I just published a story I don't like... · 2:27am Jul 23rd, 2013
I just published a story that don't simply dislike, but hate with a passion:
"Not Really A Mare" is a sensible story about what would happen when sensible creatures have to live through a severe gender imbalance, which is what we really saw in the show for the first two seasons: levels of imbalance ranging from 1:4 all the way to 1:32. I went for 1:16 because it would be the best vehicle for drama: a 1:32 would pretty much have all stallions with "breeding" as their full time occupation, and 1:8 may not put enough pressure to call it a 'patriotic duty' or to have carefully kept schedules.
I hate this story because it completely dissociates love out of love-making. Still, I felt it had to be said, just so people would know how a harem world would really work.
That sounds fascinating...
Is it tagged [Mature]? I don't see it in your story list, but if it's [Mature] that's no surprise.
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There is no violence whatsoever and the sex scenes I have so far planed or written would be safe for primetime television, but the psychological load makes me think that the M rating is justified.
But now you made me wonder...
Let me scratch my head for a while.
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Oh no no no, I agree with you completely. I wouldn't rate it any other way. (Well, maybe for views... hm.) But this sounds interesting (in a "psychological horror" or perhaps "moral dissonance horror" sense of interesting, at any rate), and since I normally browse with [Mature] off I wanted to double-check.
Hm. Now I'm idly curious how much of your actual target audience normally never looks at [Mature]s.
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Quite frankly, my target audience IS the mature audience: those who can say "hey, a harem world really could be pretty fucked up!", rather that immature idiots who browse fanfiction websites looking for free porn.
And I never turn on the anti-mature filter: I prefer being able to judge by myself whether or not I want to check this or that story. Take for example the following story: Cadence in A minor. It deals with the psychological repercussions that Shining has to face after having been repeatedly raped by the bug queen, especially as he notices that even with her inflicting mind control on him, she wasn't as domineering and emasculating as the real Cadance, who he notices that had never actually treated him like an adult. It doesn't help either that everybody is focused on Cadence's tragedy and don't seem to even notice that he's hurting as well. It in fact reminds me of a Japanese story I read some twelve years ago, about a groom whose wedding gets bombed by an ex-girlfriend that wouldn't take no for an answer. As it goes, everybody (starting by his own mother) focused on consoling the bride and took it out on him, and his only way out was that, a week later, he opened his own hara after penning a note saying "I'm sorry about Akane's wedding, but I must inform you that my own wedding was ruined as well."
Another story I would have never seen is Twilight and the Spartan Stallion, which deals with Twilight undoing a petrification, then having to bring up to date a ponified King Leonidas. That story is tagged mature because, while the Spartan is well adapted by the standards of his time, he is an utter sociopath by modern standards.
There's also A Soul To Spare, which deals with a human who found a unique way of going to Equestria: being the subject of Nazi-like medical experiments, ending with him being put into a magical equivalent of cryogenic freezing and then waking up eons later.
There's the romantic comedy The Unexpected Love Life of Dusk Shine, where four (and later five, then six) girls compete for the attentions of a boy, whose attention solely focusses on Girl #0, who is almost oblivious to his shy advances. I don't think I would much like this story if it wasn't a very accurate portrait of one of my best friend's late teens. Besides, that story also includes very interesting character building for Pinkie Pie, and notes on human sociology: many things that would be considered sexual harassment boy-on-girl can pass as 'fun' if they are girl-on-boy.
And finally, there's Xenophilia. I'm completely sure that, if the author was to release a version successfully obscuring the sex scenes (they cannot be deleted, as plenty of character building happens within those), it would become the most popular romance fic on this site. Lets put it into proper perspective: how good does a fic have to be for me to have discovered it through the blog of a woman, despite being a female harem fic? Well, it's good enough that its about to break 4000 likes, has a forum with 633 members (Xenophilia HQ), and has sprung 28 reader written stories, very few of which also have mature ratings.
And about this one: I believe it is my second favourite universe within FimFiction; only second to the Nyx fics. And my only possible third would be All American Girl, even if I hate the title.
Take care.