State of the Lemur - 08/07/2015 · 4:35am Aug 8th, 2015
So, a few weeks ago, after my first return-trip to Disney in months, I came up with a stupid sequel to a stupid story and ended up hammering it onto a keyboard after I returned home the next day. It failed to get featured, and--for the most part--the public forgot entirely about it. But a choice few marsupials saw in the fic the same silly bliss that made me fall in love with the story hard enough to produce the thing in abominable text to begin with.
Among such glorious bastards was this melon fudge, and he was so delighted with the cute!tastical zaniness of the fic that he elected to make his own fanart about it. Now, Zap's done fan art for some of my fics before, but this was the first time the dude spent days and days hammering out something he could be proud of. And... hey... when you're promised free pink dresses and bows, why complain? So... kudos and humble thanks all around, fucking buddy.
So, I've been writing a lot of garbage lately. In my defense, it's garbage that I happen to enjoy, and it's made the best of some much self-imposed insomnia these last two weeks.
Take this piece of refuse, for instance. When in doubt, write a ship!fic, amirite?
EqG is a very strange animal. Trying to comprehend it is like looking at pony mythos through a warped looking glass. That's why I can afford to look at EqG and think "Wow, Fluttershy is hella hot!" and then glance over at pony-verse and think "Lulz silly horsey. Want a carrot?"
I also have something of an affinity for Sunset Shimmer, thanks to certain goddamn melon fucks, so what could be better than combining Sunset's cuteness with Human!Fluttershy's hawtness?
But, even with that aside, truth is... I had a lot of friggin' fun writing "In Your Kaleidoscopes." Like... the most fun I had writing a oneshot in a while. Maybe this means that I'm secretly a big pervert who enjoys stalking teenage high school girls with nonsexualized ethereal butterflies. I dunno. But the sort of story "In Your Kaleidoscopes" is resembles the exact kind of fic that I would actually casually read if it lay before me, shiny and chrome. It's stupid, silly, and yet it ends on a tantalizingly sweet note. I lurve that kind of shiet. Eat it up... with a side of fries. F'naaa.
As for this story... well...
I bleed kaizo fics. It's nothing truly to boast of. If I had a dime for every stupid, crazy, whacky fight scene I've written between freckled horses and giant robots or fire-breathing dragon matriarchs... f'naaaaa... you get the idea.
The Applemancer's Apprentice is the product of a big-belly'd lemur with a fucked-up sleep schedule tossing and turning while watching old videos of extinct Disney Hollywood Studios rides until his mind poops out a desperate one-shot forward thrust.
There are parts in the story that make me giggle... and I suppose that's all the inspiration I need to shamelessly squirt the sort of "literature" out. Was there any inspiration? A certain marsupial who shall not be named has stated that Apple Bloom was his favorite pony, and--as always with Noble acquaintances--I felt compelled to deliver.
Well, that would be an awesome answer if it were true, but I gotta admit that writing a story centered on Apple Bloom for once and not carving her up like a side of hash, f'naaa was tantalizingly adorable, and I wouldn't mind trying it again. Also, frecklepone makes an appearance, so--yay.
And then there's this brass beast. It's going... very slowly, which is kinda par for the course with my drivel. Still, I am managing it. Not just that, but I'm managing to do it in conjunction with the other two daily travesties I put to word processor. Is it a good balance? F'naaa. Only time will tell. Appledashery's always been a real slog. And Austraeoh's latest entry, Ynanhluutr, moves faster than the other books--IMHO--but that isn't saying much.
But I'm definitely feeling the time constraints. It's a bit wyrd finding oneself hammering out three chapters in the space of ninety minutes. I'm having to rearrange and shift writing sessions around in order to fit my uploads within 24-hour time slots, as is my personal commitment. At times, it gets hairy, like today... when I expected to do the three chapters in the afternoon cuz I had a four hour evening shift... but then it turned into a seven hour full shift. I mean... yay for more green paper, but f'naaaaaaaaaaaa. Now the State of a Lemur has to go up technically on Saturday morning. Ah well. #basementchildproblems
At least I'll be able to commit to my Clueless Reader vomit. And y'all deserve a well-thought-out, thoughtful review. I mean, we've already had the likes of Rust's, Titanium Dragon's, and Cold in Gardez's immaculate works commented on in this blargh. I think I should carry on with the high quality and slap my lemur tentacles against another timeless masterpiece of brony literature.
Being a selfish, solitary writer all of these years, I've always heard of great pony works in... like... passing. "Hey, did you read that story where Pinkie lures Rainbow Dash into her basement and rips her wings off?" "Hey, did you read the one where Rainbow, Applejack, and Rarity go on a Tolkien adventure? "Hey, did you read the two hundred stories where human beings suck major toes so they turn themselves into literal ponies because what?"
Argembarger's The Spiderses is one such oft-talked-of-story. In countless forums and skype conversations, I had witnessed the title spoken of in mesmerized, hushed tones. Supposedly it was a must-read, a life-changing experience. From residual word of digimouth, I kinda sorta figured what its deal was. After all, I had written that style of shiet back in the day--being ironic for the sake of the joke.
And yet that doesn't change the fact that--upon so much as glancing at the fic's first chapter name, I lost my shiet. I love being friggin' goofy and playful with language. Believe it or not, it's not so easy to garbly-gook-up the written word and have it come out more comedic than confounding. Nietzsche knows I've tried with 6s & 7s, and though that fic has gotten the "MEH" burns it deserves, I'm still personally proud of it.
Argembarger's story accomplishes comedy with several rich moments:
He gaved the book to twilight and she said thank you spike go away now" and spike said ok I will go away and he slided away like a dragon.
oh ok said the red spider wlell if we are going to be spiders forever lets have spider sex and twilight spider said ok well but i don't know how to have spider sex and big spider mac red said it is probably easy ok are you ok with this i am asking permission to have spider sex with you
twilight said i dunno spiders are creepy and weird :(
and then big mac said twilight WE ARE SPIDERs
Twilight felt really bad and sorry for big mac spider because she knew that he tried his best and but if there wasn't an biggest problem happening she would give him the hugs.
all the spiders ran thru equestria and all the ponies were scared and ran into house but except for one pone who stood in teh street and angry!
But... alas... in truth, I found that the meaty bits of truly hilarious psuedo-prose were... few and far between. That's not to say that the fic wasn't hilarious. I just feel that it was lacking in a certain joke-per-paragraph ratio that would have made the entire experience unique. I mean, sure, in its favor the story is incredibly dayum short. As a result, the pushed joke is... simply that. A pushed joke. Argembarger wisely avoids soaking too much in his own ironic juices... which is the least that can be said about any of the kaizo stuff I've perfectly slapped together.
Spiderses is also hilarious because of the juxtaposition of many absurd things. It's like a holy trinity of fucked-up grammar, grotesque absurdity, and crack!shipping. On its own, the plot thread of Twilight and Big Macintosh engaging in non-descript sexual intercourse would be dull and heartless, but here--with arachnid horrors funneled through a m00nsp34k cannon, it reaches Kafka-esque levels of insanity. It's like a delicious forty-five degree curve that I tried to accomplish in ¡DIVE! ¡DIVE! ¡DIVE! but failed horribly (also, D^3! was 15 thousand fucking words long).
Still, I think Spiderses--as short and sweet as it was--could have done more goofy things that extended beyond the constraints of its wacky storyline. You can sorta see where the author tries to do that, with having the death scene of Spike be written in an inexplicably correct use of grammar and syntax, or suddenly switching to first person narration in the last chapter. And although I found the use of emoticons to be a bit jarring, even for a fic of this crazy magnitude, I have to admit it added a signature touch to the work that's adoracute in its own right.
But how does one rate a fic like this? Does one score it based on what it's trying to accomplish? Also, can anything else on Fimfic truly compare to this one milestone that we all have to gleam from?
Thing is, it's very... very hard to be "IRONIC" in the MLP fandom anymore. That might sound hypocritical, considering just what kind of a demonic spawn pool the fandom was birthed from. But Spiderses is more or less the... Ebaumsworld version of Cupcakes. Back in 2011, it took an up-and-coming internet sensation and cranked it up to 11, only on LSD. It just so happens that Argembarger had a good acid trip while Sgt Sprinkles suffered a hellish fever dream. And--guess what? Both authors are fucking ghosts now. Argembarger hasn't even signed on Fimfic in over eighty-two weeks. It's like they were both the humble, exploratory Neil Armstrongs of our community. They came, they saw, they briefly dragged their sneakers in the moondust, and then they high-tailed it for the stars while all the Buzz Aldrins remained behind to soak in the god damn spotlight.
Something like The Spiderses can't very well be uploaded today without becoming buried deep within that moon. If it stands a chance, it's only on such harlequin occasions as April Fool's, such as when I uploaded 6s & 7s (and even that fic got rejected and had to be rearranged before the fimfic admins would so much as breathe past it).
What does this mean for us, exactly? Have we gotten classier? More self-respecting?
I think, in a lot of ways, it means that the irony is long gone from the phenomenon that is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. When you make a goofy comedy fic, it has to be something anchored in the characters. If there isn't something that the readers can relate to, then the plot is going to get you nowhere. Nobody likes ponies flailing around in zero g. They need a planet to roll on... and do mud fights in. Meh. Whatever.
So long, fair sailor. I bequeath thine story three dancing spiderses out of five: 
May you someday write bat!phobia crack fics in the Stephen Universe fandom. Nietzsche help us all.
Man, buck y'all. I've said it before and I'll say it again: this is my Bronycon.
With tears,
-SS&E
Disney is evil though
Every time I read one of these, I have to wait for my brain to finish processing. Then I laugh. Then I wonder why my head hurts.
Huh.
I had a lot of fun with Kaleidoscopes too.
Both of these gave me the good giggles.
I, too, have noticed this change over the years. Some people blame it on analysts like Digibro, but I think it's something that was just naturally going to happen as the show became less meme-like.
I find myself reading your zany, off the ceiling and walleyed fics more than your other ones, mainly because I actually like those kinds of stories. And, well, reading stories about adorable ponies in simultaneously dark and uproariously hilarious situations makes me laugh.
Also, Kaleidoscopes was as cute as Fluttershy.
On that note, I'll remind myself to read Spiderses now.
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>less meme-like
You say this after the 100th episode and the midseason finale.
It is true, though. They've been tackling some rather serious topics lately, season 5 especially. Also, those little girls that tuned into the very first episode (assuming they're still at least semi-watching it) are obviously older by now.
Plus, you know, growing with the audience n'all that shiet.
>Sunset Shimmer
>RoboRed
>not me
Man, what's a girl gotta do? :(
I think I said this exact same thing when I found out my job was a night shift.
The absolute best "ironic bad MLP fic" in the entire world is Spike's Day Off.TXT
There is actually a nonzero possibility of a chance that Argembarger might return. I hung out with him at a recent convention!
#horsefamous, #horsefamous everywhere.
Instead of juggling updates all at the same time, why not just set aside some time to write ahead and amass a chapter reserve, so you can afford to relax a bit more?
And EQG is strange because it's the functional equivalent of, I dunno, taking the cast of... Lord of the Rings and sticking them in a suburban US/Canadian highschool, retroactively erasing all of their experiences that made them interesting in favor of a dull life as an earthling, and leaving just one who fell through a portal wondering in horror if these people who look so familiar are their friends, or body snatchers.
Also, while I like your crazy fics, the worldbuilding in your main stories are far more fun to me. Making all the crazy ones happen in the same universe on the other hand could be amusing.
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Honestly, I thought this was what he was doing in the first place. To have him say that he was slinging all of these out just hours before posting them is...well I'm not entirely surprised, but it's still damn impressive.
That fanart is freaking wonderful. Dress on RD looks perfect. Those cookies, gosh. Nice to see there are artists that read your stuff on here. If I could I would have done quite a few by now given all the awesome imagery those stories have played out in my head as I read your stories. xD
yes, and it was worth every word to see AJ and Dash really gain more respect for the dainty unicorn. All three really grew amazingly close in that adventure. I wonder if stories like that would have been more common if Faust had gotten her way, you know, with probably less World Snakes. Maybe. I dunno, she likes kaizos too I guess.
About that Bloom fic. When's the Swee-qeul to that one coming? ;P I kid, but that lipstick shenanigan was very "Pretty Cure" lol
images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fimages4.alphacoders.com%2F228%2F228236.jpg&f=1
(all this time and still couldn't find a good picture to show how it related to the ending. buck it, I'm too tired to continue looking D: )
Lewis Carroll was not a pedophile.