State of the Lemur - 04/03/2015 · 12:41am Apr 4th, 2015
Finally, the two best ponies where they were always meant to be...
This was drawn by MoonlitBrush, a super-talented brony artist who's good at colors, good at frecklepone, and good at holy fucking fuck what in the fuck did he just fucking do to fucking Dinky fuck me sideways my fucking God. Ahem... still, insanely provocative skills at grim-dark aside, he's just an overall great deviantartist, and it was nice working with him.
Why did we cross paths, you ask? I won a free art commission for coming in sixth place in a fanfic contest that I totally did not write on another alt. You can tell it's not my story, cuz of the huuuuuuge percentage of downvotes. F'naaaa.
You know, for the record, in the three-or-so years that I've been writing poniwords, I've not won first place in a single literary contest ever. I've gotten second once, but that was about it. Although I've gotten some great pieces of art from talented lemurs in the process, I just... have horrible luck in submitting stuff to legit writing competitions.
And, in a way, this might explain why I'm so crazy about having and using alt accounts. Imagine a world where Appledashery or Austraeoh was written on SS&E. The subscription base would literally have an aneurysm from the constant, 24/7 blitzkrieg. But it's much more depressing than that. While I relish the thought of needing my own separate space like some self pretentious Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band of poni poni poni, the truth is that I suck super hard at the writ and... sometimes I wanna test that, y'know? And the results are almost always less than flattering.
Surely I'm capable of growing and improving, but I don't see it happening anytime soon... not so long as I'm writing fanfiction and... y'know... having fucking fun while doing it. A wise woman once said that she's read SS&E stuff, but not entirely out of choice. More to the point, she was compelled to read the material "for the ideas of the story in spite of Skirts' style." And, y'know, I suppose I can understand that. But try and understand how it feels to write something in spite of one's own style. Lulz.
I've never been and I never will be a genius, but... I've got ideas. I've got tons and bushels and pantyloads of ideas. So many ideas that I'm constantly sighing under the impossible weight of them all. I have so many ideas that I know I will never ever get to publish them all. The best I can do is just unload the ascii train tracks with a miles-per-second-keyboard and hope for some decent applepone cuddlebumpery. And, y'know, I've considered doing the Spielberg thang and sitting back, tossing the fic ideas into the pile, and letting other lemurs have their tentacles at them. But... like... it's all so dense and kaizo and piling up to God's dicksack. And who in their right mind is actually going to write all that? You?
I'll butt my head against more contests in the future. And though it may take a long time (or just a lot of lust luck) before I actually win one of them, it's nice to know I can win myself some wicked pretty-pastel-princessy fanart out of the mix. F'naaaaaaaa. So, bring it on, you heroes and champions of azeroth.
Mmmm... champions.
Oh fakk! Fakk! Moving right along! Go! GO!
No. The above embed is not a trick. That is none other than the cunning linguistic talents of Aurora-Borealis, author, artist, world-builder, and all around renaissance lemur... when he isn't, y'know, flooding my PM or piling heaps of praise on top of a certain fuzzhead's mailbox. Whoops. But it's all good. He's a nice guy and doesn't afraid of atheism. Besides, who can't love someone with a user-name that resembles Third Best Blonde Princess?
For those of you playing the home game, he's performed an audio read of the first seven chapters of this story. That's right, I said "first seven," because the only thing better than a horrible abomination is a horrible abomination that stands to continue, like Dances With the Stars soaked in rabies and just crammed straight into your belly button. In truth, I only wrote this because I had to do something for April Fool's. It's similar to how your mother's obligated to get you a personal valentine's card every year even though you're a thirty-two year old basement child who would rather do nothing with girls but instead sit on your hairy ass writing pony words and play TF2 all the time (they sure don't make gaydars like they used to, huh?).
What was I talking about? Oh, right, this shiet. It's not as easy to write at you might think, which is one reason why I've left it tagged as "incomplete." The other reason is so that I can have an excuse to be MAXIMUM KAIZO with a single story at the drop of a hat whenever the mood presents itself. Who knows, maybe it'll mean less crappy oneshots in the future (but we all know better). When can we expect more chapters? Boh. I dunno... maybe when the permanent ink finally fades off my toenails.
Some of you might wonder if... y'know... Skirts ever gets rejected for the crapola he puts up, or else if he's some sort of god-king-walrus-wizard who gets everything instantly featured no matter what. Whelp, not only did this story fail to get featured, but get a load of this:
Holy shit, son. That's almost worth the price of admission itself. Someone on the fimfic submission board actually possessed an ounce of sanity. What I absolutely love best is the flagrant yet righteously necessary overkill. I've written single Appledashery chapters less dense than this. They didn't just reject the fanfic, they gave it the stone-cold stunner, kicked it in the balls, ran over it with a beer truck, then filed for domestic abuse. I think I laughed for a full minute when I first saw this masterpiece of a screenshot. Whelp, it took some fiddling around with the tags and synopsis (not to mention a modicum of grace), but I was finally able to get this travesty uploaded, albeit a good twelve hours after I had originally hoped. I guess you can never be too serious on the one day when nobody's supposed to take you seriously.
And, so you know, I've been rejected before, and I'll have stories rejected again. It's never the end of the world. If nothing else, it shows you just how far you can flex the tentacle, not to mention it's a great litmus test for one's literary (in)sanity. I recall that the first story that "Blue Harvest" ever wrote was meant to go up on SS&E, but the admin rejected it, claiming that it had too small a synopsis and absolutely zero plot. And yet, at the same time, they wrote something to the extent of "Well, if you really want to upload it, then I guess it's okay." To which I just sighed and said "Nah" before uploading it to Blue Harvest... only to be rejected again because "You stole from SS&E, f'naaaaaa!" Lulz... that took a delicate conversation to fix.
I guess what I learned from that experience is--yes--there is most definitely a bias when it comes to what one is able to put up and how. If I had pushed for that original ship fic to go up on SS&E, I would never have branched out and turned Blue Harvest into such a chill alt that it is. I'm not sure if that proves anything, but I like to personally think that a moment of humble restraint rewarded me in the end. But that's pretty pretentious. So... mleh.
So, it's the end of an era. Ponies are on the horizon. Long live poni.
Why is it that--in some fashion--the last twelve months of fucking drought didn't really bother me that much? Maybe perhaps it was because I was too busy waiting for a return of a far fuzzier kind. Maybe it was cuz I spent everyday writing ponies doing some shit... or some other shit.
The pastel hoof drops tomorrow. Am I excited? F'naaa. Still, in a lot of ways, it feels like it's snuck up on me. Lately, I've either been too distracted or too lethargic to do much of anything... even write. I suppose it's just the moment when I need adorable fuzzy ears and kicky-hoofs to drag me out of the quagmire.
There's something about MLP and--to a slightly lesser extent, EQG--that makes me happy in ways that can't properly be explained. Like, sometimes even when watching the lamest, most watered down, most luke-warm of estrogenical faux high school drivel that is Equestria Girls... I feel a tad bit misty-eyed. It's something I hope to capture some day in a fanfic... heh... who'd a thunk?
Pony is just so innocent, and in such a confident way too. Naturally that means I must take one of the characters, yank her out of her element, and have her commit brazen murder in prolonged multi-chapter star wars death fights. But in all seriousness, sometimes a human being just needs to go someplace and dwell somewhere that feels innocent, pristine, and detached from gritty, grimy world. And while MLP:FiM hasn't necessarily been perfect (I can definitely think of a handful of cartoons that I feel are better, though I like them far less), there's something about it that unifies emotion and places it in... I dunno... a soft fluffy place where you can appreciate the thought... the noble essence of what it must be (or even feel like) to be innocent.
These are the kind of wyrd thoughts that make me smile while working a lonely opening shift, or sigh in bittersweet melancholy at the end of a boring day. Maybe that's not happiness... but it's certainly the conscious awareness of happiness. Gaydar... hah... get it?
So, good luck to all of you marsupials. May this new season spark twice as many new fanfic ideas as it'll inevitably crush, and may we all find reasons to smile, sigh, or just get misty-eyed when the waves of innocence wash over us.
The absolute best way to die from rip tide
Hey, what does this button do?
-SS&E
That [Page_break] messup.
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I read that and thought "HANG ON DID I MISS-READ SOMETHING OH SHIT" then read the next few words and all was well.
Also I agree, I watched about 14 seconds of adventure time years ago and already found it more interesting, more funny etc than MLP FIM but I have no interest in being part of their fandom or reading fanfiction except princess bubblegum x marceline obviously ship it to hell and back and then back again
It's better, but it's not better, if that makes any sense at all. MLP quite rightly earns it 7.6-9 on IMDB which I feel is entirely correct, and the songs, characters etc are great but the pacing is dreadful fairly often whcih is one of the main things I feel keeps it down.
Though MLP should only be scoring a 2/10 so the fact that it is able to target a demographic above and still achieve 7.6-9 even taking into account the fandom bias (but also people who hate pony) is not bad at all.
There really aren't many cartoons that I like, actually. I've tried "Adventure Time", "Gravity Falls", and "Steven Universe", for example, and found them clever and amusing, but for some reason they just don't hold my interest for long. And even when talking about live action shows--I'd pick "The Sopranos" as one of the best TV shows ever made, and I've watched it all the way through a few times, but I couldn't imagine being part of a fandom for it.
Something in the alchemy of MLP's sweetness, humor, and relative intelligence makes it a truly unique experience for me, and I love it to pieces.
The moderators rejecting a story due to bad grammar and/or punctuation? Obviously, they were just playing an April Fools' joke on you.
And 6s and 7s did make the Featured Box, but the "mature" setting had to be turned off to see it there. In other words, there were clop fics that scored higher.
Shoot, you just reminded me that season 5 is going to kill all of my head canon. Hopefully I can keep deluding myself into thinking the Mane 6 are all immortal anyway. F'naa.
I love some other shit!
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Kinda in the same boat here, or a similar vessel. I like MLP and am definitely more in the fandom for it, but Ed, Edd, n' Eddy will always be my all-time favorite cartoon.
Can't stop the Flood. At least, not without destroying all life in the galaxy along with it.
That's also why I love this show, man. I listen to heavy metal, watch horror movies, and play violent video games. When everything I watch, play, and hear is about violence,e gore, and death... sometimes, it's nice to watch something that jsut wants to make yo smile.
TD? Biased? Perish the thought. He is an upstanding citizen who would never, ever, ever let bias get in the way of recommending terrible feghoots to people.
(But seriously, I'm flattered by the mention. I think.)
I have to admit I have yet to read your stories which you add to on a daily basis, but a lot of what you write seems to meander between brilliant and bizarre, and it isn't always easy to tell which is which at first glance.
But don't ever doubt that you don't deserve every single one of your followers.
I look forward to what the future brings!
Eheheheh... sorry?
Hmm.
Maybe that's why I like the show so much too. When someone asks me why I even bother watching MLP all, I give them the usual schtick about good writing/world-building, adorable&relatable, somewhat in-depth characters, quality animation, acting, etc. However, I think the way you put it describes it best. I'm not someone who would look the least likely to watch the show (I'm a 21 year old female who looks like a 12 year old and outwardly enjoys anime and cute things), but according to my friends, I have a sense of all-around innocence that's ingrained within my personality no matter what type of innocence that may be. If that's true, that probably means I'm just naturally drawn to it.
When I was a little kid, there was a contest at the YMCA to guess how many jellybeans were in a funky-shaped glass jar. First prize was something I really wanted (I forget now what).
I got a measuring tape and measured all the circumferences and projections of that jar, in units of jelly beans, computed its volume by pencil and paper, and submitted my guess.
I came in second. Somebody who guessed randomly came in first. (Second prize was a calculator.)
You can only have so much skill. Skill isn't normally distributed. But there's no limit to how much luck somebody can have. Luck is normally distributed. If you put a million names in a (really big) jar and pick one, somebody is going to have 1 in a million luck that day.
If there are enough people in a contest for it to be worth winning, there are enough people that some of them will have enough luck to win. Not to say that they could win with a bad story! But the difference between 1st and 6th place is luck.
ON THE OTHER HAND...
Pascoite has a very good record of winning write-offs. That's because he (a) writes well, and (b) writes the kind of stories that My Little Pony fans want to read.
"Second Singularity" isn't the kind of story that My Little Pony fans want to read. It's a tragedy. Exactly zero super-famous fandom stories are tragedies.
Pony really is all that you described. Heck you're right about there being better cartoons, but I don't like them as much either.
Shit, I remember when it all started for me. I knew about some weird cultish behavior of some guys I played D&D with. They wore pony shirts and I couldn't possibly understand it. It had to be ironic, it just had to be. Spin the clock ahead almost a year and I'm raiding in Guild Wars 2. My friends are gone that night, so I join a pickup group of bronies. I get bored while waiting for them to get ready and start asking questions about the show, they just tell me to watch it.
So, silly me, I do. I watch Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 first. Rainbow Dash instantly makes me interested to see what happens. Something about her voice. Then I watch the next one I find, the classic: Hurricane Fluttershy. After that, May the Best Pet Win. Before I know it, it's got it's hooks in me and I'm in.
It just made me happy. Like, really happy. It was a high. A euphoria. (Tips fedora) I can't think of any other word to describe it. It was good. It hit me so hard I wanted to start writing about it. Eventually I did, and tried to capture that wonder in fics. Eventually though, I cam down from the high. Try as I might, I couldn't capture it again. It wasn't that things were bad or worse now, actually imo they're better than ever. But that feeling, it was gone. I sat down and transcribed my feelings into a story. It was then that I realized what you said.
That's all we can do. That and hope people enjoy reading it. But for me, those ideas don't generally trend well toward attracting viewers. I don't have anything to say about the mane 6. Not like you or other better writers do. I prefer OC's or background characters. Stories that I can shape myself and carve out an entire canvas for myself. I just have to come to terms with the reality that people might not care as much about them, if at all.
Ahh well, dems the breaks. Here's to a new season. Fun, adventure, and episodes that make us want to keep writing. Oh, and hopefully some cool songs, too.
For god's sake, skirts, how many alts do you actually have?! It's quite un-nerving to see an author name and then be told "That's a skirts alt", then see another name and be all like "Yeah, that's another alt". Jesus man, leave some poni words for the rest of us, aye?
That button at the end was pretty cool, though. Reminds me that I should get around to reading Austraeoh at some point.
I've seen those other shows, and while I will say that they're better than Magical Fun Poniponi Time in a lot of ways...
They aren't better.
And I suppose that's the draw for the show. The cute, fuzzy ears that you'd just luuuurv to scratch behind and see their reactions. Those big, anime-esque eyes that just
suck you straight in like a black hole.Its just so goshdarned innocent and cute that, if it were a disease, it would've eradicated the entire human race by now.
I like this new era of Skirts posting more than gifs and weird images.
That whole better but not better speech speaks to me a lot. I feel that Pony is more than the sum of its parts, especially earlier on. That's how season one has the most episodes I dislike but is my second favorite season overall. That's how the series is one of my top three favorites ever despite disliking over 20 episodes. The good is just SO good. It all just adds up into such a nice yummy whole that makes me feel and care so much.
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How does it feel to be SA's newest female?
I'm actually interested in another internet persona's existance. Am I going insane?
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So.... are you contending that Background Pony is not a super famous fandom story, or that it is not a tragedy?
2944874 I think every review I've read of Background Pony said "... but I hated the ending." Haven't read it myself. Point still stands: Pony fans don't like tragedies. Don't enter a ponyfic contest with a tragedy, then be disappointed when you don't win.
I can understand what you mean about your style. It's your own unique way of presenting an idea to the world, but not necessarily in such a way that people will immediately understand. You are obviously doing something right though, or else why would we like you quite so much?
Maybe you are like Lovecraft, in that you have a niche following until years after you die and then you become famous and get all kinds of eldritch marketing deals to feed your estate. You have an estate, right?
Maybe a tiny one? They sell those at hobby lobby. You can paint them and everything! Painting can be a hassle though.
As to a thought on FIM... It's hard to describe why, like many here, I like it more than other shows. There's too many reasons.
Maybe it's the characters. How they all have their quirks that have grown since they first appeared years ago. Maybe it's the setting, a glimpse into an alien yet familiar civilization of superpowered cuddlepons. Maybe it's how characters with wildly differing personalities and views will still put up with each other because they want the best for each other.
Or maybe it's because Rarity is the greediest and most hilarious avatar of generosity ever, and Fluttershy is well on her way to being tied with Rarity for the 'best manipulator' spot.
Yeah, it could also be how the characters live with how they feel they should act, and how they want to act.
2944972 Fair enough. You have a point. though I think my point stands, and is now that there is a distinct difference between "super famous" and "generally liked".
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2944972 Personally, I enjoy and relish the fact that so many people didn't like the ending. Heck, I didn't like the ending, and spent a few days wondering if there was any opening for a sequel to fix that ending so that everyone could be happy and things could be fair.
And then I realized that that is the point of tragedy: to remind us that life isn't fair, and that sometimes, things really do end terribly. By that logic, you can somewhat gauge it as a compliment that people say they hated the ending. I say somewhat because there will always be those who just hate anything, but generally those types will just hate the story to begin with and won't stick around long enough for the ending.
2967294 Tragedy is a good genre. But it's unlikely to win ponyfic contests. Skirts shouldn't be surprised at that. Most of my best stories are tragedies; half of my followers followed me for "The saga of dark demon king ravenblood nightblade" or "Sisters", 2 of the 5 comedies I've written (out of 27 stories). Comedies or feel-good stories routinely win the monthly ponyfic write-off.
Second Singularity even meets the neo-classical definition of tragedy, as Lyra's tragic ending results from her great strengths combined with one character flaw.