In the heart of the Featured storm. · 9:26pm Jun 22nd, 2013
Imagine you're crossing an empty highway on foot. It was closed down by the state fifteen years ago and there hasn't been a vehicle on it since. You walk across it all the time without fear or notice: there's no one around to see you and the last thing which could have hit you is currently being scrapped in a junkyard. So you take your time. And then you hear the sound of a hundred eighteen-wheelers approaching. They're all doing 90 mph. And you didn't pick up on them until the first one was about seventy feet away.
Or... you saw this minor magic trick on television last night and you're pretty sure you've worked out how it's done. So you decide to walk through it with a friend, just to make sure you've got it right. No other audience. Pretty much complete privacy. There's a noise behind you. And when you turn around, you find you're in the center of a theater, there are high-definition cameras filming you from every angle including a few you're pretty sure are illegal, someone is wheeling up X-ray machines, the people in the packed house are stomping on the floor, and for one horrible second, you can't remember if there are somehow supposed to be fifty-one cards in a deck.
You're a musician. You mostly play for a few friends and small audiences at minor venues. You hardly expect the former to pay you and the checks from the later always seem to bounce. Really, you're just playing for fun more than anything else: the music wants out, so... On a whim, you post a few videos of your performances to YouTube. The first one gets about ten views. By the third, you're all the way up to fifteen. The fourth gets a direct link and upvote from Beyonce's verified account. Sixteen hours later, there's a political war in the Comments section and you have no idea how to shut it down or explain that no, you weren't trying to imply anything was supposed to be set on fire, and you'd really appreciate it if someone would untie you from the middle of the kindling pile now.
I'm not saying I regret what happened, or that I'm angry about it, or want to take it back. It's just that -- I'm in the middle of one of my insomnia cycles right now. I got about two hours of sleep. And this? Came out of nowhere. The meme claims that YOU ARE NOT PREPARED? I? Wasn't. Should the laws of probability fall apart to the point where it somehow happens a second time, I'll have some experience in handling it. But as is...
...three hours of sleep probably would have helped.
And now to the CDA comments section, where I will try and inevitably fail to explain myself on a few things.
Here goes much nothing.
Eh, the parrot says good luck.
I knew following you was going to be fun!
Based off the Beyonce reference, I assume you've seen this?
I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and I feel bad that some people are giving you crap because you didn't write a HiE in the way they are accustomed to. I myself am a fan of HiE, but only when it's done well.
Currently, the one HiE subgenre out there that I absolutely despise is second-person human-on-pony clop with no real plot or explanation as to why the reader is boning a pony. Those things get Featured WAY too often. I have come to hate each one I see without even reading it, because this fandom seems to be so convinced that ponies would be sexually attracted to humans.
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Eeyup.
Honestly? I'm grateful. As a new arrival, there's always this faint hope that someone, someway, you're going to be Noticed. Yes, being Noticed on Triptych was the original dream, but -- Noticed, period, and hope for trickle-down. (Although as noted in an earlier blog post, it works about as well on stories as it does in economics: dubiously.) And then by what was probably the sheer coincidence of my getting the submission approved just as he was looking at the front page, I got Noticed by one of The Best Writers On This Site And Nobody Argue That.
(Possibly a good time to mention that I was introduced to the world of FIM fanfiction because a friend burnt a DVD for me of what was described as the choicest selections from the site. As you might guess, one of the very first things I therefore opened concerned a certain Princess and her hatred of a notorious beverage -- and I am totally going to edit this part in to my reply to his blog post right now. I should have told him that earlier, but insomnia.)
So now a somewhat larger portion of the site is aware I exist. Based on the majority of the reactions, that's a good thing. I've even picked up a few extra followers (as noted) and maybe in time, more readers might come. But I wasn't ready for it, certainly not on my current amount of sleep which has me wondering just how well I'm actually stumbling through all these replies.
Before today, the biggest surge of ! notifications I ever had was after Jury Duty went up. And I think that was less than a third of the last twenty-four hours.
I am, put mildly, dazed.
I'm flattered to have been part of someone's best-of collection, and further pleased that this made me part of your entry experience into the sordid little realm of Ponyfic.
I feel a little sheepish about having shaken up your apple cart, but the fact is you've got a nice style and an appealing openness to playing with figurative language, and I thought it was worth a little more attention than you were getting. Congratulations on the feature-boxing; the traffic I directed your way wouldn't have meant squat if people didn't like what they saw when they got there, so you earned it.
...and now I realize I trotted so quickly off to my blog that I don't think I actually registered a like or a fave or anything. Rectifying.
Hope a little sleep has since already found you, or will find you soon.
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Well, I came for CDA but I stuck around for Triptych, so that's at least one trickle that worked.