I came to a sudden realization just now. · 4:35am May 25th, 2014
I have the fifth most viewed story on this website.
Look upon the face which got that story there. Look at it!
Warning, touchy-feely woe is me artist blog ahead.
I rightly give credit to Sweetie Belle for this... because there's no way my writing is what got me all of those views. Folks must have searched for a Sweetie Bot story, and found mine by mere chance, perhaps? I can't explain it any other way, certainly. Of course the story isn't very deep or amazing, either, so that's a little embarrassing that it has apparently gotten so much attention. Literally, only My little dashie, Princess Molestia and Anthropology (and one other) have more views. If I had known... that that would happen, I might have tried to put a little more effort into it, or at least not ripped off a bunch of famous robots from other stories. 
I had only wanted to have fun with it! I didn't know that it was going to be the most read Sweetie Bot literature in existence! 
Well, I think I'm going to have a lie down and mull this over, then. And now I'm wondering if I should be worried that 'Thunderstruck' has such a terrible view to actual 'like' ratio. It has many many more views than positive reviews. Hm. Well, the negatives aren't very high, either. I don't know, but I think it's also fair to say I don't even know why this happened or a lot of other things. (Other than perhaps Sweetie Bot being irresistibly adorable)
And yes, it certainly says a lot about me that I'm so unaware of what my own stories are doing as of late that I am just now noticing its view count. If you have read my stories, fellas, you'll know I'm mostly in it for/about the 'short' joke. The gimmick, the thing that makes you chuckle and smile while reading a story about magical little horses. I like kameos a lot, in particular. They say that's a mistake, but oh well. Really though I just enjoy silly situations and a big cast.
Moving on, I'm (still) sorry for not updating and being scarce, everyone. I've just been a bum and haven't really taken much in the way of action to try and come back to writing. It's like, you fall behind, and then you stay behind, becoming your own worst enemy. It's crazy—like me hahaha, get it?—but seriously, I guess it happens to a lot of us. I was foolish to think I'd be so immune to it. A solid year or so of writing hard was good... but it didn't see my stories through.
I'll try not to wait till next year to kick myself back in gear. I'd really like to see Twilight get home, Mary get her life in order and become human again (maybe? right? ^^), Fluttershy figure out what's going on, Rarity and Pinkie Pie triumph over evil, Rainbow and Applejack find their friends, the girls finally get reunited, Ponyville get saved from Pinkie Pie, Sweetie Bot come to understand her place in the world, the Jaegers stand triumphant over the Kaiju, Twilight and Trixie stop fighting, Swan Dive get her story actually published, and whatever other unresolved plot points I have in my other unfinished stories.
So, this miiight be my wake up call blog. But I'd feel bad about calling it that if I don't follow through. I'm not sure I will... I've been looking at schooling lately, in NY, so that might tear me away for who knows how long. I'll let you all know if anything happens though, so don't worry about that much at least.
So, have faith in me, everypony! Because...
Dat broken image link.
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Which? I'm seeing both just fine, sire.
2143195 Yeah it be.
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First image.
I always have had faith in you. I don't know if it means I should read Thunderstruck now. Is it really part of the Madverse or not?
I find the one below yours ironic...
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Fixed, then, (I hope.)
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Thank you.
2143231 No no, thank you for the timely heads up before I walked out!
How in the ... WOW. That's a lot of views. Thousands of eyes upon you, watching your every move!
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Thanks anyway.
Aw...don't mention it.
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static.fjcdn.com/gifs/Poor+Fluttershy.+could+be+a+good+They+re+watching+gif_1156ad_3508571.gif
You should uh... get back to writing... you crazy old wizard, you.
Another striking revelation: all but two of the stories in the top ten are completed. So in terms of potential exposure, you have the chance to climb higher.
Congratulations. I can positively assure you that it is not just the Sweetie Bot part, though. I for one thoroughly enjoy your writing especially in this story, and I know for a fact that you had several others of my friends at the edge of their seats (and probably grinning madly (I mean, that's a normal reaction to reading a story about electrical cartoon ponies... right?
)).
)
I'd even say that this story proves how good of a writer you are, because I can only imagine how easy it is to turn robot ponies into another bad - or at best, mediocre - story. It's probably third place after HiE and human-turned-pony (the latter of which you also mastered
I don't know if this counts as a positive review yet. Just to be on the safe side, I might have to make another, longer one later today.
Even my most viewed is only 65th most viewed on the site. Congrats.
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You! What are you doing here, you famous person-writer you.
I mean, uhm, yes, I am also a famous horse-words person. So this is normal.
Thanks for the congrats, though, really. ^^ Hope your day's going grand.
Eyep. You surely are mad.
Yep Love me some Sweetie Bot.
Love me some insanity.
This could just be a result of being incomplete. People might be waiting until the end to determine if they feel like they giving it a like. Granted, I'm not sure on the average holdout percentage, so this is all wild guessing and such
Trying to figure out the logic of view counts is an exercise that only results in madness. For example, let's look at your Fimfic page vs. my DeviantART page.
You have a total of 135,000 views, 780 followers, and 7680 comments.
I have a total of 735,000 views, 330 followers, and 9570 comments.
In short, you have under a fifth of my views, twice my followers, and around the same amount of comments.
I gave up on trying to figure out what these numbers truly meant long ago.
I seem to surround myself with friends that can't easily accept prais and admiration. I wonder if that's a good thing? Humility is a vsluable trait at the very least, I'm sure. Keep it up Merlos. Not the waiting, but the writing that helped inspire writes and followers like myself.
Hehehe!
This pleases me! You write good stories! You deserve all the views!
Hey, I did what I could by featuring it to all like 60 followers of the EFNW account!
But seriously though, I had no idea it had that many views. I was going by "likes" as a general indicator of popularity, and it wasn't as high as others at the time. The disparity is kind of interesting. You also have slightly more "favorites" than "likes" (1800 vs 1400) which makes sense for an in-progress story. My "best" story only got 900 faves and 700 likes, so almost exactly half your numbers, but I only had 5,200 views and that story's been "complete" for a while now. You have 15x the view count... my only guess at that is that at some point, you hit saturation for "willing to identify as a brony and log in to a site" viewers, and then the rest of the readers are anonymous.
Bottom line? No clue... other than that fortune is even more fickle than the muse. Still, I enjoy the hell out of that story, so why don't you just write some more damn chapters already!
> most viewed story on the website
> Look upon the face which got that story there. Look at it!
> not Mary
filthy casuals
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Yup, people have no class.
it's good to know it hasn't gotten to your head.
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Oh my grand ego was swollen to begin with.
And then the ending happens: All the ponies lose and evil takes over forever and there are mountains of dead ponies everywhere.
Because suddenly grimdark.
Though honestly, there are sooooo many stories I've read that started out as light comedies and then became filled with death and destruction about 100,000 words into the story out of nowhere. And I'm all like, "Well, that happened..."
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?
2216036 Just ribbing you with a trend I'm noticing in quite a few stories, where the tone suddenly and drastically shifts to hyper-grimdark after a long while of a light tone.
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Which story? I didnt think any of them did that. Adventure, maybe, but not dark.
2216895 Not yours, just a bunch of stories in general.
They went from comedies with only slightly darker hints, but no deaths to sudden invasions and gore and death. And I was like, "Damn, somebody stopped taking their meds!"
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Ah, yes I notice this a lot too.
2219919 That's why an outline is a good idea.
It kinda keeps the story from running screaming off the deep end.