These Cosplaying Humans · 8:04am Feb 27th, 2014
These days, I can't seem to visit this site without finding another story in the feature box/newest stories/latest updates/popular stories about some cosplaying human being thrown into Equestria and gaining the powers of whatever the hell he/she was cosplaying as. There, they get accused of villainy and promptly decide to confirm those accusations. It turns out that there is now a group for these things.
It's always the "cool" cosplays too. I've yet to find one where two people team up to cosplay a horse and only the bottom half gets sent to Equestria. Or how about some McDonald's employee dressed up as Grimace finding that magic portal?
The premise alone reads like the unwanted offspring of Crossover and Human in Equestria. I tried to read a couple: Malideus, which apparently started this whole thing, and F*** it I'm having fun, which I picked because it had Solaire of Astora in it (I especially liked the cover art). I didn't make it past the first chapter for either one. Terrible. Poor attempts at being "mature" through constant swearing and references to sex and alcohol, bland and contemptible protagonists, and just bad narration. I don't know why I even tried. I don't like most crossovers and I don't like HiE, why did I even think this malformed fusion would be better? While Malideus was just bad, F*** it showcases the inherent weakness in the premise. No attempt is made to be anywhere near Solaire of Astora, which was to be expected because it's not Solaire of Astora, it's just some asshole that looks like him. In your typical crossover, the writer has to, at least, make a passable attempt to properly characterize the crossover elements. Cosplaying Human in Equestria doesn't have to because you're not dealing with the actual character, just some bad copy. This premise actually manages to be lazier than its parent.
Now, I'm not going to go around saying this is the worst thing to have happened to fimfiction. It's not. It's just some ridiculous fad that's going to wear out its novelty after being over-saturated by band-wagon hoppers. The readers will lose interest, the writers will move on, and the whole thing will just starve and die. My question is: why do people jump on fads like this? It seems a bit hypocritical for a fanfiction writer to harp about originality, but if you're going to produce derivative work, at least put your own spin on it. Don't use someone else's spin.
Someone said in a comments section somewhere that there's no original story left to tell anyway, so why not use this easy premise? That may be so, but you should at least try. There's still value in that trying. It still leads to coming up with something interesting. You're not going to be some pure, saintly, angelic being, but there's still value in trying to be a good person. You're not going to be the greatest person in your field, but there's still some worth in improving your skills. You may not come up with something completely original, but you can come up with a piece that's better than something so blatantly lazy like hopping on this fad.
People jump on bandwagons 'cause they actually give a shit about numbers, views, thumbs-ups, favourites. Honestly, that's the biggest mistake that people on the site seem to make.
Don't get me wrong, having a story become popular and get lots of "numbers" is great, but all I'm saying is that it shouldn't be the reason you write the story. People should write because they want to tell a story, or because they want to improve skills, or simply because they enjoy the act of writing. But they don't write for any of those reasons. They write with the sole purpose of increasing a stupid little counter in the top-right of their story box, and that attitude is very much the worst thing to happen to fimfiction.
Well thanks for saving me the time. I was trying to decide if those were worth reading. Better delete those from my Read Later tab. Personally I don't like most BiE stories. Most of the time it just feels like the author running out and living his fantasy. I did read, through the Eyes of another Pony, Echo the Diamond Dog, Griffin the Griffin, and a few others and they were excellent. It's just most people don't seem to put much effort into making it interesting or 'new'.
I must say while it is definitely harder to come up with original ideas since nearly all the obvious ones have been done I know there are others. I'll even through a couple that I thought about and will probably never get around to writing out.
A royal guard who sees how miserable Celestia is and plays the incompetent guard to make her really smile. A background pony is actually an undercover guard trying to protect the elements of harmony and either saves them or causes all their dangerous trouble from behind the scenes.
These two might have already been done but if so I haven't read one yet. If you do use these people let me know so I can actually read it.
If only I could write decent fiction.
I would write this just for you, Visidance.
I've only read the RealityCheck one, but it was written as a reaction to the Malideus story and I had prior experience with him as an author. I have no intention of trying any of the others, I have way too much to read as it is without jumping into a new fad that is currently getting dog-piled by inexperienced authors looking for a cheap way into the featured box.
I generally detest that kind of protagonist anyway, so why bother.
I've read several, and most are exactly as you describe. But Rise of Darth Vulcan is pretty good and worth the read.
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Old McDonald had a farm...
I've only read one of these types of stores so far so I have no idea what the others are like. Rise of Darth Vulcan so far have been a blast though.
It's like a self insert of a self insert, really. A person dresses up as a character without actually being the character, yet is able to become the character.
Then they insert themselves into Equestria, where they are both themselves and this cool new guy inside of their favorite show. It's all vomit-inducing levels of self serving puerile nonsense.
This sounds amazing and someone should write it.
Well, I'm a little different. I don't mind HiEs or crossovers as long as they're done right, which they can be. In all but a single circumstance (which was a parody anyway), I draw the line at self-inserts or brony-in-Equestria. With all this in mind, I still haven't read any of the cosplayer fics myself, and I've never had any intention to. Why? Because of the same reasons you listed, basically. They are essentially self-inserts or BiEs, only this time, they gift their protagonists with the powers and appearance of some other random character, so it's a double helping of the wish-fulfillment nonsense that I resent those kind of stories for.
As for the question of why people jump on bandwagons like that, and essentially just reuse someone else's idea but swapping in a different character, there are two main ways you could answer it.
The first is of course the answer given already, that they do it for the views and favourites and likes. It's an explanation, but it's a little too cynical for me, and it also has the problem that in most the cases where this stuff happens, it doesn't work anyway. There have been countless 'verses out there. Fallout: Equestria, Conversion Bureau, the Winningverse, Chess Games of the Gods and a few other smaller ones you might not have heard about such as the Ponyearthverse have all spawned shitty spin-offs from other authors regardless of whatever quality the original might have had. And when a verse gets as big as any of those, there is no guarantee of getting popular by writing something in that 'verse anymore.
Which is why I prefer the second explanation: some writers are just not very good. A lot of people out there are blessed with creativity and imagination, an extensive knowledge of language, and an ability to weave great stories, characters and settings out of them. Some people out there are not, and never will be unless they take steps to improve themselves. Many of them might still. Until they do though, they copy what they see because they don't know better.
So don't waste time getting angry at them. If you're going to insist on expending thought on this at all, then use it to teach them better, because Lord knows they could use it.
Guess I should count myself lucky that this is the first I've heard of these types of stories. Judging from the other comments, the mentioned stories seem to be rather trite.
Well look on the bright side...Today it's out of place cosplayers, but somewhere in the not to distant future lies new untold horrors just waiting to emerge.
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There you are. Dunno how it works.
The last fad I remembered was that wonderful time when we got like eight stories about Twilight eating peaches at the same exact time. Please tell me we didn't get another?
I honestly try not to care if what I'm writing "has been done a thousand times" before. I simply try to make it my own and make it unique in it's own way...and even if I fail...well I tried and I'll have learned from my setback.
Amen.