Health Update · 3:52pm Dec 1st, 2020
SO as some of you guys may know I had COVID early this year before the pandemic was declared (China had it since November, and the Chinese love to come to Alaska to Ski in the winter, so we got it pretty much the same time they did). Ever since that, writing has been hard for me for several reasons.
1. I've started DMing again and that takes time and attention, but I've done both in the past at once. NBD, but...
2. I've had ongoing health problems involving my sinuses that make me miserable all the time, and...
3. I've had a few people demoralize me greatly by saying that my world building is terrible and I should do this, or this or this instead because ONLY their ideas make seance and there can't possibly be mitigating factors not presented int he story itself and here's my 15 page ramble about how food shortages are impossible because you can just make clean earth to grow things from rock and apparently every single Earth pony ever knows this and has the stuff to do it. This has made me not want to do pony fic stuff at all, so I went to work with one of my other interests.
So, yeah. I've been pretty missterable for the entire damn year. On the up side, I finally got to see a doctor about this and they think I've developed an clergy to something. I'm only on day one of a drug plan to treat that and I already feel so much god damn better so it's probably correct and I'll just need cetirizine HCL for the rest of my life. I'm feeling quite good right now at least, and if this lasts I'll go blast through the rest of Star Drop for you guys.
As for weather or not I'll do more ponyfic after that... IDK.
Too many people doing criticism even though they don’t know the context of the story or the necessary plot devices. People need to realize if they want something to go their way they should learn to do it themselves or not read the story at all.
But NOPE, people have to be assholes because they feel authors should write stuff exactly how they want it without realizing the effort that goes into writing stuff.
Terrible world building? If so then i haven't seen it, to be honest you're quite good at it; not too slow so we realize just what's happening until the very end, and not too fast telling everything "in your face" instead we get the knowledge our lovely zebra protagonist has advancing as she learns new things. All in all i DEFININITLY wouldn't call your world building terrible, opposite rather in fact.
Ps. Don't mind the mistakes autocorrect is a pain... besides English isn't my first language.
Your world building is great! I wish I was half as good as you. The people complaining either don't know the amount of effort it takes to write, or their egos are so over-inflated that they ignore all critics that don't agree with them.
5408038 There's also the thing that to be calssified as criticism, you must talk about the good parts of the work as well as the bad. There's also such a thing as "overwhelming an autistic person with insane ammounts of data and making them hate something they loved previously via assosiations."
5408049 Thank you. I needed that. Also your English is great, better than mine in fact.
5408055 Thank you, and if this was a critic that would be one thing but it's a fan so it hurt badly.
Hey Meep, I just wanted to say try not to let the beat you down. Your numbers alone on your stories says otherwise to those who are criticizing you. I learned a long time ago that often people will attack others for being able to do what they can't. As was pointed out, critiques should include both positive as well as negative comments, or else it is just a beat down.
As I used to tell my recruits when I was pushing boots back in the 1990s, If it pertains to you, take it on board, if not, ignore it. Your numbers tell me you do a wonderful job of world-building. Keep up the good work.
First of all biggest most import thing to me is that You are feeling better. Glad the doctor has found something that appears to be working.
Critic- fan, fan critic or just a critic it matters little ultimately since they've taken the role of not only critic but editor in saying what you should write and how you should write. Personally and this is only my own opinion not overly fond of the fallout setting but that's me regardless I hope you keep writing
5408087 The problem with numbers is they are only numbers. A story can have a ton of numbers because people love it, or because people love to laugh at how bad it is. It's comments that matter, not numbers. Comments tell you why people like something... if that's what is said. I get very few instances of proper feedback, so any negative feedback I get hits me hard. Also I'm not exadurating when I say this guy sent me multiple rambling diatrades of 4-7 pages at sie 10 font on adverage... He wrote more in 7 rants than my editors have ever made notes on my stories in 5 years.
5408089 The setting is quite flawed but I find most of its issues are completely removed by making it a MLP crossover. THe setting makes much more sense as a "Post mage-war apock" than a nuclear apocalypse.
Glad to hear the doc managed to get you better, and given its Cetirizine, here in the UK its a buck 20 or so equiv from the cheap stores for a weeks supply, lowest level hayfever, you might have got sensitive to something stupid.
Like the perfume in your laundry powder, or whatever the hell is in Walkers/Smiths Sea Salt flavour Crips/Chips.
As for world building. I follow writers cos I cant even build with Lego, never mind with words, but I like a piece of art.
As for the soil thing, I noticed recently an article about the necessity of worms. Those guys might grow, but I though Earth Pones dont exactly work on animals in general, as in you could get a worm farmer, but thats a whole class of speciality, othrewise youe just into worm farm compost heaps and taking a Long whilte to get quality stuff, assuming you had the other base materials also available. Maybe Yaks could set up rock crushing buisiness to make volcanic grit soil improvers? Needs more weathering? Sulphur from the Dragonlands? Oh gawd, the trade and supply headaches.
Hope you get far better players in your campaigns than I am. According to one fan alighnment, I play Chaotic Stupid.
I'm glad you're doing better :)
Now while I'm not a writer, I once heard "Don't write for your fans, write for yourself."
5408108
I hear you Meep. I have over 800,000 words in my main story and until this week I had not really had a comment on it in well over a year. From what I have heard and seen from other authors' stories there does not seem to be near as many comments being made in the fandom overall. Especially compared to those from just a couple of years ago.
I am very sorry to hear that he was like that, but it seems he was deliberately trying to bully you at that point. As for food shortages, Believe me, I agree with your concept of it. The only reason the main setting in my story has become an agricultural spot is that I actually studied what the US Government recommended to help recover farms in the event of a nuclear war. In this case, the main stable opened after 100 years and they not only turned over all the soil farm by farm but used the waste from the stable and a couple of small local communities to rebuild the soil. I also did a lot of research into what types of plants grow well in shade.
But even if it is magical radiation rather than nuclear radiation with the fall of civilization the ability of the land to support large populations is cut. this was brought up by Malthus in 1798 and is why something like an EMP event would be so devistating. Because without the means to transport the food from the fields to the cities, then food will become in short supply.
Sorry if I have sent you too much, just trying to help support your argument.
5408173 While that is common advice... ANd good for most people, I see no point in writing for myself. If I want to tell myself a story, I can just imagine everything and remember it. The only reason I can see to write things down is so others can enjoy them too. So, I write for you, and everyone else who might like what I do.
5408191 Oh! YOu're writing too? Let's just see what you're up to...
[Adult story embed hidden]
Hey guys, read this, the first bit is good.
Best Meep ever :D
I'm an asshole.
I don't like your writing. When I first found your stuff I didn't have time to read anything, so I just followed you. I quickly became a fan of your worldbuilding, but I didn't like reading your works.
Your characters (at least in the older fics) ware to simuler, same opinions and motivations. You could write any character in almost any seen and it would've played out the same.
Ug, I don't even feel like posting this now. I don't want to be an asshole, but I am. Just remember that even though there are asshole that (often unnecessarily) criticise you work, there are there are ten times that many who support you. Just see the commits.
5408834 I don't really get that objection to my early characterization... Might be because I'm autistic but real people in real life seem quite interchangeable in most ways. Not like, literally no difference, but I mean... Just look at political parties. All of those people are basically interchangeable in terms of what they think the world should be like. Same goes for people of the same religion. The only differences in opinion within those topics will be quite small, and sometimes completely irrelevant. At least that's how it seems to me.
It's not just politics and religion though. Most Americans will like burgers, enjoy action movies, hate their job, have a few friends, love animals, love kids, think everything costs too much, hate doing household chores. People have a huge amount in common with everyone else. Such that I find it absurd that they hate each other over the tiny differences that do exist. You'd think they'd be like "Holy shit, a rare difference between us! How novel. Please, show me what you think/do so I can enjoy a break from the sea of beige that is humanity."
I get that to other people the differences are far more pronounced, but... Well in my opinion my writing is as close as we'll get to seeing an alien trying to write stories for humans as we'll get until we have first contact. I really dont feel human most of time time. YOur goals are often antithetical to my goals, there's so much value mismatching. Entirely different logic trains... I'm an outsider looking in and trying to make you guys happy. So in my later works when I make people act more differently than each other it dosnt feel like a reflection of reality to me. But you guys like it so I'll keep doing it.
I hope I didn't hurt anyone's feelings... I didn't mean anything I said in a mean way. And one reason I'm here is because most people do not like ponies. This fandom attracts some of the more unique and interesting people. It's why I like being here :3
But seriously, your typical humans act the same, dress the same, think the same on the big issues... It's hard to see the differences a lot of the time. At least for me. It's why all of my friends are generally the "wierdos". They're so different they stand out and that makes them cool to me.
hugs
Yeah... that guy ranting at you had...no idea what he was talking about. He completely missed the fact that the soil was magically contaminated in his analysis, among other things.
You worldbuild gud, meep.
5408114
The players meep has right now are really quite skilled, as it so happens.
Also, as long as you're not so stupid as to gank a party paladin to steel their holy sword without any plan to corrupt said holy sword after you've looted it, you're doing better than some of the people I've heard about.
5409549
You dont gank the paladin.
You cast Resist fire on them, wait until theyre buried in melee, then throw dwarf spirits and Fireball the lot.
The trick is getting the paladin to demand you do it up front, then claim it was all his fault, sorry, idea, when the authorities turn up.
5408293
Thank you for the recommendation Meep. I truly appreciate it.
5408996
I am autistic as well, so that makes total sense. Having a weird mind is just par for the course.
Honestly, I love adding evil to my characters and world for depth. Like in my verse, Celestia refused to sign the naturalization act (my worlds version of civil rights act, were all creatures born within equestria are, under law, ponies). When the act was passed two years latter, all creatures took to calling themselves ponies to get back at Celestia.
At least that's how I explain why I don't use the every-creature style phraseis.
5409942 I didn't know you write. I'll have to give it a read!
5409964
It's shit.
My amazing artistic ability is the complete inability to write. Though, knowing that you might read it provides some much needed motivation to make it good.
Thanks.
5410027 Everyone starts making shit. It's the first step to being kinda okay at something.