Reading. It's the reason most of us are on this site. We like ponies, and there isn't enough show to go around. So we went looking for more and ended up finding horse words.  Yet despite this apparent love of reading, I often wonder how much people actually read things outside the world of ponies. And no, I'm not talking stuff people had to read for school or massively popular stuff like Harry Potter, Eragon, etc. That sort of stuff hardly counts since most were forced to do the former and never really enjoyed it, and the latter usually ends up being incredibly simple and holds little to no literary merit. I'm talking high fantasy, especially the epics, and some of the more in-depth science fiction (think Foundation by Isaac Asimov). And I'm also talking reading these sorts of stories on a fairly regular basis.

And I've come to a conclusion I find incredibly depressing. People on this site don't read like this. They never read as a hobby before, nor will they outside of pony. I'm also not referring to the average FimFic user. I'm mostly referring to the people who supposedly know what they're talking about. The sort of people who leave pretty solid comments and offer pretty good insight on how to properly craft a story. Or, they usually do. Then they'll say things that just make me pause and question their intelligence. Comments like, "This is all a bunch of pointless meandering. Get to the point already." Or, "Stories should never be above [insert number here] words." And while some stories do meander about aimlessly, or go on for far too long, people often confuse craftily developed plotting or clever world-building or carefully crafted build-up as pointless drivel and mindless meandering that should be cut from the story. It's a frequent enough occurrence that I'm blogging about it, after all.

So allow me to give you some background information so that when I go full-on rant mode, you can understand where I'm coming from.

I joined this site at the end of my senior year of high school, about two weeks after I started watching the show in earnest. Prior to that, all throughout high school, I spent a great deal of time reading and collecting books. If you've actually read my bio, you know that I have lots of books. I've read nearly all of them, some of them multiple times. And most of this stuff is considered "high fantasy." If you don't know what that is, think in the scope of Lord of the Rings in terms of ambitious world-building, long-term planning, and carefully crafted plotting, but not necessarily as dense in terms of wording. I read these sorts of stories all the time. I searched for more of them. I learned a lot from them, especially when it comes to planning out longer stories. It's almost like watching a puzzle get put together after you've read enough of these sorts of stories. You come to understand how the different pieces fit together. When I'd start a brand new series, I could often recognize the pieces as they happened. I wouldn't know the specifics of what the plotting led to, but I'd know the carefully crafted plotting for what it was.

And now here I am reading ponyfic. And from ponyfic, I discovered the wonders of the short story. It was something entirely new for me. I was used to grand epics, so the change of pace was something remarkable and really quite enjoyable. I learned a lot about the concept of the one-shot and the sadfic. These were things I was once entirely unfamiliar with. However, unlike me, a lot of people didn't come in with the massive reading base I did. They came in and, like me, discovered the short story. They, too, found it enjoyable. They went and searched for more of them. And this spoiled their understanding of reading, for in their searches for more ponyfic, they'd find the more ambitious world-builders. They'd find the ambitious epics that had a grand story to tell but required lots of time to properly tell it. These readers, used to the short story, complained about these slow-burners. "Where's the action!?" they'd cry. "Why is there so much pointless meandering about? When will the actual story start?" And they'd voice these thoughts in the comment sections of these stories. Then I'd stumble across these stories, read them, and then get all excited when I found those ambitious world-builders I'd enjoyed reading all throughout high school. It was the best of both worlds: ponies and epic storylines. Then I'd read the comments and see these people, some whose opinions I'd come to respect based on their comments on the short stories I'd been reading so much of, saying the absolute dumbest things.  It baffled me for the longest time. How could these people, who had before been so smart, now be so dumb? Can't they recognize story-telling for what it is? Are they even reading the same story? Do they even read anything outside of pony and schoolwork?

To give you a very clear idea of what I'm talking about, I'm going to compare two stories for you, one of which is a book sitting on my shelf and on pace to be my favorite book series while the other is on pace to become my favorite story on this site.

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson begins with a very interesting prologue. In it, these heroes of the land have appeared to have given up. They've fought endless battles against the horde of enemies, and they've had enough. Unfortunately, for them to leave, one of them must be left behind. It ends with the final two heroes, save the fellow who had to stay, leaving. The next 1000 or so pages only seem vaguely related to the prologue. Certain artifacts throughout the story appear to be related. A couple flashbacks show something that might be related, but that's it. There's nothing more than a hint here and a hint there. Instead, the story focuses on setting up the characters and building up an incredibly interesting world with a fairly unique system of magic. As I said before, though, hints of something grander are scattered throughout. They're clearly pieces of a puzzle, but how they fit together is unclear. As the story goes on, the hints become more common. The relation to the prologue gets a little clearer. Then things get really interesting and the last couple chapters happen. Those pieces start to come together, and the puzzle they've built is something entirely interesting. And it's not even finished yet.

Harmony Theory by Sharaloth begins with a similar opening. It stars the alicorn sisters having a conversation about Twilight and the Elements, and it leaves the reader wanting to know more. However, it has that similar feeling, that feeling that it doesn't appear to be significant to the story at first glance. And people often don't look much deeper than that. They write it off as irrelevant without reading the rest of the story. They write it off as pointless meandering because its purpose isn't immediately apparent. More to the point, this prologue is apparently bad writing because the readers don't immediately understand it. However, even without giving the prologue a deeper look, its purpose becomes immediately apparent as you begin Chapter 1. In fact, the openings of each chapter clearly relate back to the prologue, and these chapter openings are clearly building up to a grand, possibly earth-shattering, conclusion. The pieces of this puzzle are incredibly clear as distinct, integral pieces. It baffles me that people don't understand this.

Now, I certainly understand that these stories are not without fault, and I can certainly understand why they might not be to a person's tastes, but that does not, under any circumstances, make these stories, and others like them, poorly written. That does not give you, the reader, the right to tell the author to cut so the so-called "pointless meandering" and get to the action already. That is incredibly destructive advice when not given properly. That is incredibly destructive advice when given because you, the reader, can't immediately understand the purpose behind a particular piece of the puzzle. That's incredibly lazy on your part, and you should feel bad. Now, don't get me wrong. If the author fails to put the pieces together at all, there will be hell to pay, but until then, give the author the benefit of the doubt. I'm all in favor of reminding the author that there better be a grand plan in mind. However, that does not mean you tell the author to cut the build-up and get straight to the action. So allow me to reiterate: that is absolutely terrible advice. It is incredibly destructive, and you should feel bad if you give that kind of advice unwarranted.

So why is this? Why is it that people who otherwise give valuable, constructive advice are so dense on these sorts of stories? What's different? Well, I've found a couple reasons for why this is.

1. Fanfiction is often written in small sections while books are written fully before being published. Thus, the wait for a new chapter of ponyfic can be very long while reading the next chapter of a book is as simple as turning the page. Thus, build-up that isn't immediately apparent in books is even less apparent when the wait for new content is so much longer. In this case, it's somewhat forgivable for a reader who isn't used to reading long epics to be confused as to why it's taking so long to get to the "story." For any experienced reader, however, the pieces should still be clearly recognizable for what they are. Additionally, this does not forgive the sort of terrible advice I've mentioned previously. No matter what the reason, bad advice is still bad advice.

2. People think all stories that aren't to their tastes are poor quality by default. Because of this, anything these sorts of readers don't immediately understand is pointless and should be cut from the story. These sorts of narrow-minded reader are the worst sort. Some of these sorts are obvious in that they downvote without reading. But this is something every reader struggles with, myself included. It's the mentality of, "Grrr, I didn't like this story. I need a reason why, though, so I can properly express my displeasure to the author in the form of constructive criticism. Yeah, I'll do that,  but I need a reason first. Oooh, I can make something up, but make it look like a valid reason instead! Yeah, that's the ticket!" While it may not follow that level of conscious thought, all of us have thought that way before. You've all wanted to justify disliking that one story  you really hated at one point or another. In doing so, you've convinced yourself the story was poor quality because it didn't meet your personal tastes.

In of themselves, these are mostly harmless. Little will come of the terrible advice given by one misguided commenter. However, as mentioned before, I've seen people whose advice I normally respect give out this sort of destructive criticism. And since they have  hundreds of followers built on the successes of multiple stories, their opinion carries some weight.

This leads to my next point.

3. Most stories in this fandom are one of two things: short or packed with action. Think stories like MLD, Cupcakes, and FO:E. These are perhaps the three most well-known stories in the fandom. The first two are short and the third is full of mind-numbing action. There's very little thought involved while reading these sorts of stories. And in the case of the short stories, there isn't much time required either. So when someone who's used to reading these sorts of stories encounters a slow-burner, they balk. If the "story" hasn't started up by Chapter 6 or something similar, there's clearly something the author's done wrong. However, this often isn't the case. Oftentimes, this is the fault of a reader who doesn't know how to read.

Please note, however, that this is not to say that short stories are bad and contain no intelligent thought. They aren't and they do. However, my point here is that judging a slow-burner by short fic standards is silly, as is the opposite.

So what's the point to all this, you ask? Why type all this out? Well, mostly because I'm in the mood for a good rant, and this worked. But there are some important things to draw from this incoherent mess of a blog.

1. Slow-burners are an actual thing. Understand this. Give the author the time and space needed to work the magics. These are very much like a puzzle. Each piece is important, but the big picture takes time to construct.

2. Personal tastes do not at all equate to a measure of quality. Ever.

3. Read more. Read stuff that isn't horse words. The Wheel of Time is an excellent example of an ambitious slow-burning world-builder.

4. I don't think I actually mentioned this before, but the slow-burners require patience to read fully. If you don't have the patience, fine. But don't use that as an excuse to call the story bad.

5. Learn to find the puzzle pieces. This will help immensely in aiding your understanding of some of the longer stories that populate both this site and your local libraries.

I'm also quite sure this mess of a blog failed to adequately justify why I feel this way, so allow me to explain as best I can. And if it's something I've already mentioned in the blog, I'm not going to explain it again. Feel free to ask in comments, though.

1. "The End of Ponies doesn't go anywhere. It's all pointless, and it should be many thousands of words shorter."

Puzzle pieces, I say. Puzzle pieces.

2. "Anthropology accomplished nothing while Lyra was on Earth. That whole section was pointless."

Again, puzzle pieces. However, I could certainly see the argument where they were poorly-executed pieces. But not pointless.

3. "Background Pony was full of pointless chapters that did nothing to move the plot along."

This one is actually a bit more complex than simple puzzle pieces. The thing about Background Pony is that it's not a grand tale in the making. Rather, it's a series of short stories that all happen to feature the same character. Yes, there is that loose connection of a main plot, but it's a loose connection at best. What's more important, though, is that it is a series of short stories and should be viewed as such.

4. I wrote 400 horse words on Thursday. Thanks for continuing to read my mess of a blog. Have that knowledge as your reward.

5. "The prologue for Harmony Theory is poorly written. It serves no purpose in the story."

I already explained this.

These are common enough complaints from all sorts of people that I've been wondering many of the things found in this blog fora very long time now. If these were isolated complaints, this blog wouldn't exist. But they're not. I see them from all sorts of people on a fairly regular basis.

If anyone managed to make sense of this jumbled mess of a blog, I congratulate you. My ramblings can't be easy to decipher.

I ramble too much. Blech.

Should I ramble more often, though?

~Csquared08, The Rambling Ranter