Lateral Movement (Or: This Month's Existential Crisis Is Brought To You By The Letters "I" and "S") · 6:02am Apr 3rd, 2017
I reserve the word "hate" for a very intentionally short list of things. Sure, I get annoyed by a lot of stuff and pissed off about others, and my internal sense of chapped-ass-edness boasts the strength and stamina of a thoroughbred racehorse. But honestly, I don't really hate all that much. In fact, I try really hard to keep it that way. Hatred just sucks, in spirit, mind, and body. It supersedes you as an individual and an emotional being, turns you into someone you don't want to be and usually aren't. Off the top of my head, I can only think of a scant few things which, in my book, deserve the term: the Blogger publishing platform, borderline personality disorder, people who speed up to block me from merging onto the interstate... and losing.
Most of all, more than anything else in the world, I absolutely fucking hate losing.
There's something I've realized recently that's going to sound at first like it doesn't make any sense, but it's the (perhaps bluntly phrased) truth: in any meaningful sense, I don't write fan fiction. If I'm honest with myself, I never really have. I've mentioned before that my first fanfic was an "alternate-universe retelling" of The Lion King; in practice and in all practical senses, though, it was a 90-degree split in narrative direction and tone from the events of the movie, that had only tangential concern at best for the film's established lore and was populated by about a 2-to-1 ratio with more original characters than canon ones. My big break, so to speak, on FIMFiction was an "alternate-universe BioShock crossover" that existed within a world near-wholly unrecognizable as the one in which the show is based, and was centered around non-canon ponies who cursed, shot each other, bashed their enemies' brains in, and espoused a Wikipedia-summary-esque corruption of sort-of-pony-fied Randian philosophy. And lest we forget, my current project--the one I'm still chipping away at, I swear to God--is effectively three OCs in everything but name and technicolors magically blasting their way through a less-than-necessarily-vulgar Angelic-order-having "AU" version of Equestria.
In case my point isn't proven yet, I'll emphasize it on a macro level. Before writing this post, I went through my stories here and counted how many of them were A) marked with the "AU" tag; and/or B) centered primarily around original characters, background characters given original personalities to supplant the lack of any official ones, or minor/side characters granted traits or personality quirks not established in canon. Out of my twenty-two published stories, fifteen of them meet those criteria. Of the seven that don't, three were created in response to a contest prompt or writing challenge, one is a horror story that still features a wholly original monster as its centerpiece, five were expressly written as jokes, and a majority are more than five years old.
Suffice it to say, there's a pattern evident in my writing that I've ignored for several years, joked about in more recent ones, and am now faced with the reality of deciding what to do about. That pattern is--again, brusquely summarized--what I said before: at its core, the writing I publish here isn't really about My Little Pony; it's original fiction with a thin coat of friendship-flavored paint over it. That's not at all to say I haven't done well for myself with it here regardless, nor that my time on this site and in this fandom hasn't been the best thing that's ever happened to me as a writer. But that being so said, I've always on some level seen fan fiction as a stepping stone rather than an end goal for my creative aspirations, and at some point it evolved from a starting point to a crutch, to something that now more than ever before feels like it's holding me back.
Subjectively speaking, my most recent story, Snowblind, is some of the best work I've ever done, not just in terms of prosaic prowess but also getting back into a productive rhythm after a long period of time spent out of the proverbial game. It also laid an egg in view count, didn't place in the contest I wrote it for and submitted it to, and--with respect to my previous conclusion--isn't really fan fiction. It's a story set in a world where magic and royal kingdoms share narrative space with nightclubs, party drugs, and rooftop sexual liaisons, starring a made-up prince from a made-up empire and a princess whose canon equivalent is currently an infant--that's all to say, not truly in what we know Equestria and its ponies to be. In retrospect, I'd wager that's what lost it some points in the final contest judging, and upon reflection that makes perfect sense. There's a lot to be said for strong composition and well-established characters, but ultimately a submission to a fan fiction contest should be just that: fan fiction. I really like my story, and many of those who read it did as well, but in the end it just doesn't hit the motifs and focus on the kinds of ponies that a Friendship is Magic fanfic should.
In the wake of all that thinking about it, I'd say that's pretty telling. And that brings me back to why I hate losing so much.
I hate losing because it's an immutable sign that I wasn't good enough. Of course, the vice versa of that construction doesn't hold: those who aren't good enough aren't automatically "losers", nor even that they've failed at achieving their goal. (Light-hearted example: I got my ass handed to me in Rocket League the other night, but since I'd never played the game before and really didn't have half a damn clue how to, I just had fun trying to knock the ball around and watching my housemate type dumb shit into the chat.) These days, I try to think of losing as a sign as an immutable sign that I'm not good enough yet, that next time I'll improve either my own efforts or my understanding of what's required in order for me to win.
Before (read as: when I started both playing sports and competing as a child [read as: pretty much the vast majority of my conscious life]), losing wasn't productive or motivational like that. It just made me hate myself, as well as everybody who for whatever reason was better than me at whatever thing I was doing at the time. With writing, that insensate insensibility persisted and, since it was a lifelong "gifted" kid's most treasured intellectual pursuit, might've honestly gotten worse. When I flamed out of the OC Slamjam in the first round a couple years ago, I brooded over it for weeks, and the less said about how many times Cold in Gardez's very existence has sent me spiraling into a genuine depressive episode, the better. (Hint: it's more than zero.)
The thing is, though, losing is a part of life. For an aspiring artist, it takes up pretty much the plurality of your life, actually, unless you're George R.R. Martin and you won a Hugo Award when you were roughly the age I am now. (Hint #2: the number for George is also more than zero.) And even though I'm trying to view it more positively and proactively as of late, I still really fucking hate it. But at the same time, that's a massive improvement over being fucking terrified of it--because that's what I've really been for the vast majority of my conscious life. I've been so terrified of failure that instead of striking out into original fiction like I've always dreamed of and been subconsciously doing for my whole career, I stuck around FFN and FIMFiction and wrote "fanfics" instead. Because here, there aren't any stakes, and here I know I'm one of the best around.
(That's another thing I'm trying to do lately, by the way: pump myself up more. Sure beats the hell out of beating myself up all the time, I'll tell you that. So yeah, just to settle the matter, I'm really goddamn good at this shit. I know it. You know it. Moving on.)
I've circled around this track a few times before, this will-I-won't-I of "real" writing versus the fun and simple kind I was already doing. Previously, though, it wasn't a matter of wanting to move on, but rather feeling like I had to, that I was fucking up and failing by not putting my talent to practical use. That mentality got me a degree in business I'm not that passionate about, a four-and-a-half-year relationship that I let myself get trapped in until the inevitable breakup went down like the Titanic, and a full year and change of suicidal ideation. It was not fun, nor--frankly--was it all that smart.
This time feels different, entirely and only because I know what I really want. I want to give "real" writing a real all-in shot. I want to start submitting original short stories to magazines, fix up the draft of Gifted that's been gathering dust in my GDrive for a year and a half, and make a fucking go at an actual writing career, because okay just one more time and then I'm done I promise, I'm really goddamn good at this shit. And most of all, I want to find a place where my writing style and tone fits just right, because now and quite possibly for a long time leading up to it, fan fiction isn't really it
That being said, I'd also like to finish Celestia's Angels just for its own sake first, but even that feels somewhat like an unnecessary delay. And for what it's worth, I do still like watching FiM and would still like to keep hanging around here, but if I start prioritizing original concepts over fanfic ones, I don't know how many more fanfics I'll even write. Truth is, I don't know what to expect going forward, from myself or the industry I want so desperately to break into. But therein lies the key to it all: I've never known what to expect, and up to now it paralyzed me into never trying to find out. Maybe I'm still paralyzed now. Maybe I will be again someday.
But real talk? I'd rather hate the fact that I failed than be scared of it happening if I try. At least I get to bitch and moan to Ferret about the former.
(I'm kidding. I bitch and moan to Ferret about everything.)
It's always better to aim for the stars, even if sometimes you hit London.
If its any consolation, Snowbound was damn good.
Trust me when I say that the rankings were incredibly close to each other.
~Skeeter The Lurker
As Skeeter said, this was a huge field of incredibly talented authors, yourself included. Not placing isn't a sign of failure, only of slight imperfection and the judges' personal preferences not flawlessly aligning with your story. That being said, best of luck with your original fiction.
Man, we both got shafted in the Slamjam, no lie. :V
Hate is better than fear, it would seem. :B I'm afraid of everything, it sucks.
As a fellow loser here, and with all due respect to the judges, I want to second what 4481944 said about not flawlessly aligning with the judges preferences. It's pretty clear from the winners where the judges tastes lined up. There's nothing wrong with that -- that's going to happen in a close field with so many different entries and a simple judging system.
Sometimes it's not even that you weren't good enough, sometimes you just entered the wrong fic for the contest.
Edit: On the subject of some of your other rambling there, AugieDog, horizon, and I have applied to do a BronyCon panel on moving from fanfic to writing and publishing original fic. If you're going to be there this year, and if we're approved, it might be worth checking out.
Yep.
I think I understand what your problem is. Creative writing is an art form, and therefore highly subjective. Sure, people naturally try to quantify the relative quality of stories, but it's just not possible, really. You never hear about critics arguing whether or not Mona Lisa is actually better than Starry Night or The Scream. The only real metric here is self-comparison. And in my opinion, your recent works are leaps and bounds better than your older ones. Be proud of yourself, dude.
Dude, that's fan-fiction.
Let me show you a slide I made using all the tags on all the stories on fimfiction in Oct. 2015.
s25.postimg.org/acalw8wtb/stories_views_likes_favorites_wi_OC.png
What's the most-common story tag? OC. Alt-universe is more common than human, sad, random, tragedy, or crossover, and twice as common as porn. 8.5% of all fimfiction stories have no MLP character tags.
If you looked at the top 60 stories on "Top Stories" in December, 32% of them had the OC tag. I counted. I'm writing an article to show that fan-fiction isn't largely people writing the same characters in the same universe in the same style as the original. That is a myth perpetuated by people who write articles about fan-fiction, because they want to say that it's post-modern. But it's actually uncommon for people to write anything that would fit in the canon universe.
If fan-fiction is holding you back, do what you have to do. But don't leave because you think you're not writing fan-fiction.
> I hate losing because it's an immutable sign that I wasn't good enough.
In sports, maybe. In art? Not so much.
68.media.tumblr.com/47839447fd99f1b6c19809fa19181dbb/tumblr_mus41srzPi1s0my1wo1_400.gif
And I'm happy to listen and bitch right back.
I loved Snowblind but god it made me angry. I had a whole rebuttal fic sketched out in my head that took the young king's side.
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Heh, I can see that. Flurry's far from a purely magnanimous "hero", to be sure, but she does know how to get what she/her kingdom wants. Mostly what she wants, though.
Snowblind has always been a bit ambivalent to me. Normally, the setup should make me angry. It's chock-full of hypocrisy by the two leads, who are both, objectively speaking, sh*tty people, with one getting a leg-up on the other simply because she's even more of a backstabber and the story seemingly celebrating her for it.
And yet, what's different to many stories with a similar setup... and this may only be my interpretation blinding me (heh) to the actual truth in the narrative... I get this tone of Flurry Heart knowing she's a sh*tty person and channelling it into doing things that will help spread peace and prosperity to as many as possible—because deep down, she's aware if she let her selfish, arrogant, manipulative side run unchecked, she'd just end up self-destructing. She's NOT like her mother or her aunts or her father, who are inherently good and don't need to bend themselves out of shape to be good. She's a teen with too much power, just like he is.
And I meant it when I said I believe she helped him as well, and most likely knew she did. Because she could clearly see how this spite-filled kingling would spiral down the same path she tries her best to avoid. She cut that short. His pride is bruised, but the rest of him may find genuine happiness still. And if it's with her, all the better, because at Flurry's core she's still a selfish brat with too much power and no real goals in life who might desperately need another loser to feel less alone.
But that's just me.