Time for an interview · 9:42pm February 18th
FiMFic user It Is All Hell asked me to do an interview, and I assume he's going to make a series out of these. In an interesting twist, he asked me to post it on my blog rather than have him post it on his. Assuming he does more interviews, I hope he'll post a compilation of links somewhere so that people who enjoyed reading one by an author they like can find more of them. EDIT: here is where they'll be archived.
And away we go!
1. I recently proposed the idea that there have been three eras of Fimfiction, at least: the first was the first half of the 2010s, the second was the second half, and where we are now is the third era. Do you agree, and how would you describe the progression/history of the site?
Hm, without some context about what you think defines those eras, it's hard to say, since I can come up with my own that might or might not fit those dates. I do think there were some distinctly different eras.
2010-2011 saw the show become very popular, and the fanfiction community grew quite large. At first, there was no central repository of it. People mostly wrote in GDocs and shared links through image boards. Fans had a voracious appetite to read whatever was out there, and you could get instant fame by being the first to have some landmark story idea. Many things that are considered fandom classics came out in this era, and many of them have been done better since, but they didn't get as much attention. Because of the lack of a central place to find fanfiction, readers relied on places like Equestria Daily to point them out. And at first, there was a small enough amount of it that EqD basically listed whatever they were aware of. That soon got out of hand, and it became necessary to post only the best of what was sent in.
And now we get to the meat of the answer, since the question was about FiMFiction specifically and not fanfiction in general. Now there was a central place, with a good search function, lots of ways to tag stories by character, genre, and content. It was much easier for readers to find what they wanted, and readership exploded. Any story you posted was virtually guaranteed 500 views just by existing. Get any sort of feature or recommendation, and 1000 was easy to reach. This is probably the 2011-2014 time frame. And over these two eras combined, there was a flourishing community of editors helping people improve their writing skills. The /fic/ group on ponychan had existed from near the beginning, and numerous FiMFiction groups like WRITE popped up, where people could submit stories to get intensive critiques on them.
Post-2014, a number of disparate factors came into play. There was a perception that the show was in somewhat of a decline in quality, as well as constant speculation about how much longer it could last. Thus people started to drift away from the fandom and treat it with a kind of fatalism. At least that's what it seemed like to me. The fandom was still large, and there was still a massive amount of fanfiction being created, but readers seemed to care less about taking recommendations of what was higher quality, authors cared less about getting critiques on their work, and interest inevitably started to bleed over to whatever the next rising show was. I took a shine to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power myself. Resources for getting critiques didn't go away altogether, but imo, nothing worthwhile was left by the end of this era, at least not for any sort of dedicated groups. There are a few individuals I would endorse for such, but only one of those is still doing it afaik. Speaking of the site itself and not necessarily the fandom, the possibility arose that FiMFiction might expand to become a general fanfiction host. It'd certainly be an improvement over the mess that is fanfiction.net. But that never materialized, so first Wattpad and then AO3 kind of inherited that function.
Once the show ended, things became kind of static, and honestly, that was a surprise. A lot of the people who'd hung on to the bitter end stayed around, and for all who left, there was enough of an influx of new fans to offset them, plus the advent of G5 brought in a new group of fans. It's heartening to see new authors continuing to show up, and not just ones writing G5, either, as well as some of those new writers being rather good. It does feel to me like it's almost come full circle again, such that popularity goes with who's prolific, which doesn't reliably correlate with skill.
Through all that, though, is a thread that readers aren't always looking for skill. Reviewers have ever been exasperated by why this lackluster story gets so much love or why nobody's reading this overlooked gem.
2. A recently published story misspelled its main character's name in both the title and description. In a blog post, Ice Star ripped to shreds a story that represents a portion of Fimfiction dedicated to displaying kinks and fetishes without even trying to do so artistically. There is, in my opinion, almost no interesting cover art on this site. WHERE DID WE GO WRONG? No, I understand that it was probably always like this, but is there anything to be done?
That's a lot packed into one question. It also seems close to another question about clop you asked later, so I'll defer the response on that part until then. The typo issue is largely writer apathy, which I've already talked a bit about. Or sometimes genuine ignorance, like thinking Apple Bloom's name is canonically a single word. (It doesn't help that it was spelled that way at least once in the credits, but I refuse to believe that's where such authors are getting it from.)
I can't claim to know why Ice Star went after that story in particular, but yes, it's always been the case that there are two ways to address any topic: appeal to the lowest common denominator or try to do it in a well-thought-out way. I would have to think that there are stories out there that deal with kinks and fetishes in a realistic, respectful manner, but it's also usually easy to tell what the author's intentions were. Comedies will normally go for easy laughs about it, and for serious stories, it should be quickly evident whether it's that subject matter first with a story cobbled around it or a story first that happens to have that subject matter in it. Not that I can tell you where to find the good ones. It's rare I read an M-rated story. Some of the reviewers around here do, though, so whenever the likes of Paul Asaran, Present Perfect, Loganberry, TCC56, or Ghost Mike make a recommendation of one, I'd assume it does the latter.
Cover art is a different thing. I have way too many stories to get custom art for all of them, so I normally look for a relevant show screenshot. Failing that, I find some fan art and ask the artist if I can use it. I've only commissioned art once. (I was supposed to have commissioned art one other time as a contest prize, but the artist repeatedly put me off for well over a year until it became obvious he'd never deliver. I'd love to tell you which one... but I'm not going to be a dick about it.) To me, actual interesting art isn't really the type you'd find as a story cover anyway. Take someone like Jowybean. Incredibly detailed backgrounds, unusual settings... that's not going to match what's in a pre-existing story. It may inspire an author to write something that does use all those elements, but still, I'd be surprised if it matched up that often.
What would it take to get the kind of art you mention? Hm. Just my opinion, but I'd think it'd have to be a case of the artist having read the story so that they have their own internal vivid mental picture of what's going on in it, yet that image also being front-cover material—that is, it does a good job of giving an overall sense of who's in the story, what it's about, and what tone it'll take. That's a lot of things to have come together.
In short, I don't think really interesting art is the kind that'll line up with a story very often.
So what is to be done? For the kink/fetish stuff, I don't think anything needs to be done. If you're judicious about what you read, you'll find what you want (and stay away from the rest, unless you just like making yourself angry, I guess, which might in itself be a fetish...), and on the cover art, it might just be a mismatch of expectations. I don't personally feel like cover art is mostly lackluster.
3. I have this fantasy of being involved in creating the most quality porn video, where the plot, dialogue, acting, aesthetic, etc. are all impeccable. Is there/could there be a Fimfiction equivalent, or is all clop destined to be some degree of trash?
I know some of the reviewers I mentioned have given high ratings to clop stories before, so yes, they're out there. I tried writing one myself once as an experiment (under an alt, and I'm not telling which one it was) to see if I could do one that was a genuinely good story first and just happened to have clop in it. I'm limited to what comments were left on it for deciphering reader reactions. If they're indicative, then no, most readers don't care about the story and just want to see the hot stuff. It was well-received, but nobody praised it for the narrative. I think I remember darf doing the same thing and getting pretty much the same result. There are good authors like GaPJaxie and Cold in Gardez who ventured into that territory regularly (the latter in a more deliberately exploratory manner), and they're both authors who will not sacrifice a quality narrative for that.
So yes, there is very well-written clop out there, in the sense that there's a compelling narrative to the story and it qualifies as being good independent of the presence of clop. If you look up respected authors and see what M-rated things they've written or take reviewer recommendations of some they've enjoyed, then you can definitely find it.
4. As a fandom OG, Equestria Daily OG, and fan fiction OG, how do you think your experience as a member of (the relevant corners of) this fandom differs and has differed from the average member's?
I don't quite go all the way back to the beginning. I didn't start watching the show until just before S2, and I don't think I hit my stride as a writer until 2012. On a chronological list of people brought on board to be Equestria Daily pre-readers, I'm probably in the back half, maybe in the middle at best. But I'll tackle those separately.
To the fandom, I don't know that my experience is different from most others. People who came in later still typically went back and watched all the old episodes from the beginning, so I didn't have any more or less exposure than them. Maybe I had more of an attachment to earlier seasons. Probably anyone new to a fandom has some rose-colored glasses about what part they experienced first, since that's when it was all new and exciting. So someone who arrived during S3, then later went back to watch S1-2, might prefer S3. What helps is that at least through the first few seasons, the characters evolved. Twilight acts differently in S1 than she does in S3 (becoming an alicorn is only partly a cause of this), so it keeps different early seasons with a distinct, fresh feel.
With regard to Equestria Daily, it just means I have an insider appreciation of how much work it takes to make the blog happen, and it makes me wish people were less reactionary to it. As I mentioned in question 1, EqD necessarily had to move to a model where we only featured the best fanfiction (we wouldn't have to so much anymore, but we, at least the pre-readers, feel like relaxing our standards now would be disrespectful to the stories we turned away at the height of the fandom but that would pass a lower threshold now). But of course that'll lead to differences of opinion over what qualifies as "best." You can never satisfy everyone, and authors mad at being rejected, readers mad at their favorite stories being rejected (presuming the author disclosed that to be the case), and both mad that they felt some other stories we did feature were clearly inferior. Some can shrug and say YMMV. Others decide we're behind a vast conspiracy to promote only the narrow categories that we personally prefer. Take as an example The Royal Guard, which arose as an alternative recommendation source to EqD and aspired to be transparent in a way that would head off those criticisms, then of course became subject to such themselves. No matter what you do, including posting everything that gets submitted, you'll never be correct.
The only big difference I'd cite as a writer is having access to all the talented reviewing groups that used to be around early in the fandom. As I've said before, learning to review makes you better as a writer. It's easier to see mistakes in others' writing, since you can naturally mentally fill in the gaps of your own, so you develop the ability to be more objective about it, then see the same mistakes in your writing that you were warning everyone else about. I wish all writers could have had that experience, but it takes a lot of work, the fandom explosion meant that demand far outstripped supply, and then burned-out reviewers gave up doing it.
5. If you had to ship Rarity with another Mane Six character, who and why? For me, it's Fluttershy. I can imagine Rarity being obsessed with how effortlessly and unknowingly beautiful Fluttershy is. I can also imagine Rarity getting burned out on trying to be the centre of attention and, as a result, spending some time living the quiet life, and how hard Fluttershy would relate to her in those burnout periods.
I'm not someone who's attached to particular ships. I could be convinced of Rarity with just about any character. That goes along with the point of the Most Dangerous Game contests from long ago, that a good author can take the most tired of cliches and write it in a fresh, compelling way.
That said, there are a couple that'd conceptually take more to convince me. For all that there was a cute long-running Raridash comic, I have trouble buying that one since I think they'd just constantly annoy each other, unless you take it along a more comedic route and write a goofy Rarity. And for Raripie, I have trouble seeing where the match is.
The only Rarity Mane Six ship I've written before is Rarilight, and only two or three times at that, but I do have a Rarijack concept or two I might yet get to. (As an aside, there was a trend some years ago to give ships names other than a blending of their names, more picking a common phrase, or play on one, where one word represented each character. Rarijack was called Ranch Dressing, for instance, and I remember coming up with Quiet Riot for Fluttercord.)
Why do those work for me? I'd place Rarity and Twilight at a similar education level, and for all that Twilight wants to be an everyman, she did have a privileged upbringing, so they can both be a little elitist (Rarity deliberately and Twilight inadvertently), but Twilight needs Rarity's help navigating the social aspect of it. Plus they're both very detail-oriented perfectionists.
On the theory that opposites attract, Rarijack fits the bill, but I still want more explanation than the cliche. I think Rarity would find that she can let her hair down around Applejack and finds it reassuring that someone finds her desirable even when she's not prim and proper, along with the relaxation of not having to be so hyper-self-aware all the time. While Applejack is very down to earth, I could also see her harboring a small desire to see what the high life is about. Just to sample it, not to commit to it. But she's timid about it, and Rarity provides the perfect vehicle to experience that, plus an understanding guide to gently usher her along. I also see Rarity appreciating nonstandard examples of beauty.
I do like your explanation of why Rarishy works, and I could completely buy that as a basis for their relationship.
6. I got a Fluttershy tattoo in 2019 (although it's so abstract you'd never tell that that's what it is). Have you paid tribute to your favourite pony or the show in any way that isn't a Fimfiction story?
I've got some merch, skewed toward Rarity and Derpy. Fan-made plushies are notoriously expensive (and I'm not saying it's unjustified—I know the amount of time and work that goes into them), and Derpy's the only character I've indulged in buying one of (and got an incredibly good bargain on it). I toyed with writing some fan music early on, but it takes me too long to do that. I've drawn a little bit of my own cover art. I also got a Derpy t-shirt way back in 2012 that's nicely obscure. It's just her coat color with her cutie mark down on one hip, and you'd pretty much have to be a fan of the show yourself to recognize what it was, so I've worn it out in public (yeah, I'm largely a closet brony). Unfortunately, it's finally starting to get a couple tiny holes in it, so I've curtailed wearing it to preserve it better.
That's really it, though. Certainly nothing approaching the commitment of a tattoo.
7. You mentioned in your Royal Canterlot Library interview that you wrote/write classical music. Compare your approaches to writing music versus stories. I used to compose experimental music (and still occasionally compose piano loops), and for me, writing music = pretty spontaneous, whereas writing stories = totally mapped out. I also didn't edit music much - I'd just start composing, then seven hours later, I'd have a completed song - whereas it often took me days to edit stories.
I've done both methods with stories and music. With stories, I more often don't start on the actual drafting until I have the entire story outlined. I'll sometimes make exceptions to this for Jinglemas exchange stories in the interest of time. The only one where I notably deviated from that is "Duet in the Folk Style." As I said in the author's notes for it, there are some people who like to "let the story write itself," and I tried it with that one. Usually you see people say that for very long-form things, especially ones that lean heavily on slice of life, and that's what I had there. But 4 chapters in, I got stuck, then came back to finish it later once I'd thought of an ending. I concluded I can't really write that way (and also largely concluded that authors who do often don't have any sort of plan at all, which can show in the story feeling directionless or inconsistent in focus).
As to music, I remember hearing that one composer (Schubert, I think, but I didn't go looking to verify) wouldn't ink the first note of a piece until he had the entire thing complete in his head. That's mostly how I write music, to a degree, at least for the melodic line, but I often then go for the chords/harmonies in the moment as I'm putting down that melody. The main exception is if I'm writing something programmatic. For instance, say I want to set the text of a poem to music. I'll go more line by line and alter the music's sound to suit what the poem is saying. I think that may make those pieces sound a little discontinuous, but as it's tough to judge your own writing, it's also tough to judge your own music. Another rare exception is if I'm writing lyrics myself, in which case, I may hit a pause in the words, then go back to write the music up to that point. I'm rather slow at writing music, though. As an example, I had fun writing a Bach-style chorale and fugue for organ some years ago (a couple people in these environs have heard it, including GaPJaxie and Present Perfect). It took about 3 months to write, and it's only 5 minutes long. I used to write music competitively back in high school, but you had a whole year to come up with something. (Well, technically you had about half a year at most, between them releasing the prompt and the due date, but I'd often start well before that, then retcon a reason why the prompt inspired me to write it.)
8. You know I like you... but why the actual fuck are the rock's sides cropped out of your avatar?
There's very little of it that's outside the border, and given that the yellow/orange part is the pertinent stuff, I zoomed the camera in until it filled the vertical dimension of the photo and cut down on how much boring white carpet is visible behind it. I also don't have specialized equipment to photograph things that are very small. I can't remember if I had to for this photo, but I often have to hold my jeweler's loupe up to the camera lens. That really fixes how big a field of view I get in focus, and there's not much I can do about it. So it's not cropped, it's just how I took the photo. I can send you a shot of the whole thing if it'd make your day,
An interesting interview, though the questions feel a bit all over the place in terms of style and subject matter.
Always a fan of learning more about my friends though so I'd call it a success. n_n
It's odd to see an interview for you on cloppy stuff, but hey, I guess that's what makes it unique! (In part, obviously aside from your own personal observations)
This... felt less like an interview and more him wanting you to validate his opinions and/or talk about himself. Almost every question contains, "I think this," and talking about what he likes and has done. That's bad interviewing.
5768892
Hm, I hadn't thought of it like that. He likes the Barcast interviews, and the user-submitted questions can often get that way, so maybe that's where it's coming from? I didn't find it off-putting personally, but I know nothing about good interviewing procedure.
For Q3, I think it partly depends on what you include under "clop", and that differs from reader to reader. For example, back in 2017 I gave my highest (five-star) rating to A Hoof-ful of Dust's When the Levee Breaks. In my review I said this: "I really don't think it's appropriate to call this fic clop, as it's not: it's a story that happens to be full of sex." It's M-rated and that rating is justified, but I prefer to think of it as an erotic story rather than plain ol' clop.
I enjoyed reading this, though there were times where I felt what Jake felt, in terms of this guy designing his questions to try and guarantee a certain reaction, or at least make it more likely. Of course, as noted, it could just be how he’s picked up how to do these sort of interviews, and there’s no necessary wrong or right way to do it.
There was little outright nee to me here, though getting your spin on the different eras, the BTS of working at EqD, and others bits and bobs was good stuff all the same. Cheers for that!
that was wild
5768892
Yeah, before I sent Pascoite the questions, I wondered whether including some of my own opinions was right. Ultimately, though, my commitment to reciprocity led me to leave them in there - I'm uncomfortable with initiating a situation where I have someone lay bare their soul, and then I'm just safe from all scrutiny in the shadows. Communication is also very taxing for me, so instead of having a proper back-and-forth with Pascoite, I sent him all the questions at once. That's another reason I included some of my own opinions - to salvage some of the dialogue feel that was precluded by my communicative difficulties. Maybe that makes it less of an interview, and more of a semi-conversation, ha. 🙂
Yo, you're fucking bonkers, my dude - I had no idea you'd go full PhD mode. Thank you, though, and thanks to you and Perfect for following me. And no, I would not like a photo of your rock - it doesn't have any, uh... "sedimental" value to me, LOL.
Also, to anyone reading: Ice Star's loved ones are in trouble, so if you have any money to spare, please donate.
5768888
I see what you mean, although I'll say that the interview is actually very structured. The first half is more about Fimfiction, and the second is more about Pascoite - it goes from broad to specific. That's even the case within the halves, as the first question in each half is the broadest, and the fourth question in each half is the most specific.
I only had maybe three criteria for the questions. Is it something that I, personally, am interested in having answered? Is it something that I haven't seen asked elsewhere? Is it relevant to Pascoite? If it turned out that no one but me was interested in the questions I came up with, that'd be a little unfortunate, but also totally fine with me. Like, I didn't do this interview for the MLP fandom or Pascoite's followers or to get followers or whatever - I did an interview because I felt like it, and I chose Pascoite because I like him and first got in contact with him years ago. That's all there is to it, ha.
5768903
Yeah, semantics can get into it. To me, clop covers all explicit sexual content in ponyfic, while others may well differentiate that clop is specifically the lowbrow end of it.
I appreciate your responses were hopeful! Acknowledging new fans and that their contributions are worthwhile as well. You'd mention the reviewing process of EQD and you explained it from a place of understanding while addressing others concerns. Even clop you were respectful that although you didn't partake you saw it could be done tactfully and even redirected interested parties to other authors who might offer recommendations. It was nice to learn a little about you and your insights so thanks for sharing your interview with us :D