The Stages of Fan Fiction, and How It Can Affect You · 3:37pm Nov 30th, 2012
Over the years, I've noticed a few things new bronies always do when entering the wild world of fan fiction, I've broken it down into various steps.
One, first contact. The brony encounters some form of it, a cute little story on Equestria Daily for example, or a comedy, and their interest is piqued. They might leave it at rest for weeks on end
Two, the search, the subject will look for more cases of it, usually using EQD. This is stimulated by boredom and is a rather slow step as well.
Three, the finished romancer. (Sometimes skipped) The subject will initially read only complete romance fictions, depending on their favorite pony. This will form in a shell of ships only, I refer to it as the 'romance shell' it can take weeks to months for it to break
Four, the reference, and in other cases, the crossing. The brony will see a reference to a non-romance fix in one of their fics, and will start to cross over to other genres. Other cases have the subject seeing a crossover with one of their favorite shows, and that will get them out of the 'romance shell' as I sometimes call it. They will slowly, taking a month or two, begin to reach out and read other fics.
Five, the horror, the subject meets grim dark in a form of a popular grim dark, like Cupcakes (oh gawd don't hate me). This could kill their interest.
Six, they weather the storm of grim dark, and finally settle in their place in our Fanfiction world.
Some things of note, while in their 'romance shell' many subjects preferred to use google docs over fimfiction, and once past the grim dark contact many make an account to fill their place.
>brownies
>useing
554420 Sue me, it's an iPad.
I hate ipads.
I'll fix them.
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