Where I'm Calling From · 12:57pm March 11th
Introduction: A Confession
I lied.
Well, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It would be more accurate to say that I opted for a partial truth. In the words of Carlos Ruiz Zafon, “Perhaps, as always, a lie was what would most resemble the truth”1—and in this fashion, I did lie.
The lie I refer to is the one I made in this last blog post: when I said I would be logging off of FIMFic for the time being. As you can see, I didn’t exactly stick with that. I logged back in to change my profile—it’s now a kirin, and not just a normal OC, but what I suppose you would call a “kirinsona” of sorts—but also to glance at the people I’m still following, just to see what they’ve been up to. I also occasionally looked through a few group posts, though I did not interact with any.
"m6 Rarity" by mirroredsea (dead source)
In my lurking, I also saw that FIMFiction continues to have an outpouring of stories. I was surprised, though perhaps I should not have been, to see a fair number of Generation 5 stories. Not all that surprising was the continued additions to Generation 4. Some new long fics have emerged, but, for the most part, one-shots or short stories retain the advantage in numbers. I even saw a couple of new writers get featured.
But I never looked much deeper than that. I didn’t want to. I logged in a few times to check up on things, but then I would log out and go about my days. I noticed, as this was happening, a sense of freedom. It occurred to me that I had spent so much time on this site, feeling oddly pressured to interact with it. I don’t think it became destructive or addictive, but it’s one of those things you don’t notice you were doing until you cut yourself off from it.
And yet, it seems I’ve decided to return. Understandably, the question becomes: why?
Before I answer that, I think it’s worth talking a little about what I’ve been doing since I took a break.
The Post-Golden Age Audio Drama Experience
Something that I never got into in my earlier fandom forays were audio dramas. The reason for that is really simple: I am a book lover first, and everything else second. I got into the fandom primarily by reading fanfiction, but I did not express much of an interest in engaging with the audio drama community. Big names like Scribbler and TheLostNarrator were things I encountered tangential to their products, and many of the biggest audio dramas had already been completed or were left unfinished by the time I started to get more and more sucked into the world of pony.
There’s some irony in that. After all, I work on an audio drama production myself—Elements of Justice. That I should have no prior experience in that medium yet have devoted more time here than I have on any other creative project is not lost on me. That I should do so without any prior script-writing experience is doubly of great note. And yet, here I am, the current Team Leader of the Writers, churning out script after script.
In the process of learning how to write a script, though, I’ve started becoming curious about other audio drama productions. Luckily, I am friends with a couple of people who have experience with the “golden age” of MLP audio dramas outside of courtroom-antics and the like, and so, sometime before my sabbatical, we actually began a few watch parties looking through some of the older and apparently well-regarded ones.
The three most notable ones were these:
- Bride of Discord
- Daughter of Discord
- Remembrance
From my understanding, both Bride and Daughter were considered some of the best in the audio drama community. If not the first, they were among the earliest to use artwork into their productions, such that it’d be more accurate to classify them as audio/visual dramas and not, basically, a radio play. Both featured prominent voice talent who would go on to voice in other productions (interestingly enough, good ol’ DaWilstonator/Thespio voiced Discord, and now he’s voicing EoJ’s judge!), and both also incorporated songs in their videos, thus becoming musicals, complete with both custom music but, more frequently, ponified songs. Remembrance, while coming later, continued that tradition. My only experience with it was watching the esteemed Argodaemon’s SFM animation, on which this audio drama is based.
In a way, watching these old dramas has been a telescope into the past, allowing me to examine the cultural “landscape” of the MLP fandom from the position of a relative “newcomer.” It’s given me insight into what the early fandom appreciated, what they didn’t appreciate, what they predicted (if anything) of the show or even the fandom at large, and, more importantly, what they missed or failed to see. The same could be said of the two other dramas mentioned—they, like artifacts, “were memoranda of our past errors, and at some point they were also prophecies.”2
To talk about any one of these in any more detail, would require writing up a separate blog post; so, in the interest of time, I’ll refrain from doing that. I may want to, in the future, but I admit some trepidation felt towards that prospect—what good would it do to review something that old?
The Review Game
More importantly, however, watching them allowed me something I haven’t been doing for a while: to critically engage with a story and reflect on the experience of “ingesting it.” I went to college with the idea that I’d become a critic, and while I’ve changed my mind, I graduated armed with knowledge in textual analysis and close-reading, which has aided me in the past when it came to reviews.
I like deconstructing a story and talking about what worked, what didn’t, and speculating why that is the case or providing an idea of what could have been done. Perhaps for this reason I was drawn, way, way earlier, into the analysis community—and why I’ve consequently shifted away from it as the years wore on.
Suffice to say, I miss doing that. I miss talking about stories in this wayPerhaps, then, on the eve of my return, I am thinking of returning to that, in some way. Only this time, instead of doing it as part of a group, I’d be freelancing it, maybe picking one story out of a bunch and talking about what I got out of it.
I’m reminded of a very old post I did where I spoke at length about the opening of one story I came across a while ago. In the vague notion circulating around my head, that’s sort of what this kind of “reviewing” would be. Less about giving scores (and more about analyzing a work, criticizing it constructively—approaching it, in effect, not as a reviewer, but, really, as a critic.
Is there even an audience for this here? I don’t know. I’ve sometimes been accused of reading too much into fanfiction, and perhaps rightfully so—I know that many write just for casual fun and do not like being picked apart or deconstructed, or having their “silly stories” (which I do not say pejoratively) being exposed to the open air.
Then again, it would be wrong for me to embark on such an endeavor with the goal of appealing to an audience, rather than serving the interest of the art itself.
The long and short of it is: I’m considering getting into “reviews” myself, if only to give myself an excuse to actually read ponyfics again, but also to generate, in my small way, that community of intelligent discussion over stories that had, long ago, appealed to me. There are, no doubt, parameters I’d need to iron out—timing, scheduling, and, of course, what to read (thankfully, though, a couple of friends sent me some fanfic recs, so those may prove to be some of the first ones I do read and review)—and so I will not promise this will ever come to fruition.
But it’s a nice thought all the same.
Other Creative Endeavors
Watching audio dramas wasn’t the only thing I’ve been up to.
Sometime after my break announcement, I was invited, alongside a couple other team members, to play Jackbox with the Out of Our Manes podcast, who, interestingly enough, have long been fans of Elements of Justice. It was a lot of fun—a welcome sabbatical from the constant work of EoJ.
Speaking of EoJ, we’ve gotten both 3-1: Hindsight and Foresight and 3-2: Skeletons In The Closet out in record time. From what I’ve seen of previous audio dramas, most have a gap of several months between episodes. We’re aiming for one new episode or one new piece of story content per month, which is both ambitious, and a little daunting.
Yet, it appears that it’s paying off. Response has been quite positive, especially to the last episode. The last scene especially has gotten people theorizing and re-considering what they’d already seen, and honestly, I couldn’t be happier.
I’ve also been a part of two Director’s Commentaries for those episodes, which can be found here and here, and most recently, I was on an EoJ TALKS to discuss my experience on this production. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been a member of EoJ for almost five years now—that’s longer than I’ve been in college!
And finally, something new: I’ve started making non-EoJ music. Admittedly, this has been a less-focused creative endeavor—understandably I’ve been focusing on other things over it—but it’s been nice to step away from the usual kinds of music I make and focus more on personal projects. I had in mind that I could feasibly upload them onto a YouTube channel of my own and follow in the footsteps of, say, MelodicBrony, Marcus Warner, even RedSpark and some contemporary orchestral musicians, but I would need to get a decent video editing program (and learn it, too), as well as, obviously, have more than a handful of tracks done and ready.
But it’s a new skill, and I have found that when you are in a creative rut, taking up a new hobby can help bolster the old.
And speaking of the old…
The Writing Life
I have been writing!
Of course, to admit that feels a little scary. I have been writing, yes, but who’s to say I won’t suddenly stop? What if the well dries out or I get bored? But these are the same old fears every writer has faced. One ought to simply take the victory as is and say: I have been writing.
What have I been writing? Well, mostly two things: a short story and something that’s approaching the form of a novel. Both are fanfics—and let me tell you, it feels wonderful to be writing them at all. One of them is even an old idea that I’m properly trying to flesh out, and—knock on wood—it may turn out to be good—after editing, that is.
I can’t promise when any of these will be ready. As you may know, I’m meticulous when it comes to the process of any single story. “The Trail of Your Failures Will Lead You to Memory” took several different drafts before it was finished, and it’s short compared to most of my other work.
What I can promise, however, is that I am having fun again. I realize that that was partly what was getting in the way—I had “forgotten” to have fun for myself when it came to writing. Sure, I enjoy writing for EoJ and leading the team and generating scripts and all that, but in a way, that’s a job I took up and volunteered for. It’s not really my creative endeavor so much as one I am contributing to. And with regards to fanfic projects, I also realized I was trying to write to affect something in FIMFic’s audience, rather than focusing on my own sense of story first and foremost.
This, of course, runs the risk of alienating the “average fanfic reader,” but I’m of the opinion that if you write a story well enough, you can win over most people. Sometimes that’s all you need.
"A. K. Yearling" by Zwagyzonk
What Next?
I’m not sure. I doubt I’ll ever be as active as I used to be when I first joined FIMFiction, but honestly, that’s probably for the best. I want to focus a lot more on my personal life and, honestly, it may be better for my mental energies to remain a partial lurker, reading the occasional fanfic, commenting on an occasional post, and doing the good work that is writing.
The nice thing about this partial break, though, was that I got to see that the fandom, at least on this site, is still ongoing. I’m reminded of a sentiment I heard sometime around the end of G4: “There will still be ponies.” I suppose even that saccharine statement remains true.
So yeah, I’m back, I guess. Happy to be here all the same. 
Notes
1. Zafon, Carlos Ruiz. “Men in Gray.” The City of Mist.
2. Vargas, Juan Gabriel. The Shape of the Ruins.
Well, I'd be interested in more analytical reviews in the style of an academic essay. The key is to pick larger stories with character arcs and thematic depth to unwrap, and not just, say, basic slice-of-life or comedy fics.
Vibes🗣
5771935
The funny thing, of course, is that you don't always know if a story has thematic depth or character arcs until you read them.
But I think it would be a fun exercise in discretion. I'll have to see, experiment, that sort of thing.
Time marches on as our interests wax and wane. At least you've been communicative about yourself. I just vanished for five years and then came back promising to write a book that had been bugging me ever since I left. One thing I've discovered is this: you can always come back to friends. Hope you take care of yourself and get that life balance you want. It took me five years and moving countries to do so.
5771938
Jarvy! Welcome back!
For what it’s worth, I’d lap up any review/analysis style posts you make. And also new stories, you always have a personal goal with everything you write. Whatever form you take in being around again in a more limited capacity then before, I welcome it, bud.
And I don’t just say that off my current burnout on Ponyfic reviews myself either: I’ve always liked your analysis-type posts, whatever form they may take.
Like you say, write for yourself and put in the work, and the people will come.
5771944
I appreciate it! If I do go through with reviews, I think and would hope I can do something unique by analyzing rather than rating. It might be more helpful to writers, more than a simple number (though I know many fanfic writers don't care for that treatment).
I do sympathize with you feeling burnt out. If you need to take a break just to "reset," I would encourage you to. It helped me.
Intriguing!
Do you have any preexisting examples of this type of writing by you that you can link to, that we can read for a preview?
5771990
If you mean previous reviews, there's this example linked in the post itself. Aside from that, I did a number of reviews for My Little Reviews & Feedback and Reviewers' Mansion.
For some specifics, I can provide the following:
* Friendship is Magic - Extended Cut
* The Haunting of Carousel Boutique
* The First Second of Eternity
5772076
Thanks! This is extremely helpful.
(I'm a bit annoyed by one thing that I don't think is in any way your fault, though: "My Little Reviewers and Feedback" seems to have dumped your reviewed stories list into the same folder with a lot of other peoples'.
)