Musical Numbers · 8:41pm Nov 11th, 2013
I like to think of myself:
As a fairly law-abiding kinda guy--I mean, other than the whole "disregarding the intent of ev'ry copyright law in the book by writing and displaying Pony stories" thing and all...
So when the Powers That Be around here cracked down with this dictum last week, I started shifting nervously in my chair. I mean, yes, only one of my stories contained musical numbers, but they were all songs still under copyright, and I didn't have a single lick of permission to use them.
At first, I thought I'd see about actually obtaining permission. I'd kind of built the story's emotional arc around these four songs, and I didn't want to just excise them from the text. But, well, the story in question, History: A Romance Continued, is part of my "rated: Mature" story series where I'm attempting to write romantic sex scenes even though I've never even come close to having any sort of sex myself--Fimfiction rules also prohibit me from linking to the story here, but you can find it easily enough on my user page.
Still, the idea of explaining to Christina Sayles, the person in the copyright department of Songways Inc. who answered my e-mailed query, that I'd like to quote the entirety of Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's song "Feeling Good" in the prologue of a story about an asexual cartoon pony who feels love and lust for the first time when she discovers that one of her best friends has the equivalent of Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome and is therefore partially female and partially male in a base physical sense...
I just didn't think that'd go over well.
So I decided to rewrite all four songs completely, and I've just finished doing that. Strangely enough, I think I like these new ones better than the others since I was able to make them more closely fit the story situations. Of course, the process has also gotten me thinking about how much time and effort I'm putting into writing stories on the site here instead of original stories, but I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't enjoy it.
And enjoy it I do, very much so: I've even started work on a collection of Pony poems that's still too short to be submitted, but I have plans for it. Oh, yes, I always have plans... 
Mike
Cool beans.
You gotta admit, that would have been an interesting conversation, if nothing else.
1500483
In the same way:
I suppose, that "monsters are such interesting people." If I might quote Bugs Bunny for a moment.
Mike
1501845
Bugs Bunny is one of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known. By all means, quote away.
I was wondering how people were getting along without copyrighted song lyrics. It's been suggested before that people can just rewrite the lyrics, but this is the first I've heard of someone doing that and it working out well.
1502489
Maybe I should:
Advertise my services to anyone who needs a song reworked...
Mike
"attempting to write romantic sex scenes even though I've never even come close to having any sort of sex myself"
So that's why your sex scenes are so short! I have the same problem--people are always telling me I need to make them longer, and I'm always afraid I'll get a detail wrong if I try to make things too complex. I guess it's a bit like trying to write a war story if you've never been through a war--maybe worse, since there are even more myths and falsehoods around sex than around the battlefield.
1504721
This is the main reason:
Why I've pretty much concluded my experiment to try and write clopfic. I just don't seem either interested or able to make the sex scenes long enough or juicy enough to qualify.
My example when I started planning "Biology" was Applejinx's series of novels beginning with Trixie's Magic Bit. But from the beginning, I found myself skimming over the descriptions of fluids and bulges and concentrating on the descriptions of the actual physical sensations and emotions that the characters were experiencing during the sex scenes. That's the stuff I'm interested in, but it doesn't seem to be the stuff of an effective clopfic.
So I've put "writing clopfic" into the "failed" column on my list of experiments and will just concentrate on making "Philosophy: A Romance Expanded" into the best sort of story that I can make it.
Mike
1505293
Don't sell yourself too short. You'd be surprised how many readers get off on the emotions more than the physical acts.
1505502
That's definitely the way I went:
With History--I mean, I even put in musical numbers!--and I think that worked better because there was an actual story going on external to the two main characters' budding relationship. So that's likely the way I'll go with the third one--I'm hoping to have the first chapter of that ready to go in about a month.
Mike