#100: A Retrospective Blog Post · 12:55am Apr 25th, 2014
Well, blog post number 100 has arrived, and with it comes a time to reflect. This has given me a chance to look back on my nearly two years on this website, and I'd just like to summarize my journey so far.
The first time I considered watching "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" was when I kept seeing pictures of Fluttershy floating around the internet. I was skeptical at first that I was going to enjoy the show, but I decided to give the first episode a fair shake. I was instantly enamored by the show's wonderful cast of characters, solid writing, and beautiful animation. I had a lot to catch up on, though, with all of season 1 and most of season 2, but I was hooked and definitely willing to invest the time.
Having written some fanfiction of my own, I was interested in seeing what the brony community had produced, and I was particularly interested in romance (read: sex) stories. This brought me to a now defunct website called clopfic.heroku.com. Among the stories I found there was SleeplessBrony's "Romance Reports," which I read in only a few sittings if my memory is correct. I knew immediately that I wanted to take the next step and write some fanfiction of my own.
Enter Filly Fooling, a title I came up with immediately after a brief search for it. The term "fillyfooler" was commonly used, but no one had thought of making it a title of a story. I'm sure the title and the exposure on clopfic.heroku.com contributed to its early success, and before I knew it, I was on the map of Fimfiction. The story was quite popular, and even has the distinction of being the first clopfic accepted into Twilight's Library, a group I will mention again later. Unfortunately, Filly Fooling got bogged down after the first few chapters, but it was an interesting writing experience and one that changed the way I write today.
After experimenting with a gorefic (Discord's Revenge) and a crossover (Harry Potter and the Ponies of Equestria), both met with tepid response, I started writing some one-shots. I even had the audacity of trying to get a few of these stories on Equestria Daily, which didn't amount to anything but a wounded ego. When these stories weren't as successful as Filly Fooling, I became a little disheartened and learned a big lesson about the fleeting nature of popularity. However, I didn't let it discourage me.
I was at college during this time, and late 2012 I got an idea for a story after spending some time with my old roommate from freshman year. He complained that two people couldn't cuddle with each other without others implying that there was something romantic going on between them. The resulting story was Cuddling, and nearly 6,000 views later, it's still my most liked and favored story.
After Cuddling, I took two shots at a plot involving Mr. Cake cheating on Mrs. Cake with Pinkie Pie. The results were both called Equestrian Beauty at one point, but their names changed as time went on. The first one, The Pink Temptation, was about to take a dark turn when author Steel Resolve consulted me. We decided to scrap that story and start fresh with the much better written Equestrian Pie. However, neither of these stories really got off the ground, as I was struggling to work alongside editors while keeping my own ideas.
After this disappointing experiment, my writing slowed down, and I produced very little material through the summer of 2013. One thing I did get involved in was an AppleDash collaboration story involving about thirty members of the AppleDash group. The story became a harrowing adventure into Tartarus as Applejack tried to get in contact with her parents. I never did find out how it ended, but it was a great thing to be a part of. I also did a few early entries into the RariTwi group collab, featuring short stories about my OTP.
It wasn't until the very end of the summer, however, that I finally got invested in my own material again. In the featured box, I saw a story, whose title I can't remember, about Applejack posing for an adult magazine and Rainbow Dash's reaction to it. I thought the idea was amazing, and I had more ideas about where I would take a story like that. Trading Rarity for Applejack and Twilight for Rainbow Dash, I came up with Spread, which just ended a few weeks ago. This story hit the featured box and got quite a few comments for a story with only 3,000 views, and I was pleased with the results.
While writing Spread, I became more and more involved in Twilight's Library, eventually joining a group chat with a lot of its members that was started by Skeeter the Lurker. It was there that I met Draconian Soul, a stand-up guy and a fantastic writer. We're still in touch to this day, reading each other's stories and offering our thoughts on each episode of Season 4. I also spent a brief amount of time as a contributor for Twilight's Library, serving as sort of a guide to the moderators about what stories to accept. It got draining and became too big of a time commitment, so I had to stop, but it was an enjoyable experience.
Now I am slowing down in my writing again, but trying to work on a project involving Rainbow Dash and performance-enhancing drugs. If you've been reading my other blog posts, you'll see that progress has been slow at best, and it isn't very popular, either. However, I plan on sticking with it for now, and I also have some ideas regarding a Pinkie x Fluttershy shipping story.
Well, that takes me to today, where I've posted almost one blog a week on average up until this one, number 100. I've talked about a lot in this blog, mostly story progress and milestones, but I've also done a few questionnaires and offered some opinions on major turning points in the show, such as Equestria Girls and alicorn Twilight.
We'll see where the next hundred blog posts take us, and I hope you've enjoyed this wonderful ride I've been on for nearly two years now. I'm a very different person than I was when I started, and I've learned a lot about writing and about myself in general by investing in this fandom. I can't wait to see what the future holds. Until then, I hope this was a sufficient blog post for this milestone. I also hope you continue to enjoy my writing as the years roll on, because while I've slowed down a bit, I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.
