Amnesty · 8:16am Jun 27th, 2017
For a few weeks now I've been staring at a red three-digit number in the "Feed" section of my notifications. "Yeah," I kept thinking, "I should catch up on FIMFiction. But that's work at this point."
It recently has grown closer to four digits than to three and I realized I've been actively avoiding the site so as to not feel guilted by it.
So I'm cutting the Gordian knot. I officially have not read anything on FIMFic (except RCL candidates) for, like, a month, but I just clicked my Feed and closed the window to nuke the backlog. If anyone's been saying or posting anything that I ought to be interested in, this is the place to tell me about it: otherwise I'll never know.
... And um apparently FIMFiction Gold is an actual thing now? 
IN BRIGHTER NEWS, I'm getting a pretty good reception with my latest Writeoff fic, and if I get a few hours to catch my breath this week hopefully I can get the story turned around and ready for posting by the time the round is over? I hope? (I want to give more details, but anonymity and all that.) And I've been poking at Hard Reset 2 over the last month or so, and still need to finish un-tearing apart Time Enough For Love. On the other claw, I'm balancing that against Search & Rescue; Ultimate Frisbee league; GMing a Ponyfinder tabletop game that I managed to sweet-talk my non-pony local gaming group into letting me run; and my job ramping back up with the groundbreaking for our fiber-optic infrastructure project approaching. So, um, busy summer, but hopefully I won't be totally crippled by my perfectionism like usual?
FimFiction Gold is a real thing now?
wut.
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I've seen little badges in comments sections under some people's names.
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Helpful link!
I have a long RIL list. But I'm never intimidated by it, because once a month I sort it be "complete" and only read those as they arise.
So the number is always, otherwise, meaningless. It's big because it's big, but it's completely disconnected to the amount I feel like I'm actually going to read in it.
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They missed the chance to make it FIMFiction Platinum: the Princess Edition.
I'm all too familiar with guilt delay. The hard reset (heh) may be just what you needed. Also, good to hear about both your fic progress and your non-horse exploits. I'm sure you'll be able to balance the demands on your time.
Fiber? I wonder if I will see it in my lifetime
Badly disorganized and self-deluding as I am, I keep a lot of Fimfic tabs open for things I mean to get to in the next couple days--recent stories I didn't have time to get to immediately, some blog posts, and especially review posts. A few weeks or a month or so ago, I gave up and nuked most of the accumulation from the last year, probably over 200 tabs, sweeping them under the RiL rug or into a folder of bookmarks.
So I get it.
I'm right there with ya, brother.
Work's taking up all my time.
~Skeeter The Lurker
I'm in the same position, Horizon. I just had to dump like 900+ notifications and hope I'm not missing anything I should be responding to / doing something about. Feels bad.
The notification feed is a beast to struggle with on a regular basis. I've never had it that bad, but I tend to just do a click and skim to see if any of the post titles seem interesting. Totally support you just nuking it from orbit.
Now I don't feel so bad about not posting anything of import since May
It's always good to hear that you're alive and writing, even if it's from the edge of a smoking fimfic feed crater. I probably would've done the same in your position.
Arg wait wait I did achieve something cool recently (even if I failed to blog about it): I broke into PresentPerfect's Top 15 for a whopping six days. It was a glorious almost-week
Don't sweat it. Fanfiction readers are some of the most patient people in the world, and it's clear that we all understand.
Just try not to get too frazzled. You've got to put on a good appearance at BronyCon, after all. No pressure.
I've recently gotten back into D&D in a big way, and as a player this time. How are you liking Ponyfinder?
Oh, and I'm not rich enough for Fimfic gold, so I picked me up some bronze
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Congratulations! You can join me in the "Pushed Off Of PP's Top 15 By Even Better Stories" corner (Thou Goddess was up there for a while). It's like George R R Martin's Hugo Losers party, except with less GRRM and Actual Awards, and more beer and envy.
(Seriously though, looking at his top 15, I can't even be mad. There's some amazing stuff there. I think it was even Cynewulf's story written for my 80 Days competition which pushed me out, which is oddly karmic[1], since Thou Goddess was written for AugieDog's competition in the first place.)
[1] I feel obligated to also plug GaPJaxie's Around The World in 81 Days, And Other Problems Caused by Leap Years; Cynewulf's 80 Days story was excellent and deserves its honors, but Leap Years is in my personal Top 5.
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I really like the book's flavor — there's a huge amount of rich worldbuilding for the game's Totally Not Equestrian setting, in ways that really offer a lot of game hooks independent of the show. (The pony capital is built on the ruins of an old necromantic cult wiped out by the old Empire. There's a whole city run by changelings. The Twilight Sparkle expy is the goddess of knowledge, and is one of a dozen colorful deities. There's a bunch of non-pony races that are every bit as flavorful as the core pony ones. Honestly, it was the book's awesome setting work that made me itchy to run a game in the first place.)
It's still early yet, in terms of figuring out how it works wrt game balance. A friend of mine who dabbled in it a year or two ago said that his impression was that ponies were ... if not broken, then at least unusually powerful; the Cutie Mark basically is like getting a free bonus feat at first level, and pegasi being able to fly at first level can be game-wrecking if you're not careful. My solution for this was to crank up the power level of everyone else, add some house rules to make PCs more durable and flexible at lower levels, and throw them against bigger challenges from the beginning.
We'll see how it works! So far, the only fight they've gotten into is with a disorganized mob of about two dozen goblins, and they mopped up the floor with 'em (which I expected).
Oh! And Silver Games recently released a conversion of Ponyfinder for D&D5e, so if your group is playing that instead, you can still roll with it.
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It is a very nice corner...
Also, assuming you haven't already, I'd recommend reading bookplayer's latest blog.
Other than wanting to say hi I got nothing for you, so hi!
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Shouldn't it be the Harder reset? This is Horizon, not Eakin.
I was up to over 4000 because I hadn't caught up with the show.
Fixed that now, though. Though I don't think I'm going to go through my whole backlog.
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I've fallen behind on the show, too, but I blame that on the super frustrating and ridiculous doubling-up due to the Canadian airing schedule. I wanted to watch them on the normal one per week schedule but by the time the "official" air date comes around, nobody's putting up videos of the current American episode, and DMCA has already removed all the old ones from Youtube/DailyMotion.
I finally broke down and torrented an ep from yayponies, because I didn't want to skip the Luna/Celestia episode, but I've just had too much trouble keeping up this season. Grr. Will probably buy a DVD once they finally release one.
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I mean, if you're just going to watch them on YouTube, there's no reason not to just yarg them from YP. I mean it is basically the same thing either way.
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Downloading is a massive chore on a 3 Mbps Internet connection.
Youtube barely streams, but at least it plays in real time (if I'm not doing anything else in the background).
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I have a 6Mbps connection, so I sometimes set stuff up to download overnight to deal with this issue.
Though 3Mbps is pretty terrible. The cobbler's children have no shoes, eh?
Great! I can't wait for the next chapter!