The Power of Two: Bookish vs. Shipping and Beyond · 6:37am Aug 22nd, 2013
Hey, folks.
It's late night (at least over where I live), I'm eating blueberries and some really sharp cheddar, and I've got soft music and RainyMood playing in the background.
Simply put, I'm relaxed. Who's up for some navel-gazing that I'll probably regret in the morning? 
Been doing some thinking about what I'm doing here with this ponywriting thing, because it's either that or remember that Saints Row 4 and DuckTales Remastered are out and I won't have the money for either for at least two months. I'd rather go the happier route!
---
As part of my recent self-imposed mandate to get out there and make some friends see more of Fimfic, I've been around a whole lot of groups, boards, and user blogs, while fueled by nothing but sheer curiosity and fascination. My Read Later list is now nearly 200 stories long (if anyone knows how to keep that thing in check, tell me! I'm drowning here!), I've made awesome new friends in just the past month (love you guys!) and in the meantime, I've noticed two things:
1) Gosh, pony fanfic's blown up since 2010.
I know it sounds like a foolishly obvious thing to say but I really went into closed-mode for a year plus, writing more than interacting. Even my previous attempts at further interaction via different social media were short-lived (I can never do tumblr for long. I just can't). Thus as I navigate Fimfic's ecosystem I've been going through the fan-community equivalent of future shock not unlike the last part of the Captain America movie.
I remember when the Feature Box didn't work nearly as fairly as it does now... which in retrospect is kind of sad. 
2) The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It's been a long time since I've been involved in a big fandom, but every time I have, there's been one constant: romance and "intimacy" rule the roost, hand-in-hand. The jury's out on whether it keeps people around, but it certainly gets butts in seats.
I've had a lot of time to think about this -- and a lot of people also ask me about it -- and the truth of the matter is, when it comes to pony? I just can't really do the romance much, and certainly not the really spicy kind. When it's well-done I can read about relationships (my favorites are about how they get together rather than anything that happens afterward... unless you've already shown me how they get together in the first place, then I'll sail your ship all the way to port, so to speak) but it's not a staple for me, and clop does absolutely noooooooooooooooooooooooothing for me.
Yes, I needed that many "o"s. Ditto for me on the writing end.
There are two main reasons for this. (Sensing a theme yet?)
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The first reason is that prior to this fanfic writing life, I had another in my younger years -- and in that life I hopped from one series to another, writing almost exclusively syrupy femslash. (I also dabbled in some het stuff, but yeah. It was mainly the girlstuff.) I won't say how long I did this for, but it was a long time -- a good third of my life. I was prolific, and even then half of what I wrote was never published. I pretty much swam in girlhugs, friends becoming more than friends, not-rivals-really, fluff, hurt-comfort, romcom, starcrossed lovers, overcoming personal flaws... anything you can think of, I did. So many characters, so many reasons, so many ways.
And it was incredibly fun times, don't get me wrong, but as Twilight would attest, everything needs to be taken in moderation. Overspecialization is dangerous.
As it was, I'd learn that myself when I eventually just burned out. Hoo boy, what a crash. It was a crash like you'd never seen. Go through enough romantic setups, or any singular kind of creative theme, really, and you eventually just get dulled, then jaded, then... well, then the smile goes away. Didn't ever want to see a notebook, pen or text editor again.
Yeah.
The second reason is why I'm back to writing, and that's pony itself. When Friendship is Magic first started airing, I was shocked by the lack of cynicism, the amount of idealism, the refreshingly flawed characters, and the female friendships present that didn't exist with nearly as much depth in the rest of animation outside of one or two exceptions. (I'd probably extend that statement to mainstream TV as a whole if I watched more of it.)
In short, this was a show I could just absorb the sugary, idyllic happiness of (barring those episodes where the writers tried to get "ambitious") and not ever read any further into it if I didn't want to. With such a personally compatible world and cast calling to me, preaching the same message I had been for years on end, I knew I wanted to fashion more of it, and here I am. Even through the series's and fandom's more tumultuous times, I haven't regretted being here for a minute. My Little Pony saved my muse, and in other ways helped me improve as person, and I will be ever thankful for that.
But as I recalled my writing skills -- if one can call them such -- one by one, I learned something about myself.
To put it in pony terms, I absolutely detest writing clop. I've never found it fun. It was always the part I tackled last and which delayed my completion of a story for weeks to a month. It's a combination of words, a practice of going through the motions (in a literary sense) that I've never liked putting together, or even reading back to myself. I've probably forgotten more than most of this site knows on how to set up, visualize, and "direct" a romance and/or love scene that's fulfilling for the characters involved and anyone who's into them. At the same time I fully admit that there are dozens, if not hundreds of people running around this place who could do so better than I ever could even when I was at my best. (I've checked.) But if I don't find it fun for me, then I just can't write it -- and thus writing clop is the bottom of the barrel for me as far as what I want to do with ponies.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying that it's bad in general and that people shouldn't write it; write what you like and what makes you happy (so long as you're not hurting anyone, of course). I'm just saying that I shouldn't write it. It makes me unhappy. I have to be in a much different place to even attempt it. Last year around this time, I wrote three slightly-spicy mini-shipfics over the course of a single night (and edited them over the course of a few weeks). It was one of those rare occasions when I was truly, truly angry and depressed and I really needed to both make myself happy and let off some steam. That's where I need to go to enjoy writing this stuff, and even then I don't consider it worth reading.
Plus I just don't have the energy or the motivation to begin thinking about how about quadraped intimate moments are even supposed to work. I'll leave that to you guys who trade in that stuff.
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At the same time, old habits die hard in other respects. I've had people ask me before "just how would you put (insert MLP character here) in a romantic or even mature situation given such-and-such variables?" And I'll tell them, usually in an essay involving multiple scenarios, but only if I consider them friends and I know they're genuinely looking for something to do and using their advice. While pony romance requires extra motivation for me to attempt and and clop is impossible for me to write, I greatly enjoy brainstorming circumstances that lead to intimacy, simply because I greatly enjoy taking apart characters to see what makes them tick, then putting them back together and watching them go. The MLP cast is full of exquisitely-executed characters, so I find this crazy fun. I've had lots of practice with this in my life and I don't think I'll ever stop, whether it be for MLP or anything else I come across.
Soooooo yeah. That's why you don't and won't see too much shipping from me despite constant teases laced throughout my work and despite requests I receive at least a few of every month. It's not that I'm "better" or have more morals than anyone else here (well, maybe a little 
). It's that due to an overdose, I literally get nauseous if I think about writing intimacy past a certain line. It's sort of the same reason I can't eat instant ramen anymore. Anyone who's attended college knows exactly of what I speak.
I would be lying, however, if I said I didn't feel the tiniest bit of pride in seeing that I have almost 300 followers here, readers willing to both talk and listen to me, and such valuable friends made along the way... and with none of them coming from clop or even heavy romance (though the ones who do talk romance with me have have been just as wonderful 
). Just because it means I can write entertaining things that aren't just those, you know?
Knowing that you have branches, as a writer, is a nice feeling. I enjoyed exploring one for quite some time; it's time to see how much I can enjoy exploring others... but with lessons learned from the past.
---
All right, you've put up with my soliloquies for long enough! As thanks, here's what you likely really came for:
While my philosophy is indeed "Every Ship Is Best Ship(tm)," if you really want my attention, the best carrots to dangle in front of me -- and the carrots I'm most likely to chase in terms of my own pony writing -- have these labels on them:
* Twixie
* Rarilight
* Raridash
* Lightningdash
* Twilight (yes, in the portmanteau sense, and at this point in time there are four funderful ways to go about it!)
*Sunlight (Added 9/2013)
* Cadance With Any Mare At All
Why yes, I do play on Hard Mode, always. I have to, or it's just not fun. With Bookish Delight, The Challenge Will Always Be There.
(rereads list) ...oh my. I think I may be getting the urge to become a hypocrite. 
Next writing music post tomorrow, folks. Probably. G'night!
~B
P.S. Does this count as an NSFW blog? I genuinely have no clue.
P.P.S. I... seriously, folks, we need more Lesbian Cadance. Okay, I do. Damn the canon torpedoes. :D
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Mature Romance? Because I wrote an adorable Raripie but... some call it clop, I just wrote a romance with a sexually driven plot.
1301026
What do you mean "damn the canon torpedoes?"
Cadance is the princess of love. It is literally absurd to think that she has never been involved with a mare.
1301042
For what it's worth, I consider those opinions factual. i do know the difference, because Mature Romance was my specialty when I did write the stuff. It was impossible for me to do one-and-dones, though not for lack of trying. I would always get taken over by the urge to wrap the whole thing around a story and character development.
...stupid urges.
1301020
Is it up?
My philosophy is, if the romance/intimacy is well-woven and still contains the spirit of the characters you're working with, then I'll give anything a shot. Even Pinkie, who is my personal Kryptonite.
1301060
Oh I know -- it's not the plausibility that gets in the way, it's the timeframe. The second she's introduced in A Canterlot Wedding, she's hitched, and unless something new's come up, we're not quite sure how long she and Shining were an item.
Twilight Sparkle & the Crystal Heart Spell fortunately gives us more time to work with since it explains her backstory, but that as much as we've got; a nebulous block of time to work with. Better than nothing, I suppose.
1301064
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/27108/i-love-to-see-you-smile
I guess I should try finishing that story where I pair Cadence with Twilight for some arbitrary reason then...
1301023
Sea slugs are entirely your domain, sir, and I would never dream of encroaching~
Yeah, I agree, Celestidash is pretty great! (Hmm. Need to reply to that author tomorrow.) I can definitely understand Romance being a favorite genre; really, it's a great genre if you like character-based stories, and seeing happy ponies never, ever, ever goes out of style. I never stopped enjoying the heartful side of friendship and love, so that's what I tend to concentrate on now.
And the weird thing about me; when I'm nervous or around new people, I'm Twilight and Fluttershy fused together in terms of shyness. When I'm around people I'm fairly comfortable with (or when I'm drunk; don't ever get me drunk) I'm Pinkie Pie. Or so I've been told by more than one person. Point is, once I've hit that point, I never shut up. Get ready to tl;dr for days!
Requests noted and filed, my loyal follower.
Though that story I linked to in the blog post kind of already takes care of the first two. The only way I could outdo "Second Time's The Charm" at this point is if I were expressly not trying to. 
Never say never, though. I did post that list at the end for a reason, and there's no way I'm scrapping three years worth of notes for the one single shipfic I've always wanted to write now that we've gotten this far...
But actually, I was thinking about it the other night and I've just about hammered out my Diamond Tiara idea! It needs a little something extra though to really help the characters involved along...
1301074
(clicks) Oh now I remember! I'd looked through your list of works when we'd first met and had actually tossed that one onto my Read Later Li-
-NO ONE RESPONDED TO MY QUERY AS TO HOW TO KEEP THAT THING IN CHECK. I'M DROWNING HERE.
I MEAN YEAH I'D READ MORE BUT WHEN I'M READING THAT MEANS I'M NOT WRITING (or worse, not working) AND AUGH.
1301082
Whoa, who's that over there trying to stop you? Whoever it is, it's not Bookish~
1301088
I don't know how to stop it, if you're drowning, I'm already at th bottom with a whopping 700+ read later list...
As for what's stopping me... It's the fact that I need some ideas to make a coherent story out of it, rather than just some risque scenes with Cadence and Twilight.
1301095
If you're going for Twidence, I'd say reading through Crystal Heart Spell is your best bet. You could set it in the Nebulous Time Zone between Cadance's backstory and Twilight moving to Ponyville (which A Canterlot Wedding makes difficult but not impossible), or if you don't care about the sanctity of marriage, planting the seeds of a relationship either in the middle of or after the book is like shooting fish in a barrel.
...or you could go AU.
Augh, Cadance!yuri can be frustrating to try and put together
Thanks for sharing! (He said in a totally not at all sarcastic way).
I also had another writing life, and while the details are different, same result: totally burned out writing plays, actually switched careers, then found pony and found my muse again. It's still hard for me to writer theater, even though I came from it, so I get the whole 'no I did romance' thing.
That being said, you, yes you, are the reason I now hunger for a Rariluna story that matches the potential interwoven into Special Case.
1301106
What I had was basically... AU. Along the lines of Cadence wondering whether she was making the right decision on the day of her wedding.
...which is the the sort of thing I was talking about when I said you should keep doing what you're doing.
1301082
Go on...
1301068
Well, related to that, it's also a little absurd to think that the only flavor of ice cream Cadance likes is vanilla.
I'll bet she has some interesting kinks... role playing, probably.
1301193
You have a theater-writing background?
Wow, now I really need to read your stuff.
See, I don't trust myself to try a Rariluna. Special Case was a, well, special case.
It's one of those stories that happen when I write without overthinking every single detail, and I'm still learning just how that works. That said, I'm practicing that very tactic with this crazy crossover I'm doing, so there's always hope?
1301307
Wow, I wish you luck. If you do it, I'll be certain to read it!
1301325
Touche. I meant to thank you for those words, actually.
1301342
Headcanon: Cadance is the princess of every kink. So long as it's... y'know. Happy.
1301601
You're very welcome.
1301601 Got a drama major and everything!
I understand the overthinking thing. Just know that I love Special Case, hyper edition. So much. Flames. Flames on the side on my face.
1301601
And now, you have the prompt for your next story: Cadance kinks everything.
Interesting stuff. I can see what you mean about shipfics allowing a writer to better see what "makes a character tick," as you put it. Emotional intimacy can give you a better picture of a character than you'd normally get. And with characters as richly developed and interesting as our little ponies, there's no shame in wanting to see what they're made of.
I hope I haven't given you the impression that I'm completely averse to shipping. On the contrary, I wrote a FlutterMac fic in my early days as a pony writer and I've read more than a few romance stories that I've found palatable. There was a time when I indulged in femslash as well, but I've long since taken it out of my diet; one of the reasons I'm so fond of the show is that it depicts close, realistic female friendships, and I'd much prefer it if fanfic writers try to capture that instead of breaking canon and reducing these beautiful, believable relationships to mere "romance." Mostly I just wish there weren't such a surplus of shipping on this site in particular, since it's choking out all the good slice-of-life/adventure/every-other-genre that I enjoy far better.
As for clop, I just hate that it exists. I realize my views are unpopular with pretty much everyone and I don't care. I bear no ill will towards the people who write it or read it, but knowing that so much sexually explicit material exists for this show of all shows makes my skin crawl.
Here's hoping I haven't offended everybody.
P.S. Hate to say so, but I've gotta disagree with you about Cadance. She and Shining Armor are the sole reliable source of straight shipping this fandom has.
1301925
Well, you haven't offended me, for what it's worth.
The amount of explicit fanwork for this show boggles me too, but only due to the speed at which it happened. This is a phenomenon that happens to literally every intellectual property, but three years in, I only expected half as much as what we've got! (I think the Internet just got bigger and threw off my internal barometers.) Eventually I learned to just stop worrying and do my own stuff. Still, it's hilarious to see clop take over the feature box every single night.
The things you find out when you try turning the Mature Filter off!
When I did my shipping stuff way back when, my number one priority was to make sure the characters were always happy in the end, no matter what conflict or hardships they might have had to go through to get there. Thinking up both sides of the coin means you have to absolutely study a character and then think up the best circumstances to put them in which completely puts their essence on display.
And that was the part I always liked. It's just that I tended to also include something I now know I wasn't a fan of including, simply because I knew back then no one had really tried associating one with the other before (Internet was young, y'know?). So I cut that part out, and here I am.
But that's why, even though I completely respect (and share some of) your stance, I can't dismiss the Romance genre or put it "below" anything. It's useful for far too many things to take it out of my repertoire completely, even though when I first started writing pony, I really tried. But it's all about finding your own personal balance. Heck, the one story I genuinely have tagged as Romance is actually a Trojan Horse -- it's mainly there to give Vinyl a backstory that turns her into a character I'd like because I find the fanon interpretation to be... not for me.
But the Romance angle I wove into the narrative gives it a little extra intrigue for readers to hold onto.
---
As for Cadance, I'll let you in on a little secret. I adore Shining Armor, and I adore their marriage. I wouldn't wish to break them up for anything. Shining/Cadance is one of those few straight-couple dynamics I'm really into, where both the guy and the girl are allowed to be awesome on equal terms by themselves, but when you put them together they become ten times more than the sum of their parts. I love them.
But I don't need to write about Shining Armor. Shining Armor's a great character, but he's an open book, and a short one. I don't find him fun to explore. I find Cadance's very concept -- a super-powerful Princess of Love in the way Celestia is the Princess of the Sun and ruler of material Equestria, and Luna is Princess of the Moon/Night and Ruler of Dreams -- to be far more interesting.
It's why she's my favorite princess, and I want to explore that. There are so many different types of love to explore which Cadance could theoretically bring an endless number of spins to seeing as she has alicorn-level magic. And yes, a whole lot of that would involve teaching mares what (x) type of love is like. Not just romantic -- but romantic is easily one of the most lucrative mines. But canon gives us very few places to have Cadance without Shining unless Cadance is a proxy third party (whch I don't find as interesting) because they are quite literally joined at the hip.
So yeah. As a fan, I love Cadance's relationship, but as a fanfic writer, it brings me no end of annoyance. I indeed made a mistake, though -- when I said "Lesbian Cadance,", I really meant "Omni!Cadance."
Because changelings need love too.
(*quickly flies away*)
1302626 I can't thank you enough for the genial response. Given my controversial stance, I didn't know whether to expect silence or hostility. You've managed to both surprise me and warm my heart.
I didn't mean to imply that romance is necessarily "below" other genres (that was just poor diction on my part). I only meant that many (I would even go so far as to say most) fanfic authors have a very shallow understanding of the distinctions between friendship, romantic affection, and sexual attraction, and that this shallowness tends to reveal itself in their fanfiction. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, but I always prefer the stories that stick with the spirit of the show - which is friendship, of course. I mean, c'mon, it's in the danged title.
As for Cadance, fair enough. I appreciate the distinction you make between fanand fanfic writer. I may detest the idea of Omni!Cadance, but I certainly can't argue against its use in fanfiction on the grounds that it isn't canon.
For whatever it's worth, I think a lot, if in fact not all, of your work fulfills a lot of the same emotional requirements for me that "Shipping" usually does, but I'm also a bit of an odd bird as Shippers go, I s'pose.
I've talked about this with another friend of mine, but one of THE big pet peeves I have with Shipping fan-art and fanfic (and I say this as someone who Ships as passionately as anyone you are likely to find on the internet; you think I've got it bad for RariJack? That's tame compared to how I get over other, non-FiM Ships XD; ), and indeed a lot of Romantic sub-plots in media in general, is the recurring need to pigeonhole literally every last relationship into the exact same narrow, boring Box; nothing but "Oh my Darling"'s and Big Romantic Kisses for Sweeping Melodramatic Moments. Nothing I'm necessarily opposed to, you understand; I can think of more than a few examples of such things done wonderfully right, after all. But their sheer prevalence, combined with how rarely it feels like consideration has been made to whether or not these are the ways these particular characters would express Romantic interest...well, it reminds me that what I'm ultimately looking for in a good Ship 'fic is very different than what seems to be the generally accepted mold.
For me, it's not necessarily the explicitly or traditionally Romantic elements that make Shipping worthwhile. Again, those things are hardly a problem in and of themselves, but ultimately, as long as it's about the relationship between the two characters, its specific in's and out's, the particular ways in which these two characters specifically interact with each other...THAT is what makes Shipping really work for me.
Which is thankfully where talented folks like YOU come in!
What makes "Friendship is Magic" so great vis a vis Shipping is that, in point of fact, ALL the relationships among the central cast are on equal footing. "Did you know you're all my very best friends?", after all, is right there in the theme tune, and even if the particulars or the history among them is different, the degree to which each of these Ponies cares about the other feels just about equal all across the board.* Consequently, as long as the specifics of that Relationship are honored by any given story, it clicks for me in the same emotional range as "Shipping" usually does, and if there's any one talent you've demonstrated repeatedly (though it's hardly your only one ;3 ), it's that very ability. So while I may have my preferences of which relationships I like seeing explored that way, you nonetheless always make it such a satisfying experience, because you truly understand that most important element of Shipping: it's ALL about the characters. And even without making it necessarily ROMANTIC, you honor that through 'n' through in all your stories.
So don't worry. You don't NEED to do anything explicitly Romantic if you don't want to; the emotions and ideas you're working with now are quite satisfactory. ^3^
*This admittedly also poses a bit of a PROBLEM for Shipping too, though, when you stop to think about it....
I cannot tell you how much I agree with your comments on Cadance. She is rarely, if ever, given any sort of romantic life outside of Shining Armor, which is–in my opinion–a disservice to her potential as a character, not to mention her role as divinity.
As for devising a plausible scenario, I could see Shining and Cadance comfortable with extramarital romance. Given her deific status, I am under the assumption that Cadance trusts Shining absolutely, and that she is absolutely worthy of his trust. The issue of cheating is only inherent to the betrayal of said trust, so if the trust is absolute, there is no act that can betray it.
1303546
Hi, and welcome to my press. Hope you enjoy it here.
I tend to be hesitant towards calling the princesses "divine" in anything but a figurative sense (or perhaps even how other ponies perceive them to be), but I would agree their their abilities are far beyond those of normal ponies, which makes those abilities tons of fun to experiment with.
And indeed, yours is an idea I've played with from time to time -- a mutual pact made early in the marriage which involves Shining understanding that anything/anyone Cadance involves herself with in the name of Heart Princess duties is pretty much her job, but in the end she always comes back to him. (She'd probably only be physically involved with others in extreme circumstances anyway -- there's plenty of opportunities for dream-sequence stuff, for example, and her job description probably involves lots of emotional direction by proxy.)
As for Shining's end... he's married to a mare who's royalty, emotionally omnipotent, utterly devoted to him to the point where their true love defeated an army once, and who knows a million and one ways to keep a marriage from going stale should it come to that. Dude's one of the luckiest sentient beings in the multiverse.
In fact, the more I roll this over in my head, the more this sounds like a plausible angle... I'll have to think on this more. It would require an astronomical amount of trust from both Shining and Cadance, but If it were any other couple, I wouldn't have gotten this far in considering it before throwing it out the window.
Wow, thanks for getting me to muse on this some more! I think we're onto something.
1303785>>1303546 I could see Cadance doing this. You know who I have doing this? Fluttershy. I have a head canon (not that I think this is how she would act, but that I think it's very plausible for her to act this way.) that Fluttershy is a happily married (to a stallion) mare who also is a semi-professional dominatrix, and depending on the tastes of each individual client, she or her husband are involved to more or less varying degrees for each session. It's actually a story idea I'm really proud of, but I can only work on it late at night when I feel kinky.
My Little Dominatrix: BDSM is Magic
I, like you Bookish Delight, abhor clop for the sake of clop. Unless it's done as satire.
I write what I want to write, and what I want to write is what I would like in real life: Romance. I'm not going to have sex until I get married. I'm not a prude, I'm not holier-than-though, and I'm not super-conservative. (I'm a Christian, but an EXTREMELY liberal one.). So writing about sex for the sake of sex without emotional attachment will always be weird for me to write. (I dunno why the Fluttershy case is different? maybe because it's rollplaying she enjoys? I'm confused by myself now.) If I'm going to be making love/fucking (because there is a time for each type of coitus), I want to be able to love them in the eye and say "I love you" while I'm doing it. So I write about that. Granted, I'm pretty new to little horse fiction, so most of those stories are either still being written or still in my head.
Let me be clear, I am very much a feminist and a strong straight ally of the LGBTQ movement. But I'm not a huge fan of lesbian pairings in Fimfiction simply because they are SO OVER DONE! I actually once did a bunch of math and found that the odds that (if 10% of the equestrian populace is homosexual (which is a number in the higher end of plausibility) 4 of the main six are lesbian or bisexual to be a really low percentage which I can't look up right now because it is on my whiteboard on my wall and I am currently sitting on the pot (why did I need to tell you this?). But the point is, I just can't really see a lot of the pairings the fandom makes actually happening. I guess ironically, I like realism in my Technicolor magic talking equines.
I'll leave this long-arse post with a question: why do YOU ship almost exclusively female/female?
But I will ship Vinyl and Octavia, because why not?
~Super
1567513
I like chicks.
1567690 Really, who doesn't? narciejeter.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/baby-chicks.jpg
I feel the same way.