Keeping Tags On 'Em: Character Biases When Writing Fanfiction · 3:37pm Oct 30th, 2020
Blog Number 111: Top 25 Character Tags Edition
How many stories have you written for each character?
For the sake of no headaches, I'm going to confine this to major characters such as the Main Six, the CMC, and the Princesses. FIMFiction has 298 character tags as of this posting*, so don't go expecting an exhaustive search here.
* Excluding Original Character, Self-Insert, Anon (which is frankly nothing but one of the previous two), and Other.
(That said, at the end of this post, there is a list of all those character tags in alphabetical order, partly to impress upon you the range, partly because I drew it up to help me with part of this post, and I don't want all that time editing and copying in bulk going to waste).
First, Methodology: You Know, The Boring Bit That's Vitally Important
Out of curiosity, I'm going to use my own fics as an example. It'd be easier for a user with fewer stories to do this, but hey, I like a challenge.
First of all, which characters should we stop at? The Main Six are obvious enough, as are the CMC and Princesses Luna and Celestia, but what about borderline cases? Is Discord a major enough player to count? How about Babs and Gabby, who are technically members of the CMC? Long-runners like Daring Do and Big Mac? Sunset Shimmer, despite being almost entirely exclusive to Equestria Girls continuity? (I think: does she get a cameo somewhere in the show?)
Helps if there's a ready-made reference. For instance, on Equestria Daily, there are dedicated "Calendar Days" for particular characters, which can be used as a rough gauge of what are considered major players. The source is here, but I'll reproduce the calendar here so you can get a quick look at it for the purposes of this blog:
Secondly, what order should we tackle them in? I'll simplify this and use this calendar as a checklist, with the exception of the Main Six tag, which doesn't have a single day corresponding to it neatly. As a brief contents page, the characters will be tackled in the order presented in the calendar, hence as indicated below:
- Spike
- Rainbow Dash
- Shining Armor
- Princess Cadence
- Derpy
- Starlight Glimmer
- Fluttershy
- Octavia Melody
- Vinyl Scratch/DJ P0N3
- Queen Chrysalis
- Princess Celestia
- Lyra Heartstrings
- Bon Bon
- Twilight Sparkle
- Rarity
- Sunset Shimmer
- Pinkie Pie
- Applejack
- Trixie
- Discord
- Cutie Mark Crusaders
- Apple Bloom
- Scootaloo
- Sweetie Belle
- Princess Luna
That makes a grand total of 25 tags, which seems enough to be getting on with. The ordering will be a bit random, but at least it's ready-made and better than nothing. I'll be ranking them by story count at the end for something more meaningful, but we've gotta get there first. That means considering each one individually.
OK, here we go!
Character By Character: From Spike to Luna
Pretty unsurprisingly few, and always in conjunction with Twilight. Only one of those fics really delves into him as a character in his own right (Petalback), and sadly it's unfinished.
Honestly, I have no firm idea how to deal with Spike in fanfiction. I've got plenty of ideas, plural, but I haven't really given much thought to him outside of his serving as an assistant and as a foil to Twilight.
Also worth pointing out early on that "tagged" doesn't automatically mean "included": I know for a fact Spike plays a major role in Team Quantum and Thieves, Spirits, and Romantics, and is usually alluded to or cameos in other Twilight fics. It's important to remember what "tagged" actually means as we proceed with this.
As for how I feel about this, it is kind of a shame Spike doesn't get much attention among my fics. I've long been a (silent) fan of the idea of treating him as on par with the Main Six, something that was a major gripe back in the day. Also, it'd be really interesting to get him out of Twilight's influence and see how he fares as his own character.
Still, neither do I feel particularly strongly about his character anyway, not relatively speaking. Probably won't change much in the long run.
All right, who's next?
Pretty good showing, though there are no real surprises here either. Co-occurs with Scootaloo and Fluttershy a lot, has a notable bias towards "Adventure" and to more exotic fics like Eldritch Fun Times and Petalback, largely consistent regular appearances over time. Nothing much to add other than a nice couple of fics I remember from early in my "Renaissance Years" (2016-2018) where she appeared with Rarity and - in one case - Sweetie Belle. Rainbow and either of those two make for quite a fun compare-and-contrast.
I'd definitely like to write more adventure stories for her - as an idiot hero, she'd be in her element there - and perhaps it'd be good to get her in a more unconventional crowd, or at least to pair her up with relatively lesser-used characters like Pinkie or Apple Bloom. Definite scope for future expansion, with the interest to back it up (Rainbow's never been a top favourite, but I've always liked her relationship with Fluttershy and the potential trials and tribulations of her lifelong Wonderbolt ambitions).
Next up, we have a day dedicated to two characters, so I'll do them together.
I always spell it "Cadence", not "Cadance", canon be damned. The former is an actual word and a clear allusion to the musical term. The latter just looks like an ugly "Cuh-DANCE" to me.
Not really surprising these turned out so low, to be honest. As much as I like half of "A Canterlot Wedding", these two are a big reason why I don't really care much for the other half.
Shining's not so bad, though I still see him as a problem: later episodes give him a dorkier childhood, and his role in the Royal Guard (and as one of the few good princes in the show - I'm looking at you, Blueblood) at least makes him potentially useful for stories such as those with a military bent or in association with Twilight. I still think his sibling friendship with her retroactively weakens her friendless origins backstory, but he's relatively salvageable.
Whereas Cadence takes those weak points and exaggerates them: not only another childhood friend, but a princess alicorn babysitting super-nice non-blood-relative friend, whose most salient contribution is a... questionable use of love spells and usurping an entire empire that was fascinating world-building potential on its own already. That's probably the only reason she gets a fic at all, as I was writing about the Crystal Empire, so she just came with the package.
I can see one or two uses for them in the future - Shining makes appearances in Mothering, Someday, and I've been interested in writing something for the Royal Guard someday either as a crime story or as a political thriller of some kind - but don't expect these to change much either.
Wow, on par with major characters here! Even more eye-catching because all of these fics were recent (well, if you count October 2016 as "recent").
That reflects my attitude towards her too: I wasn't really interested in her character for the longest time, up until an association with another character or two brought her closer and closer to my attention. As she became more noticeable, I started adapting my ideas accordingly, until now she's so intimately connected and bonded with part of my "inner canon" that I'm surprised I ever made do without her.
Speaking of those characters or two, as a quick mini-point-of-comparison: Dinky gets 7 and Amethyst Star/Sparkler gets 7. If they were included in the rankings at the end of this blog post, they'd rank pretty comfortably high.
I've gone into more depth regarding Derpy in that prior blog post discussing Dinky, but suffice it to say she's become one of my favourite characters to work with, an endearing oddball with a mixture of limited intelligence and boundless emotion, pegasus incompetence and family gold, weird outlooks and simple-minded wisdom.
Definitely enthusiastic to see more of her, even if it keeps her close to Dinky and Amethyst Star, and is still mostly comedy and slice of life. Sometimes, you just gotta admit when something really works for you. (Even if it took you years to figure out how).
Hmmm.
I'm not going to turn this into a rant, but suffice it to say, with typical understatement, that I really don't like what they did to her character from "The Cutie Re-Mark" onward. That's a big reason why she's not here. Let's just leave it at that, partly because I realize I'm swimming against a current of popular opinion, and partly because I'd rather not dwell on things I really don't like. I only put this here for completeness' sake.
That said, Starlight Glimmer as a villain was one of the best in the show - simply because the ideological approach felt like the show was moving away from simple villains and turning to more complex and intriguing anti-villains, well-intentioned extremists, or at least more thoughtfully challenging villains.
"The Cutie Map" remains arguably my favourite season premier. Perhaps it'd require a backstory or a full-on AU, but perhaps I might make that side of her work someday. Who knows?
I think I have a clear favourite. 
In fact, Fluttershy was the focus of my first ever fanfic (a real primitive piece of work called All of a Fluttershy which, despite being choppy and lurching from one hit-or-miss gag to another, I still regard quite fondly) and has been a staple during and ever since my personal renaissance years.
Her love of animals and social difficulties in particular are extremely relatable to me, and the fact that she represents the spirit of kindness attracts my moral attention too (it's an ethical topic of special fascination to me, especially in conflict with its opposites, such as toughness or cruelty).
The Rainbow Dash association is natural: their odd friendship seems especially odd compared with the other tribes' representatives (Applejack's down-to-earth sensibility versus Pinkie's pie-in-the-sky excitement, Twilight's modest but prodigious talent versus Rarity's histrionic but status-chasing hard work), given that you could argue there's some overlap with the others. After all, Applejack and Pinkie are both family-oriented and strong pillars of the local community, and Twilight and Rarity are both talented in their own ways, tied up with status and the ensuing responsibilities of their roles, and engaged in higher pursuits such as knowledge and the arts.
Whereas Rainbow and Fluttershy are complete opposites in almost every way.
Rainbow is classic pegasus, a being of air and water: Fluttershy is so grounded and earthy that it's no surprise to learn she was originally going to be an earth pony. Rainbow bursts like a firework with ambition, determination, and social hunger: Fluttershy'd just as well burn quietly on her own and stay out of the spotlight.
Rainbow is a creature of extremes, pulling off outrageous stunts one moment and snoozing on a cloud the next: Fluttershy takes a lot of prompting and poking to do anything unusual. And young Rainbow was a bully challenger one minute and a self-absorbed klutz the next: young Fluttershy was a bully victim one minute and then motherly and concerned for creatures she'd only just met.
I'm not saying you couldn't list a lot of reasons why, say, Twilight and Rarity are complete opposites, but it feels much more obvious and fascinating with Rainbow and Fluttershy, especially since their friendship has (arguably) been going on the longest. Which apart from feeling more vivid also makes it easy to devise conflicts to test those differences, figure out how that old relationship works (and doesn't work - there's two sides to the attraction, after all), and so, naturally, pair them together and watch two very different species of bird nevertheless form a symbiotic partnership.
Anyway, apart from that, I've also paired Fluttershy up with a fair few others, such as Discord, Rarity, and lately Apple Bloom. I'm happiest with the diversity and comfort of my Fluttershy stories, and I definitely hope to keep a good thing going.
Aha. Here's something of a common thread, and something which Derpy managed to escape: popular background characters I tended to avoid, at least partly as a backlash against their fanon personalities.
It's not that I don't have ideas for them - Octavia's similarity to Rarity in particular I wouldn't mind capitalizing on - but I don't feel any particular enthusiasm for giving the world another Vinyl Scratch fic, for example. It's different for popular canon characters, like Applejack or Twilight. They feel open to everyone, and given by an official authority.
Or something: I'm not really sure why, for instance, I tackled Rarity so many times, had no major problem writing the likes of White Lightning and Braeburn here and there, but struggle to muster much enthusiasm for a couple of eccentric musicians who were largely solidified by fanon. Like I said, it's not like I didn't eventually warm up to Derpy.
Part of it is probably because I feel I'd have to be more knowledgeable about music to do these two justice, and music is definitely one subject in which I am severely lacking (I still struggle to understand simple notation like that B sharp and C flat diatonic stuff, despite having looked it up umpteen times).
Then you get cases like this, where I'm flat-out stumped why I haven't done more for them.
Remember when I said I only half-liked "A Canterlot Wedding"? Chrysalis and the changelings are pretty much the half I like best. Fair's fair, on analysis Chrysalis's schemes have a tendency towards the hole-ridden, but she more than makes up for that with oodles of style.
She's a blast whenever she's onscreen, certainly more darkly charismatic than the bland King Sombra, and unlike Discord - whose scope and villainy took a while to cement - she's unapologetically dripping with delighted evil from the word "go". Her design combines everything nasty: succubus/vampire predatory draining, zombie aesthetic, elvish ethereal associations, hive-mind-like insectoid creatures that find good company in sci-fi and fantasy while still feeling like its own take, dark and twisted, gangrenous green, gray with decay, and staring through the careless, slitted eyes of a cat, or else the slitted cold evil of a reptile. And with the combination of operatic melodrama and paranoia-inducing stealth that makes her at once both as campily loud as a moustache-twirler and as deadly serious as a silent assassin.
In a show where antagonists get redeemed with reckless abandon, she's one of the few characters to stick to her villainy and like it. And as I've discovered in writing for her, she's the perfect channel for darker genres**.
** Which admittedly might be part of the problem: see Princess Luna below.
Given all that, to have only written two fics for her is a bit disappointing. Perhaps this is an area for further investment.
I think it's worth putting my cards on the table here and admitting that a lot of my love for certain characters is down to my own interpretation for them. Even to my biased thinking, Celestia is the clearest example.
To be fair, it's not like the show didn't leave hints as to her characterization, especially early on when she could pop into Ponyville like it was nothing. Her serene aura of angelic wisdom has cracked occasionally to let her be openly glad of a little Grand Galloping Chaos, a prospect of free cake, and teasing Sugar Cube Corner's residents with fake tea requests and a half-dead bird. Plus, her connection to Twilight has always been a rich source of story ideas, especially as the show hinted further and further as to her pushing Twilight towards the princess path.
But I think, when you get down to it, the show hasn't really done much with her, and not all of it for the better. Epic quests? She gets taken out so often that Twilight and co do all the interesting stuff. Political intrigue? Same problem. Relationship with Twilight? She might as well be Basil Exposition for all the input she has, at times. It took seven seasons for her even to get a dedicated episode, and frankly I'm going to stop here a la the Starlight Glimmer entry above.
Given that I think most of her in-show appearances are either thin or unsatisfactory, I generally turn to other sources in order to construct my own version of Celestia. It's kind of a mixed bag for me because her hints and suggestions in the show are at least food for thought, but what I eventually end up writing usually feels more like my own creation.
I don't think I'm explaining myself very well, but "canon-guided OC for a character in her unique role and position" is probably why I write about her so often.
To this day, I still don't understand the appeal of these two. I mean, a harp and sweets? At least Octavia and Vinyl make sense as musically themed opposites, and Dinky as Derpy's daughter kind of looks about right colour-wise, but these two?
My best guess is something similar to the "odd friendship" thing with Rainbow and Fluttershy, and of course, the whole The Legend of Korra thing where people get excited same-sex relationships are a thing in a cartoon where you wouldn't think to notice them. I can't say I'm that impressed, myself. They're so underdeveloped and implied that it feels less like an actual celebration of such relationships and more just token acknowledgement that people blow out of proportion. Besides, the fandom openly ships everyone with everyone at this point. A cartoon maybe kinda hinting at such a thing is pretty meagre fare in comparison***.
*** I'm aware of the argument that even doing this much is historically important, and that the blame is on the lopsided culture in which those cartoons find themselves. Trouble is, the former says nothing about quality, and the latter is an explanation for the lack of said quality, not a justification in and of itself.
Anyway, so why the discrepancy, with Lyra getting four fics and Bon Bon none?
Simple: same as Derpy, Lyra got roped in with other background characters I was considering. Unlike Derpy - who took years to enter my good graces - Lyra was pretty much taken as part of an easily identifiable set from the start.
In fact, unicorns and pegasi in general fall into some pretty identifiable cliques in the show (unicorns thanks to "Amending Fences"****, pegasi thanks to "Wonderbolt Academy" and "Hurricane Fluttershy"). Earth ponies, by contrast, are tougher. There are so many of them all over the place, not all of which fall into an easily identifiable clique, that it took me a long time to get even a rudimentary one off the ground for my fics. I still have an easier time with the other two tribes.
**** This is generally speaking. I was paying attention to that clique as early as the first episode, and already had a worked-out character set long before Moondancer's onscreen debut came along, which is one reason "Amending Fences" is such a complicated episode for me.
Bon Bon does interest me with her bizarre S.M.I.L.E. connection, and that could be an opening for a thriller series, but otherwise she was largely the victim of circumstance. And admittedly, my indifferent-to-unhappy reaction to the growing show references and fanon emphasis was because of a pairing I didn't care much about anyway.
She's effectively the main character. Of course she's going to have so many.
Although it's notable that I rarely have her alone or as the central figure. A lot of the time, she's part of an ensemble, or a sort of reflection on other characters (Twilight Velvet, for instance, as well as Dinky and Lemon Hearts). I think part of that is that, especially in recent seasons, a lot of what made her stand out wasn't particularly interesting to me (I personally prefer her more as a socially awkward intellect rather than as a blandly heroic leader). So to remedy that, I throw her against contrasting characters and watch the smooth wood get chipped, fractured, or roughed up. She's more fun that way.
I think I'm like Discord. I just can't help making chaos, even in small, limited ways. So who better to throw it at than a stick-in-the-mud authority like Twilight? 
The second of my three favourites (Fluttershy is the first, I'll discuss the third later).
I find a lot to like in Rarity. I find her accessible mostly for her artistic inspiration. I find her entertaining mostly for her over-the-top complaining/whining. I find her interesting mostly for her business and status ambitions, which pits her against the likes of Canterlot (that's pretty high-ranking on both) and Rainbow Dash (who's also ambitious, but in a much rougher and much less sophisticated fashion). I find her just all-around a pleasure to write for.
Plus she's a lot of fun to pit against other contrasting characters. Applejack's an obvious candidate, not just because the two of them often have the best episodes in the show, but because - as per "Sisterhooves Social" - they have complicated relationships with their little sisters and - as per "Simple Ways" - differing attitudes to romance, as well as - as per "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" - polar opposite attitudes to the trappings of high society. Helps class is kind of a no-brainer topic for a Brit to write about, of course: it fascinates us still, even if we try to deny it exists anymore.
My only real weakness with her is fashion itself. I don't know much about it, despite having picked up a few clothing terms here and there (see what fanfic research does for you?), which means she doesn't have the automatic appeal of Fluttershy. Plus, with so many juggling elements to her character, she's not always the easiest to balance.
Working on it. Still like to write more Rarity stories, because that's art for art's sake.
A pretty limited one, this. I'd like to get her out of the Romance rut I've apparently forced her in and give her some more connection to the rest of the cast, but that in turn would either mean writing more Equestria Girls material (which, among other things, means she's mostly interacting with AU versions of these characters) or just going AU entirely.
She's definitely a distinct character in my mind. I kind of like the idea that what distinguishes Sunset from, say, Twilight is that she's ultimately a creature of passion rather than pure intellect, someone who acts on their gut instinct and experience (even if it makes her temperamental and dangerous) rather than from a carefully considered (but more muted and potentially naive) rational and reasonable approach.
Not much to add to that, but I see a definite long-term writing project here.
I think it's old hat to point out that Pinkie is one of the hardest main characters to write for. She's goofy, but not an idiot. She's loud, but not mean with it. She's a tad insensitive, but still a social genius in her own way. And it's very easy to just turn her into a mini-Discord, random and funny (or "funny", depending on taste), but not particularly deep or engaging.
Plus I have to admit she's my least favourite of the Main Six. This isn't because she's a bad character: she has her own strengths and weaknesses, just as the likes of Fluttershy and Rarity do, so inevitably she'll appeal to some more than others. In concept, she's a definite plus to the group, the reliable source of positivity and giddy, childlike innocence (and wackiness, and energy, and a common-as-muck social creature without the kinship focus of Applejack or the status pretensions of Rarity).
But when I think of favourite Pinkie episodes, it tends to be ones from Seasons Four through to Six, wherein she's a companion to others (the Apple family, Rarity). As a standalone, I don't have an automatic deeper interest in her. If anything, her "Creator's Pet" tendencies in the early seasons were a major turn-off, and "Baby Cakes" remains one of the few Pinkie-centric episodes I like... and that's probably because she explicitly wants to be taken seriously in that. If I see her as a welcome dose of unreality to the series, maybe I also just see her as too "frivolous" and "alien" to write for too?
I'm not sure. I just know I've written fewer fics for her, and that's as plausible-sounding a reason as any.
Say howdy to the third of my favourites.
Ah, the Apple family. I haven't written an explicitly Applejack fic in a while (Apple Bloom's been getting more attention recently), but she and her family still have a profound grip on my view of Ponyville as a whole.
Helps they founded it and continue to play major roles in it, of course, but there's always been something pleasingly domestic about the family that's made their episodes among my favourite slice-of-life stories. "Apple Family Reunion" is practically the quintessential example of that, and "The Perfect Pear" is steeped in family, its loyalty (for better or worse), and its benevolent influence even on non-relatives.
Yet there's more to it, as well. Each member has their own quirks and faults ("Pinkie Apple Pie" is all about that, but it shows up in other episodes too), and really the four core members (five if you want to include Winona - I kind of wish she wasn't overlooked so much) both project a typical classic family warmth while also being unconventional (Applejack, the oldest sister, basically acts like the mother, while there's no peep of parents or the grandfather, and Apple Bloom is an atypical Apple - e.g. not a farmer - compared with her more dutiful older brother and sister).
I think that odd but close family bond is ultimately what I find deeply appealing about them. Even if particular episodes aren't all that great ("Where the Apple Lies", anyone?), I at least enjoy just hanging around with them for twenty-two minutes. They almost perfectly encapsulate the charm and comfort of sleepy little idyllic Ponyville itself.
That, and the Wild West motif. I love me some western, all right. In fact, I think I'd like to do some "Western" themed adventure stories in the future, because that's something I honestly haven't tried before.
Trixie, hoo boy, Trixie's a weird one. I definitely want to write more Trixie.
Thing is, canonically speaking, I don't think she's very good. "Boast Busters" was bogged down with moral unfortunate implications anyway, but frankly, ten straight minutes of Trixie being a snooty jerk isn't my idea of a good time either. I won't go into why I hate the "eat your cake and have it" approach of "Magic Duel", an episode I dislike anyway for its bizarre treatment of Fluttershy. And by the time she became genuinely entertaining, we were in Season Six and I will stop this mini-rant right here.
Which is honestly a shame, because as a character, Trixie's fantastic. She's full of herself, yet magically meagre if not outright reduced to sleight-of-hoof; she's a traditional magician in a world where magic's a real thing; she's a bit of a coward and a liar, but not ultimately a bad pony. And she makes such a scarily perfect foil for Twilight that it's no wonder the fandom adopted her so quickly early on.
Plus, for me, she works best when she's at least partially aware of how short her own boasts fall - while simultaneously doing everything to hide it - not just because that makes her more relatable, but because it makes you reconsider her whole character in that light. She's a hero wannabe and she knows it, but she clearly isn't letting that stop her (much: don't ask her about life-or-death quests anytime soon).
Buddy comedy, against-all-odds adventure, slice of life shenanigans, even a bit of kid appeal with her magic tricks: I so want this to be an Impossible Numbers thing that it's not even funny.
So far, most of my really ambitious projects with her are either incomplete or unpublished. Something to correct in the future, I think. After all, one does not just overlook the ineffable and mysterious genius of the Grrrrrrrrrreat and Powerful Trrrrrrrrrrrrrixie!
(Did I mention she has the silliest-yet-most-endearing verbal tic?).
Blame Fluttershy for this one, though I'd like to use him more often with the likes of Twilight as an order-chaos compare and contrast. And because of what I said before about chucking chaos her way.
On the other mismatched hand/paw/talon/whatever-appendage-that-is, Discord's a bit of a rough challenge canonically too. Not as bad as a couple of others here - Season Four I regard as passable damage control for what Season Three did - but I've never been entirely satisfied with his redemption. I've never been fond of the show's redemption obsession - not least of all in execution - and Discord is one of the knottier examples. Especially since his best appearance to this day still remains his debut.
This despite the fact I have no objection to more John de Lancie, and a chaos spirit is right up there with a sun-wielding princess and a formerly banished ex-nightmare in terms of obviously fascinating character studies. Even if I dislike how he was reformed (or arguably that he was reformed at all), a magically wild, morally grey jerk with some gold in his Frankensteinian heart can't be easily dismissed.
I mean, think about it. You want odd couples? Take an all-loving, modest, and naturally friendly mortal pegasus, pit her against a cruel and ambitious but learning immortal spirit, add in the theme about taming chimeric monsters to Fluttershy's animal-loving resume, and then sit them down for tea.
Of course I've pounced on this at some point. I dare say I'll pounce on it again. There's too much fun to be had here.
A reminder at this point that some of these counts overlap. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo, for instance, share one fic each.
You know, after talking with certain people, I'm very surprised I haven't done more for these three. Apple Bloom's currently my favourite for thinking outside the box, but all three of them - as I've said elsewhere - feel like they break the mould in their own ways. Do I really need to reiterate why Scootaloo's flying workarounds and awkward sisterly fangirling of Rainbow Dash has endeared itself to so many viewers, myself included? Or why Sweetie Belle's musical talent, acute social and status awareness at school - while wrestling her conscience for the same***** - and love-hate relationship with her own sister makes her stand out as more than what otherwise could have been just another mini-Rarity?
***** I'm thinking in particular of "Ponyville Confidential" and "Twilight Time", which despite being CMC-wide episodes, feature her in very conspicuous roles as pushing the team further yet feeling conflicted the longer it goes on.
True, I did go off them a little bit after their crusading subplot started to feel stale in Season Four, their big cutie-mark-acquisition in Season Five, and their strangely aimless-feeling episodes in Season Six. And to be fair, they're not as much of a draw as their bigger sisters, if only because they don't get canonically as much focus.
What's particularly interesting to me is that I've only ever tagged the whole group once, in a long-dead fic that, despite my wishes to the contrary, remains my most viewed. I think the one thing that drew them together - the crusading - just feels less compelling to me than each one considered individually, or in relation to their sisters (Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash should go without saying) or to more unexpected characters (Scootaloo and Rarity is less conventionally considered, but I'm very pleased with the seeds planted in Valuable Time, or Dolce Far Niente, enough to want to revisit that angle).
And especially with the recent treatment I've given Apple Bloom, I got nothing much to add but: yes, more work here, definitely.
Ha, the original dark horse among the lineup. A character whose popularity exploded early on and has remained significant since, despite arguably having fewer episode appearances than background ponies like Derpy.
There's certainly a definite appeal in the day-night dichotomy between the two sisters, something I delved into and expanded upon in Romancing the Sun. Like Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, these two were especially odd in the early going. Luna made her first big impression as herself in "Luna Eclipsed", and it's remained a key episode for referral to this day. Loud where her sister is quiet, demonic where her sister is angelic, serious-minded and blunt where her sister has a secret prankster side.
Plus, Luna's dream theme and association with nightmares and the supernatural (like Hallowe'en monsters) was as good as declaring open season to me.
Still... only six fics? While Celestia gets ten? What's up with that? I only even pair them up twice!
I genuinely have no idea, but part of it is probably the dark theme. Luna nudges towards horror and the grim side of things, and that runs a little too far from the brighter, lighter side of the show's appeal. I do wonder too if part of it is just because Luna's also very popular with the fandom and its many interpretations, which puts her in close proximity to those popular background characters I discussed earlier.
Or maybe it's just that I've tended to want to put Luna in big, impressive fics, and that usually means fics I haven't finished or even published.
I mean, I'd blame things like her being distant from Ponyville or the role of princess being a barrier, but those reasons don't explain why I've written more Celestia fics.
I'm honestly not sure. Celestia - or at least the version of her running around in my head - just clicks with me in a way Luna hasn't quite managed, despite Luna's canon portrayal being more compelling and fleshed-out (despite, or arguably because of, her rarer appearances; Luna made them count).
So while I wouldn't mind capitalizing on Luna's unique traits more, neither do I feel particularly strongly about her lack of focus in my fics. If anything, I'm arguably more surprised Celestia got so many than that Luna got so few. We'll just have to see if I can find an opportunity for her over the coming years.
Top 25 Ranking, From Most to Least Number of Stories
Okie dokie! Having considered each one individually, now let's rank them and see if any overarching patterns emerge.
- Fluttershy (14)
- Rarity (11)
- Twilight Sparkle (11)
- Applejack (10)
- Princess Celestia (10)
- Derpy (9)
- Rainbow Dash (9)
- Princess Luna (6)
- Discord (5)
- Pinkie Pie (5)
- Trixie (5)
- Apple Bloom (4)
- Lyra (4)
- Scootaloo (4)
- Sweetie Belle (4)
- Sunset Shimmer (4)
- Spike (3)
- Queen Chrysalis (2)
- Cutie Mark Crusaders (1)
- Princess Cadence (1)
- Bon Bon (0)
- Octavia Melody (0)
- Shining Armor (0)
- Starlight (0)
- Vinyl Scratch/DJ P0N3 (0)
Well, the top seven seem explicable enough from here: personal deep favourites and/or characters who are the backbone of the show and have been since the beginning. The next nine (from Princess Luna to Sunset Shimmer) are pretty great or promising characters who - whether I've worked out my own take or not - could still do with being better represented or who haven't been the focus much.
The next three (Spike, Chrysalis, and the CMC), the same but with difficulties or biases working against them in some form. Spike, for instance, is easier to do alongside Twilight, who's more easily fascinating for her own reasons. Chrysalis is probably too dark or too remote from Ponyville for her own good. The CMC, as mentioned, are more fascinating to me individually than put together.
With the exception of Octavia and possibly Shining Armor, though, the last six are characters I either have no feelings for or whom I have very strong feelings for, but in the opposite direction to the one that'd get them more fics. Octavia I can see some potential for future expansion, and Shining to a lesser extent maybe could work in a Royal Guard fic of some kind, or in association with the other members of the Twilight family.
What? I didn't say it'd be a particularly surprising analysis.
So how about you? Any favourites, biases, particular oddities, or strangely overlooked ones you might have?
That's all for now. Impossible Numbers, out.
Appendix: List of All Character Tags on FIMFiction as of Today
P.S. If you were wondering what that list of 298 character tags looks like as of today, here it is, A to Z, with the four omitted ones kept separate at the bottom:
- Abyssinians - 6
- Adagio Dazzle - 1,003
- Ahuizotl - 130
- Angel - 818
- Apple Bloom - 2,892
- Applejack - 7,946
- Applejack (EqG) - 332
- Aria Blaze - 790
- Aunt Holiday - 6
- Aunt Lofty - 4
- Autumn Blaze - 77
- Babs Seed - 479
- Barrel Twins - 10
- Bat Pony - 514
- Berry Punch - 554
- Big Macintosh - 3,867
- Blossomforth - 31
- Bon-Bon - 1,669
- Bow Hothoof - 57
- Braeburn - 643
- Breezies - 70
- Bright Mac - 70
- Buffalo - 6
- Bulk Biceps - 125
- Button Mash - 280
- Cake Twins - 298
- Capper - 59
- Captain Celaeno - 43
- Caramel - 428
- Carrot Top - 447
- Chancellor Neighsay - 53
- Chancellor Puddinghead - 19
- Changelings - 3,767
- Cheerilee - 1,377
- Cheese Sandwich - 341
- Cherry Berry - 15
- Cherry Jubilee - 67
- Chip Cutter - 2
- Clear Sky - 0
- Cloudchaser - 25
- Cloudkicker - 119
- Cloudy Quartz - 35
- Clover the Clever - 86
- Coco Pommel - 316
- Coconut Cream - 8
- Coloratura - 95
- Commander Hurricane - 42
- Coriander Cumin - 7
- Cozy Glow - 360
- Crackle - 1
- Cranky Doodle Donkey - 85
- Crystal Ponies - 395
- Cutie Mark Crusaders - 9,350
- Daisy - 19
- Daring Do - 1,000
- Daybreaker - 123
- Daydream Shimmer - 10
- Dazzlings - 646
- Dean Cadance - 114
- Deer - 19
- Derpy Hooves - 4,440
- Diamond Dogs - 461
- Diamond Tiara - 1,963
- Dinky Hooves - 1,007
- Discord - 7,930
- DJ P0N-3 - 3,702
- Doctor Whooves - 2,084
- Double Diamond - 53
- Dr. Caballeron - 27
- Dragons - 214
- Ember - 362
- Fancypants - 467
- Feather Bangs - 46
- Featherweight - 154
- Filthy Rich - 149
- Firelight - 30
- Flash Magnus - 17
- Flash Sentry - 1,325
- Fleetfoot - 173
- Fleur de Lis - 503
- Flim and Flam - 374
- Flitter - 33
- Flitter and Cloudchaser - 297
- Flower Ponies - 128
- Flurry Heart - 513
- Fluttershy - 9,255
- Fluttershy (EqG) - 384
- Gabby - 114
- Gaea Everfree - 10
- Gallus - 274
- Garble - 89
- Gilda - 1,271
- Gladmane - 0
- Gloriosa Daisy - 60
- Grace Manewitz - 2
- Grand Pear - 8
- Granny Smith - 915
- Griffons - 349
- Grogar - 105
- Grubber - 44
- Gummy - 305
- Hayseed Turnip Truck - 0
- Hippogriffs - 18
- Hoity Toity - 85
- Igneous Rock - 28
- Indigo Zap - 78
- Iron Will - 174
- Jack Pot - 17
- Juniper Montage - 49
- Kerfuffle - 20
- Kettle Corn - 7
- King Sombra - 2,486
- Kirins - 29
- Lemon Hearts - 33
- Lemon Zest - 93
- Lightning Dust - 654
- Lil' Cheese - 22
- Lily - 31
- Limestone Pie - 117
- Little Strongheart - 84
- Luster Dawn - 92
- Lyra - 3,189
- Main 6 - 35,670
- Main 7 (EqG) - 2,333
- Mane Allgood - 5
- Mane-iac - 104
- Marble Pie - 129
- Mare Do Well - 205
- Matilda - 33
- Maud Pie - 741
- Mayor Mare - 396
- Mayor Sunny Skies - 17
- Meadowbrook - 18
- Micro Chips - 25
- Midnight Sparkle - 116
- Minotaur - 43
- Minuette - 571
- Mistmane - 8
- Moody Root - 1
- Moondancer - 293
- Moonlight Raven - 21
- Mr. Cake - 412
- Mr. Hoofington - 2
- Mr. Shy - 11
- Mr. Stripes - 1
- Mrs. Cake - 505
- Mrs. Hoofington - 1
- Mrs. Shy - 19
- Ms. Harshwhinny - 86
- Mud Briar - 23
- Night Glider - 39
- Night Light - 300
- Nightmare Moon - 3,800
- Nightmare Rarity - 31
- Noteworthy - 109
- Nurse Redheart - 540
- Ocean Flow - 13
- Ocellus - 189
- Octavia - 3,247
- Opalescence - 174
- Owlowiscious - 162
- Parcel Post - 5
- Party Favor - 35
- Pear Butter - 105
- Pets - 23
- Petunia Paleo - 10
- Petunia Petals - 9
- Pharynx - 142
- Philomena - 235
- Photo Finish - 125
- Pie Sisters - 296
- Pinkie Pie - 8,830
- Pinkie Pie (EqG) - 336
- Pipsqueak - 479
- Plaid Stripes - 4
- Pony Joe - 40
- Pony of Shadows - 31
- Power Ponies - 142
- Prince Blueblood - 1,062
- Prince Rutherford - 6
- Princess Amore - 18
- Princess Cadance - 4,665
- Princess Celestia - 29,609
- Princess Luna - 24,802
- Princess Platinum - 50
- Princess Skystar - 57
- Principal Celestia - 362
- Principal Cinch - 87
- Private Pansy - 21
- Queen Chrysalis - 4,666
- Queen Novo - 51
- Quibble Pants - 40
- Radiant Hope - 37
- Rainbow Dash - 14,767
- Rainbow Dash (EqG) - 584
- Raindrops - 136
- Rarity - 8,336
- Rarity (EqG) - 416
- Raven Inkwell - 58
- Rockhoof - 18
- Roseluck - 472
- Royal Guard - 493
- Ruby Pinch - 26
- Rumble - 564
- Saffron Masala - 20
- Sandalwood - 19
- Sandbar - 145
- Sapphire Shores - 75
- Sassaflash - 4
- Sassy Saddles - 45
- Scootaloo - 3,927
- Screwball - 189
- Sea Swirl - 4
- Seabreeze - 26
- Seaponies - 15
- Shadowbolts - 1
- Shadowbolts (EqG) - 285
- Shining Armor - 4,382
- Silver Spoon - 1,148
- Silverstream - 165
- Sky Beak - 11
- Sky Stinger - 33
- Smart Cookie - 21
- Smolder - 216
- Snails - 269
- Snap Shutter - 4
- Snips - 193
- Soarin - 1,659
- Somnambula - 29
- Sonata Dusk - 960
- Songbird Serenade - 34
- Sour Sweet - 107
- Spa Ponies - 217
- Sparkler - 221
- Sphinx - 21
- Spike - 14,541
- Spike (EqG) - 178
- Spitfire - 1,546
- Spoiled Rich - 120
- Star Tracker - 19
- Starlight Glimmer - 3,596
- Starswirl the Bearded - 305
- Stellar Flare - 33
- Steven Magnet - 7
- Storm King - 69
- Strawberry Sunrise - 15
- Stygian - 32
- Sugar Belle - 91
- Sugarcoat - 83
- Sunburst - 343
- Sunny Flare - 67
- Sunset Shimmer - 6,238
- Sunset Shimmer (Demon) - 63
- Sunshine Smiles - 12
- Suri Polomare - 95
- Svengallop - 24
- Sweetie Belle - 2,790
- Tank - 162
- Tantabus - 54
- Tempest Shadow - 538
- Tender Taps - 38
- Terramar - 28
- The Pillars - 53
- The Smooze - 21
- Thorax - 420
- Thunderlane - 604
- Tiberius - 7
- Timber Spruce - 79
- Timberwolves - 73
- Tirek - 671
- Toola Roola - 12
- Torque Wrench - 9
- Treehugger - 82
- Trenderhoof - 59
- Trixie - 4,723
- Troubleshoes - 29
- Twilight Sparkle - 30,912
- Twilight Sparkle (EqG) - 1,247
- Twilight Velvet - 464
- Twinkleshine - 54
- Twist - 225
- Vapor Trail - 43
- Vice-Principal Luna - 316
- Vignette Valencia - 20
- Wallflower Blush - 220
- White Lightning - 10
- Wind Rider - 20
- Wind Sprint - 9
- Windy Whistles - 79
- Winona - 221
- Wonderbolts - 1,010
- Yaks - 30
- Yona - 72
- Young Six - 329
- Zebra - 172
- Zecora - 1,858
- Zephyr Breeze - 115
- Zipporwhill - 16
- Anon - 1,319
- Original Character - 51,341
- Other - 32,681
- Self Insert - 686
Darn, I've just realized I forgot to add the Main Six tag. Whoops!
Well, not that it changes much. Here's the count:
Main Six (2)
Nor does it change the analysis much, either. Same reason for its lack of use as with the CMC tag. I only include it here out of completeness (and because I forgot to add it to the blog earlier).
That’s a lot of tags.
Oddly enough, I think my own stories spread the gamut of characters. I have a lot of OC fics, one of which actually has Spike, without Twilight in it. I’ve got one with the Mane 6 reenacting the best of Dr Strangelove, one that’s Celestia Berating Twilight for driving Trixie to attempt suicide (no one can convince me that’s not exactly what happened), one with Fancy Pants and Fleur that is a G rated version of Hellraiser (it just... somehow happened, don’t ask).
Then I have the S.M.I.L.E. Fic mostly about Bon Bon, but Lyra shows up for long enough to run face-first into a cart. So, you said you don’t understand their draw. I think their attractiveness as a pairing is based on playing them as an odd couple. While Vinyl and Octavia are opposites in the respect that they are two sides of the same coin, Lyra and Bon Bon are, at the very least, different coins. They are not opposites in terms of profession or skill set, but they are in terms of personality. I play Bon Bon as the straight-man secret agent, sort of like Joe Friday from Dragnet (the old one), while Lyra is Don Adams from Get Smart, or just straight up Inspector Gadget levels of
incompetence (who is also played by Don Adams, funny enough) so that dynamic of Competent to a Fault, and So Incompetent that they cannot fail (your plan can’t fail if you don’t have one) is just fun to toy around with.Then I have the story where I have to eventually bring in, or at least mention, every single character that I can remember in the series. Before they get killed. Because Darkest Dungeon.
I agree that Trixie has a lot of potential. Trixie is, much like you said, a character who is not great, but yearns for greatness. So she sells it. And she sells it so hard, that at some point she wants to start believing her own sell. But even she knows the truth, she says as much in her first episode. I found her to be exceptionally sympathetic in her first episode. When others were going “Trixie! That obnoxious blankety blank,” I saw the whole thing in a slightly different way. Incoming blurb:
Just imagine, that you are a one-person traveling show, trying your damnedest to eke a living through entertainment. So you embellish, as all good entertainers do. Then a bunch of hecklers in the crowd start wrecking your performance, ie your livelihood. So you send them packing with a few harmless pranks (well, depending on whether Rarity could get the green out, and depending on Rainbow’s level of concussion). Then people dote on you, maybe for the first time. So of course you eat it up, this is what success is, right? Right??? Until two of your “fans” jump on one of your embellishments and decides to risk everyone’s life to watch you do your thing. At which point you say the appropriate thing “are you out of your pony minds?” And then, despite knowing you don’t stand a chance, you face off against the thing anyway. This attempt to save others results in your house and business being obliterated. Then, to add insult to injury, someone you’ve never met before outperforms you without even trying. So you attempt to save face, toss a smoke bomb, and Batman the hell out of there.
Going on a quest to get the
Lament ConfigurationAlicorn Amulet may have been a bit much, but Twilight did wait until after Trixie’s livelihood had been reduced to splinters before saving the town. So wanting some vengeance may be justified. Maybe. Just saying.I also think that Flim & Flam would make for interesting stories. They also tend to get the short end of the stick. The only reason that they ended up as the bad guys in their first episode is because the Apple family knows how to bargain about as well as Dormamu. (Seriously, Flim & Flam start negotiations with a percentage split and the Apples don’t make a counter offer? Do they even business?) Now, I’m not saying that Flim & Flam are 100% in the right, I’m saying that no one was in the right in that episode. But still, they’re geniuses at both making inventions, and they are geniuses at marketing. They just seem to keep running into ventures that don’t cater to their strengths. Even after being reformed
(why did they give up running Las Vegas again?). I’d write them as career opportunists and facilitators. They have the interpersonal skills, they have the technical know-how, but they’re not fond of the long-term effort involved in the day to day operations of most businesses (I’m sure they’d have outsourced operation of the SCS 6000 eventually).
Anyhow, that’s a lot more than I meant to write.
I think the tldr; is that I’m all over the place, and surprisingly don’t have a favorite member of the cast to write. And I think Trixie and the Flim Flams could do well if written in a less antagonistic light.
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Tell me about it. Roughly half of them still have fewer than a hundred stories to their name.
To be fair, this list was deliberately focused on major characters. It would look quite different if I expanded to include those other tags.
I've already mentioned Dinky and Amethyst, but the Flower Trio - individually and as a group - would fit in with the likes of the CMC and Sunset Shimmer here, as would Commander Hurricane and Private Pansy. Daring Do's as good as Luna... as is Twinkleshine! To say nothing of loads of one-offs and rare characters that, over time, I've tackled arguably more often than any individual main character. It's an eclectic bunch on my end too.
Also just noticed to my astonishment I've only done Flim and Flam once. They're some of my favourite antagonists!
I've always gotten the impression she was popular from the start.
I honestly think most of that episode's problems were down to weird execution, because it otherwise fits the mould of a typical "Miles Gloriosus" storyline perfectly: arrogant blowhard shows up, talks nonsense, real threat shows them to be much less than they boast, genuine hero saves the day, blowhard discredited. For one thing, if Trixie was meant to be sympathetic, I'd think the ending would have played out quite differently (more like the reconciliatory alternative ending for "Wonderbolt Academy" that was considered for Lightning Dust).
Regardless, even if I took the argument wholesale that Trixie's the innocent party in all this (short story: I'm only partly convinced at best), I still cannot stand the first ten minutes of the episode on an immediately visceral level. It's just not fun for me to watch. And it's one big reason why it took me so long to take a deeper interest in her character.
On that front, I really like her take in "Forgotten Friendship".
That's quintessential Trixie!
I don't mind the antagonism: it's not the same thing as being a villain. Butting heads with others or smoothly working around and outsmarting the good guys (at least for a while) is part of the charm for me.
I like to think I'm all over the place too. It's much more fun that way.
Clearly this means you have to write a story starring Octavia, Vinyl, Shining, and Starlight.
Now, let's see what I can glean from my own work...
Spike: 5. And one tag is debatable given how he vanishes from the story after the first thousand words or so. Spike tends to act more as a voice of reason and mediator in my stories than a plot catalyst in and of himself. I do like him, but I apparently appreciate him most in his role as the influence that kept Twilight from following in other unicorns' megalomaniacal hoofsteps. I have to wonder if, subconsciously, I want a number-one assistant like that.
Rainbow Dash: 9. Dash, meanwhile, is a fantastic plot catalyst. She'll charge headlong into adventure and awkward conversations alike, which is quite useful for getting balls rolling. And her determination to see things through means she makes for a great solo adventure lead. I've actually done little with her relationship with Fluttershy, focusing more on her more adversarial relationships. Apparently Dash sparks my muse best when she's in somepony else's face, whether that's Rarity, Trixie, or in one AU story, King Sombra.
Shining Armor: 3. Interestingly, I've never actually had him in a story tagged with Cadence. I lean hard on his nature as Twilight's brother. I wasn't over the moon with these two when we first met them either, but the enormous dork has won me over in time when I can use him as a straight man for his sister' shenanigans.
Cadence: 1. Oh. And that's the human, not the pony. As I said, Lovebutt's existence rubbed me the wrong way from the word go. There are certainly a number of interesting things to explore with her, but it seems I've never really dug into them. I may need to rectify this...
Derpy: 12. I don't think either us is surprised here. Best Pony is best pony. Though I do write much more Ditzy Doo than Derpy Hooves; the vast majority of my Derp-tagged stories involve a being who functions much better in six or nine spacial dimensions than three.
Starlight: 5. I actually wrote the first Starlight story on the site. I didn't write one with her either pre-reformation or just after the time battle until last year. It took me some time to come to terms with Glimglam's reformation, but as Season 6 unfolded and it became clear that the montage at the end of "The Cutie Re-Mark" was more a glimpse of things to come than an overview of her first week in Ponyville, it became... somewhat easier to deal with her. I am happy with where she ended up by the end of the series.
Fluttershy: 6. I actually didn't write a story tagged with Fluttershy until 2016. I certainly used her as a character, but still, I'm honestly surprised by this. Looking at the stories, she tends to be a guide or a moderating influence for strange creatures. (Beings from other worlds, Discord, her brother...) I guess her interactions with Discord was what made my muse perk up and notice her potential.
Vinyl Scratch: 1.
Octavia: 2.
Okay, so it turns out the only reason I write stories featuring these two is because of memes. Specifically Sharktavia and a Tumblr post about deliberately making a terrible cup of tea to get back at a British significant other. This makes a terrifying amount of sense. Yes, there's character space to explore with them, and I have done interesting things with both, but they aren't exactly star material in most of my ideas.
Chrysalis: 0. I was impressed by Queen Bugbutt for about half of "A Canterlot Wedding" and dismissive of her ever since. She is a bully, a fool, and a petty tyrant. Sure, people have tried sympathetic angles for her, but "To Where and Back Again" put the lie to those takes. There's nothing there I want to work with.
Celestia: 10. Now, Celestia, there's a mare worth digging into. I enjoy peeling back the mystique to examine the person under the crown, whether that means slices of life with Luna, exploring her relationship with Twilight, or just getting candid moments beneath her poise. Celly's a lot of fun when circumstances allow it.
Lyra: 8.
Bon-Bon: 4.
For the record, all of Bonbon's stories involve Lyra. The funny thing is that, years before "Slice of Life," I made one of these ponies a secret agent... but I did it to Lyra. I've run with the idea ever since, though I have also made use of the Canterlot clique and some other fun things to do with her fanonical anthrophilia.
Twilight Sparkle: 32, including two tagged with both Twilights. (It's a 26/8 split, if you were wondering.) Main character privileges strike again. It helps that it's so easy for me to get into Twilight's headspace. Plus, given the sheer breadth of character development she gets over the course of the series, she represents a multitude of characters, especially once you factor in the human. Twilight at the beginning of Celestia's tutelage is a very different pony than Twilight post-timeskip, and I've written stories for both.
Rarity: 11, including another double bill. I call in Rarity for stories with a lot of social or political maneuvering, unsurprisingly. That or interactions with Sweetie Belle. She often acts as a Spike-like voice of wisdom, though her more melodramatic turns are also very useful in the right context. My own lack of interest in most of her interests likely lessens her usability in my muse's eyes.
Sunset Shimmer: 20. Well, when you make an AU that turns someone into the pillar on which all existence rests, you're going to end up writing a couple stories about her. Plus, Sunset is a fascinating character to explore both through her development and her role as intermediary between worlds. (And she forms half of my OTP, so that's going to bump up her numbers too. This is an analysis of personal biases, after all.)
Pinkie Pie: 8.
Wait, that can't be right...
No, I've only written eight stories tagged with Ponka Po, one with both species involved. That honestly astonishes me. I suppose she's more of a side presence in a lot of stories... and honestly, that may be for the best. Pinkie often works best as a seasoning rather than an entree. At least, she does the way I write her a lot of the time. Still, that doesn't mean I can't try to make up those numbers...
Applejack: 9. And a roughly even split between everymare hero and incident-instigating silly pony. Applejack works great as the sane mare in an insane world... which can also mean she's actually the one who's gone mad. It's funny how much nonsense you can get out of such a no-nonsense character. Her family dynamics also provide some nice dramatic grist, especially her parents.
Trixie: 4. Would you believe I didn't write a Trixie-tagged story until 2018? I used her before that, of course. She's too wonderfully bombastic not to. But it took the show reintegrating her for me to really consider her optimal usage. I find Trixie works best in opposition to someone. She's an adversary in need of a rival that will let her be properly adversarial; heck, that was the whole point of her show! She's especially useful as a friendly foil to Starlight. The way the two resonate with one another raises both in my eyes, and I've had some wonderful fun with their dynamic.
Discord: 16. Take everything I said about Trixie's adversarial nature, then crank it up to 11 and add the potential for infinite side gags. I love working with Discord. It opens up so many possibilities that would otherwise be almost impossible to justify, and a truly unique perspective to consider it all. Plus, I've had incredible fun playing with a novel take on his human analogue.
Cutie Mark Crusaders: 6.
Apple Bloom: 2.
Scootaloo: 2.
Sweetie Belle: 0.
The funny thing about the Crusaders is that I mostly dug into them after they got their cutie marks. The concept of a special talent in special talents is so wonderfully recursive and reminiscent of the three Fates/Norns/etc. that it got my imagination going like nothing else with those three. (And I admit, I still want Scootaloo to be able to fly.) I have to say that I'm surprised by Sweetie's solo absence from my work. I'll have to think about how I can best use her.
Luna: 9. Luna generally shows up with Celestia, though she does have a few unique tales involving the dream realm and the pathos of the Nightmare. I do enjoy Moonhorse conceptually, and I actually have several ideas for her in various stages of development. I just haven't gotten around to them.
Main 6: 14.
Main 7: 14.
And here's the other reason why some of those tag numbers are lower than they might otherwise be. Those girls are often package deals, with optional Sunbutt Jr. If I can involve enough of them, the rest tend to get dragged in on the basis that there's no reason not to include them.
This has been most enlightening. Thank you for the impetus to self-analyze.
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Gets you pondering, these comparisons, don't it? Genres, character tags... Whatever could be next?
You complete jerk!
Octavia and Shining might be relatively easy with the Canterlot connection. Still no idea how I'd handle Vinyl - similar to "Slice of Life", I've considered making her a mute, but mutism's already taken by my take on White Lightning, so it'd have to be a different kind - and don't ask about Starlight.
Looking through your character tags, I was gonna raise the point about distinctions between Equestria Girls versions and Friendship is Magic versions of each character, but you addressed that already under Twilight, so I won't comment. (It'd be meaningless to my results, anyway: even my Sunset was ponified and carted off to various AU's, so no one's tag is affected here).
I'll say how weird the idea sounds to me, of Spike and Shining playing straight men to Twilight. I suspect part of the reason is because I'm so used to Twilight playing the straight man (so to speak) towards everybody else. Although I suppose I could make each work: Spike and Twilight I envisioned as having a streetwise-academic dynamic, and Shining worked well enough as a supportive influence on Twilight in Mothering Someday.
What is this, Best Family?
Although I suspect we'd differ on Sparkler's/Amethyst's position in it.
Also, I love the idea that Derpy's apparent clumsiness is actually because she's more aware than most ponies of her environment, dimensionally or not.
When it comes to Chrysalis, I've never seen the point, to be honest, other than fans confusing "I love this character!" with "I must prove she is a good person!" Bugger that: Chrysalis is a she-devil, and that's what I find so entertaining about her. Even the closest I came to a "sympathetic" take on her - Queen of Assassins - made it clear she's still a haughty, pony-hating monster at the end of the day.
You know, I never thought of that. Someone who believes in government conspiracies, yes, but a secret agent herself? How very interesting a coincidence that is.
As for her anthropological interest, I don't use it in my characterization of her, for the same reason I don't use the "Human" genre tag. This simply is no place for it, in my eyes.
Whereas surprisingly, I don't think I've ever done that myself. She's been the victim of it at least once, but never the culprit. Odd, as that'd be right up her alley. Also, I wouldn't mind writing Rarity in a "Little Young Lady Investigates" mystery a la "Rarity Investigates!" Goodness, there's a lot of ideas I've never used for Rarity, come to think of it.
Of course, of course. I think I can guess the other half, or at least roughly calculate the most likely candidate to ten decimal places.
Don't have an OTP myself. Never really been the romance kind. Still so, so weird I gave Sunset romance fics, but all of them were idle curiosities, nothing I really full-bloodedly committed to (one of them's with Sea Swirl, another's with Lemon Hearts: you tell me that's meant to be serious, after I tell you who on earth those two are).
There's that, yes. I like sugar, but I don't open a bag and pour a kilo of it down my throat.
Huh, I've never put Applejack and her parents in the same fic (excluding memories). Honestly, a lot of this feels like an exercise in looking at what I've done and asking, "So why the hell haven't I done this yet as well!?" (Pretty much copy-paste that for every character here, in some form or other).
Also, I think I might steal that bit about sanity in an insane world itself being a form of insanity. Something very Discworldian about that.
Hold on, let me just check mine... huh, my first was only one year before you. I think we've both missed some opportunities here. And this was well before her best appearance (in my eyes) in "Forgotten Friendship", which I didn't even see until 2019.
Good point about her working best as an adversarial character. Trixie's just as much bound by the social focus of all unicorns as Twilight and Rarity are: even when she wants to be known as the supreme solo act who can do anything with all legs tied up in a straitjacket, she needs her audience to see her doing it. She needs someone to impress.
I have to say I'm surprised too, considering you mention Rarity playing off her earlier. That's probably one of the CMC tagged stories, but I did a double-take when I realized that apparent discrepancy.
Truth be told, I've had problems with Sweetie Belle's character lately too. Apple Bloom, fine. Scootaloo, I'm working on it. It's trying to figure out how to make unconventional use of Sweetie Belle's talents and attitude that's proving strangely tricky, and is one reason she's the only CMC member to not get a fic this year from me. Maybe pairing her with someone unusual might work...?
I think I must have an individualist bent, then, because I've never had that problem. Once or twice, a particular character will try to hop into a fic without them in mind, but all six are incredibly easy to separate for me. Maybe it's just that I instinctively don't want to get bogged down in an obvious clique, or prefer not to juggle such disparate characters when it's not clear what they're there for. Plus, it's a common criticism of some fics to just lump them all in like a checklist, something I think I only did once (for The Web Untangled). When their diversity's emphasized: that's when I full-bloodedly like 'em.
No worries. It's been a long-standing consideration of mine, but I haven't done it this systematically or analytically before.
Also, I dare say I'll find an excuse to list something else before long.
Y'know who wrote a good Pinkie Pie? Shakespeare.
No, I'm not kidding. Just look at any of his "fool" characters. They're very charismatic and liked by everyone around them, they're likely to burst out into song at any moment, and their seemingly off-the-wall jests are most often a disguised keen commentary on the foibles of the goings on around them.
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Rule One of Fiction: Shakespeare did it.
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Well, that bit is how she should have been written, and you can see some clumsy examples of how some writers tried to do it; Filly Vanilly, for one of the worst examples. The song Giggle at the Ghosties gave me great hope for the character when I first heard it. If there was a ever to be a great kid-vid version of The Fool, Pinkie had the best shot at it.
It was certainly your Fluttershy stories that drew me to your work! My paltry portfolio is hardly worth analyzing in this way, but Fluttershy is a central character in both of my non-crack fics. She's not my top favorite, but I've found her the easiest to work with as a stand-in for exploring my own interests and philosophies.
Your observation that Celestia's intrigue often lies in her role as a "canon-guided OC" in many fanfics also rings true to me from a reader's perspective.
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That makes sense to me: I tend to use Twilight in a similar way.
She's a smart one and the leader of the team (usually the smart one is a sidekick specialist), she's focused on science, academia, and generally being intelligent and thoughtfully rational, she's a bit of an authority-wielding stick-in-the-mud in a world of craziness, she's neurotic and eager-to-impress and socially not always the brightest bulb, she's sometimes very hard on herself, she's both modest and an undeniably powerful figure, and all-in-all she has the potential to be an unconventionally philosophical or scientific type of leader... all while being a magical unicorn princess of friendship in a fantasy setting.
Twilight hits so many topics of personal interest that she'll inevitably get a lot of attention from me, even though her character in the show tends to be less appealing to me too (not least of all because of how railroaded and boringly typical her journey to princesshood feels: what's the point of giving her all these odd strengths and idiosyncrasies if she's just going to end up as a bland Celestia 2.0?).
I think a lot of the problem might have been solved if she'd just gotten an episode early on. By the time Season Seven came around, so much had changed around her that she simply couldn't have the same impact Luna had as far back as Season Two.
Hmmmm:
I've got 36 stories under my AugieDog name, and 33 under Baal Bunny. But the Baal Bunny stories tend to be a lot shorter since they all started out as entries in various Writeoff contests: only 4 of the Baal Bunny stories are longer than 10,000 words, for instance, while a full 20 of the AugieDog stories hit 5 digits.
And yet? Both pseudonyms have 10 Twilight-tagged stories, and she's the only character to hit double digits on either account. With Baal Bunny, in fact, the next nearest characters are Applejack and Discord tagged in 6 stories, so with my short stuff, Twilight definitely seems to be my "go to" character.
On the AugieDog side, Celestia's at 9, Fluttershy and "Main 6" are at 8, Spike and Luna are at 7, and Applejack stands alone at 6. Pinkie's at 5 on both accounts, and she's the only 5 among the AugieDog stories: in the Baal Bunny stories, Dash, Fluttershy, and "Main 6" all get 5 tags. Conversely, Spike's the only 4 on Baal's list while Rainbow, Rarity, and Discord all get 4 in Augie World.
Cadance gets 3 Augie tags, but Celestia, Rarity, and Luna get 3 from Baal. Augie's got no character with 2 tags, but Shining Armor, Derpy, and Starlight Glimmer get 2 from Baal. Single tags on Augie's account belong to Derpy, Starlight Glimmer, Chrysalis, and "Main 7" while Baal's got single tags for Cadance, Lyra, Bon Bon, Sunset Shimmer, and Trixie.
I have no CMC stories, either collectively or individually, under either account, and no Octavia and Vinyl stories. But each account has one story featuring some or all of the student characters introduced in Season Eight, the "Young 6." I also have one of the 15 stories on the site tagged with Strawberry Sunrise and one of the 17 tagged with Flash Magnus. That story's also one of the 6 tagged with Abyssinians and the only one of those 6 not rated "Mature"...
So it looks like for the longer stuff, I tend to go with the whole group--8 "Main 6" tags on the AugieDog side--while the shorter, Baal Bunny stuff maybe covers a wider range--my only stories tagged for Shining Armor, Sunset Shimmer, Lyra & Bon Bon, and Trixie are there, for example.
Mike
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So 69 stories total. And overall... 20 Twilights, 13 Fluttershys, 13 Main Sixes, 12 Applejacks, 12 Celestias, 11 Spikes, 10 Discords, 10 Lunas, 10 Pinkies, 9 Rainbows, 7 Raritys, 4 Cadences, 3 Derpys, 3 Starlights, 2 Shining Armors, 1 Chrysalis, 1 Main Seven, 1 Lyra, 1 Bon Bon, 1 Sunset, 1 Trixie, 0 CMC, 0 Apple Bloom, 0 Scootaloo, 0 Sweetie Belle, 0 Octavia, 0 Vinyl.
Haven't bothered comparing word counts myself, just to keep all this counting simple. On top of that, my incomplete fics would skew the count, since the incomplete fics tend to be the biggest and most ambitious ones.