Curtain Call. · 6:32pm Sep 25th, 2015
So, that's it. All of Both Sides Now is posted, so if you're one of the people who tracked it and was waiting for it to be done before reading, you can do that from this point on. It was a fun experience -- hard work, but ultimately very rewarding. Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who made it better than it was to start off with, and also really anyone who read it and liked it. That's why we write, or at least that's why we publish what we write, isn't it? -- to have someone tell you how that idea you had, the one you used all those words to shape, that was pretty neat, man.
Something else that happens with a curtain call, at least with plays, is that sometimes you can get a Q&A out of the actors, the director, and so on. Anyone fell like asking me any questions? Doesn't necessarily have to be about this story, or about ponies or writing in general, really. I feel like sharing, I don't know. I hold back a lot, which is a habit I want to work on breaking.
One other thing. If you've been following me for a while you'll probably have noticed I've been putting out a story that roughly corresponds with new episodes, and that's because of a thing that EQD is doing. It's poorly run[1] and brings in next to no views, but I've been plugging away at it diligently because... well, I don't know. So, I'm going to stop forcing myself to write something for every prompt, because I haven't felt as interested in things I've written for this compared to the stuff I wrote that was completely my own. It might give me some time to work on some ideas I've had kicking around that I haven't been able to to work into any prompt yet, or just recharge my batteries, we'll see. Putting undue pressure on myself over trivial things is another thing I need to overcome, and if the real raw motive for writing -- because it's fun -- isn't there, then why force yourself to?
[1] Yeah yeah, EQD handling something to do with fanfiction poorly, what a surprise. I get the constraints they're under, I just... I don't know, wish it was a little more like it was in the very early days of the fandom. At least things are pretty tight here in our own little domain, which is nice.
Would you be amenable to clarifying how you think it could be improved, and perhaps explain what other fic things we do badly?
I'm just nosy ^^;
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It's more with the culture of how fanfics are handled there, which has to do with their very nature of them getting on the blog; a picture you can judge in seconds, music minutes, but a story can easily take hours, and with the sheer volume of submissions the actual stories that make it onto the blog aren't, I don't know, indicative much of what's the actual good stuff you find on FimFiction, not in the same way following the site posts or groups dedicated to picking out good stories are. The only way of fixing things, of making EQD the kind of spotlight it used to be, would be to wind the clock back to 2012 in terms of both size and output of material by the fandom, and that's, y'know, not gonna happen.
For the actual Writer's Training Ground, the submission form pretty regularly pointed to the wrong thing and the prompts were very often "write something about the new character/continuing a scene that happened in the episode", which is narrow and hard to work with, moreso than an open-ended thematic prompt that isn't tied to any one character or situation.
But that's all just my thoughts, other people's mileage can vary.
:D
I was following along the entire ride, and it was reallt nice seeing all the positive reactions, yes. Hopefully now that it's all there I can finally convince a few people set aside the time to read it.
Thank you so much for writing. Especially Both Sides Now, because it was wonderful and one of the nicest pieces of fiction I've ever read, but I really can't overstate how much enjoyment your works have brought to me over the years.
Oh man, an excuse to be tactlessly curious while still feel like helping? You really are the best! Here's some prying, answer as many as you like.
Ever written non-pony works?
Have any interest in Them's Fightin' Herds? (I really want to see it funded, so I feel obligated to mention it to everyone.)
How's the family life going? You've got an almost two-year-old now, right? Is that when things start getting easier or harder?
How'd you first start watching ponies? What made you want to sit down and write a fanfic?
Are you ever going to write that Derpy/Soarin' fic? :(
All your clop has been pretty romantic and story-first. While I totally respect and enjoy that, is there anything that you do find basely hot? I noticed OOTN is in your fairly exclusive following list (along with me, which I am totally flattered by) – is there an actual interest in the content there, or are they just a personal friend? (If the latter, are they still doing okay? I'm way more invested in the lives of people who wrote weird porn once than I should be. <_<)
Hm. If this is really a curtain call, we should be able to ask questions of the actors, too. It kinda veers into silly role-playing territory, but there's no real harm in being shameless, is there?
Twilight: Was this the first time you'd thought of any of your friends sexually, or had you previously noticed how pretty and amazing any of them were? Was there anypony in particular who used to appear in your sexual/romantic fantasies?
Fair Banks: What's the most embarassing project your name has ever been attached to? The one that just spiralled into a complete mess, and there was nothing you could do to salvage?
Trebelle: How did you and Celestia start meeting each other individually? Which one of you made the first invitation, and how did you feel?
The Post: What do I need to know about what could be going into the hayfries I eat every day!?
Awww. I love minifics, and yours are the absolute best. If you're not getting anything out of it, then yeah, do what you enjoy, but—Actually it's kinda selfish of me to request that you always remember I appreciate them, when I can't manage to the effort into reminding you. I always want to post something more eloquent and meaningful than just 'yesssssss', even if that's a pretty accurate summation of my feelings.
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Agreed with most everything Hoofsy said, yes.
The issue is sort of that... there's too much good content? Or at least, 'reasonably worth reading for a specific audience' – I dunno how much of anything I'd imply is good. Because our niche isn't so niche anymore, we've fragmented and segmented and there's nothing that can achieve common-ground, everyone-should-read material. That's not a bad thing, it just means that groups have to become more specific. And EqD doesn't do that.
As for the WTG, there's just not a lot of attention drawn to or from them, or any real feedback given or other incentive to participate. Those are the main things for me, but I agree that the prompts are also kind of... obvious things there were already going to be a half-dozen minifics about, because the idea popped into people's heads, instead of anything that really encourages writing improvement or such.
I really enjoyed the story. As you say, it was pretty neat, man. I read 'Too Much Love Will Kill You' earlier today (liked it!) and I think I read in one of your blog posts that 'Both Sides Now' was inspired by not spending much time on the Rarity/Twilight relationship.
But I didn't feel like you spent much time on Applejack/Twilight either, comparitively. So what inspired you to write 400000 words of Rarilight rather than Twijack? Or was it just that: that was where the inspiration was?
I might have answered my own question, actually. Feel free to ignore me if so!
It was a great ride--I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Questions?
Why RariLight?
When you write a oneshot, do you have an idea of what comes after? Because I'm clueless what's beyond the end of the fic.
If T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost got into a fist fight, who would win? Personally I think it would come down to whether or not Eliot's instability could be weaponized. But Robert Frost is wily and elusive. Also old. I mean they're both dead but y'know.
How do you tend to feel about your stories, when they are out there and no longer only yours? Do you love them, hate them, indifferent, it depends? I find this varies a lot. I'm usually less curious as to the what as I am about why people ive the answers they do.
I see you write a buttload of stories with song names. Are you a musician, by chance? Or would you like to be, if you had world enough and time? What would you/do you play?
I see you did the WTG. I've literally never seriously considered doing it. (I did do the 30 minute prompt pony blog thing tho for funsies) I don't know why. Just never did. Would you recommend those sorts of things, when EQD does them? Why do you? I do like writing oneshots. It's cathartic. Also I really, REALLY enjoy giving things titles and it would provide an excuse to do that like several times
Wow, lots of stuff. I'll try to get to as much as I can.
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Some. Before I was here I was in the Harry Potter fandom, and I wrote a fair bit for that. There's probably one or two things that aren't terrible, but a lot of it ended up me being intentionally obtuse and cryptic because the fanfiction culture there didn't have as many people trying to be Serious Authors, and the ones that did try were a bit weird and bitter. That was a huge fractured mess, too, with what was probably literally hundreds of sub-sites at the fandom's height all accepting only a very thin slice of what was being written, so it makes me very, very appreciative of everything knighty does to keep FimFic one of the pillars of the community.
I also wrote some uniformly shitty stuff about some anime and video games when I was an idiot teenager. Those I don't acknowledge.
I was stoked for it when it was Fighting is Magic, and I'll probably check it out when it's finished. I'm pretty bad at 2D fighters -- Tekken and Soul Edge were my jam -- but Mane Six are putting a lot of love and dedication into their work, so I feel a little obligated to at least give it a shot.
For us, a thousand times easier. Our daughter, right from the beginning, was very alert and very intense -- we think she was very frustrated with a big world she didn't really understand and couldn't really interact with for I don't know, the first six months or so. She was not a placid baby who would tolerate being passed around to unfamiliar family members or would fall asleep on car trips, and me and my wife, we got very little sleep and were going a bit nuts. So, it's a great improvement to instead have a child who can run around and grab her own toys and play with rocks and sticks outside and give hugs and bang on the cupboard where the cookies are when she wants a cookie and say words that we sometimes understand. She's great and I want to be a good person for her.
Also, she thinks Pinkie is best pony.
That's all pretty boring. I saw people with pony avatars all over the Internet and figured it was some kind of joke. Then I saw someone mention that it wasn't a joke, the show was legit good. Then I caught wind of that article, the one where someone criticised the show for being unfeminist and un-PC in a bunch of dumb ways and Lauren Faust's response was basically, "Um, no, it's not." So that was enough to give an episode a shot -- the last show "for children" I'd taken a chance on was Avatar, which is amazing -- and it was neat. I remember being sold during Fluttershy's introduction, that the show could linger on a quiet awkward moment like that. So then you watch another episode, and down the slippery slope you go.
Fanfiction was much the same way. First I found Equestria Daily, to keep up with what was happening with the show, but I wasn't going to read the fanfiction, just look at a little bit of the art. Okay, some fanfiction. But no shipping stuff, that would be weird. Okay, a little bit of shipping. But I'm just gonna read things, not write anything. Okay, maybe write a couple of stories. But stuff that stays within the confines of the show, I'm not turning that Mature checkbox on. Okay, maybe just for a little bit, to see what people are doing... oh, and goddammit, this one story is actually really good despite being all about sex.
But I am definitely, definitely not going to write any clop. Definitely not.
Maybe. One day. I thought that Troubleshoes would sort of kill the idea but aside from a story or two right after the episode was released I don't think I've seen him since, much less paired up with our favourite klutz. I don't think I have enough ways of making sex go wrong yet, but maybe I should just give it a shot with what I've got.
Oh, a bunch of stuff, I just can't write about it and still find it interesting. I remember seeing a porn artist say once that it was neat they could draw their own porn through high school, and I was thinking, "Wait, you're not focused on all the flaws, the stuff you could have done better? What kind of artist are you?" I think a little bit of power exchange, D/s-type stuff creeps in to my stories, just around the edges, but that's also a thing that really requires trust and security in one's partner (something something Fifty Shades of Grey is worse than Stalin, cancer, and Chick-fil-A), so I don't know; that's pretty romantic if you're doing it right.
I, um, I was following One-of-Three-Names because I always meant to get around to reading Sanctioned Necromancy (like a few other stories that have been on my Read It Later list for literally years). Wish I could tell you more about them, sorry. I'm not super into some of the more anime-/furry-influenced extreme stuff that's out there, but... I don't know. I'm not not into it either. I'm open-minded.
We can just sorta keep quiet about it. No follow-ups, I guess. It's the long comment threads that caused the RP ban in the first place.
This was definitely the first time. I mean, I could notice other ponies were attractive, but I wasn't ever attracted to them, not by any textbook definition. Not that there is much of a textbook definition. (I've looked.) I don't think I ever really fantasized about any concrete partner, they were just an amorphous 'other' most of the time, like extras in a dream. Just a placeholder. There wasn't really much sense in building up a very elaborate mental image just so I could, um, take care of business.
Have you ever seen Attack of the Pony-Eating Plants? Of course not, nopony has, because it's a disaster. It was my first picture, shot on the stubs of old film reels with a hoof-held camera and the least convincing rubber carnivorous plant suit you ever saw. I did what I could, but there's only so much you can get out of actors being paid in donuts and coffee or screenwriters whose entire oeuvre consists of the rich and complicated "a monster leaves a trail of bodies covered in emptied ketchup packets until a nubile young mare, played by the screenwriter's girlfriend, hits it over its rubbery head with a rock" genre.
But! I sleep at night know my worst picture was my first picture, and that I can only keep going up from there!
Let's do some more later on. Posting this so I don't, I don't know, lose it to my computer crashing or something.
Part deux!
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It was her who made the first invitation, you can be quite sure of that. We were just a little company on our first tour in Canterlot -- it was in a tiny theater, but still, it was the big city -- and the princess, she came to our first show. Everypony was so nervous -- one of the baritones sweated through his whole costume, and the poor conductor, he was shaking so bad you could hear it in the orchestra! Everypony was so nervous, except for me. I could see her in the crowd, with a smile like a warm day, and her presence was calming and soothing and... nice. I'd say it was the least stressful performance I'd ever given, except she came to the other five shows we had, including the matinee, and each of those was the same way. It caused a little bit of an upset when the only thing that came of the princess attending every show was a letter that came for me -- some ponies were convinced we were all going to be promoted to being the Royal Opera Company, what nonsense. The letter gave me a time and a place to meet with the princess, and of course I went.
It was a restaurant. It was open, but nopony else was there except for her. She was just sitting there, like anypony else, checking the menu, and I didn't feel intimidated at all. Looking back on it now, perhaps I should have been, but maybe if I had been things would have turned out quite different. She said she was glad I came and I said you just don't refuse a command from the princess. And she laughed -- that calm little laugh she has, like bells -- and she told me it wasn't a command, just a request: one I was free to ignore, if I so wanted. I did think at the time that one doesn't just refuse a request from royalty, either, but I didn't say that. Seeing her sitting in an empty restaurant, she looked so... lonely. I know what she was lonely for, now, but then... I couldn't have imagined Princess Celestia as being alone. So of course I stayed with her, and we ate, and we talked -- mostly about me, but she talked a little bit about herself, too -- and it was the most wonderful evening. It was almost a shame that the sun had to come up the morning after.
We've been quite close friends ever since.
We have been contacted multiple times by representatives of Burger Prince to stop printing stories about how their hayfries may contain extremely sharp needles, cleverly baked in to the food by an escaped mental patient masquerading as an employee, so legally we cannot tell you the shocking truth behind the contents of hayfries. Rest assured that the staff of the Post do not order the hayfries, for fear of choking on something sharp and pointy.
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I think TwiJack is better covered as a ship -- bats and bookplayer spring to mind, and the story that really got me into shipping ponies (Yours Truly) has TwiJack in it. They're also very easy to figure out what they'd be like in a relationship together, or at least I think so -- they're both very understanding, very voice-of-reason, and aside from the occasional bit of friction over Applejack wanting to prove she can handle things on the farm without any special support and Twilight having the occasional Twilight freakout I don't see too many big problems for them to overcome. They slot together nicely and you get a nice domestic relationship out of it; for Too Much Love Will Kill You, Applejack is Twilight's rock, and like Applejack herself their relationship doesn't need all that much explaining.
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Why not? There's not enough of it, there's a lot of untapped potential that's waiting there. Twilight feels burdened by the unnecessary parts of being a princess; Rarity would jump at the chance to do fancy pretty royal things. They're two characters that haven't really interacted together all that much in the show, but they're quite similar in how they micromanage the world around them to get a sense of control over it, which can easily lead to them missing the forest for the trees. They needed a little exploring.
Sometimes. Sometimes there's stuff that doesn't make it into a story but exists anyway, or an open potential for new places to go to. Other times it's an abrupt end where I stop because I don't know what happens next.
Depends on whether it's a fight that's an escalated disagreement, or a fight to the death; I think Frost would win the disagreement because he seems like one of those old dudes that has infinite reserves of fortitude, but with life-or-death stakes I'd have to go with Eliot, 'cause he's got that deep despair on his side, and that kind of darkness makes a person dangerous.
It changes, I find. Sometimes I really like them, sometimes I can't stand any of them and want to write more so I'll make something better. I think there's some that are objectively "the good ones" and some that are the not-as-good ones, which are pretty independent from views and ratings and stuff. I go back and re-read them every so often. Most of them, anyway. It's a coin flip if I like them or not, I think.
Not a musician -- the closest I get to an instrument is Guitar Hero -- but a big music fan. I'm really bad at naming things, so I just take names I like; I have a pretty broad range, so I don't think I'll run dry on titles any time soon. Sometimes the song is related quite closely, sometimes it's just a line or two, or a feeling it brings up in maybe me alone.
I liked the "do a thing once a week" factor, that got me in a good groove for writing stuff. And, yeah, it was very low-pressure to come up with ideas that were perfect, or full stories; they could just be a little scene or two that didn't have to lead anywhere, which is good for working on fundamentals of writing and things like that. Short stuff is easy to write, it clears out all those half-formed ideas that pile up and don't have bigger homes to go to. (I still have plenty of those, so maybe I'll write them down and put them out into the world; I should keep up with my practice, after all.)
You weren't supposed to stop writing entirely.
Any hope we'll ever see new wonderful horsewords from you again?
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Oh, no doubt. I... burned out pretty hard -- that (thinly-veiled) story about Lyra and Bon Bon and depression was finished open-ended with good reason -- and I'm just now getting back to being evened out. I haven't lost the will to write, though, just the time; writing's first on my list of stuff to do when I have breathing room for it, and there's very little chance I'll use it for writing about something other than tiny horses (at first? idk). I really dig what the show's doing with Starlight, I know there's something good there, and it never feels like I've done all I want to do with the Equestria Girls universe.
So yeah, tl;dr I'm not dead, I'm just resting.
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I kind of had hoped that the Lyra fic and absence were more a result of you finally being in a more balanced headspace, to be honest.
Ow. That was kind of a long period of months to be feeling off.
I'm glad to hear you're starting to feel improvement, and I hope it sticks around. I don't know if it particularly helps, but remember you've got friends and fans willing to support you however you need.
It's good know you want to get back into writing game – your stories made the world great deal more beautiful. (And may have been part of the reason I kept watching episodes... I stopped almost entirely once you weren't putting up followups anymore.
)
I don't think I'd especially be disappointed if you tried writing about something other than tiny horses, though. Your prose and narratives are wonderful on their own, and you've got a solid range of tones that I think would carry original fiction well.
Best wishes,
Exuno
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You are resting for a very long time now. Will you ever return to write ponyfics? I just found my way here because someone wrote a sequel to your story "Them Bones" and remembered again that you are one of the earliest pony authors I read fics from, during the Season 4 Writer's Training Grounds. And I went and checked if you have written anything recently and now I'm saddened that I found nothing.
Will you ever pick up the pen again? You had some very unique ideas.