherwise this is interesting.
Amit, I'll have you know that I am very lucky that there just happened to be EMTs outside as I read ch 1... yes, I just about laughed meself to death!
And I wouldn't think of Twi as a sperg; my best friend is one, and I can attest that Twilight would be closer to me in my manic moments.
25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m60rfyP3oe1rrzxebo1_500.jpg
By the time I'd reached "lollapalooza", I had to walk away and take a minute to breathe, I'd been laughing so hard. This is excellent.
Question: Had you meant to sometimes refer to Starswirl as male? Because you did, a few times.
Also,
Qualia est fabulam legero?
Rem non intelligo...
Yea, appendix some more Latin and voila.
Wow, just read chapter one and had to use a dictionary three times.
I consider myself well read with an extensive vocabulary, but you just made my brain feel small.
I'm going enjoy reading the rest of this.
I agree wholeheartedly with englishwitch.
This is definitely going to be a good read.
I can see that Twilight shows signs of being a sperg. But being an Aspie myself I can tell you she's not.
Just a psycho egghead.
I'm not sure what I just read.
...
Whelp, down the rabbit hole we go!
I can't even wut.
It's just so out of my realm of experience.