My own personal opinion · 1:06pm Apr 19th, 2020
The following are my own personal opinions about two major story subgroups here on FimFiction. They are my personal opinions and I will not think less or more of anyone who agrees or disagrees with me.
I absolutely loathe the Fall of Equestria stories.
To me, it's a poor attempt to shoehorn Gor into MLP by embracing the worst of the Gor tropes. Mary Sue protagonists, females being only good for one thing, all females are submissive, all males are dominant, and all females are slaves, only some of them haven't been collared quite yet.
And yes, I've read several of the stories. Being a major kinkster myself who is heavily into BDSM, there is a lot to appeal to me in these stories. However, much as I did want to enjoy them, I simply couldn't get past the above major, and the torrent of minor issues I had with the series as a whole. And no, I've never downvoted any of them. I'm not really a fan of downvotes.
So why did I post a story that was post-Fall? Well, as one commenter said, "It gives a quick middle finger to the Fall without doing much of anything." Which is pretty much what I was after. I had to set Dark Chocolate in something and FoE made a decent backdrop, and at the same time I got to throw a quick middle finger at FoE.
Second opinion:
I loathe the Clocktower stories.
I ran across them right after I ran across FoE, and I really, really wanted to like them. But I couldn't. I like the inventive kink, the descriptions, the hard wired concepts of fetishes and care. However, it suffers from flaws as big as FoE. Different flaws, but no less massive.
Such as, if everyone is in your secret society, it's not a secret society anymore. Then there are supervillain multi-level lairs that would require millions if not billions of bits. In one canon story there is the mention of millions of ponies using or traveling through Clocktower facilities each day.
That and the setting can't seem to make up its mind if it wants to be hard or soft, sometimes a single story can shift paradigms without a clutch so fast it strips your mental gears.
Anyway, thanks for listening. If you happen to like either of the two settings, please do not take my opinions as a personal attack on you. I think no less of you, and I am not so arrogant as to believe that I am 100% right. I just felt the need to put this out there, because there were some questions asked of my choice for the setting of Dark Chocolate. Which was a fun story overall to write, especially when teamed up with Coyotethetrickster
In spite of dreading the answer, just like a child might dread the inoculation needle -but be better off with it- what is Gor?
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Gor is a series of fantasy sci-fi novels, written initially by John Lange, under the name "John Norman". The first novel was written in the 60s and was essentially a retelling of Edgar Rice Burroughs "Warlord of Mars" series only on a different world and with a whole lot of kink. The first few books are a pretty decent story with an overarching plot, but around book six things take a definite turn into hardcore sexual dominance and brutalization.
Wikipedia does a decent description of it.
Wow. Thirty-five books? And the series has a publisher, meaning it is making money to someone, or even a bunch of people. This is sad and impressive at the same time.
Sounds like both loathings boil down to their setting and world building. One due to moral outrage, and the other due to its poor internal consistency. The latter one sounds salvageable at least. What would you do to fix it?
You might like this; it’s well written, much more down to
EarthEquis, explicitly consensual RariTwi BDSM. Some people find it too dry, but I loved it.[Adult story embed hidden]
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In an insanely simplified nutshell:
Fix FoE by removing Mary Sues, making characters less one-dimensional, remove plot armor, pay attention to the shit ton of allies Equestria has.
Fix Clocktower by going back to its original idea of it being a secret society known only to a few, that is dedicated to reaching out to educate, comfort and protect.
As for Gor, not just one publisher, but multiple publishers over the years. The series has made a shit ton of money.
Now I'm gonna have to read your Fall of Equestria story. Basically when I seen anything with Fall of Equestria in it I just never clicked it after reading a bit of the orignal story. But after this statement i will give it a go.
Can't say I disagree with you on either of them.
FoE, all the alicorns were defeated because... I guess cause they're female? That seemed to be the only reason.
Clocktower, while you're right, the secret society that ain't so secret is a problem, the bigger problem is the inconsistencies which is a result of Mani declaring that there is no canon, because canon is restrictive on authors. Yeah, no rules, more like suggestions when it comes to writing there. There's some good stories, but.. Well, it's a good idea, but for a share universe to work, you need rules/canon.
it had also been a while since i focused purely on kinky, sexual scenes so it was also fun to follow the thought trains to craft the story. i enjoyed writing it with you as a ghostly helper.
A lot of the FoE stories are poorly written. Like, really poorly written. Not even in a narrative sense, it's like the writers don't own word processors or something with the sheer amount of grammar and spelling mistakes in them.
Meanwhile, with Clocktower, it doesn't help that there is no consistent canon (or maybe it does help?) for the stories to follow, relationships change and switch around from author to author. There's also this weird mix of hard kink and silliness. So the setting is just as wacky as the author wants.
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Yeah. They should take a chapter from the production staff of MLP and establish a "bible" for writers to follow. A framework consisting of do's and don'ts. https://imgur.com/a/ecZPp
I read just enough of FoE to realize it wasn't for me, while friends—friends like this great guy named Penalt—told me enough of the further storyline to realize it really wasn't for me.
Clocktower is... odd. There's the plot problems you list (from the central canon stories), but several of the stories I have actually picked up and read seem to delve deep into the "let's write 99% rape-fic and then tack on 3-4 paragraphs at the end that make it all consensual". That kind of fic I am not into. I like to see stories that explore how much two people are willing to do to show and share their love with another, but when there is no hint of the real characters until the last few words, it's a hollow message.
I even joined the Clocktower Society Discord server, mostly to talk with people who were interested in similar kink-writing to myself. What I found was an odd place. Roles seemed to be based off gender/alignment, and me (being ace) apparently had the option of being "Attack Helicopter". Noped right out.
I will admit that FOE and later zebradom stories are a small guilty pleasure of mine but the logistics of everything kind of ruins the immersion for me equestria should be in a far worse off place as they basically eliminate half or more of their working population and turn them into what can only be called sex chattle.
I mean that is a good way for the caribou or zebras to turn equestria into a vassal state, but there would be significant problems that just aren't being addressed