Apprivoiser Commentary · 7:22pm Dec 31st, 2013
This commentary contains spoilers for the story Apprivoiser, and contains sexually suggestive material. Be warned...
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I wonder why I write commentaries. I mean, what actually made me start? That’s something I don’t remember anymore. If I had to guess, I say it would an effort to differentiate myself from the pack
I’ve been fascinated by clop for some time. I’ve never had the propensity to view other creatures, even ponies, as sexual objects. It’s not something you can develop overnight. Back when everything used dialup and the internet’s two greatest commodities were porn and Star Trek, I was familiar with the former, providing parents weren’t home and I ninjaed a way around the password to the connection. I was young and only knew vanilla... “things”.
I suppose I grew bored of the vanilla. Of course I was always a sexual deviant, but that’s a tale for another time. Just like flowers and tentacle monsters grow from a single seed, my propensity for more extreme and unorthodox material had to sprout from somewhere. I knew the internet made some weird stuff and it took college for me to find out just how perverted I can be.
But back to clop. What started my interest in clop? No idea. My first My Little Pony stories that I read were My Little Dashie and Silent Ponyville. Obviously not clop. I’d have to say my first clop that I can remember was Anonymous Pegasus’ Tipsy, at least that is the oldest favorite that I can remember.
It’s weird! Now that I sit at this screen and type this commentary, I realize just how F’d in the A my morals have really become since I was a kid. I went to church. I even went through about six years of CCD classes. I suppose that previously unmentioned deviancy that I refuse to talk about at this time had something to do with it. That seed really screwed me over. I haven’t even gotten to the actual commentary and I’m going through an existential crisis.
Screw it. I’m currently sitting on a mattress in an attic. Morals can wait for another day. I realize those two sentences combined sound really creepy out of context.
To the actual commentary now. I tend to be quite loquacious and polite in my stories and when talking in the comments. I think it may have underrepresented my perverted nature. For quite a while, several months in fact, I desired to make a clop. I didn’t have an ideas for a clop, but I wanted to make one nonetheless. I envied how authors can humanize ponies and actually make them quite sexually appealing. Popular authors TittySparkles, darf, and Twilight Clopple are notorious for doing this, and it only inflamed the craven desire in me to do the same.
Longtime followers know I struggle with two things more than any other: comedy and character development. Clop heavily relies on emotional investment in the latter. Of course, you can have fetish fics that are nothing more than wanton spank banks that do not require conscious thought or logic, but clop that makes you come back makes you come back for the characters. How many people have revisited Gentlemen for Mares? Stuck? Sweet Apple Aches?
A lot.
Fortunately, I had my neurosis on my side. I can't spit out complete nonsense like some authors. Not like there’s anything wrong with that, but when I write something, my brain forces me to pretty much make an entire continuity for the fanfic. It’s something that stems back to my olden days. Everything needs to exist for a reason. Chekhov’s Gun, as it’s called. No matter what, my brain required me to make the story itself canon in terms of the series itself, or reasonably plausible given the context of whatever exposition I give. I couldn’t make a clop out of nowhere because I was never good at writing romance, and my stupid brain prevented me from creating a reliable AU in order for it to be believable. I needed something a little better than that. I needed better inspiration.
The kind of inspiration I get from a serious lack of sleep.
+2 INT, +2 DEX, -2 CHAR, -2 PATIENCE WITH THIS BULLSHIT
I seem to always think and write best when I’m about to fall asleep. I don’t know how, but it opens the floodgates on my creativity. This story alone was written over the course of about four nights between midnight and five in the morning. I’m a slow writer as it is, and being sleepy is the only real advantage I can get. The problem is being dead on my feet is enough to make me pass out at the computer, something I’ve done at least once.
In these delirious episodes, my brain conjured up the image of a humanized Rarity walking down the street with her eventual destination being the Ponyville spa. I really don’t know how I got the idea, but I do think Fimbulvinter’s fanfic Desperate Times had something to do with it. Picking a human Rarity was understandable. Even though I read clop, writing it was a different matter. I empathized best with humans, and was very close to writing it as humanized. But... it just didn’t feel right. If i was going to write a clop in the first place, I might as well jump all the way in the pool and make them ponies as well. It was going to put me seriously outside of my comfort zone, but it was a risk worth taking. I’m an amateur writer as it is. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and it would be a learning experience either way.
As the previous hyperlink will tell you, I thought up the idea around August. I wasn’t sure what the context of the fic would be outside of some lesbian loving, but I had bigger concerns to worry about. August was to close to my October self-imposed writing challenge of thirteen (I only finished eight) horror stories. I couldn’t start it then, and once October was done, I needed to finish up my hanging chapter of At the End. After that, I was too close to finals and couldn’t work on it. As soon as finals were over and I slept off my fatigue, I began immediate scripting work. I scripted and created an entire fanfic in about a week. That’s pretty good for me, especially considering I was in unfamiliar territory.
But why did I call it Apprivoiser? I once watched an anime called Star Driver. I liked the show well enough, but I especially liked the battle music. The main character always said something that summoned his super mecha. What did he say? I wonder.
Ever since then, I waited for a reason to call anything Apprivoiser. A chapter, a story, anything. Nothing made sense, until I conjured up this story.
Still, all I really had was Rarity goes to the spa and sexes it up with one of the lovely foreigners. However, due to my previously stated propensity for a story-driven narrative, I decided to play against type. Save for the various fetishes, most clop tends to end on a positive note. With a one-shot, the ending is usually sexual satisfaction and that’s it, but I wanted something more.
My original intent was after play time was over, Aloe leaves. She’s got other clients to take care of and Rarity knows it. However as I started scripting more and more, I realized I couldn’t quite complete my original intent as planned. It was supposed to end on a bittersweet note, one which Rarity sadly accepts and lets Aloe go. Rarity’s earlier statement that she feels lonely was cemented that she will continue to feel lonely despite whatever comfort sex she received from the spa ponies.
It wasn’t my conscience rearing up that made me change my original intention, but that the story itself changed as I progressed. Aloe dotes on Rarity, and even though her time with the mare is short, Rarity realizes that the platonic love Aloe gave was enough to keep her going. Ponies consider her important despite whatever pedestal they put her on. Aloe may not see Rarity as a love interest, but knows that she has qualities to make her worthy of love and affection.
What was going to be a sour apple proved to be a little more open-ended than I realized. It can be interpreted that Rarity will remain alone, or that she understands just how much her friends and neighbors truly love her.
Now to talk about the sex... Oh boy. I’ve read a lot of clop. I’ve read a whole lot of clop, but again, reading is not the same as writing , especially considering my writing style differs from those that I read. My first step was giving a good reason for the clop to occur. That was an easy one. Massages and spa treatments are up close and personal, so there’s no real stretch of the imagination where such treatments could evolve into something more.
My general idea was to have the spa treatments gradually crescendo into actual sex. The exfoliations and massages were the foreplay meant to work up my audience and my two lovely mares at the same time.
I tend to do a lot of research when going into unfamiliar territory. In At the End, I once researched for half an hour about woodland squirrels for a scene that you could finish in about two minutes. The first thing I did for this one was research the order of treatments you would normally get for a full package at a spa. Easy enough to find, and I worked out the foreplay from that. Each treatment made things vary a little. The first involved a lot of full body contact, so there was a fair amount of rubbing and touching on Aloe’s part. Next, Rarity was blinded, so I worked on sensory deprivation. Lastly... well, they were so worked up they quickly got to the fucking.
I just wrote what felt natural. I had two things to work on: it was escalating every time, and each spa treatment would invoke new sensory stimuli. I really just worked with that. For the first exfoliation, my thoughts constantly circled around Aloe being an endless tease before finally giving Rarity an erotic rubdown.
There is one thing that was a hindrance: pony anatomy. Simple diagrams helped with that. If you’ve been in the fanbase long enough, you’ve probably seen this.
However, a picture didn’t help me understand some of the finer points. I needed to dig a little deeper for that.
...
...
...
...
I went to a very dark place in the internet. There was no light, no morals, no decency. I felt like a greased up, bound, gagged Viking housewife dropped in the Isengard Uruk’hai orgy pits. The lengths I will go for research...
I’m pretty sure I’m on a federal watch list now.
I can’t get the images burned out of my eyes.
So that’s my first roll in the hay with a clop. All in all, I think it was a success. I had fun writing it, I successfully avoided clopping to my own work (it truly is a moral victory), and I learned several new things about writing and my own horrible self.
Forgive me father, for I have sinned. I’ve sinned a lot.
Until next time. Perhaps I might make another clop sometime down the road
Sounds like you went on an adventure to get the story written.
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I saw things. Dark things. Things the world was not meant to see.
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I have probably seen some of the things you came across. Morbid curiosity is always fun.
Lack of sleep + a casting off of the traditional values of western society + unspeakable knowledge gathered from dark reaches of the internet = Apprivoiser
I'm no mathematician but that seems like the recipe for success
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