Happy I'm-Sure-Everypony-and-Their-Pet-Dragon-Has-a-Blog-Post-Tonight! · 9:04am Jan 1st, 2013
Many happy returns to you all!
My new years resolution is more pony. I intend to pony harder, pony longer, pony more vigorously, and pony with still more suggestive adverbs as I come up with them. I only got in on the whole deal in the summer of this last year, so with a full year ahead of me, I now mean to make up for lost time. Prepare yourselves to get ponied.
Now that Of Vows Unbroken and Truths Spoken has had a couple days to settle, I find myself interested by the results. Firstly, I was surprised to find that, despite a fair number of upvotes, Vows has the highest number of downvotes of any of my stories. At 67/7, it has nearly as many thumbs down as both my darkfics combined. Being blind to the comparative quality of my own writing from one story to the next, I am unsure of what to make of this data. Perhaps the wider exposure I am enjoying thanks to my recent boost in watchers means that a proportionately higher number of people for whom the story doesn't do it for them will end up reading it?
But enough looking back. It's time to look forward! The Wendersnaven is rolling along smoothly enough. Soon I'll have a draft ready to shoot off to my pre-reader, and then I'll have a nice little Twi Shy fic to call my own. I know I keep promising in my blog posts to have Chapter 3 of Z-Clop up anywhere from "soon" to "eventually," but the way it's coming now, my best guess is "soonventually." Chapter 4 of A Teatime Visit, however, is proving much easier to write. Depending on how frustrated I get with trying to make a threesome rhyme, I'll probably be able to finish that one during the span of time while I wait for my pre-reader to have a look at The Wendersnaven.
Out of curiosity, are any of you interested in seeing a cloppy follow-up to Stubborn as Ponies? I have the beginnings of an idea for one, but I won't bother putting much priority on it if people think it'd be a bad idea.
One last thing while we're on the subject of SaP: if you have seen the light and now follow the truth of Apple Pie, fortune is with you, for there is now an Apple Pie group here on FIMFiction, founded by none other than yours truly. If you've any love for the pairing, I would be pleased to have you join us. Our current membership goal is to get bigger than the Apple Spike group. Ambitious, I know, especially considering the boost they've no doubt had from the latest episode.
I hope you all have a great year!
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Have a happy new year =)
Also, don't think too hard about the numbers. You'll work your brain to death trying to figure it out. =)
It was a good story, but while it wasn't a Mature-Tragic-Dark-Sad fic, it also wasn't all warm and fuzzy. Some people knee-jerk on that. You'd think the Sad tag would be a clue, but no.
SaP clop: no objections here! Don't think I've ever read non-crackfic Apple Pie clop, actually.
Apple Pie v/s Apple Spike: does nobody else find non-aged-up Spike shipped with adult ponies creepy? Especially since the show seems to be writing him younger lately?
Happy new years, you!
On downvotes: You'll go crazy (like me) if you start trying to "analyze" this without any real data points. If they are downvotes without any comments that suggest the why of it, you'll learn nothing. Or, more to the point, unless your pre-readers and trusted ones have pointed out to you weaknesses in the story that you can say "Yeah, fair enough, that's a glaring weakness", it's safe to assume they're votes for content. I haven't read the fic myself since I don't do Sad, but nor will I downvote it because it's not my favorite type of fic; not everyone observes these rules.
That's not to say you should dismiss downvotes. That way lies a very dangerous mentality of course. I'm simply suggesting nothing good can come from speculating when people don't have the good grace to comment on why they downvote. I am happy to know why some downvoted Well Grounded for this exact reason.
>But enough looking back. It's time to look forward! The Wendersnaven is rolling along smoothly enough. Soon I'll have a draft ready to shoot off to my pre-reader, and then I'll have a nice little Twi Shy fic to call my own.
Yesyesyesyesyes, can't wait!
I'm not very much into clop so I would be giving that a miss, however--
>I have the beginnings of an idea for one, but I won't bother putting much priority on it if people think it'd be a bad idea.
The idealist in me feels compelled to mention that if you write (or don't) something because of popular opinion, well. That either makes me sorry to hear it, or it makes me respect that you have a better ability to cater to a market than I.
Not sure which.
668990 Mmm, sticky. And yeah, I'm not gonna think too hard on the numbers, it just seems odd that more people would be upset over a story with emotionally damaging circumstances in it than there are over a story in which ponies are physically harming each other. I wonder if it says something about cultural desensitization to violence...
669273 I don't like Spike shipping for just this reason. We don't know much about how dragons age, but given that they were concerned that the one dragon's nap would last for a hundred years, it seems a safe bet that without any kind of time-wimey stuff, and barring clearly unstable things like greed-growth, he's going to be a baby dragon for pretty much the entire lifespan of everypony in the show, sans the Princesses. Hmmm... Spike-lestia...
669289 Oh, whether I write it or not doesn't hinge solely on what people say about the idea. If the beginnings of ideas sprout into full-blown inspiration, I'll write it even if people are vehemently against it. But all other things being equal, it's just one among a whole lot of things that I could be working on, and a bit of input from my readers would be helpful in setting my priorities.
Vows has downvotes because of me and my six other troll accounts!
Vows has downvotes because of its content. My guess is that at least a couple of the votes were just people who read the description and didn't like what they saw. You don't really deserve any downvotes so you're free to dwell on the injustice if you like. I however, absolutely deserve every downvote I receive, so I can't get too upset about them.
I'm down for some ApplePie clop. I'll even upvote it. Just don't make it too hot, I'm on the nofap challenge.
I've probably said it before, but I'm looking forward to getting my hooves on this Twi-Shy story. No rush though. Uh, unless you want to.
Anyway, happy new year and good luck with all the ponying.
669610
You say cultural desensitization, I say unconscious feeding of the shadow through gratuity...
Besides, the people here are downvoting less because they disagree with what they see, but more because they agree too much with what they do, and this just sort of gets in the way. It's complicated. I don't understand it myself.
Case in point, my AppleDash had more 'gut reaction' downvotes than a story I wrote in which I psychologically torment and kill every character in the show. It is not a matter of people expressing what they hate, it is a matter of people standing up -- too much -- in what they believe in.
669751 I just hope I'm not hyping my Twi Shy too much. I'd hate to build up people's expectations just to disappoint them when it turns out to be bland and uninteresting.