Let's talk about MLP fics · 3:32pm Sep 24th, 2012
I was going to entitle this "Rockstar is in the mind", but realized that that had less to do with my intended post and more to do with the music I'm listening to. Either or.
Sup? I'm waiting for coffee to make. Ooh, we also have Bailey's! Wait... it's morning... Don't put liquor in the coffee...
Let's talk about MLP fics!
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Normal: The poorest named of the genres. I mean, really. It sounds so boring! "Normal". Oooh~, how riveting!
Labels aside (and trust me, labels are always aside with me), these are the fics that most closely reflect the nature of the show itself. They can be cutesy slice of life works, more introspective soliloquy-style writings, or just a conversation between two characters. Again, it sounds more boring than it is. These are mostly nice filler fics to brighten up a day, but some can be quite enthralling and pleasantly poetic! Their simple nature makes them versatile for the writer as well, as the situation is more important than the narrative. These types of fics are approachable by pretty much anypony in the fandom, and the rating often doesn't go above teen.
Adventure: Much more robust in name, this is like those special season openers and closers. Because everypony knows just how money those are.
Adventure fics take the nature of the show out for a walk through the kind of inspiring and revelation-inducing concepts you find in the layered soundscapes of a progressive album (or more often on the cover of a progressive album). It's hard to categorize these as they most always incorporate many genres therein, just as epics tend. The essential adventure however follows a plot-line filled with goals and adversaries, often with high stakes for failure. This isn't a walk to the store; this is a walk to the store in Mordor. And you're on fire. And it's Sunday. Think D&D with colorful ponies and a much smaller dragon, but there are still hordes of goblins waiting to steal all your stuff. These, however, are some of the most touchy fics. Many concepts and themes have to be maintained, as well as accurate portrayal of character. A single faux pas can ruin the entire story. Poetic license and overacting can also be abused in these on the level of James T. Kirk. You'll comb over many that fail apart, but when you find one with a good structure, you'll read it all the way through. Huzzah!
Shipping: We're not talking UPS. You know those two characters you like? Wouldn't it be awesome if they made-out? That's the thinking here.
Shipping, which is derived from "relationship" or sometimes "friendship" (just what I've observed, so feel free to beat me with the education stick if I'm wrong), is love fics. Platonic shipping isn't barred, but usually romance is the theme. Some are canon, which is based off the show (Mr. and Mrs. Cake, Cadance and Shining Armor, that one pony and the obvious mutual love he shares with those tubs of jelly), but most are fanon, which are in the eye of the quill-holder. Some of these are again just cutesy little works to make a smile, where others can explore more complex emotional tones and abstracts. These can be very engaging works, eliciting empathetic response from the reader like the best of love songs (and sometimes un-love songs). However, these are again fragile ground. Too much or too little emotion can make the work feel contrived. Pacing is essential, and characters have to be maintained. These are rather controversial as well. Some claim these tarnish the show's kid-friendly nature by forcing ideas of romance, a more adult concept, onto the characters. The typical nature of these fics also tends to focus on homosexual relationships (due to the all female mane cast and disproportionate male/female ratio of Equestria), which also draws ire from the many who do not see this as acceptable (fun fact: they're wrong). However you stand on the matter, these fics are often the best at exploring the characters' minds, and when you find a good one, you'll likely save it to read once every month.
Sad: Aw...
Just what it says on the tin, people. Sad fics are sad. Not to be confused with "heartwarming sad", however. Some fics seem sad for being just so touching. These are sad for just being sad. Some are simple enough, about things like break-ups, bad days, or poor decisions. Some others, however, will crush your soul, focusing on death, depression, futility, aging, cognitive dissonance (google it), and the disparaging thoughts of never meeting your life goals. Holy horseapples, dude. Way to be a downer. These, like shipping, explore the mental state of the characters, and can be masterful pieces of introspective. Poignant and often poetic, these can delve into the heart of sorrow on the grandiose scale of Poe. If you can make it through one, you may just decide to pick up a psychology course. They're not immune from poor pacing, however, and failure to connect with the audience can leave these stillborn. Sad fics breed less controversy than shipping oddly, presumably since sadness, though not at all child-friendly, interjects on average less objectionable material. Sadness is part of life, after all, and even from the most wretched of misery, you can find something to take to heart from it.
Grimdark: That is, until you hit this point.
Controversy is the word of the day when grimdark's in the room. There's a thin line between sad and grimdark. Rainbow Dash crying because she lost a friend: sad; Rainbow Dash crying because her friend died off scene: sad; Rainbow Dash crying because she beat her friend to death in a argument induced rage: yeah, now you're in the ballpark. Also, somewhere, somepony just started writing that story, and I'd bet bits the friend will be Applejack. These go hand in hand with sad fics, but take the darker side of the concept. Death is often the focus, and is almost always in-script. Other themes include mutilation, cannibalism, psychosis, rape, torture, and pretty much any other form of misery you could imagine a Swedish metal band making a song about. Some actually report feeling ill after reading these kinds of fics. These suffer the most from writing. Pacing, character, pacing, detail, and princess-forbid pacing are all critical to a successful grimdark work. They have to stick around long enough to not only carry the tone, but to linger in the mind like a bad infection. You want to unnerve with a grimdark, which is harder to do than one would imagine. This is why Saw is a failing franchise.
Let's just cut to the chase: yes, I tried to write one of these. And failed miserably. I wrote it only to see if I could, and the answer is no, I can't! And I'm cool with that. Maybe I should try again. After all, I'm part of the problem, not the solution.
Clop: Yep. We're going there.
Clopfics are almost always worth a read. When they're good, they seamlessly blend carnal desire, passion, emotion, and physical interaction into a flurry of literary gold. When they're bad, they're often so bad that they're still redeemably bad! The Ecce Homo(/Mono) of fics, as it were. Some take the emotional ground, with the love-making focused on passion and connection. Others can take the more physical approach, with sex-for-sex-itself themes being common enough motivation. Better yet is when these take a humorous approach, parodying their own inexplicable nature in regard to the medium. I've read of Fluttershy getting it on with Bloomberg (the tree from "Over A Barrel") and getting caught by Applejack. I lol'd. Some even go for shock value, with crack pairings and fetishes galore. The bad clopfics are reminiscent of an automotive crash; it's shocking, it's gruesome, and of course you're going to look! These can be accidentally hilarious if the pacing is off ("They began to have sex" is the worst/best way to start a sex-scene), and out-of-character dialog can actually be redeemed because of how out of character the entire thing already is! The only true way to fail with a clopfic is to be too average with it. Taking the safe road with tame dialog, shallow character, and semi-censored scenes will makes these the most forgettable fics on the internet. Go big, or go home. Controversy? Do I even have to say it? It's all the taboo of shipping turned up to 11, then ran through a tube-screamer into another amp set to 11. Not only is it sex based on characters from a show targeted at children, it's also technically animal sex. And often gay. This is like a controversy nuke, people. This makes dead baby jokes look like cooler-talk. Don't believe me? I can officially say that I wrote a story about lesbian horse-on-horse sex. Just say that aloud and tell me you don't feel a little uncomfortable just by proxy. I however just don't give a buck. Ask why in the comments! :D
Trollfics: U mad, bro?
These are designed to be bad. That's all there is to it. Some are written intentionally poorly with horrible storylines. Some take character and situations and turn them inside out just to irritate the canon-diehards. Some throw in characters from other mediums just to cause a riot ("Spike Spiegel in Equestria". Just think about that for a second). These try to fail, so they're almost invincible. If they're so bad they're bad, they win. If they're so bad they're good, they win harder. The only way to mess up a trollfic is to be too subtle, where people think you actually tried and failed, which is still kind of a victory. Also, they're hilarious to read in Gilbert Godfrey's voice.
Wow. I wrote more than I thought. Now, to summarize this post...
I forgot to turn on the coffee maker. FUCK!
Point of order: You forgot about meta-fics.
And for the record, I don't feel uncomfortable about lesbian horse-on-horse sex.
Also the crossover fic.Still you got your point across. Now go get your coffe.
Mhm, if we go the forbidden road too, then he definitely should have talked about MST3K stories.
But what he said: I like.. just why? Meh, sense is overrated.
Also:
Why?
379869 Can't say I know of any meta-fics. Or what that would even entail.
I will assume a time-traveling Da Vinci and a vial of liquid DMT. And ponies. My princess that needs to exist. 
379875 Oh, yeah, Cross-overs. Those seem more like a theme than a genre to me. You can have a cross-over shipping fic, normal fic, sad fic, but you can't really just have a crossover. "Pinkie meets Bugs Bunny and... they... stare at each other for a while?"
I guess you could say it's a subgenre of potentially every genre. It's a tricky one.
380099
In meta-fics ponies know that they are cartoons or characters in a story. Like Pinkie Pie breaking the fourth wall but with everypony, all the time.
Try this one: Twilight Sparkle Earns the Feature Box. But be advised, that is one of the better ones. There is a ban on meta on this site for a reason.
And time traveling Leonardo is always a recipe for pure win.
379880 What did I even say that about, again?
Oh, yeah, the clopfic thing. Well, for one, it doesn't really matter what people get their rocks off to in terms of fiction. Writing really harms no one. And besides that, there's a lot more outlandish and unnerving things people get said rocks off to. This is the internet. Two, the zoophilia overtone that many point out in an MLP clopfic is undermined by the anthropomorphization of the characters. They are by definition animals, but the presence of both sentient and sapient characteristics overrides this. We ourselves are animals, after all. Sure, biologically this attraction would still be considered bestiality, but by that same regard, it'd be like saying you couldn't sleep with someone from another country because, despite obvious human qualities, there is cultural difference. Mind, this is a stretched comparison that requires an open-mind, but it is of a similar vein. Genetics aren't as important as lifestyle similarity. Compare with the reverse argument: "I can have sex with an extremely retarded person because we are both human". That's a lot more disturbing in my book than the concept of banging a pony that could probably beat me at chess and sew me a new blazer. And three, at the heart of it, it's (often) two of the same type of animal in a clopfic, namely ponies. There are many who can probably find their jollies reading an MLP pony on pony clopfic, and yet would still be repulsed or at least dissuaded by the idea of human on MLP pony action (or vice versa), either in story or reality. Vicariously, we don't consider the characters ponies, but characters. The same concept applies to, say, all the aliens James T. Kirk banged on a regular basis in Star Trek. Though their features were more humanoid, they were not actually human, but that didn't matter to the audience. Ask someone if they would screw an alien, though, and they'll say no. This idea, however, is suspended when this alien is with another character, even a human. Doesn't mean they'd be up for it themselves, but at a distance, it isn't as taboo.
... I just realized that I'm such a dork.
Science, psychology, sex, and animals. All in a day's work.
380182
You know, that James T. Kirk connection is really blowing my mind into little, useless pieces. Kirk sexed (it's a verb, right?) aliens, humanoids. So we have human x humaniod, logical extended that becomes humanoid x humanoid. Fine. No, I don't want to kill that argument, I just want to get to this point:
In the same universe (Star Trek: TNG) our beloved Q wanted to sex (verb!) another human(oid). Well, now Q is a god. Besides being somehow a mighty force, he also is (yes he is) not a darn humanoid, but a draconequus who wanted a human! I mean, when Discord does want a being of a completly different universe.. ow, my mind.
If I push some facts aside, I would highly cooperate with your statement that we aren't actually reading about ponies (horses) but characters, who interact. The only changes that are made here are some words. Hands -> Hooves, butts -> flanks etc. And connecting to your psychology-trip, I'll say that our subconsciousness barely even takes notice of such little changes when it comes to basic instincs (reproduction, in that case). It's the same as the emotional stuff. How often did we (I) read about Twilight or another unicorn who got cut his horn of, and didn't we (I) felt the pain in that moment in our chest? Ha, how could we even know, if there are nerves in a HORN that is supposed to control magic? Probably there isn't the slightest pain after all.
(And nope, I'm not an enemy of clop at all. Or any other kind of fics..)
Bro, Y U use EQD tags on FiMFiction blogpost?
380452 Because that's the genre labeling I use. Site is irrelevant.
380258
Sexing is totally a verb. Just see a scientific, journal-published article that uses it in the title: A Simple Method for Sexing the Confused Flour Beetle.
Spike Spiegel in Equestria?
Is that a real fic? Because now I really want to see a Cowboy Bebop/MLP crossover. Other than Vicious, I think all of the main characters would actually fit really well with ponies. Also, if Ed and Pinkie ever met, hilarity would ensue quite rapidly. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Pinkie_Pie_lolface.png