Blog recommendations · 3:00pm Aug 9th, 2018
A few recommendations from recent fimfiction blog posts:
Twilight Sparkle Is A Heroic Fascist: School Daze Part 2 is MLP's Post-Mortem by redsquirrel456. Redsquirrel456 has been highly critical of the show for many seasons now. In this post, he shows that without Lauren Faust around enforcing consistency and believability of setting, character, and plot, many writers drift into writing stories that match their own internal ideology--which turns out to be fascism.
That's very interesting--what is this apparent link between pastel ponies and fascism?--but a bit clickbaity, as most of his post is not about fascism. I take issue with some of his points and word choices, but concur with his larger one: in recent years (excepting season 7), many of the show's writers haven't cared about the show's quality or consistency, or understood what the show is about, or what makes something a story rather than just a plot--or even, in the case of "Marks for Effort", what makes something a plot. This is all epitomized by Big Jim's answer to a fan:
Early pony episodes were not very heroic at all. Many of them had a clear objective, but the story ultimately wasn’t about solving that one specific problem, but the problems that rose along the way to solving that problem. ... Even the episodes with villains, like Trixie, Discord, and Chrysalis, were not about “how do we destroy this villain?” but ultimately “how do we preserve our harmony in the face of this crisis?” Remember the dragon episode? It was not about defeating the dragon—the dragon was incidental. The real dragon of the story was Fluttershy’s inner demons, and how she overcame them to the benefit of her friends. It was about how the Community around her reacted to her decidedly un-Heroic actions.
Except now, episodes are self-contained to the point that they are irrelevant to the larger tale of Equestria. Every single new writer has their own ideas, their own concepts, their own vision for what the ponies are and what they represent. ... Episodes are less about learning the mysteries of friendship and more about… ponies doing a thing.
Defeat the Shadow Pony. Defeat Starlight Glimmer. Babysit Flurry Heart. Impress Sugar Belle. Kick Zephyr Breeze out of the house. Like early episodes we have a clear problem to solve, but that’s all there is.
...
Did anyone actually care if Zephyr became a better person or not? The fandom forgot about him so soon after his episode. All Fluttershy did was stand around waiting for his life to get so bad that his epiphany was inevitable, not interesting. “Gosh, I better shape up or I’ll die in the woods” is about as compelling as Starlight’s “Gosh, I better stop trying to destroy the world or I’ll destroy it too much, I guess?”
...
None of these episodes were about learning, but asking: Do the ponies Do The Thing? Friendship does not spring organically from interaction [in these episodes -- BH]. The overemphasis on an antagonist, centering the conflict on a character or an object, robs the entire cast of agency and emotional maturity. What they think and even what they do doesn’t really matter. What matters is the One Thing to Rule Them All.
Whether or not you agree that this describes the show today, this post contains a lot of wisdom about storytelling, and why a plot isn't a story.
Difficulty Levels, by Chinchillax. This short post gives a life lesson from video games: At any given task, we're each playing life on different difficulty levels. Learn to be aware of and accepting of this difference between people, and don't be ashamed to ask for help when your difficulty level is high.
Hungry Ghosts and Jealous Gods - Writing about Addiction, by Heartshine. Heartshine has been pumping out insightful and experience-based blog posts about psychology and therapy. They're all long, but--forgive me the sentimentality--very real.
I don't usually recommend commie pinko anti-free-market writing, but MrNumbers is just so good at it. Rather than single out any particular blog post, I'll say that lately he's written a lot of well-researched [1], fascinating, and disturbing blog posts. Some are only on his Patreon account, though, so you've gotta pay a buck a month (or more, if you like!) to read them. They're well worth it. (You have to go to the $5/month tier to get all of them, but... um... I didn't.)
[1] "Well-researched" doesn't mean "infallible", so beware. I typically find about one statement per Numbers post that I think is significant to his post, but incorrect. But that's very good, considering the amount of controversial and difficult-to-uncover information he presents.
And, of course, you all probably know about these ones:
Aragón at Bronycon: Some Legends are Told, Some Turn to Dust or to Gold
Nobody punched me at Bronycon 2018.
All your money was fucking wasted.
Aragón at Bronycon, Day Two: And I Won't Stop till the Whole World Knows my Name
Ghost Gallivants to Glorious Galacon
Not a blog, but Weasly Larry is building a list of the Top 1001 Stories on FIMFiction. This list is different from other lists in that it's a combination of popular and critically-acclaimed stories. This may make it useful for recommending to people who want an intro to ponyfic. (Although it will be less-useful if he reaches his target of 1001 stories, since then it will be too many to read.)
I've had a few stories show up on that list. <.< I guess if it's being curated via mechanical means, then I needn't disparage the choices too much...
4917196 It's not mechanical. He's going over other lists: top-rated, Canterlot Library, the Vault, etc., and trying to find the ones which seem most influential or most discussed. I do think he's doing it too fast, though.
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There are ~75 slots left in the bookshelf. Curious if he intends to continue curating it, or if it's going to be a snapshot of this moment in ponyfic history.
Maybe I'm too influenced by the Vault and RCL, but it does seem like he could stand to be more selective in terms of picking out one or two representative works from the authors contained therein. To wit, all three of my published fics are now in it. If I were doing the same, I would at the very least omit the third, which is a sequel to the first and could presumably be discovered by anyone interested in the others. This would free up room for a wider sampling.
Can't say I mind the compliment, though...
Well, my RCL ended up on the list, at least.
What metrics are actually used for these? Because quite a few of the stories seem more like personal opinion than objective or statistical results.
On the other hand, fimfic lets you search within bookshelves, so it is possible to narrow your search by interests.
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Agreed on maximizing author diversity. There's a sequel story of mine on there that will make zero sense without the context of the prequel, and another that's just a One-Shotober collection.
It's flattering to see a bundle of notifications about stories getting added to a "Best Stories on the Site" shelf, but his methodology seems questionable at times.
It can't be all the best; Twilight Eats a Peach isn't on it.
I, too, am curious about the methodology behind that list.
Then again, he’s got four of my stories on there, so he’s probably on the right track.
I'm rather baffled to have ended up with a couple of slots on the list. One of them had featured in Seattle's Angels, so I guess that makes sense, but Tastes Like Heresy hasn't appeared anyplace notable and has been rejected from a number of collections.
I'd be very interested in learning what methods Mr. Larry is using.
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From your post, it sounded like he was just going by site rankings or something. That actual methodology makes a good bit more sense, though I'll agree overloading certain authors won't really accomplish anything.
My best story (Feeling That Way) is on there, so I’m happy.
4917233 Site rankings are arguably the worst metric to consider a fic "Good" or "Bad".
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Absolutely true!
Then again, he put My Full-Sized Goddess Horse in there, so something about this is flawed. :B
Thanks for the interesting links!
You said in the comments of the first blog post
Anywhere we can find this story?
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I'll pick up that challenge!
Worse metrics to judge the quality of stories:
Pure wordcount
Word to pronoun ratio
Lack of Flash Sentry
Presence of Flash Sentry
Number of external referrals
Chapter to wordcount ratio
Semi-colon count
Paragraph count
Tag count
View count
Views to wordcount ratio
4917278 I counter with: None of those are usually considered an objective metric, unlike the site rankings which function in an entirely disparate and unreliable way and are based entirely on an equation designed to elevate what equates to "eyecandy" rather than merit, but people here still take at face value.
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Er, no. I meant he gave a good explanation. In Quills & Sofas at Bronycon.
I blame my time on YouTube making me lose all sense of perspective and decency. I am a victim of the violence inherent in the system, man.
As if I didn't have enough stuff to read this weekend.
I got 3/4 stories in that list. Generous, I must say.
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He must have added over 20 of mine by now. Notifications from before yesterday are gone now, but I can still see 10 of them. While I appreciate the sentiment, that's easily enough to dip down into what I myself would consider second-tier, and there's no way I account for 5% of the best stories out there. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Larry, but spread the love.
Redsquirrel seems like a prolific writer. I have no clue what he's talking about though. I'm not sure why you're headlining this list of recommended blogs with him, since it just seems like he's letting loose a ton of dissatisfaction at a target not deserving of it. But I've seen all your responses in the comment section, you seem really engaged in this. Your conclusion from The story isn't over when you wrap up the plot are on the money, but I don't know what he's watching if he's thinking that the MLP:FiM writers have forgetten the point about friendship being magic
So that's all there was to Flutter Brutter? Kicking Zephyr around? I'd frequently hear people praising it for Fluttershy displaying her approach to tough love, finally seeing her family unit, the running gag of Rainbow Dash having a crush being projected onto her, and Zephyr himself.
How are we defining "caring" about Zephyr? There's a difference between how much we like a character, how much we relate, and whether there's any story or growth to them. A lot the fans said they either were Zephyr in some ways, had been him, or knew someone else in that mindset. His egotistic facade hit the sweet spot of cringe comedy without feeling forced, or turning into actual cringe (which I will definitely say the show has dropped the ball with in the past). Despite his complete douchiness, we still get to see his core lack of self confidence, and how that convinces him to halt his own progress in life. There were certainly more layers to him than Blueblood, another egotistic familial member who imposes on other people that came out of nowhere and hasn't had a role since.
If there aren't as many fics dedicated to him like Blueblood, it's because the of the decreased fandom participation since Seasons 2 & 3, and (more importantly) that the fandom had comparatively much less to latch onto with just one season. It's the same arbitrary, ordinary reason why we gave Steven Magnet his own name, but not the Chimera in the Fire Swamp. Why if you browse through this site, you'll see so many stories with a manticore or cockatrice, but not a cragadile or maulwurf. Or why Berry Punch gets to be a tragic alcoholic (or Cloud Kicker the base of own fandom universe!), but people do so little with more one-off background characters like Stellar Eclipse or the Beast Master (who you probably forgot about until your read this).
vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/9/95/Rainbow_offers_trade_with_Stellar_Eclipse_S4E22.png/revision/latest?cb=20140421191710
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If Zephyr's change means nothing because of the threat of dying in the woods (which no pony would really allow happen to him), why can't I flip that and say Fluttershy only gained courage because a dragon was about to cook them all? Or that Rarity and AJ only learned to get along at the slumber party because a big ol' tree smashed open their house?
There's definitely a point to be raised about how the show direction changed with Faust's departure. How there can be inconsistency between disparate writers (especially the lesser ones). This season has totally had some suckass episodes, and unless this second half has a lot of gems, I'll probably rate it lower than others. And the School of Friendship is poorly explained* and not fully utilized... like most plot devices set up at the beginning of each season. But Redsquirrel's takedown of episodes and seasons being so devoid of an emotional core in favor of a set piece or hard-set plot are ridiculous.
*This a sincere complaint of mine, and I've had to accept that this entire school was something the toy department decreed from on high, and it's just a weight that the showstaff have to write around. But...
.... I do think this actually stands as evidence against the newer seasons focused on plot, seeing as how so little attention is paid to how this schools functions or what it provides. To paraphrase what you led with in The story isn't over when you wrap up the plot, the School of Friendship is the "thing" for this season, and the metaphor of racial integration is the "other thing." Right now, the writers have to lean on the "other thing" for each episode focused on the school. They aren't always succeeding.
A lot of what RedSquirrel seems to be railing against* seem to be things that were present at the onset of the show.
Isn't this an inherent conceit/problem with My Little Pony from the first episode though? This shows leads with the Elements of Harmony, meaning the universe itself is reward certain character traits by transmogrifying virtue into a huge laser with visible effects on the world, and it's enemies. It's arguably a problem with fantasy in general, where you can tell someone's the bad guy because they'll have grown horns and have fire behind their eyes.
RedSquirrel goes on about this show post-Faust. But when she was first plotting out Friendship is Magic, hasn't she said her vision was more adventure orientated, and then Hasbro curbed the series into having a greater emphasis on slice-of-life and staying in Ponyville? It seemed like Lauren was more set on stories where the cast "goes forth and achieves an objective" and "ponies doing a thing." I stand with others' assesments that Lauren's strong suit is unmooring the audience in wonderful worlds and imagery, but her writing for dialogue and character interaction could fall flat. I might actually compare her to George Lucas. Which is actually meant to be in an endearing way.
So much of that blog post, and others of his on recent episodes, sound to me that the parts of the Star Wars fandom that complain that the sequel trilogy has tactics and imagery too similar to WWII. Or Pokemon "Genwunners" that say GameFreak ran out of ideas and are just now relying on slapping faces onto inanimate objects. If you view it as a crutch that needs to be abandoned, fine. But don't pretend these elements weren't part of your franchises composition from the outset.
*I hesitate to use this word because it's so bizzare to me that such a long, articulated essay is done on the basis of such anger. Maybe I have trouble realizing that because I can't reckon at all with what he's focusing it against. Also maybe because it feels like he tried to tie-in the idea of fascism for the sake of trying hard to make a point, and a earning a click-baity title.
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That's a good point. Personally, I didn't like either Dragonshy or Zephyr's episode, because they weren't about interesting conflicts. They weren't about conflicts at all; there were about personality defects. A good plot is based on conflict, not on a personality defect, and a story that can be summarized as "I can't do X. I can't do X. I can't do X. Wait, I can do X!" is suitable only for children's picture books.
I did like the sleepover episode, a lot. That episode was about a conflict, and it was an interesting conflict because neither Applejack, Rarity, nor Twilight was right. I think the sudden ending is okay in this case, because the method of conflict resolution was not for someone to have a character arc, but for them all to adopt pragmatism.
A philosophically idealistic plot has some characters who are right and others who are wrong, and requires a final, complete resolution to its conflict in which the side that's right either wins or loses. This kind of plot either has a battle between Right and Wrong and one side eventually wins (e.g., Lord of the Rings. Star Wars), or has long character arcs in which characters gradually realize/admit they've been in the wrong / pursued the wrong desires (Darth Vader in Star Wars, Generation Kill).
A philosophically pragmatist plot has characters who disagree, and agree to compromise instead of trying to figure out whose values are "right" and whose are "wrong". That agreement to compromise doesn't require a long and steady character development, but a long time with all the characters trying and failing to impose their values on everyone else. That's what we have in "Look b4 u sleep". Fall Weather Friends is another variation, where characters keep trying and failing to beat each other and eventually realize that fighting to defeat the Other just makes them lose. Yet another variation on pragmatism is Suited for Success, where Rarity takes the opposite tack, trying to honor everyone else's ideas entirely and simultaneously rather than compromising, and fails.
My impression is that seasons 1 & 2 had more of these kinds of stories: Ticket Master, Look b4 u sleep, Fall Weather Friends, Suited for Success, Green Isn't Your Color, Over a Barrel.... I'll stop there.
Pragmatist stories have a structure that's similar to that of the modernist "epiphany" story, like James Joyce's "Araby" or "The Dead", or John Updike's "A&P", in which the main character has a sudden realization that he's been looking at the world too idealistically and that things are more complicated. The difference is that a pragmatist plot leads not to an epiphany, but to the pragmatic decision to just get along instead of seeking ultimate truth, and that results in harmony. An epiphany plot leads its main character to a painful brush with ultimate truth, of the sort reminiscent of Greek stories of mortals being burned by seeing the gods in their full glory. They usually imply that harmony is impossible and the world is a miserable place.
Dragonshy and Zephyr's episode were both philosophically idealistic--the main characters were simply wrong--but they had a sudden realization of the type found in pragmatist or ephiphany stories, perhaps because that's the kind of climax writers are taught to write in contemporary creative writing university courses. IMHO that's why neither story worked.
Yeah, I think they're stuck with a metaphor that doesn't work, because they don't have enough worldbuilding to deal honestly with racial integration (other than between the different pony tribes). The different races aren't interdependent, don't have a history with each other, and don't have cultures that are fleshed-out enough to be stereotyped. If you wanted a pony to stereotype hippogriffs, you couldn't. A stereotype has to be an oversimplification of what we know, and the sum total of what we know of hippogriffs isn't enough to be a stereotype, let alone to be oversimplified to a stereotype.
Maybe. I'd have to count, episode-by-episode, what happened more in early and later seasons. I'll keep my eyes open for this, but I won't do that time-intensive count unless I write a blog post on the subject myself. Which I'm not likely to. I'm not as interested in Season 1 vs Season 6 as I am in studies of individual episodes.
I think the issue is that in the Friendship School episode being discussed, Twilight is legitimized in overthrowing the existing social compromises to implement her personal vision, because she's the Princess of Friendship. This is analogous to how the Nazis said Der Fuehrer was legitimized in overthrowing democratic rule because he was the incarnation of the world-spirit. There was no character like that in seasons 1-3. There were princesses, but they didn't rule by following their personal visions; they were very lassez faire pragmatists.
I didn't know that.
I don't know enough about her. I certainly was disappointed in Littlest Pet Shop, but there was no wonderful world or imagery there, either. Just a series of mediocre jokes based on the single defining traits of 1-dimensional characters.
That's really funny, given that the climax of Star Wars: A New Hope is copied from the WW2 movie The Dam Busters.
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I'm gonna split some hairs here and say that while on the surface, Dragonshy and Zephyr's realizations are just a simple "I can't do it but now I can"... Dragonshy just did it better. We had had several episodes up to that point about Fluttershy having crippling anxiety, and the audience had grown to love her because of those little quirks, and the image of her overpowering all that in the face of her friends being in danger is still compelling even if it's not very complicated. Zephyr, kinda like Starlight, didn't really care that his actions were affecting other ponies. Even if the show didn't really mean to make it seem that way, the episode still has that bad taste of Zephyr changing only because his life had gotten irredeemably miserable for himself, not because he cared that he was a leech. If you want the audience to cheer for a character changing, you're gonna have to at least give them some redeeming qualities, and Zephyr had basically zero. He might have been entertaining from a cathartic point of view, like "ha ha look at the basement dweller being given what for" but all Zephyr really is in the end is a bundle of negative male stereotypes. I never thought that was something we should have had on the show.
I don't think Zephyr can be compared to other background characters either, since he had an entire episode devoted to himself and yet the show still couldn't give him staying power, just like how Tempest Shadow had an entire movie and yet she vanished from the scene almost immediately. The fact is a lot of the information we're given now just... isn't interesting to write about. You're right, Blueblood is still written about specifically because he had so little screen time. We were allowed to imagine anything and everything that these characters could be, not what they are. But if we're going this deep, I'll go ahead and say that a "a crocodile but it's a rock" and "a giant mole" are also not particularly interesting monsters to delve into, simply because manticores and cockatrices have always been a part of the public consciousness.
And on that point, Prince Blueblood was also more interesting as the "anti-Prince Charming" because that messes with a mythological archetype we've been working with since stories were a thing.
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That's also a good point.
(Also the entire episode was undercut by the fact that Fluttershy didn't have a paying job either. My head-canon was always that she was a trust-fund kid.)
Big Jim's tweet reminded me of something
not sure if you went to M.A. Larson's sunday panel at Bronycon -- he read through the only episode script that he wrote but never got produced as an episode (if you're curious, it was a much funnier version of "Rarity Investigates") -- but during the Q&A, someone asked about the apparent contradiction that the Mane 6 are heroines who constantly save the world, yet in most episodes they're just average ponies without any fame.
without hesitation, Larson confidently provided his answer: "Yeah, it's a plot hole. Don't think about it."
on the surface it seems to be the same as Jim's answer, but I think it reveals two opposite approaches to writing (not that Jim wrote the episodes). from listening to Larson's panel, it's clear that he begins by taking everything we know the characters, then letting events unfold. he claims he doesn't even think about the moral lesson until he's figured out where the episode ends up. the characters are most important, so as long as they're consistent and believable, there can be some cartoon weirdness the audience will overlook.
Apparently, whoever thought up the friendship school episodes instead first decides on the destination, then selectively rewrites the characters to fit that. Not just minor errors on their personalities or whatever, but a major error about their careers and roles.
There's cartoon logic that's innocuous, like "why does Bugs Bunny keep running into Elmer Fudd everywhere?"
.... and then there's using it to instantly break years of audience understanding of the characters, like Bugs Bunny suddenly acting like Eric Cartman. the latter's not cartoon logic, much less anything to do with cartoons. it's bad writing.
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I'm not sure about Zephyr: arguably he wasn't wrong, he was dysfunctional --- his hairdresser dream had little in common with reality and his only practical skill of extracting free stuff from others by looking pathetic just stopped working. Fluttershy and Rainbow by credibly threatening to leave him in the forest and some encouragement forced him through long sequence of actions that ended with reinforcement. That's not realization, that's...
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... shaping, that can actually work in real life. And behaviorism is nearly as far from idealism as possible. Although it obviously doesn't guarantee that story would be good, and I don't know if writers of that episode thought about it in such terms.