So. I've been busy these last few weeks. Driving robots. Slaying zombies, you know. Oh yeah, and my regular job, too. So there's that.

Still, I've got at least one story I should be working on- somebody pester me at some point so I make sure to keep working on it. I think it's got the potential to be fun, I just need to smooth it out a little bit to make the plot properly coherent.

But the REAL reason I'm making this blog post is because I came to an epiphany the other day, and I felt like sharing. So here goes:

Rainbow Dash/Prince Vultan (as played by BRIAN BLESSED) is best ship.

(Note: this is not what my next fanfic is about).

Hey! Been a couple of months since I've posted here, hasn't it? And what the hey, why not hammer out a few paragraphs to let all twelve of you following this let me know how I'm doing and/or to ramble on about other subjects entirely? This is what happens when nobody reads Livejournal anymore.

Anyway, so yeah. Once again, I've been a bit remiss in my writing- I've the vague rudiments or at least two or three pony stories in mind, but I've yet to really sit down and hammer anything promising out on this shiny new laptop I picked up about a week ago. An Asus, for the record- it runs well, but the speakers are fairly crappy and Windows 8 is seriously horrible.

Anyway, in other boring, day to day news, I swung by a used bookstore today. It was a rather fruitful run, as I managed to snag Jeff Smith's Bone: One Volume edition, along with the Exalted: Siderials splatbook (1st edition, woo!). Visiting bookstores always makes me think about writing- as someday, I think it'd be pretty neat to have something gracing the shelves. Preferably in the 'bestseller' section, as long as I'm daydreaming about it, but I digress.

Anyway, I figured a fun blog post might be to talk about some various authors I enjoy. Call them influences on my own work, or just people who are a lot better at writing than I am, or whatever. So, here we go!

Jim Butcher: Mostly, I'm a huge fan of the Dresden Files novels. And to be fair, there's a bit of bad in with the good- they've got a kind of...odd sort of treatment of gender/sexuality, and Harry Dresden himself really can be an insufferable asshole sometimes (which, to be fair, is a feature, not a bug). This said, I still get a kick out of the books- I describe them to my friends as 'What if Harry Potter grew up to be Sam Spade.' Which is kind of a strained analogy, as Harry Potter is kind of lame as a character, but I digress.

George MacDonald Fraser: Here's an author you probably haven't heard of before- I happened to stumble across his work in college, and I've been enamored of his work ever since. His most famous works are his Flashman novels. They star the titular Harry Paget Flashman- womanizer, coward, bully, and general hero of the English Empire. The novels are a pastiche of old Victorian adventure novels- and the fun part is seeing Flashy blunder through various battles and fiascos throughout history: The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Opium Wars, Roarke's Drift, the Sepoy Mutiny, Little Bighorn, etc. So it's educational! The novels are deliciously written- if nothing else, they're a really fun demonstration of an unsympathetic protagonist. Unfortunately, some of Fraser's other work isn't quite as good: The Pyrates is fun, in a sort of shameless way (it has pirates!) but The Reavers mostly retreads the jokes from The Pyrates, only with Scots instead of pirates- and it sort of just resolves itself at the end. Then again, there's something to be said for shameless comedy. Oh! And on a side note, they actually made a movie version of Royal Flash, starring Malcolm MacDowell, and it's a rather fun watch. The movie and novel both are takes on The Prisoner of Zenda, which is kind of a classic (if lesser known) story these days. Which reminds me, I should totally write a ponys story called "The Prisoner of Zebra," sometime, because why not?

Arturo Perez-Reverte: A Spanish novelist, I first encountered his work in high school, when I was supposed to read The Club Dumas for English Class. It's a fun novel- one that was kind of hamhandedly adapted into "The Ninth Gate," but that's not what's really hooked me. Rather, it's the "Captain Alatriste" series of novels that have really hooked me. They're set in 17th century Spain, so it's all rapiers and big hats and swashbuckling and such. At the same time, the books are also a bit gritty- I once heard someone describe them as 'noir with swords,' and that's a fairly good fit. The one thing I'd say against them is that there's a major theme of decline- every couple of pages, the narrator will remind you how corrupt yet proud Spain was in "those days." But yeah, I absolutely adore the Alatriste novels- and again, they made a movie! And even better yet, the movie's been posted on Youtube. It stars Viggo Mortensen and he has a moustache and he stabs everybody. Go watch it!

I'm sure I'll think of some more authors to talk about at some point. Or heck, maybe I'll get really ambitious and start posting links to various bands I like to listen to as I write and stuff. So, y'know, stay tuned!

This is a blog post about writing. A confession, even. Which means that you're entirely within your rights to skip it and stuff. Though I will thank those of you who have read this in advance for putting up with my whiny self indulgence. Because that's what the internet is for!

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I was going to give a go at the 'National Write a Novel Month' thing. And, well...I made it about as far as I usually do- 12k words in, and I just sort of let it go. There's all kinds of reasons for this: the story never quite 'clicking' with me as it should have, the lack of a proper villain to antagonize my protagonists, the fact that most of my writing for the last...while has been about talking magical ponies (and my novel was not), the fact that I didn't really keep myself inspired and connected to other NaNoWriMo people, and so on. That's also before the RL stuff, too! In addition to my Real People Job keeping me busy 6 days a week, I also found time in November to do the following:

1) Saw Peelander Z perform live. There was a bass squid monster on a unicycle. Very glad I went.

2) Watched Miami Connection, which is a movie about a band full of Tae Kwon Do black belts who fight drug dealing biker ninjas. In Orlando. It's the sort of movie where any given scene will make you either yell "WHAT?" or "YES!" at the screen.

3) General socializing (read, nerdy gaming stuff. GURPS may have been involved).

4) Did I mention I work 6 days a week? 'Cause I do.

So yeah. I figured I'd get that off my chest to somebody out there. Still, if nothing else, I got the chance to think about my own writing, and I came to a realization a bit ago that some of my best work (or at least what I consider to be my best stuff, like Whatever Happened to Captain Cloudsdale or Vengeance and Fashion) really draws on themes of identity. Or, rather, themes of mistaken identity, as that's a pretty good way to start a comedy. Hey, I studied Theatre in college, so I can point and say it's classically inspired, or something. And so, the inherent paradox of someone claiming to be someone they are not (or better yet, someone unwillingly labeled as such) provides the nesescary ideological conflict needed to sustain a story. Yes, this is me analyzing some of my own fanfic, because if nothing else, studying Drama will make you both overly analytic and terribly self-indulgent.

Of course, now that I think of it, ALL my stories (or at least my pony stories) develop once I think of a few cheap jokes or gags, and then think up some silly way to string them together. Though there are times when I fear that "Rainbow Dash plays matchmaker (and is terrible at it)" is a gimmick I've gone to a little too often (or, well, twice), so I may have to shelf that one for a bit.

Which leads me to wonder- what next? I've got maybe a thousand words of an intentionally horrible PONY STORY already written, but I'm still on the fence about whether or not to continue it or not. I've also got some vague ideas for a story that doesn't even involve any of the mane six, but would involve some (well, -one-) fan favorite minor-character pony. Or, for something slightly less shameless, I've also got an idea for a story about writing itself, which could be fun, but also terribly masturbatory (figuratively speaking. No clopfic for you, pervs).

So yeah. There you have it! Maybe I'll actually get productive soonish!

(Yeah, right).

.

So yeah. This NaNoWriMo thing.

Just hit the 10k mark on this thing I'm working on. Which, y'know, is a good number, but according to the '1667 words a day' goal, I should be at over 18k words already. EHEH.

Doesn't help that I haven't written anything for the last two days; I've been busy with work, and then, well, being sociable outside of work. Fun times, but not conducive to this writing thing. Still, I'm writing NOW (sort of, I'm just sort of venting here as a pre-writing exercise to get my fingers flitting this way and that). But! I'm hammering some stuff out right now, so I'm making steady progress. I think the biggest problem I'm having at this point is a matter of making the narrator's voice really 'pop.'  So far, she's a little wry and sarcastic, and pretty tough to deal with the various situations she does, but I haven't yet found something to distinguish her from the slew of other Anita Blake-esque Urban Fantasy protagonist ladies. At least she doesn't wear leather pants, so that's a start? She also likes cheap beer and obscure indie music too, but...yeah, I'll have to figure something out.

In any case, 'cause I feel like sharing, here's my first-draft 'blurb' for the work, in case anyone's curious as to what's keeping me away from pony stories currently!

Need a few pints of blood, no questions asked? Sanctified, silver-plated bullets? Bottled ectoplasm? Rare, madness-inducing texts? Genuine fairy-dust? Jude Ellis will hook you up...for a price.

Jude is a fixer for St. Louis' supernatural community, because your typical shambling horror can't exactly go out grocery shopping. But when a typical delivery goes terribly wrong, Jude is left ankle-deep in corpses without an alibi. Jude doesn't have long to clear her name, and while she does so, she's got to deal with shambling horrors, lycanthropic motivational speakers, ex boyfriends, and a robot who wants to be a wizard.

And those are the ones that DON'T want to kill her.

So yeah. Back to the word processor I go!

Really, it's not.

Rather, it's about writing. One of 'those' posts, if you will. But still, an announcement!

Namely, I'm going to give a go at National Write a Novel Month (aka NaNoWriMo) this year. It's something I've tried before- I think last time I gave it a go was in 2010 or so, and then I got about 10,000 words in before I said THIS IS STUPID and quit like an Alaskan governor (dated political humor, zing!). But this year...well, we'll see how things go. I've got a vague idea for an urban fantasy thing about a robot who wants to be a wizard. We'll see how that goes.

But, why am I telling you about this NON PONY business? Well, simple. For one, this may lead to a lack of pony-based fiction out of me for the month, unless I get stuck and  fall back on "And then the wizard robot started writing about Rainbow Dash" or something, which may or may not be one of the more plausible things to occur in the story.

But the REAL reason I'm writing this blog post (besides the obvious procrastination), is to inform my fans (all, like, three of you) that I'm doing A THING, and thus have someone to hold me accountable to it. So, y'know, feel free to message me or comment on this post or whatever in order to keep me motivated. As honestly, I'm going into NaNoWriMo as more endurance training than anything- I haven't been writing nearly as much as I should, and hopefully this'll whip me back into shape.

So here we go!

So, uh, yeah. It's late, I'm tired (and a little drunk), and I've got some kickass psychobilly playing on itunes. Woo?

In any case, I happened to stumble across something, fairly recently. Namely, some High School kids have done a reading of What Do you Do with a Drunken Unicorn.. Observe!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVT6dqjKfLQ&feature=plcp.

On the one hand, their delivery is a bit stilted, but hey, random internet denizens are reading my silliness, so I can't complain, right?

Thou

It's kind of funny to hear other people reading my words, and kind of funny that the internets are the only people I can share such amusements with. Thankfully, I've got other bidness going on in the next few days, so it won't be entirely horrible. Or something. I'm at least going to see Amanda Palmer in the next few days, so yay for that!

SO.

I'm working (slowly) on my two as-of-yet unfinished stories, and I have some vague ideas on at least one or two more stories that may or may not wind up being moret than a little metatextual. And I may even go about and start writing non-fanfic again sometime soon (not that it'll be posted here, but I digress).

BUT.

I've had a few errant ideas for PONY STORIES. These are ideas I don't think I'll wind up pursuing, but I thought I'd share anyway, just to vent the pressure and get them out of my brainspace. These ideas will be very silly, so consider yourself warned.

In any case, IDEA ONE:

I suddenly find myself wanting to write a Luna shipfic, just because the ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE is hilarious. However, I have no idea who to ship Luna with. Maybe Benchpress? However, I'd prefer to ship her with a lady, mostly 'cause I have a totally awesome title lined up if that's the case.

IDEA TWO (really, this would be better done as a PMV, but I digress. Bonus points if you know what I'm shamelessly crossovering with without google).

No one was left who could remember how it had happened,

how Equestria had fallen under darkness.

At least no one who would do anything.

No one who would oppose the changelings.

No one who would challenge their power,

or so Queen Chrysalis believed...

Twenty floors above the dark streets of the city, Dr. Twilight lived in a run-down tenement.

An eccentric and brilliant filly,

Twilight was a loner, a thinker, a pony of ideas.

Ideas forbidden in Chrysalis' society.

The society for which she worked.

The society in which she lived.

The society that she would set free.

And so Twilight worked, far into the night, when the watchful eyes of Chrysalis' changelings weren't upon her.

She'd set her skillful hooves to the task of creating a device to bring about a change, to create a machine to bring freedom, to create a pony to save the world.

Twelve years Light worked and on a cold night in the year 200X, RainbowDash was born.

A perfect pony, an unbeatable machine, hell-bent on destroying every evil standing between pony and freedom, built for one purpose, to destroy Chrysalis' army of evil changelings. Ready, willing, prepared to fight.

IDEA THREE:

Two words: Octavia's Eleven.

I may even have a thousand words or so of intro for this written somewhere. But now I'm afraid that I've actually shared the title, someone else will steal it! And they'll probably even be a better writer than I, and so the story will be totally awesome and I won't be able to use that title anymore! JERKS.

Really, I don't like working on multiple projects at the same time, because it makes me fear I'll never finish any of them. On the other hand, it's kind of refreshing to start something new and take off with it. In fact, as I type these words, I'm kind of tempted to go back to a story I started like a year ago and never followed through on. And it's not even about ponies!

In any case, rest assured, I'm still fiddling with Friendship is More than Meets the Eye. The thing that's getting me is finding smooth ways to transition to the big setpieces/cheap gags I've got laid out in my head. But, rest assured, it'll be finished! Someday. Soonish, I hope. Oh, and it's ALMOST ready to get posted on Equestria Daily...it's just I'm kind of paranoid that I've still got a mess of spelling/punctuation errors that I've missed in there. I need a proper editor.

In any case, on to the new stuff! Namely, it's another ship-ish story. I find it's more fun to just sort of skirt around certain matters than laying them out explicitly. Though, most notably, this story's probably gonna be a little continuity-heavy...at least, fanon-heavy. Which is to say, you should all go read (or re-read) my other pony-based work in order to get the full picture of what's going on. Ha ha ha, see what I did there? I am shameless, really.

Oh, and for the record, I got the inspiration for this title from J.C. Brooks & the Uptown Sound's version of the song, not Wilco's.

So, I should be writing. Even if it's just PONY STORIES. And, uh...I try. But I've got a new job, and it keeps me alternately busy and kind of bored (and not the good kind of bored where I have a keyboard handy).

In any case, it should be noted that I'm slowly going towards a finale for Friendship is More than Meets the Eye. I have a general idea of how I want it to end (spoiler alert: Grimlock punches somebody), but it's a matter of getting there.

ALSO, I have at least two other fics vaguely in mind. One will be shipping-ish. It's fun to play around with Rarijack,

The other will be cracktacular. It will be a very common genre seen on FiMfiction (no, not clopfic), but done somewhat differently. Or, at least, I like to think so. I'm even going to make the title a literary reference so it makes you feel smarter! Or something.

In any case, I suppose I should actually get to work instead of just pretending I'm at work. Ahem. Expect updates to come! Soonish. Maybe.

So! If you hadn't noticed, I just finished Strange Bedfillies (Or, Nopony Loves Twilight Sparkle). And, since I'm feeling lazy and not writing anything of consequence (or even PONY STORIES) at the moment, I figured I'd hammer out one of these blog entries!

A blog entry on shipping. You guys love that stuff, right?

Anyway, more history lesson/personal confession here. Way back when I first discovered the intarwebs, I stumbled across this stuff called 'slashfic,' and it confused me. It...still does, in a way, but more on that later. It wasn't the pairing of characters so much as WHICH characters were usually paired. As just about any anime protagonist seemed to be inevitably paired off with his archenemy, for...whatever reason. I suppose one could argue adding a twisted psychosexual angle to an antagonistic relationship could be done WELL, but more often than not, it wasn't. Sturgeon's law, y'know. And like hell if I'm gonna go digging through Fanfiction.net's Trigun section for the best Legato/Vash fic, or whatever.

Ultimately, the biggest WTF I voiced was the whole Draco/Harry phenomenon. Which is kind of funny in retrospect, as the characters are BOTH losers, when you think about it, but that's something else entirely. Of course, there's also the argument that there's really a suave, charming, and somewhat evil character in Harry Potter fandom who just happens to be named Draco Malfoy as well. But, I digress. I don't mean to hate on HP fandom at all- guys with ponies on the shelf shouldn't throw stones. Or something.

So yeah, for years and years, I stood by my conviction of 'shipping is bad. Don't do it! (Unless you at least have some degree of canon to support your claim like, say, Sokka/Suki now shut up).

Until I started watching ponies. (I get the feeling that's a pretty common line that comes up when talking in fandom).

Perhaps it's because there's next to nothing in the way of canonical, textual relationships, but somehow, a bit ago, it 'clicked' for me. Shipping is ultimately a game. And it can be somewhat fun to monkey around with. Perhaps MLP makes it a little easier, as while there isn't much text to support it...there's not much to disprove it, either. Sure, characters fight and bicker, but that's usually in the amusing way that makes for fun odd couple banter. Makes it a lot easier than if the two characters were literally trying to murder each other the previous episode, y'know?  On top of this, I can't help but find the fandom characters/ships absolutely fascinating. I mean, Lyra/Bon Bon has become a shout out gag by the animators, which is great. Though really, it's Octavia/Vinyl Scratch that floors me. Here you have two characters with...what, 60 seconds of screentime between them? And they're not even in the same episodes...and yet, it's like, knife-fight level fanon, right there. I suppose that Vinyl Scratch Tapes fic is the ur-example of said pairing- unless I'm wrong?

When it comes to the mane six, I find myself not writing shippy-ish stories for the romantic aspect, so much as the romantic COMEDY angle. I don't go to out and out crack-ships, but (like most things that make it into my pony stories), I just ask myself 'is this funny?' And...it goes from there. Which may mean I may never ship Rainbow Dash with anypony, because I find it a lot funnier if she's single and clueless.

In any case, mulling over all this makes me wonder if I should sit down and write a proper 'shipping' fic of some sort. Using, of course, the super secret shipping formula which I shall NOW SHARE:

HOW TO WRITE A SHIPFIC.

Step 1: Pick two ponies. Doesn't matter who. Dartboards are nice.

Step 2: Come up with an excuse for the two ponies to hang out. Working together on some project, one caring for the other after an injury, or cross-state kidnappings are all popular.

Step 3: Pony A angsts about how they find themselves having feelings for Pony B.

Step 4: Pony B angsts about how they find themselves having feelings for Pony A.

Step 5: Continue angsting until there is a final burst of 'I love you!' coming either immediately before or immediately after random kisses.

Step 6 (Optional): pr0n.

Use these secrets wisely.