On Writing #3

Sometimes I hate myself.

There's this little thing about me that is equally the worst and best part about myself, in my opinion.

That thing is conceit. Egoism.

Pride is something that has always been seen as a negative trait. I wonder why. Pride is not arrogance. You can be prideful without putting down your competition and talking about yourself nonstop. You simply must not be humble.

America has fallen into the culture of the underdog. People look at me with distaste when I tell them that I want to be rich, as if being wealthy and wanting an overly comfortable lifestyle is something that I should be ashamed of. They ask me with their eyes “why can't you be happy with what you have?”

Because I want more. I don't settle for the average. I can't. I want to be the next fucking J.K. Rowlings. I want to be a multimillionaire. Shit, I want one of my kids to be in the White House. Fuck it, right? Might as well lay it all out.

Same thing with writing. I read some fics this week. Nothing new or special, just some old favorites from my faves list that I wanted to revisit… And all I could think was “Heh, that was a nice read. I remember why this was a favorite. But I've surpassed this guy. Who’s next?”

But what baffles me is that… I go to the aforementioned guy’s page and see FimFiction’s version of success. Over a thousand followers, three or more fics with over a thousand thumbs up.

It enrages me and fuels me, but at the same time it discourages me. That's what pride is: two sides of one coin. Being in constant competition with everyone around you. And wanting praise because you know that when you do something, you do it at the highest level of ability at that moment.

But I guess… I guess this is Fanfiction. Like, there's a system in place for how to get popular. But I hate the system, and frankly think myself above it in the most conceited way possible. But I want to have my cake and eat it too.

But whatever, whatever. I'm not all talk and no work:

Some stories coming down the pipeline (I hope)!!!

A TwiDash oneshot that I've been fooling around with for like over a year. It was originally supposed to point out all the ways that that pairing would crash and burn. But now it's grown into something more… hopeful and uplifting. I'm not happy with it but it's a pretty big one shot and as always with one shots, once you change even something small, you have to change a pretty large amount because everything snowballs into itself. There isn't time or word count to make ever one of your little mistakes into meaningful ones.

Uh, let's see… I've got a humanized PinkieDash also sitting in the Gdocs. Lots of sex because Dash has issues and stuff and things. It's actually an examination of that convoluted, chemical and psychological thing called ‘moving on’. As in from one serious partner to another. Lots of ‘humans are freaking awful creatures because we truly are way too smart for our own good.’ The fic is also this way to point out the differences between humans and animals. Ponies are animals. They are not humans. The fact that everyone writes ponies with the same level of emotional intelligence and retrospection and introspection has begun to really really bother me in the last year or so. I don't really know why. Maybe I'll talk about it in another blog, but I've given the entire thing a lot of thought… thought that I could have been using on more important stuff, I'm sure. Earlier today I got an idea about the overall theme of the story, actually. Originally it was just supposed to analyze the feeling of moving on and being on the rebound… but I didn't know what the natural conclusion of that would be and so I whipped up an overarching theme of Love vs. Dream. As in ambitious dream. Basically your heart’s desire come to fruition. Interesting, yeah? Both can give you happiness for the rest of your life, both tug at the heart in an indescribable way. And what if trying to keep both makes you lose both. Which do you cut? Regret and angst. Yum.

I've got an idea and two different beginnings to a fic about Flurry Heart. Grown up Flurry Heart. I'm excited as hell for it. It shows the progression of a character from neutral to hero to villain. How outside pressures and little nagging thoughts and questions can push someone over the edge. And it ties into a fic that I've been trying to write for the past three years. God it's a glorious, convoluted mess of a story and I cannot wait to get started on it. Everyone hates Flurry Heart so no one writes about her seriously. I shall be the first. I claim the territory in the name of Admiral Sleepy. I will forge the new ground and someday whenever Fimfiction starts writing about Flurry Heart because they've exhausted all other characters and topics… My example and character will be the ache type for who grown up Flurry Heart is. Yes.

Also another one that I've been thinking of is a story about Thorax. I didn't see the finale and I'm not going to because once I see for myself that what I want to write about has been shot down by cannon I simply cannot continue to even humor the prospects. At least without thinking very long and hard about how I can outsmart cannon and still work it into my idea. But that's just me. So anyway. Thorax story. Lots of politics, actually. Basically Thorax saves the changling race by teaching them to unlock the love within themselves and therefore become self-sustaining and therefore not need the Queen’s Feedings, which I've decided is how she controls them in the first place. Takes love from ponies, distributes it into the hive… Kinda hard not to worship someone when they are your only source of substanance. M/M romance, though I've decided that changelings don't have penises. What would they need them for? Thorax failing, a lot, and almost getting killed lots and lots of times. Changelings being very robotic and talking their way around things that we as humans take for granted: emotion. Like instead of saying “I'm confused” they would say “your meaning does not come through your words.” Or something. Still trying to figure it out. Most of the lore just kinda came at me without any type of fanfare. It's just what would make sense.

Uhhhh. Not much else, really. Lotta big projects that I'm afraid will only see the light of day when FimFiction is a ghost town and no one is around to marvel at my amazing work. Sigh. I need to write faster.