Patreon blog takeover: That was a load-bearing serial number: could the Continuum exist without MLP? (Spectrumancer) · 9:20pm May 31st, 2023
So, before we get to the actual question... I want to post a reminder of how this sort of thing becomes available to the public.
Dictating a blog topic is a tier benefit offered to Patreon sponsors at a given tier and above, with the price of said base tier having recently increased. It's also currently possible to get one through my Ko-Fi tip jar, especially as I'm still trying to reach the goal of a Sicily sidetrip after Galacon (currently at 17% of goal, total must be reached by July 15th): just note that you want a blog, drop a sufficiently-impressive tip in said jar, and stand by.
I wanted to post a reminder of that before starting, for two reasons. The first, of course, is that I can always hope for new sponsors, plus I'm really hoping to go home for a few days. But the second?
Here's today's topic.
All right, here goes:
If you were to "de-MLP-ify" the 'verse, for publishing as an original work, as some authors from this site have done with their own stories, what might that look like, in broad strokes? What would change, what would stay, what kind of foundation would you make for an original setting for this wonderful world you've built?
I recently had to increase the base tier for the blog topic choice by an additional $2 per post, going from five to seven.
I've just been reminded that I really, really should have made that increase higher.
...all right. Take it slow. Especially because I'm pretty sure that by the time we reach the end of this blog, I won't have answered the question in a satisfactory way and given that, I kind of want to stall.
I couldn't say which authors on the site have tried to render their fanfics as stories attached to no IP other than their own, mostly because no one's told me and I'm usually about six years behind on any news: something which made matters exceptionally awkward when I first signed up here and had to gaze into the void of negative history. But I do know that people outside of our group have not only tried it, but managed the feat. Spectacularly. The most famous modern example is probably the Fifty Shades books, which started life as a Twilight (sparkly vampire version) fanfic and if this was the way you just learned about that, I am so sorry.
There are times when it's possible. You can take a set of character personality traits, exaggerate a few while understating others, and then assign a new name. Some of our mares are effectively their own archetypes: it's just a matter of tweaking a little, right? The sort of people they are... that should remain visible. Magic is magic: draw up your own system -- or, as with the example above, ignore everything supernatural entirely. So I'm going to talk a little about what I could potentially do in order to swap out the support beams and replace them with something a little less 18th-Century Middle- Europe.
But there's another question present, isn't there? And it's this: without MLP to support it, could the 'verse exist as a published work?
I'm going to answer that one now.
No.
It couldn't.
Not in print. Ever.
And there are three foundational reasons for why it would never be published. Aspects beyond the usual anti-rallying cries of 'You can't write!' (YMMV) and 'Your so-called style doesn't work when there's a page limit!' (arguable). A trio of rejection rationales, and they look like this:
Introduction.
Establishment.
Investment.
I'm going to need a few minutes to set up the details.
Beyond this point, we get into serious spoilers for the 'verse as a whole. Do not proceed past here unless you've at least finished reading Triptych.
Okay. The Triptych Continuum (and for the new arrivals, I wasn't the one who named it) without ponies. How?
There's a few different ways.
We can't stick to reality here. Urban fantasy -- modern (or in this case, slightly retro) life with a twist... that's a possibility. So is science fiction, and it can be mostly a matter of your preferred doubletalk flavor for explanations -- plus whether you want your ridiculous number of multiple fully-sapient races living on the same planet, or to have a few commuting in from their own. You might think that SF is a little harder because quite a bit of the 'verse relies on the concept of the soul being real, but genre authors have done a lot with that: see Riverworld and Kiln People for good examples.
I don't want to go the 'secret species hiding within humanity' bit. It's been done and for something on this kind of scale, you've pretty much got to take it all the way public. This is worldbuilding, and that means restructuring the entire world.
So...
...let's look at this from the fantasy aspect for a few seconds.
So there's a trio of 'races' who share certain base physical characteristics -- although there's a few visible differences in build and, in one case, you have to factor for additional limbs. However, in the great fantasy tradition, they can all interbreed -- but oddly, there's no such thing as a half-anything: a child will always be fully of one species, and might even show up as one from outside that union. It's something about the blood (or, for SF, a quirk of the genetics, where species traits are recessives which, once introduced, lurk in the DNA forever. Waiting).
They all live together, for the most part. They usually get along, although there's some exceptions. And each has their own magic. One group does very basic agronomy effects, another is connected to the sky and weather, while the third consists of wild talents who can potentially do anything -- but most of it is limited, some is effectively useless, and the vast majority know only a few spells each. (Replace with psi effects as needed).
On this planet, we have a living deity. She keeps the world going. She's directly, demonstrably connected to that which brings life. She possesses aspects of all three races, and she's the only ones who does. She's been around for as long as anyone can remember. Your god not only walks among you, she runs the government. Everyone accepts this. That's the way it's always been and if she ever vanished -- well, who's going to keep the planet alive?
Let's throw in hints of a precursor civilization. Magics which can't be cast in the modern day, because no one remembers how: not even the goddess. (SF? Ancient technology. Don't take it apart, because the replacement parts haven't been available for millennia.)
And then one day, a student of the goddess, who's one of the strongest wild talents... finds hints that there used to be a pair of living deities who were responsible for the world.
Something strange happened to the younger one. Something bad.
And now the darkness might be coming back.
The goddess rather directly tells her to not to worry about it, takes away the student's current research assignment, and kicks her into a nearby settlement with instructions to meet the locals, learn how those who don't live in the palace exist from day to day, and while you're at it, get a few social connections because the student is really bad at that.
The dominoes start to fall...
It's an archetype plot, isn't it? High fantasy or urban, plus you could make it work in science fiction if you needed to. I'd be accused of stealing from the source material -- with, let's face it, complete accuracy -- but the fundamental ideas underneath it all have been explored a few times before. If I keep going down this road, then it's absolutely possible to change enough in order to create Legally Distinct.
The fashion expect now constructs armor that's just as decorative as functional. An impulsive weather-controlling sprite? Not a problem. And then we have a beastmaster who understands animals better than people, the local town toughie who just wants to be left to tend her farm, the baker seems to be a wild talent when her species normally wouldn't allow that and somehow, no one questions it. Give our student her own assistant, and we've got the set.
But...
...you've probably noticed that we went back a ways.
We're at Season One, Episode 1 here. Or, for Legally Distinct purposes, Chapter One.
Triptych doesn't start that way. Because it had the freedom not to do so.
My first work on the site effectively begins shortly after the student ascends to godhood.
Except that she doesn't feel like a deity. She can't seem to make any of the godly powers work at all. Actually, turning into a god was supposed to be impossible. No one's ever done that, and now the oldest goddess (because of course they got the sibling back) won't tell her how operating as a god is supposed to work.
And she starts asking questions. About what she is now. About what gods are, and whether she truly wants to be one.
So how do we reach that point, moving forward from our Legally Distinct starting line?
Spoiler alert: we don't.
We can't.
Because no one's going to care.
No one will have the chance to care...
Introduction. Establishment. Investment.
I have to create this world, or at least separate it far enough off to the side of the original to viably claim a separate orbit. This means setting up everything about it. From scratch.
I would need to bring the reader into this environment. Juggle all of the major characters (and we can consider the story to have at least seven), tell you who they all are. And I've got a little news for you: that's all going to take place in the central adventures, because ain't no publisher gonna let me waste dead trees on slice-of-life side stories.
You know who almost got away with this? Dragonlance. Tell the epic story of light against a different kind of darkness, using known character archetypes -- only in this case, we had one who was actively trying for godhood and really didn't care about what he had to do in order to get it. You wound up with a few fundamental questions about how the universe worked, as opposed to how the characters had believed it to operate. And after a while? They even got side stories. Collections of shorter works, expanding what we knew about that cast and giving both world and occupants some additional depth. It was popular enough to allow for that.
And you could call it an original setting.
It's also built on the back of the most successful tabletop RPG in the world and came with a built-in audience who'd been longing for some decent content.
I'm starting from scratch.
Introduce the world. Establish the characters. Get the readers fully invested in them. Make people care. Bring it to the point that when the story starts to investigate the deeper mysteries.... everyone will be willing to go along for the ride.
Let's consider the total word count of the 'verse. We're nicely into seven digits, aren't we? Over a hundred works, major and minor, tied into this silly thing.
Now. Imagine what that number is if I had to tell you the Legally Distinct story starting from an equivalent of Episode One.
I would be asking a publisher to let me take the slow path. Even without the side stories, it's going to require at least three books to build an audience and lay the groundwork for the big stuff. Whoever looks at this project is going to be betting on long-term interest. In the new.
And no one cares about the new.
Recycle the old IPs. That's where the audience is, because it's where they were before. Import old characters into new mediums, and the money will follow. The new (or the Legally Distinct) is scary. Reset, restart, revise. Hey, how about a live action version?
Forget about my writing style, and the fact that it doesn't work in print because I do run off at the keyboard and if somehow published, I might be the only one left who actually does talk about what the forest looks like. Let's say no one sues me for not being Legally Distinct enough. I doubletalk my way so far in that marks work. (Magical runes which appear on your body? When your talent is recognized, the nanomachines which have been with you since birth reconfigure your DNA just enough to produce some minor psi effects and a visual signature? We really want to avoid a caste' system here...)
I was able to come in on FIMFic Day One and pray for an audience for two reasons.
You already knew who Twilight Sparkle was.
And you cared about what happened to her.
The Continuum, when it's not taking itself too seriously (or being silly, or telling little slice-of-life stories which I pretend could have happened between the episodes if TV-Y7 didn't exist), is about pulling back the curtain. Maybe this is how things could really be. Look under the surface. Peer backstage. It might all be a little more complex than you suspected. Somewhat more -- real. And to a large degree, those who came along for the ride did so because -- okay, fine: let's see how the hack is going to work with this. There's a lot of spins on the base already, so what does this have to offer?
There was also a base.
The readers knew who the main characters were. Wanted to see them come through it all.
Introduce a new world. Do so at the surface level. You can start to hint that deeper things are taking place out of sight, but.. . do it slowly.
Establish the environment, one slow step at a time.
Get everyone invested.
And then -- only then -- take the deep dive.
Let's go back to Dragonlance for a minute. The first trilogy is arguably about setting up the world, and the second is more towards exploring the characters.
The first trilogy takes up over a thousand printed pages.
And they could get away with that, because they were riding the D&D engine. Everyone understood the rules. Introduction and establishment are partially covered -- for an audience which is already there.
Dragonlance rides the engine. I came in on a property which had been around for three years, present in some form or another for decades, and hitched on.
There is no non-vanity publishing company in the world which is going to sign on a new author who needs that much verbiage just to place the bowling pins in the alley, then say "Wait. The really good part begins when I finally throw the ball."
I could write about the magic of soul splicing. Tie it into true friendship. There's a horror story waiting for Tish, if someone learned how goddesses were really made and became determined that his daughter would become one. Discord? Discord is Q. I just need to remove him by one more step. And here's Doctor Gentle, medical magic is just starting to specialize and obstetrics is emerging -- or he knows one unique spell, his psi can't be duplicated or he's the only one who figured out how to operate that piece of ancient tech, it only responds to him and he's somehow never explained how he keeps it charged...
Give me enough time and I could build all of it.
No one's giving me that time.
Readership very much included.
What would I toss? Most of the musical numbers. Names would become a little more serious. I'm convinced that I could find a way to keep marks. There would be some difficulty in dodging Planet/Species Of Hats, but the series already has that issue. We can keep the main cast and the sisters and the press, but I'm probably going to wind up dumping a lot of the extended group because no one cares.
But I could shift the bulk of it far enough to the side, I think. Lost magic, lost technology... it's just about the doubletalk style in the end, right? Teleportation is a spell or a power: the results are the same either way.
We can retain a Diarchy. Tenant species? Partial uplifts. Go that route and I might even be able to hang onto sapient equines -- although such would make the eventual court case that much more fascinating. Settled zones? Fantasy worlds, even the real world -- that's dangerous. Create places of relative safety, and be careful about risking the roads.
We can keep the world. The worldbuilding...
...but I didn't create that world.
Not the base of it.
I interpreted what was already there.
And to go Legally Distinct, to make it a little more my own when I'm just filing off a few more recognizable curves and hoping no one looks too closely -- means losing everyone who was:
Introduced to that world.
Stayed around while it was established.
And became invested in it.
Gone.
I'm not sure I've truly answered this question. It's probably not possible to answer it within the word limits of a blog. I could go into more detail if asked about individual elements, and I will if Spectrumancer has some smaller questions. But it's mostly about labels. Devices are magic items, or tech which one species specializes in building and energizing. Psi channels, perhaps. The griffons become that species on the next planet over, and they tried to invade yours a few times. For your own good, of course.
Ask me about smaller bits, and I could come up with adjustments to suit. Or doubletalk, if you prefer.
But the results would never be published as an 'original' work. No publisher would ever take that chance. Honestly, I can't blame them. It's a huge risk to take, and there's about 99.999% odds that a profit-level audience would never show up.
Introduce, establish, invest? Impossible. This isn't mainstream book material. It never has been.
There's only one way to pitch this and have any chance to see it work.
Animated series story bible with connected toyline.
...
...the lawsuit would be epic.
(Did I mention the Ko-Fi drive to send me home for a few days?)
(After this blog, some of y'all probably want to send me somewhere.)
(There's a running joke in the chat server. Namely, I usually get tips after I bring up how the trip could potentially get me killed.)
(Think of it as a chance to have me fall into an active volcano.)
(Also, Vinylshadow's 'verse music page has a lot of new tracks. Go listen.)
Or just wait like what... 50 more years for ponies to go public domain? That'll be a golden age for fanfics. Or a nuclear wasteland, dunno which is more likely tbh...
Or in a fantasy land. Get Hasbros permission and sell Trypch Books as official non-cannon stories. Where 99% of the profit goes to Hasbro.
Yeah, I've ended up in the same boat every time I've contemplated converting my work to something more marketable. Building on someone else's foundations doesn't just apply to the world building. Honestly, I'm not sure how the folks who do so manage it, and I used to beta read for someone who was trying to convert their horsewords to something fit for a general audience.
Ms. Faust's Wild Ride offers a wide variety of potential ideas. It's trying to keep any of them when you get off where things get complicated...
If you really want to go for legally FUBAR just have ChaptGPT do all the rewrites for you…
(And now for something completely real…)
Like a number of your fans I’ve encouraged you to give a try doing non-pony fiction to actually get paid for writing, and I repeat my appeal here. You don’t have to do an epic, just write a piece in your style that really gets into the head of someone going through a less than fairy-tale life. Your blogs here would provide no shortage of grist for that particular mill. Submit it to a local mag or newspaper as fiction, or register for a writing course just to get something published at school or better still get help from a teacher or author that would help you get your foot in the door of a magazine or publisher. Yeah, there are no guarantees, but as we Canadians like to say “you miss 100% of the shots at net you don’t don’t take.”
You mention Dragonlance. You could also look at Thieves World.
That started in 1978. Dawn of both internet and D&D. It couldn't have worked without both.
Without Fimfiction you would need a website that published fanfics. Archive Of Our Own started Sept 2008.
Before that, you would have to start by publishing a fanzine & selling it at Sci-fi cons. You would also have to do this in the free time left after earning a living.
If you didn't have a spouse (or equivalent) with a job willing to support you or family wealth (like Niven) this would require getting established as a pro author with enough of a fanbase to support you. Figure at least a decade to get there -and most didn't.
I fundamentally disagree on the 'Established' point re: "No one will give a shit if I start with Tryptych".
Brian McKellan has written 6 novels (two trilogies) and 11 novellas set in the Powder Mage 'verse, he has a kickstarted RPG, he has a TV series on the way. The first book literally opens with our protagonist finishing the violent coup of the tyrant king, slaughtering his mage cabal, and starting a revolutionary council. This is THIRTY pages in. You've no idea the background, the magic system, who or how any of this works. Just the bare bones of "Guy is so pissed at the system that he overthrows it". Similarly, Triptych is "The great hero has received godhood, the ultimate reward...now what? " followed by "Oh, the laws that seemed so ironclad in this world are far more mutable and darker then we perceived". It's a grecian tale of arrogance, hubris, and gods playing amongst mortals.
It could be done. Whether you *wish* to, is a different question. But it's not impossible.
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I have to concur. You would need to figure out how to adapt the backstory and some of the world-building, but only the plotpoints - because it would only need to be written out in some explanatory flashbacks. No need to completely rewrite Season 1 through 4. Bullet points should suffice for most of it.
Ok, bear with me. I'm plotting out a way to do exactly that with The One Who Got Away/Drifting Down the Lazy River.
Fantasy world. Earth pony analogue are people who have talents, but can't cast spells. Unicorn analogues are people who can cast spells and therefore much more versatile, but don't have base talents. (I.e. Farmer Rootabaga can grow rutabagas far better than any spellcaster can, but they'd be roughly tied trying to raise corn) Third kind of people based on Earth pony analogue who can 'link' to animals, many of which have a pegasus as their favorite (since flying, nach), a talent/spell which eludes the other two groups. All three groups have various levels of power, from sprouting beans to blasting craters, but reigning over all of them is the immortal Queen, Solia (or another name if I can find one), who can do all three. A few years ago, the duties of reigning got to be far too much for her and she un-banished one of her ancient foes, who she explained things to and they came to a generalized power sharing arrangement (because face it, even together they're going to have trouble keeping the far-flung Empire together).
And go down the river from there.
I know of Knight Breeze, same name here and on Amazon Kindle.
Not if they have to advertise and manufacture them, no. Modern writers have more freedom though, self publishing weird little stories is more practical than ever before and the art is better for it.
You make a good point that your whole ‘verse is just too complex and intertwined to file the serial numbers off. Don’t doubt your talent to make a go of it on your own though.
Not only a good answer, but a thought-provoking piece on the very nature of fanfiction. I'd go so far as to argue that writing good fanfiction is it's own artform, parallel to writing original fiction (and then point at your portfolio as an example of how to do it well)
I still think you could write a good original story. You've dipped into it before, with various OCs and background ponies that never really got an established personality in the show, doing things that aren't connected to the deep lore of either MLP in general or the 'Verse in particular, and on top of that, the various crossovers you've done prove that you don't need to limit yourself to ponies to craft quality stories.
Anyway, Good Blog :D
I'll get around to reading it at some point, but as someone who doesn't care about spoilers I am going to disobey your direct order* and continue reading the blog.
*You didn't have a "unless you don't care about spoilers" rider on this so it is not so much a warning about spoilers ahead as it is a direct command not to read the "spoilers".
Not teally? I mean you'll get basic fantasy or sci-fi fans just from the premise alone.
To continue with your Dragonlance example my first book of the setting was The Doom Brigade and I got it because it was a fantasy book featuring humanoid dragons as the main characters.
I know I had no idea what Dragonlance was at the time and it was before I started playing D and D as I was still in either elementary or early high school at the time and I didn't start playing D and D until middle-late high school..
I was a voracious reader as a child, particularly fantasy and sci-fi so I was snapping up as many books in both genres as I could no matter if I knew the world or not.
So really there is no "from scratch" anymore as there will be a base level audience for any work of fiction in any genre until we come up with a totally new genre and that will have a large audience from the start because everyone will want to see what this new thing is about.
A lot of people care about the new, just not the people who have the power to print this sort of thing. Readers want new stuff all the time but publishers are hesitant to take the risk. Self publishing has lessened the stranglehold somewhat but is still prohibitively expensive.
As for how many books it'd take to set things you don't have to follow what F.i.M. did that closely, You could probably get the set-up down to one book and then start on what Triptych is about.
Oh, wait, you could probably do it in two books. Three is a bit much for even your word counts. But you only need to set up the basics of everything and don't have to go through every single Friendship Lesson or event that happened in the show.
I think you are vastly underselling just how much people are willing to read this sort of story. I'm not going to argue with the publisher side of things, The "big names" in the entertainment industry are kind of out of touch with how the world works now and don't understand they can't have all of the money by giving people more of what they already have just in blue now instead of green. yeah it'll still make some money but never as much as they want, which is all of it.
Another thing I won't argue with you about is the time it'd take to actually write all of this and format it and so on. While also doing whatever you need to do to keep a roof over your head, food in your stomach, and power to your computer that you're using to write. Time is not on our side.
But I vehemently say you'd have an audience for an original work of fantasy slash sci-fi and more than enough of them would be willing to give you a book or two to set things up.
You do not have to make the best sellers list to make a profit. Again, you can't make all of the money from one product and that is where the big name publishers and such fail. they only want all of the money and won't settle for enough of the money. Maybe there is a big name publishing company out there that doesn't have that toxic mindset, but they'd probably be hard to find.
Beyond that though I do know there are many smaller publishing companies that deal with on-line stories that take up new i.P.s all of the time and at the very least you could always go the Royal Road to Amazon e-book route**, and Amazon is a pretty big name company to put it lightly.
**For those that do not know Royal Road is a free-to-read website where authors can post their works and if said works get popular enough they get picked up by Amazon and made into for-sale e-books. The story on Royal Road becomes a "stub" for a while, where the sections for sale on Amazon are not available for free any more but the rest of the story is still free-to-read. I am not sure what the profit margin is for the authors but I know a lot of people have made the cut. Many of the ones I know of are generic fantasy, System Fantasy, and Cultivation settings with all of them being original I.P.s as per Royal Road's policies.
The main problem, beyond the time sink aspect, is of course making it Legally Distinct (tm) enough. And that might just be too much work if you don't feel as passionate about it as an original work as you do about it as a fan-fiction. Your passion in fan-fiction does not have to be turned in to an original work to have value, be it monetary of artistic. That's a failing a lot of people these days have, that you have to be making money off your passion. While that's all well and good sometimes you just want to do this thing for fun. And it really sucks that we live in a capitalistic world where people can't just follow their passions.
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I'm totally going to be "that guy" but the setting (and weapons in said setting) is one word: Dragonlance. I am not sure if this was a autocorrupt issue or not.
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OK, I corrected the spelling because that sort of thing annoys me.
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The one I know of is I Thought I Was Toast
He turned his family of bat pony OCs into Gargoyles
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The two stories I know of were eminently suited to filing off the serial numbers because they were already AUs and almost nothing that was actually meaningful or important to the characters and plot necessitated MLP.
Yes, the ones where I have seen the suggestion of “filing off the numbers” and reworking things into an original offering were all AUs which took the familiar characters and their dynamics and dropped them into new settings/narratives. So those ‘merely’ required dealing with any lingering pony aspects, renaming things, and maybe identifying areas where the story was over-reliant on audience familiarity.
Estee’s work is very much in the show’s continuity, so there’s no easy separation to be had. That’s not to say that their stories couldn’t be mined for great material that could be recycled into an original framework (like, say, someone who has achieved superpowers only to be horrified at the lengths others will go to follow in those footsteps, or the meek animal lover who is so familiar with death they can reign in a literal god of chaos) but that’s just shy of suggesting that they simply write a whole new original work anyway… it’s way more of an undertaking than a simple edit of existing work.
I have no doubt that they could do some good stuff though.
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Notably, this is also essentially the case with 50 Shades of Grey.
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I would hope so.