Me: A Retrospective · 4:28pm Apr 5th, 2017
Well, it's April again. If you've followed me and my stories long enough, you know why April is an important month for me. For one, today is my 22nd birthday. Honestly it doesn't feel all that much different than 21, except that now I have to start thinking more about "adulting". Things like jobs, insurance, houses, all that I really have to give pause to... I think I can handle it.
But enough about that. April also marks my Fifth anniversary on this site (April 26th, to be exact). Hard to believe that for the last five years or so I have (on an off) written My Little Pony fanfiction and had people enjoy it. As an aspiring fiction writer, it's good to see that my work can make its way. Now I just need to publish it someday.
As I've been meaning to do, I thought I'd take a little look back on my writing career. I have been writing or creating stories since... well, since as long as I can remember. At least seventeen years, which is a lot of time considering how young I am. It's kind of a long retrospective, so if you're not into that sort of thing I'll just leave a page break here.
The first story that I can truly remember was some kind of mashup between Disney's Dinosaur, Star Fox 64, and whatever else I was interested in (probably Star Wars), where the protagonists of the former rode around in spaceships drawn from the latter to battle evil (usually evil, sentient cucumbers. 5 year old me must not have liked vegetables all that much). I do remember writing this down on my dad's company laptop, but not much else from there; we never printed it out as far as I know, and eventually I got bored and moved onto bigger, grander things.
In this case, self-insert Pokemon, Harry Potter, and Yu-Gi-Oh storylines, since those were starting to get popular around the time I was seven. Looking back I realized that I was surprisingly conservative in my Mary Sue power levels (at least compared to the other kids that I played with at the time); my characters always won and had powerful combos, alright, but never to excess. They'd always end up losing to everyone else because they had even more ridiculous combos and victories. I tried to play their game, but could never get it to feel right.
I guess younger me also had a better idea of Sues than a lot of fanfic writers, now and then.
After that period, I kind of turned inward with my creative work, not helped by all my friends at that time moving or turning to other things I couldn't/wouldn't really participate in (computers, sports, and video games primarily). The self inserts remained, but I mostly kept to myself and moved them on to more "serious" work, such as Jurassic Park (the arcade light gun game, not the actual movie) and Jaws (actually generic ideas about sharks eating the people I didn't like, as you do when your nine). These, I actually started writing down, so I suppose this was when I really started my career as a writer. Of course, they never got beyond a few 16 font pages before I lost interest, but it was a start.
Of course, the transition from Elementary to Middle School was when I actually decided "I want to be a writer. I am going to write a full story!" I sat down and though up one of my old story ideas: a mashup of a variety of popular franchises with Calvin and Hobbes where the heroes fought against an army of demonic snowmen at the south pole to save the world, which ended up playing as a "Best of" list of old Call of Duty levels (because that had started to get popular around then too). Deciding that most of that was too silly, I started largely from scratch so that it was... a generic military story about a special UN taskforce fighting a worldwide Communist invasion that read like a "Best of" list of old Call of Duty levels, flavored with a bit of right wing jingoism and technology drawn stolen from the Military Sci-Fi books I read at the time. The final story clocked in at about 36,000 words and 101 pages (because size 16 font), and people said they liked it... though how much of that was genuine interest and not just encouragement to avoid shredding my fragile creative ego is another matter.
Anyway, I never really continued with that because I had better things to do: take all my misplaced jingoism and energy and take it TO SPACE!!! Thus followed what can best be described as a mashup of Star Wars, those Military Sci-Fi books I mentioned, and 80s action movies that I got into, where humans and benevolent aliens fought against rampaging hordes of evil aliens that (in my mind) looked like someone had dipped a Na'vi from Avatar in red paint (and when Avatar came out, they were going to be exactly that!) This, I actually made progress on, in the sense that I wrote about four 75,000+ word documents of varying degrees of polished (at least they were size 12 font). Looking back, I can only see flaws; the characters are barely developed beyond their desire to fight aliens, the male lead hooks up with the female lead for no other reason than they need to hook up and make babies, the fight scenes don't follow logic and rely more on Rule of Cool than even my 40k fics, and I was always pulling some contrived and poorly explained reason why the characters could do what they could do.
But hey, I enjoyed what I did then, and it helped me feel out writing, so I don't really have any regrets.
After writing that, I kind of fell into a dead period. I tried shaking things up with new story ideas, but nothing really came of it. That was until a friend of mine discovered My Little Pony, and would not stop talking about it no matter how crazy we thought he was. He also happened to be in my marketing class, and for a project on branding we decided to talk Ponies. knowing next to nothing, I returned home and went to YouTube to do research.
And that was how I became a Brony. Yay.
I enjoyed the show, and wanted to do more. Around that time I thought there was a revival of an old tabletop game I had played in middle school (the Pirates Constructable Strategy Game, for those of you who were wondering), and swept up in these two passions I decided to combine them and spread the love: Ponies of the Cursed Seas, a human in Equestria fic where fictional American sailors get transported to Equestria, turned into ponies, and battle undead pirates with the Mane 6. I thought that it'd be a bit original, get a bunch of fans and other people working on it, and maybe even start a small shared universe ala Fallout Equestria.
How naive I was; while it had a surprisingly good showing for a first fic, it didn't pick up as well as I had hoped. Of course, looking back I can probably see why; I used some of the older cliches of the HiE: mystical reason why the people get turned into ponies, no real angst over the matter, easily accepted by Twilight and co., Pinkie breaks the Fourth Wall, etc. and so forth. Being that it my first outing I suppose it was more innocent than anything (which is why I could never really make it as a fanfic reviewer; there were times where I questioned if I was being too mean spirited about it towards a new writer. Not every bad writer is Tara Gillesbie or Mykan).
Anyway, time went on and I eventually began to lose interest in that particular avenue (not helped by the generally low views I was getting). Around this time I saw a YouTube mashup of Ponies and Man of Steel's last trailer. Inspired, despite only knowing Superman from vague recollections of my childhood, I created Mare of Steel. It has its flaws, but I really had fun with it, and it was more or less the story that really put me on the map. God Empress of Ponykind is also a contender for that spot, but Mare of Steel came first so that is a win in that regard.
Since then, It's been a mix of improving and experimenting. I've had moments where I question why I'm still writing this, and moments where I get reasonable criticism that makes me reconsider if my approach is worth it. But I've kept at it, and five years later I feel I have become a much stronger writer than I could have thought possible.
And it ultimately comes down to you guys. Some of you have supported me since day one, some have been more recent followers. Regardless, I am truly thankful that I have people like you reading over my work, and your continued support helps me to keep on pressing even if it seems like I'm at a loss for writing.
So thank you, once again. It's been a good five years... here's hoping to another five and beyond.
Happy birthday
Happy birthday, mate!
Ave Imperator!
Happy birthday my friend.
The fact that you look back at your past works and not just cringe at them but also see what exactly you did wrong is a testament to your skills... that and figuring out how to cross 40k with MLP and make it work and not lose what makes each series great.
Happy birthday.
Happy Birthday! Hopefully one day you will return to your shared Mare of Steel universe.
Happy birthday.
Cheers from Germany.^^c[_] To many more years of creativity and (horse)words.
Happy birthday =D
Happy birthday.
Happy Birthday.
Would you consider doing other hero stories like a Batmare fic with Applejack based on the tim burton movie.
4484832 For that specific story, no; I’ve never seen Batman (89) so I wouldn't do it justice.
As for others, who knows? I've kind of shifted away from superhero stories for now, so who knows when I'll come back.
4484931 Watch it, then decide. Good luck.