2012: The Lemuracolypse - Part Nine: Marsupial Zero · 9:09pm Jan 21st, 2018
2012: The Lemuracolypse
Part Nine of Twelve - Marsupial Zero
We can't have nice things in this world. Or can we?
Just who was this mofo, messaging me out of nowhere? I mean, it wasn't the first time some random mofo messaged me. But there was something ever so slightly familiar about the name, the avatar, the flattering tone. Looking back through the comment section of Background Pony, I found out that--sure enough--they had left messages on Fimfic that I would surely have read, if only in a passing glance:
The bastard even found something good to say about the Pinkie Pie chapter; that should have been the first warning sign
Getting lots of praise can most definitely put a chip on your shoulder. But, keep in mind, this was 2012. Douchebag or not, I was still acclimating to relative "horsefame." True, I was getting tons and tons of positive reactions to Background Pony, but nobody was legitimately pretending to call me a "legend" or "celebrity." Not to say I've managed to become either of those things since, but I most definitely feel as though I've gathered a lot of praise over the years, earned or not. Back in 2012, it was still kinda weird and new to me. And with Background Pony only halfway done and Austraeoh just starting to become an ambitious experiment, I wasn't quite used to being ego-massaged so heavily.
Now here comes this fuzzhead with the stealth of a Subtlety Rogue--and just as elvish. He presents a question that... in hindsight really didn't need to be asked. What would I care if "Background Pony" Lyra was used in a fanfic of theirs? I mean, it's fanfiction. If Hasbro couldn't stop him, then why should I? How could I? I mean, at least it's respectful and nice of him to have asked... but still it appeared to simply be an excuse to message me... to make some connection between person and Mark David Chapman person.
Indeed, the PM was stupidly redundant. The only thing more redundant would have been responding to it. You see, this is the usual "mentality" with which I greet messages sent to me. However, at this particular high in my life, I was a happier kind of douchebag... and I actually felt like replying for once.
Naturally, the subject of the PM required me to do some research first. So I went and took a look at the dude's story (only the part that included BP!Lyra, however). I felt the prose was plainly written, but the characters and the dialogue stood out... especially Daring Do who--unlike most fanon representations of her--was written as a Grade-A asshole. Heh... good thing that will never be canon, huh?
I got to the Lyra part. She did her Background Pony schtick. It was cute, if not somewhat gratuitous... and--also--including it in another fanfic outside of the source canon sorta breaks a gazillion rules concerning the Nocturne of Firmanents and the nature of the unsung curse but who cares. The fic wasn't hurting anyone. Most certainly not me. Plus, the dude had--like--barely a few hundred followers. So whatever.
And I proceeded to message him back with the obligatorily redundant "whatever."
And so... the deed was done. A random brony asked me something and I answered that random brony. They requested permission for something, and I gave it. On a professional level, all that should have been stated had been said. The "transaction," so to speak, was over. The last thing I should ever have expected was an insanely manic and gushing response within hours on the same day oh goddess dammit to fucking hell
I feel like the little dutch boy and his dike-saving finger comes into relevance here. After all, some things on the Internet should simply be left alone.
Alright, so someone was a little obsessed with me. I mean, this sort of thing happens without dramatic assassination attempts, right? Perhaps if I knew a little bit more about this guy.
So, like an even creepier bastard, I went and scoured his fimfic page and his blarghs. In so doing, I found a few trace links that revealed... one thing or another. Turns out Ponky had a Youtube page. Ah. Here we go. Certainly, like all neckbeards, this would prove that the fuzzy brony's just another awkward frumpy weirdo with no talent or social skills whatso--holy fucking shit.
Yeah...
So... uhhh...
The guy's kinda sorta godlike. Not to mention young as hell. With that sort of quality of steam under his belt, imagine where he'd be in another ten or fifteen years.
So that only leaves one question. What in the ever-loving fuck of god damn cunt shit did the freakazoid see in me?
Whelp, might as well take advantage of the attention, I guess.
In his second PM, he asked that I go and check out a story he had written. Which I did. And, like a Grade A-Prick, I decided to go full Vindictive Vimbert on the work right out of the gate.
Objectively speaking, there were indeed a lot of issues with the fic--namely in pace and execution (Ponky lurves to paraphrase my ire over the fact that it literally takes the story's protagonist multiple chapters to walk down a god damn hill). It has all the trappings of a glorified self-insertion fic, never mind the fact that the self-insert is Lucifer the Devil himself.
But... in truth... I was impressed by a lot of things. I could immediately tell that the author had some sort of religious background... at least one that I felt that I could relate to. With that in mind, I found his nuanced personification of Lucifer and God to be charming... if not ever so slightly blasphemous. There is confidence and character in the stuff that Ponky writes, and it appears to be more or a less a tiny slice of the boundless charisma that he pours out onto the world around him like a fountain. In short, it's hard not to fall in love with the words Ponky makes... even if they might be flawed. In a truly dismal and dark world, he reminds us that cuteness exists. And it's succulent.
But was I going to tell him all of that? Pffffffft. Naaaaaaah... let's exploit that shiet for fanart.
You think I'm kidding?
The "fanfic" I was talking about was It Ends With Them Cuddling, the manic idea spawned by my mid 2012 Disneysplosion.
As for the "sketcheronica style," I was referring to this:
Norman Rockwell, the man is not.
However, the nature of his sketches have always indicated that he knows he's not Norman Rockwell, and thus he channels all the energy into style in order to compensate for it. That is still the mark of an artist... at least in my opinion. And there's something unique about the way he puts pen to paper... like Tim Burton meets Disney... which means it's automatically grabbed at least half of my balls.
Sooooo... the guy can write. He can sing. He can sketch. That's--like--a holy trinity of talent. I decided to appeal to the third portion of that. Because--and I wasn't blowing hot air at the time--the whole Cider Space concept was indeed trippy and more or less demanded an artful representation that aligned with his frenetic sketch style.
Needless to say, Ponky was definitely on board: "THIS MARSUPIAL IS IN." Within a week or so, this is what he provided me:
It was precisely the kind of shiet that I was looking for. And I told him so. Happy, heartwarming endorphins were had...
...and then I let the project fall off a goddamn cliff. F'naaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Ponky didn't seem to mind, though. And although the fic was never written, its spirit endured long enough to become a major arc of that fanfic that nobody reads. Even today, a slice of Ponky's creativity hangs out on Just Essay's user page. Sort of a memorial to death and lemuriffic douchebaggery.
Well, could be worse. Through giving the fuzzhead attention and humoring his art farts, at least I hadn't inadvertently broken the levy and allowed an even greater tidal wave of obsession to rush on through--whoops.
Oh...
Oh no...
Well, guess I was stuck with the little melon fuck now. As if his admiration for me wasn't already creepy, now it was damn-near unbreakable. Jee, where had I seen something like that before?
Although, of course, I would have been lying if I said that I didn't find the whole thing friggin' ego-stroking. But was I about to tell him that? No way. Not like I was into getting excessive amounts of praise... baka...
If Ponky said something overtly-flattering, I'd hammer in something to remind us both of some inherent gap between us:
"You know that Vimbert is my Knight in Shining Armor, right?"
And then he'd whip out something like this:
Originally with the Caption: "Go on. You can keep Vimbert."
Or I'd mention on a podcast that I had a horrible dream with Ponky in it. Which more or less led to:
A lot of times I simply brought it on myself, which I suppose is frighteningly telling. At one point, Ponky wrote a blargh where he featured his latest sketch of himself:
And I recall commenting on how I felt that the pose looked familiar.
Lo and behold:
(God Fucking Dammit)
Now... I know what you all might be thinking. But that's okay. We were kinda sorta thinking it too. Hell, it's the year 2018. A lot of time has gone by. In the past six years, we've both admitted to thinking it at least once or twice ourselves. The first time I ever heard him talk or speak normally without singing, I'm pretty sure my first thought was: "Wow. He sounds kinda... fruity." But then I later learned he was Mormon: "Oh. Well that explains it." And everything was okay.
In all seriousness, though... we were just two weirdoes on the Internet who met through similar creative outlets and formed a sort of peer-mentor bond thingy. He looked up to me as a purveyor of philosophical horse words. I saw in him an insane amount of midi-chlorians talent and insatiably addictive charisma. Together, with the rest of Fimfic watching, we just bromanced it up without a care. I mean, why the fuq not? It was 2012: the apocalypse was upon us... or at least inescapable missions to Italy. Why not live it up?
I mean, it's not like anything too weird happened, like him confessing that he always imagined I looked like a young handsome Tom Cruise in person--wait, I forgot he did that too. dfdajfajfa;lkjfdl;ajlk;afd;alkjfdkjl;fa
I mean, it's not like anything too uncomfortable happened, like him asking me what kind of special thing he should do for his 100th blog and then me shrugging and impulsively saying "you should do a vlog shirtless" and then he proceeded to do exactly that oh fucking christ in a dildo basket dlkjaf;lkjf;lkdajf;k'f;ja;fk
I MEAN, it's not like anything cheesy or fluffy happened in one out of a myriad private internet conversations in which we proceeded to spontaneously quote opposing lines by Christian and Satine from the Elephant Love Medley in Moulin Rouge--OH FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST! dslkjfalkqfjalk;fjd;alkjfakl;jf DONE! I AM DONE!
Yeah. This really happened, though.
Not a big deal, really. Ponky and I even talked about it in one of the Princess Robot Podcasts that we occasionally do these days. We were chatting up literary themes or something, and the concept of "love" in art and fanfiction came up. And I must have made some predictable nihilist statement resembling "I don't believe in love." And then Ponky decided to protest by quoting Ewan Macgregor. And I--being an old bastard who was quite familiar with Moulin Rouge--tossed Nicole Kidman back at him. And he retorted and then I retorted and it became a game of "who would refuse to keep quoting Elephant Love Medley line-by-line first." Eventually, the whole thing sorta finished on its own. I just thought it was mildly-amusing. Ky--who was still something of a green noobie to the Interwebs--thought it was a Divine Experience.
But he has since made a valid point about that whole hooplah. For the first few months that Ponky chatted with me, I was acting under the veil of what he likes to call "Proto-Skirts." This, in a nutshell, refers to the nihilistic existential super grimdark-writing shortskirtsandexplosions indicative of End of Ponies, Background Pony, and Last Tears in Tartarus. Remember, from 2011 and on--and going into the whole Brony scene, I was very much an antisocial stick in the mud. I mean, in a lot of ways I still am. Anyone whose PM I've ignored can attest to that.
But in 2012, I took things so dayum seriously. Sh00r, in my blarghs I was goofy and manic as Hell, but that was just a character... a shroud... a veneer--one that Ponky admired and (to some extent) emulated, but it was just "shortskirtsandexplosions" at face value. Skin deep. A play I would put on to maintain the illusion of someone I wasn't.
Lo and behold, Ponky PM'd me out of nowhere in mid-2012, and instead of brushing him off I actually entertained the notion of chatting with him. It started via Fimfic messages, but then transformed into e-mails and Steam and Google Talk. His admiration of my writing was clear, but I was always one to brush his praise off and act aloof and pretend to be way awesomer than I truly was.
But then that evening where we quoted Baz Luhrmann shiet--at least in Ponky's book--was the moment where I "broke character." I stopped being some figment that he idolized and instead sorta... melted down into a true, human being. Maybe even a friend.
And Ponky's right in so many ways. I had several acquaintances through SATGF... but I treated the likes of Propmaster and Razgriz as fellow editors. Vimbert--for all of my admiration for the dude and for all that I owed him--was someone I kept at arm's length because of stupid srs fanfic reasons. Spotlight was invaluable to me as a source of amusement, advice, and inspiration... but there was always something sorta casual and laid-back about our interaction. He had a livestream and I frequented it like a barfly, occasionally hitting him up on Minecraft or TF2. When Background Pony happened, it sorta took me away from Spotlight and the scene that had enthralled me in early 2012. In the meantime... the same fic had fatefully steered me on course for meeting Ponky. And making a friend.
And the story meant a hell of a lot to the fuzzhead. Perhaps way more than I had the capacity to understand at the time. Sure, I found out since... in copious amounts of handwritten letters conveyed to me throughout the course of his two year mission to follow. But all I knew at the time was that he absolutely lurved Background Pony to death. And considering the cheer, the creativity, and the inspiring amounts of wordsmithery and enthusiasm that he had to shovel out... I kinda sorta had no choice but to believe in him.
It's more than ego-stroking, really. Up until that point, all good things said about Background Pony were either (occasionally) in Google Docs edits or (frequently) in Fimfic comments. I hadn't until that time realized that the fic could mean something personally to a person... like on some sort of intimate, spiritual level. Nevertheless, there I was chatting with a dude who was brought into my life solely because of the existence of that story. I had experienced that before--with the likes of old friends like Lord Belgarion and Randirogue and Sora G Silverwind (most of whom I no longer chat with, but I wasn't about to tell Ponky at the time). Suddenly, all of the angst and self-doubt I had over my "new magnum opus" didn't really matter in the scheme of things. I had the proof of the fic's validity in a real human form... and who was I to let the melon fuck down?
As time wore on, Ponky and I would continue chatting more and more frequently. It became clear that the stuff I worked on was responsible for a huge chunk of his creative inspiration. I whole-heartedly remember this one time he uploaded a one-man-show Voice-Over of the climax to Last Tears in Tartarus, where he covers the emotional exchange of both Spring Step and Dream Peace. And he did so while making glorious side-comments and practically bursting into friggin' tears. Almost everything Ponky ever sets his mind to involves 100% of his heart and soul, and it flattered me that he would attribute even an ounce of that to any of my heartless drivel. He even once took a lame-ass bunch of lyrics I wrote for a stand-in for a "lullaby" in Background Pony and turned it into something unnecessarily beautiful:
If someone like Ponky could take a piece of nothing crapola of mine and turn it into a masterpiece, then who was I to sit so long on Background Pony?
Pinkie Pie be damned. I needed to get back into the game with Chapter Eleven. Thankfully... I had come up with a noble plan for doing the second half--the "Second Season" as t'were--of the Lyratastic Existential Epic.
Enter Alabaster Comethoof.
No, not Come Thoof. It's Comet--
You know what, never mind. Let's just continue with the blogtastic self-fappery.
For Chapter Eleven of Background Pony, I decided to go out on a wild tangent and produce an entire chapter from the perspective of a character who wasn't Lyra. In so doing, I broke the mold of the fic as it was--which was meant to throw everyone for a loop. For Part XI alone, I utilized the perspective of Alabaster Comethoof, a half-sarosian musician from over a thousand years prior to the main story. As it turns out, he was partly responsible for helping Princess Luna discover the Nocturne of the Firmaments which tragically led to her going insane and adopting the persona of Nightmare Moon. I also introduced the font color cornflower blue... which I remember to this day because the name of it is so goddamn silly.
While a crazy outlier of the chapter, it did accomplish a lot: namely in exposition. Here we see what more or less becomes the fate of Lyra Heartstrings, although it's only half said. Also, the color purple is introduced to more or less point out the influence of Princess Aria, who was implied but not named at this point in the story. Employing so many dayum uses of color opened the door for some truly meta shiet. At some point--if the readers presently tackling the story wanted to--they could trace back throughout the pre-existing bulk of the fic and discover differently-colored fonts... which suggested that moments in the story that were previously "unsung" were now being exposed to the reader just as they were being exposed to Lyra. It was a pretty snazzy mechanic--at least in theory--and it truly made the story come alive in new and exciting ways.
Writing so wildly was the best choice I could have made at the time, and although Chapter XI amounted to nothing more than a colorful (lulz) exposition dump, it was still enough to reinvigorate my appreciation for the epic-in-progress. I now had an explicitly stated cosmology for Lyra to deal with, and it made the rest of her quest in the fic crystal clear. While this didn't necessarily uncork the dam that had stagnated Background Pony's regular updates, it helped make the story far less of a chore... and it was the perfect pick-me-up to follow the abomination that was the Pinkie Pie chapter. I like to think that the commenters felt the same, but only history will or won't prove that.
All things considered, 2012 was lookin' lively and exciting in ways I hadn't embraced it before. Thanks to Ponky, I had learned to stop loathing Background Pony so much... and perhaps even myself by extension. While It Ends With Them Cuddling didn't hit it off, I was still in the mood to embrace new ideas and distractions.
For better or for worse, a particularly interesting distraction wriggled its way into my domain:
NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS
One brony had a dream. Little did he know that it would turn into a nightmare... for some.
Perhaps some context is in order...
Wanderer D a.k.a. Tony Stark is a moderator of Fimfic.net. But he's much much more than that. He's been a major charismatic influence on the literary brony scene since time immemorial. I remember him as far back as Ponychan's /lit/, where he'd comment on some of the rough-rough drafts of IRRD and EoP that I submitted. For as long as I've been a Brony, I've always been aware of his presence. Plus, cool guy is cool, and he hosted the first ever Vlog/Podcast that I was on.
Generally speaking, Wanderer has always liked to do cool things to bring the community together... or set it on fiiiiire? One such incendiary snazzy idea was to found what would soon be called the League of Extraordinary Gentlecolts. It was created for one purpose: to destroy the world of men.
Ahem.
The League was designed for the mother of all troll projects... in good fun, mind you. You see, as 2012 rolled on, the meta of Fimfic was just starting to take shape. And it became clear that anyone who used the site had an unshakeable love/hate relationship with the Feature Bar. The Feature Bar was basically Jerusalem; armies of literary bronies would arrive to lay siege to the thing to conquer and re-conquer and re-re-conquer it for ages. Blood has been spilled every weekend over it. Bodies lay dead and littered along its outer walls. Over the centuries, some have been successful at mastering its formula. Others... not so much. War makes corpses of us all.
So, in 2012, Wanderer D--in full knowledge of the gothic love/hate romance that the marsupials had for the Feature Bar--decided to play the ultimate prank to highlight the absurdity of it. His plan was to assemble a bunch of horsewriters--some through personal invitation and others through volunteering--so that they could write separate stories and then swap them across accounts. In other words, he'd get a high-subscriber-volume person to pair up with a low-subscriber-volume person and then post their stories--written especially for this project--on opposite accounts. This would cause the reader base to think that one person wrote a story... when in fact it was somebody else altogether. The trick was to see if people would react favorably/disfavorably to their assumed author... and if such a bias would affect the Feature Bar in turn.
At some point, he passed this invitation onto me. I was flattered, of course, cuz this was Wanderer D and I've known and admired him since Ponychan (and still do to this day). And if nothing else, this project had the potential to prove whether or not there was any merit to my written word beyond the superficial skin of my horsefame--brought on by the success of Background Pony.
So, while chatting with Ponky and tackling more Austraeoh and Background Pony, I waited with bated breath for the next announcement of this new "League." At long last, Wanderer sent the call out. I found out that I was being paired up with an author whom I already knew called Chromosome. Those of you old bronies might know him from this fic:
Chromosome was a pretty cool guy until he went fucking nuts, but whatever. I remember White Box being one of the first stories I legitimately read and enjoyed. I found the experimental colorization to be really provocative, and I absolutely digged the bleak ending. In some ways, it was likely influential on my choice to use colored font throughout the course of Background Pony. So when I found out I was being paired up with him, I was ecstatic. Chromosome was evidently pumped too, and he capitalized on the situation by writing the mother of all HiE fics:
Anno Domini isn't exactly a perfect story, but it's undeniably chilling on the first read-through. All of Chromosome's usual finesse and professionalism is at play in the fic, and the ending--albeit pessimistically preachy in its own right--still sends chills down the spine. People writing "dark" HiE stories today absolutely need to read it and take notes.
Meanwhile, I had a story of my own that had been kicking around in my head. I decided "fuq it" and ended up hammering it together for this project.
If nothing else, I Met a Pony In Hell is perhaps proof that I didn't put too much serious weight in Wanderer D's project. It wasn't my intent to suggest that the narrative style I was going for was indicative of Chromosome's--so as to pass off as his own material. I just wrote it for the hell of it, fully-expecting that it would return to the shadow of my own pen-name once the project was said and done.
It's a fic that also stars a human. But where Chromosome's story is a Coppola movie, mine is friggin' Guillermo Del Toro meets Michael Bay. I revert back to the explosive sound-effect riddled kaizo-ness of my old TBE days... only with a sprinkling of gore and vulgar language added. Seriously... how the Hell didn't this fic get rejected for not being an "M"-rating?
Whatever the case, I had a Hell of a lot of fun writing this story. I incorporated Applejack long before I knew she was best pony. I also borrowed Kelly--an OC's of Lord Belgarion (with his permission). I named the protagonist Shawn, a name I was almost given--so the story's basically a gratuitous self-insertion fic. On top of that, Lyra and every other pony is basically the size of domestic house cats so fuck everything. This fic's awesome.
And with such blind euphoria, I submitted this story to the League for Wanderer D to switch bassinets with Chromosome's fic. Soon, the day of destiny would arrive. I mean... what's the worse that could possibly happen?
It got insta-featured.
And it stayed on the top of the bar.
For a week.
Within a few days, it had garnered nearly 700 upvotes... and only 27 downvotes.
This was a oneshot that accumulated 4k+ hits and nearly three hundred comments.
It was the talk of Fimfiction, of skype channels, and message boards.
And my story?
Thirty-four upvotes.
Nineteen comments.
Barely over a thousand hits across the whole of ten chapters.
All in that same time span. It was never featured.
But why? Let us not forget which of the two of us outnumbered the other by hundreds of followers.
Needless to say, what had started out as a blind, manic, wild-and-crazy experiment turned outright poisonous in aftertaste.
I mean, yes, perhaps it was good for Chromosome in a way. He would later be revealed as the true author of the story. But "later" is still too dayum late. I essentially robbed him of potential dozens if not hundreds of subscribers--all for hosting a masterful fic that I did not even write. This was because--by the terms of the experiment--his fic hung on the feature bar under my name for days.
All to garner shiet like this:
Eeyup. Ya see that^^? It even fooled Ponky. The topic would become a source of great anger every once in a while in our conversations (not really but really). But that's okay. I ended up writing a story later that would piss him off even more.
Alas, the damage had been done. The world was free to see how lackluster I was... how the sheer acclimation of followers affected the overall reception to my stories. I wasn't so much a horsefamous genius as I was a walking neckbearded example of Internet China Syndrome.
And what was worse... I could see it... when before I had only ever anxiously suspected it.
Arguments could be made for the devil. Like... perhaps if I had tried more or aimed for better quality on my own fic, it might win sympathy to the fact that I wrote something breathtaking that got ignored due to the system. But the fact of the matter is I didn't even try. Despite all that, I distinctly remember believing that a kaizo piece-of-crap story like I Met a Pony In Hell would somehow land dead-center in the feature bar even though it didn't have the same subscriber boost as the rest of my garbage.
There's one or two amusing take-aways from the experience. I like to think that Ponky learned not to blindly praise me. Also, I vaguely recall having a conversation with Chromosome wherein he revealed that a previous critic of his read my fic and praised him for "finally following his advice and writing something spectacular."
But the cold and bitter truth is that I loathed the entire League experience. I turned my anger and bitterness on Wanderer and his gang too... mostly because while Chromosome and I had uploaded our swapped fics on the deadline that had been planned since Day One... everyone else was friggin' slacking behind. You can look for yourself on Wanderer's blog; the calendar's right there. The next closest upload after Chromosome and I was five days later. And some members even had to wait another five days before they could catch up and post. All the while there's Chromosome's fic, frolicking around like a lemur in sheep's clothing, soaking up the attention that I didn't deserve.
In hindsight, I shouldn't have been so blind. I should have seen what was going on with the rest of the LOEG and realized that Chromosome and I had to delay our upload for the sake of legitimizing the "science experiment." But I was impatient, egotistical, and full of myself. I insisted we upload on day one and Chromosome sorta shrugged his shoulders and said "sure." In the end, I don't recall him being too terribly offended. I mean he did get some recognition from the overall experience, not to mention a bevy of subscribers. The story's still rightly posted under his name to this very day.
But boy oh boy did it put me in a fucking bad spot. I ended up writing a long, epic, and horribly bittersweet blog about the situation. It turned some heads, too. I apologized profusely to the community at large, waxed philosophic about the feature bar, and spammed the Hell out of Chromosome's account, begging everyone to subscribe to him and read his stuff instead.
I feel like--in a way--it was the first time I more or less "broke character" before the marsupial alumni to apologize and reveal my true feelings. Ponky had witnessed such melting in private messaging, and now the rest of Fimfic got to see me... at least attempt to be human. Humble. Real.
Real bitter, if nothing else.
So, after starting out 2012 feeling aimless and full of self-doubt, I learned to relax... then I found inspiration... then I became famous... then I started feeling doubt once more... then I made a friend who helped me open up and enjoy writing once again... only to end up in a spot where I hated and doubted myself more than I ever had before. And the biggest stinker of the whole debacle: it was all my fault.
But, thankfully, I had learned my lesson, right?. Famous or not, I would never put myself in a place to come across as a pretentious self-absorbed douchebag ever again.
Wait, what?
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh crap...
To be Continued in Part Ten: The Dark Lemur Rises
I still say, despite your screams to the opposite, I Met A Pony In Hell is one of my favorite stories by you.
Wow... damn, I think this is the first blog of yours I read, I'm not sure. Hmm... I've been seeing these and I got curious, so I decided to drop on in and see what it was.
Holy dicks this is huge. Also ayy, Ponky, I remember that name... vaguely, hehe.
Fuuuuck, what to say here, hmm... Not a clue, to be perfectly honest with you. From our incredibly brief conversations, you seem like a pretty cool guy, and I enjoyed a lot of your stories. BGP was one of the ones I enjoyed, and one of the first stories of yours I read was uh... fuck, The End of Ponies, actually that was the very first pony story I ever read, no that I think about it.
Uuuhhh, Ima stop myself before I go off into a tangent. My main point is, like... you're a chill guy, and stuff like what you've gone through can happen even to the best of us n' shit, it's what makes us human.
That make any sense to this blog? Probably not, aaah fuck it, I'm gonna bounce, hope your day's going good, Skirts
How can my Internet horsewriters possibly be this cute?
It melts my heart how much love you put in your words when you talk about
Doogie HowserPonky. You two are adorkable.Um
This Ponky dude is a legend. I think he's my new hero.
The real probably with the ship is that neither Poirts nor Skinky rolls off the tongue. Not a lot of cadence to it.
Skonky is okay, but...
Also I just realized I made a shipping name joke last blog. Oh god the well has run dryyyyyyyyyy
I Met a Pony in Hell is incredible. Well worth the read, for anyone that hasn't clicked over there yet. Funny, fast paced, action packed, and still rooted in Skirtsian emotion.
This is a nice reminder to me that the best (at least, my favorite) story on Friendship-Is-Magic-fiction.net was one about a friendship.
You two share "a love unspecified"
Ponky has my all time favorite singing voice. It's a little sad to see the spamming of downvotes he got for hating Hiccups. I wasn't a fan of that story either . . . once I read the comments and found out what it was about (I'm terrible at reading between the lines. That's why I can't do video game puzzles.).
I didn't know about the story switcheroo situation, but I do now have White Box and Anno Domini in my Read Later.
I've always enjoyed glimpses into the life and times of SkirtxPonk.
Incredible image.
I just realized I'm going to be a bit sad when all twelve parts of this are over.
I Met A Pony In Hell was a crazy fun story. I was really hoping for a sequel for it. IIRC you had one planned a while back but it got dropped along with a bunch of other things.
Ohey L-day!
I remember this from a podcast!
Oh hey, it's me, but I don't think it was a great look
At least L-Day is upon us!
The tragedy of that whole experiment is that the feature box is ridiculously easy to break. I mean, these days I'm more surprised when my latest story *doesn't* hit the box because I worked out the trick to it so long ago I don't even pay attention anymore. That's not me being egotistical, that's me pointing out that the feature box is stupidly predictable.
Disclaimer: In no way, shape, or form do I intentionally write FB bait stories to rack up notice. It's just that the kind of shit I like writing has a high tendency to wind up there anyway
because we're all Sunset Shimmer whores or like dumb joke fics. Ironically, the stories I'd *love* to see featured, the ones I put the most time, sweat, blood, andsementears into, *never make it there*.You don't need to write an emotional masterpiece to have an entertaining story. I Met A Pony In Hell is like a popcorn flick of Fimfic literature, and it embraces it wholeheartedly. To that, I say you did a great job on it.
Oh, and Ponky, from what I've seen here, is infectious with his positivity. I look up to that attitude.