State of the Lemur - 2021 · 1:11am Mar 24th, 2021
Art by dm29
This Is What Pure Joy Looks Like | Or Maybe Starfish
So it is Christmas 2021, and what have you done?
Oh fuck oh god I forgot how to do a page break help me I'm not very good with computers
As for this Lemur: I've done a whole lot of nothing. About five months of nothing, seeing as my last fic came out in September. The one before that was in July. F'naaaaaaaa... curious that the last three uploads on my account are huge risk-taking mega-smuts. Who on this site still believes that I'm the melodramatic sad!gasming purple-prosaic word machine of 2012? Wild how the infamy you develop during the first 10% of your fandom endeavors define you for forever. Now, it's a miracle if anyone even hears a thing from me, and when they do it's either spontaneous shitposting or sporadic bursts of watered-down try-hardism. I'm basically the Jontron of poni poni poni words, only slightly less racist. Just slightly.
"Ech!! (Enter Socially Atonal Passive Aggressive Edgy 'OP Trying to Start Shiet' Tweet Here) Ech!!"
And yet, for a whole lot of nothing, I've been doing something. Maybe not here, but definitely there. Ofolrodi, the latest installment of the Austraeoh series, is alive and well. It's going strong with no signs of stopping and--... wait, wat?
It hasn't been updated since the end of February???
Oh no...
Whelp, granted, there's been a reason for that. I finally unrolled my tentacles and decided to get cracking on SS&E Fic #200. I've been on this site for nearly ten years. I've written over nine million words of poni fanfiction. I've helped marsupials laugh, cry, buy hoodies and form Discord servers. I've witnessed bronies translate my stories into Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, and even Chinese. There's been fan art, vocal reads, prints made about my stuff.
So, it's only fitting that I sat down and made Fic #200 a truly special, provocative, engaging, and overall enriching piece of literature that would both summon nostalgia and provide inspiration for all the people who've read my stuff and look forward to what more I can write in the future--oh Nietzsche fucking dammit it's another motherfucking sissy fetish ficldjfaljal;fjadl;kfjdalk;fj
[Adult story embed hidden]
I won't waste y'all's time in waxing more pitiful poetic about how this is seemingly the only dayum type of content I legit enjoy writing anymore, and how it's a self-defeating implosion of cringingly gratuitous madness that only alienates myself from my reader base while flagrantly diminishing the value of modern day people dealing with socially misunderstood identity crises. Honestly, though, does anyone remember when SS&E used to actually write for an audience other than himself? I tell myself that 2016 was the tipping point, and that was five years ago. Imagine if halfway through his career, Michael Jordan stuck to playing baseball and never returned to the court despite the protest of every carbon-based lifeform in the fucking universe. That's me.
To be fair, though, the very nature of "Fic #200" and the unnecessarily impactful gravity that's been superstitiously associated with it--at least in my hairy mind--is what's prevented me from uploading anything to my account for nearly half a year as it is. And if that seems a stretch, well, it's the lazy answer I'm going with.
The story idea of A New Day Breaks came to me (ew) riding on a wave of thick turgid passion (EW). Everything about the story just clicks with me, and for the first time in ages I feel legitimately happy for the characters involved. Like--I kinda sorta look forward to writing more chapters for the characters' sake as much as mine. It's difficult calling a fetish fic about rampant pet-play and erotic polyamory with hilariously blatant /ss/ vibes as "wholesome," but--for me at least--I felt that the environment I set up established a strictly consensual, positive, and thematically "happy" smut-verse. So, needless to say, I'm pleased to fluff out more installments in the future (EWWWWW--eh, actually that's not so bad).
That hella sexy cover art was drawn by the awesome and talented Xan-gelX. I consider what they churned out to be prime inspiration for what made me even start the fic in the first place. You see, this is why artists are so friggin' awesome. They can garner worth of a thousand words in a single brush-stroke, and then subsequently inspire a hundred thousand more words when enough perverts inspired members of society take heed.
So yeah, about three weeks ago, I went full-steam on this Flashlestia smut story idea thingy. And because I'm a frumpy fat facsimile of my previous lemuristic self, I could only really afford to concentrate on one project at a time. Which meant that I sat Ofolrodi on the bench for the time it took to get New Day Breaks off the tarmac. But now that my 200th abomination has artillery shell'd itself towards the feature box (and missed, of course), it's back to Easting the Petite Prismatic Pegasus to the Midnight Armory, dreit? Mmmmmm-yeah... but now that the bi-fictennial cherry has been broken, I'm simultaneously jazzed to get back into easy-breathing, casual, shitposty-or-pretentious fic-lets once again. No promises, of course.
Seen Here: "No Promises"
So, what has this lemur been up to in the meantime? Well... really... not much.
As we all know, 2020 was a less-than-savory year, and quite interesting for such. In time, I think the transition from 2020 into 2021 will be an interesting thing of its own, worthy of analysis... or at least something "anal." Every fiber of my being is telling me that I'm in a time of "great optimism and hope". Part of that, methinks, is the result of modern day polysocial indoctrination as a result of technoconscious psychological manipulation on a grand scale. Wat. Another part of that is discovering an unexpectedly prolonged horniness at my age. Wat..
For serious--though--it's weird. I do consider myself relatively "content" these days. It's kind of a diluted happiness, because while I like to think that I'm in a good place, the reality of the matter is that we're still edging ourselves through the apocalypse like castrati with sandpaper mittens and the future has never been more vomit-inducingly uncertain. Also, while my family has been generally spared the murder gavel of our current armageddon, this year is already proving determined to throw a lot of awkward wrenches into my scheduled grasp of normalcy, making things feel slightly bizarre both at work and on the road. Also also, WDW continues to be a diseased Desantis dystopian nightmare hole which means I'll end up having spent an excess of 24 months without going there and seeing as how cavorting through Mouseland is this neckbearded wizard lemur's equivalent of "getting laid" every once in a while it makes one wonder why fic #200 didn't turn out to be an abysmally depressing angst-story about Lyra logging into a paradigital liminal space approximation of Ponyville devoid of sapient ponies where the only emotional recourse is depressive introspective sad!bonering mental bullshit shortly followed by adorable mint-green unicorn suicide.
But hey(!) I've been playing lots of Animal Crossing~~~
Lots and lots and lots and lotssss of Animal Crossing.
Granted, I'm a teensy bit late to the party, but who's counting?
Yup. That's Cherish there. Looking sweet, petite, and SFW. And what can I say about Animal Crossing that hasn't been said before in some form on the Internetz? It's enthralling. It's chill. It's pure. And--in an era where intimate socializing is empirically hazardous to one's health--it's most definitely a great escape.
But what about those of us who... well... never socialize? Is it a substitute? Or just... substance?
I've rambled a lot last year (and by "last year" I mean 2019, f'naaaaaaa) about how I generally wish I could turn back time so that I could re-experience the Brony phenomenon in a more social capacity. By this, I mean to highlight a complex I've had for years that I could have made a bigger impact and enjoyed even more branching connections--had I interacted more, made myself more present, and generally applied a conscious effort into networking myself with even more awesome bronies abroad. Poni poni poni has--after all--encouraged us all to believe in the "magic of friendship," and my experience as a brony has introduced me to more living beings than anything else I've had the pleasure of taking part in. I've found the companions and acquaintances I've made to be indescribably rewarding, and I look back with bittersweet nostalgia goggles, tracing the butterfly effect tributaries of positive impact that bronyism has had on my life.
And yet there's always that gnawing sense that I could have interacted more and benefited more and experienced even more wholesomeness if I just tried. If I wasn't... y'know... such a hard-shelled, self-serving, antisocial melon fuck.
But this past year or two has offered me more meat, upon reflection. And I don't say this to chiefly underline the apocalyptic misery of 2020/2021, but rather to emphasize the sheer breadth of time since the very start of my poni poni poni word-tentacle marathon. A common theme in so many of my stories is lonely, introverted, slightly-to-not-so-slightly melancholic protagonists going on metaphysical journeys that result in accumulating friends and rewarding emotional support via those friends. This is a wholesome exercise in theming. But--it's still just an exercise.
There's a famous saying: "Practice what you preach." It sounds noble in theory, except that people generally forget that the biggest and most gifted talent of writing is bullshit. To write is to shovel shit, at least in this language that I'm currently using. Seriously, though, writing is the act of lying in slow motion, using monkey fingers to etch betrayingly "permanent" glyphs into the collective brain bone of sapient stardust. And for the better part of a decade, I've dabbled deliciously in this bullshit. It's made me feel good, and I'm happy to think it's made others who read my drivel feel positive endorphins as well.
Pic Isn't Necessarily Relevant Here | I Just Wanted an Excuse to Post This Beautiful Boi Again
Anyways, where in the fluffy fuq was I going with this? 2012 Skirts could probably bridge the logical gap more poetically, but this 38-year-old will have to lazily leap towards the intended point:
Looking back, I feel like I'm starting to grasp and understand just why I don't make more friends than I do. And, on top of that, I'm starting to come to peace with the fact that--if somehow I was able to take a time machine back to late 2011--I would not carry things on differently. A certain ending track on an Arcade Fire album comes to mind.
I'm a huge asshole. This might sound like a trite and melodramatic statement, but it holds true.
More than that, I'm a lazy asshole. I simply... don't have the want, need, nor desire to put in the effort required to maintain friendships, relationships, monkhoods, etc. Not just in real life, but in the digital realm as well, I find myself most comfortable in the shadows. I'll stick my neckbeard out once in a while to do picture spam or random links to bizarre stuff, but I'm just... not good at enduring extended conversations and committing concentrated effort into stimulating discourse. I'm a coward and a camper and a ... ... ... some other tongue-in-cheek noun starting with "c" that would complement both the alliteration and the lazily-creative false humility of this sentence.
There are times when I think that I should have been diagnosed with something ages ago--some nebulous medical buzzery that would magically explain the nature of who and what this lemur is, and likewise excuse the where and why that this lemur isn't. I'm sure we all feel that way about ourselves as the decades stack on. In my case, I'm not certain if I need fries with my ass burgers or what, but I often feel encumbered by a thick wall of "WAT" when dealing with people, both face-to-face and avatar-to-avatar. To a large extent, the most effort I put into chatting with people is image spam and non-sequitur. When I do actually engage in dialogue, it is almost always a selfish cavalcade of conversations dealing entirely with my interests, my plans, my fetishes, and what-nook. When I get deeply entrenched enough in a relationship to call it "friendship," that's when the toxicity kicks in, and I find myself emotionally manipulating and exploiting others. Then--when they (rightfully so) display even a modicum of self-assured defiance--I vanish. As in I literally ghost on them and sever all connections. Not that it matters, much. The tumor has suckled all the tissue already.
Someone told me--relatively recently, as a matter of fact--that I tend to fetishize sadness, depression, and self-deprecation. This is quite true in my writing, but one needn't look much further than the paragraphs in blarghs like this one. I suppose it's a curse, but also a gift(?) Either way, I've managed to channel it into certain vessels of literary substance. But in personal application, I've ruined almost as many friendships as I've started. This goes back to the very roots of my life, but it applies to the brony phenomenon as well. I have made some really... really great friends in this fandom. However, here in the year 2021, I find myself still-talking to very... very few of them. I've ghosted on tons of people and let even more just "drift away" when it was no longer convenient or advantageous to fabricate a nebulous connection at best. On top of this, there's the gross and bone-chilling fact that when I do make an effort to connect and follow my manic impulse, I end up becoming twelve hundred percent more ker-stupid and say and do things that embarrassingly inflates the volume of the asshat I wear day after day.
And so it came to pass that Nephi slew Laban that in the year 2021, I... kinda more or less find myself almost back in the very same position where I started: fat, lazy, horny, mostly uninspired... and lingering towards the bare bottom of the social bucket. This isn't entirely factually true. In early 2011, I had one friend, and that's a far smaller number than the total sum of marsupials I spam pics at today, so I'm still living in the days of future lemur passed.
And I'm... kinda okay with that.
One might think that I just spent the past few paragraphs waxing boo-hoo-isms in order to generate the all-too-bland sympathy that frequently orbits our veritable Hug Box™, but--as stated before in my retrospective tentacling--I only have myself to blame for existing within this antisocial pocket that I'm in. And for all the energy I expend in pretending to regret that, there's an equal amount of energy wasted in actually doing a single dayum thing about it. Actions speak louder than words, and for the past ten years my doings have made it abundantly clear that I predominantly want to be doing the doings on my lonesome.
I enjoy people at a distance, filtered through the effeminate peehole of easy contentment. I'm not sure that can really be called "friendship," but that's probably the crux of my problem right there. Word usage. Per the norm~
So, here in the year 2021, I feel mostly content. Mostly. There is--ever and always--that dull and lukewarm understanding that this is the full extent of who I am and what I'll always be. I think this sort of thing naturally sets in with age, and seeing as I'm soon to belch into my fourth decade of emitting methane, I find myself coming to grips with not having a grip: that things stay the same while simultaneously falling apart. Only, it's starting ever so slightly to dawn on me that the falling-apart will only perpetuate with velocity over time. The death slide must get its lube from somewhere.
What gives me the energy to blindly approach the veil, I suppose, is the same hedonistic energies that have always invigorated me. Being that this is a decade after it all began, I find myself feeling hopelessly nostalgic... perhaps in some vain attempt to re-kindle the fire I had back then and ultimately achieve a wordsmithery akin to purple days of yore.
Entirely Relevant
In an attempt to recreate the mood of 2011, or perhaps just to placate the itch in my testicles, I've found myself returning to Second Life. With help from a good good friend, I've updated the OG Cherish Lynne into his current 5.0 state. And there's my concrete excuse to bombard y'all with yet another cringingly gratuitous image gallery of my femboi OC:
It's a truly good year to be an SS&E vessel for vicariously girlish/sissy fantasies. At three months, we're off to a great start, courtesy of wonderfully talented artists. Such as...
Art by NekoJackun
Felicity and Cherish Enjoying Shopping | As Boifriends Do~
Nekojackunkunkun is a great artist and a fantastic bruu. My sanity's managed quite well lately, thanks in no small part to him, and he deserves all the praise in the world for his smextastically gifted art. Y'all are bound to appreciate his god-tier Aria Blaze art. Although he's a man of many different talents as well. Told ya I was gonna simp bruu~
It's nice to have a happy place. Otherwise, with or without burnout, you have nowhere cozy to return home to. And that benefits no one.
It's a bit sobering to think that, as early as half-a-decade ago, I was somewhat competently churning out 2-3 fic updates daily. It feels like an entirely different universe: where I once was so impulsed to produce literary installments every 24 hours. Yes, one can say that I've become far... far lazier since then. But I'm trying to see it a different way.
Like with Ofolrodi--it mostly certainly sucks that it's boiled down to maybe 1-4 updates a month at best. Do I prefer far more than that? Quantifiably? Most definitely.
But let us remember that Background Pony--for better or for worse--was a fic that updated infrequently, and with weeks (sometimes a whole month) in between posts. It's kinda weird to have to remind myself that "No, idiot, sporadic updates in fiction is friggin' NORMAL." Perhaps that's a pathetic excuse, but it doesn't change the fact that it's also hella hella true. Even with "professionally" published novels. I mean, fartnuggets, just look at some of the old salty pirate captains MS-DOSing out there. Praise Nietzsche HBO never dramatized Innavedr thru Yaerfaerda onto the streaming screen. F'naaa.
I've got nothing smarter to add to that. So, here, have a Sigma play that I'm particularly proud of:
What else could a blargh of this magnitude in early 2021 comment on?
Well, the news, I suppose. For instance, this fucking happened:
When was the last time I actually talked about poni poni poni in a blargh? Does it even matter?
Whatever. I like it. Truly, I do. Why wouldn't one want it? It's MOAR poni. The brony itch for generating drama never truly clicked with me. Good things are good. What's with the insatiable alchemy to turn lead into fecal matter? I'm reminded of something Arin Hanson of Game Grumps once said, when commenting on the female Ghostbusters "drama." It was something to the extent of: "The OLD Ghostbusters will always be there! You'll always have it!"
Friendship Is Magic was one heckuva ride. It was great before Lauren Faust left and it was great after she left. Engage the tits into calm chillage. We've been blessed, spoiled, and saturated with fun, cute, competent horse hijinks. Yes, one could go into needlessly intricate arguments concerning quality, tone, and the subjective placement of critical bars, but human beings can hyperanalyze the crawling pattern of a pill bug and find enough reasons to spark culture wars, if it gives us a hard enough boner. So just chill. The wealth of joy we've acquired from the brony phenomenon has been stemmed in its creatively reactionary content anyways.
Art by cuppa_chow
And look(!).
G5 has already given us this adorkable lump of cuddle bumps who totally deserves to be humanified and sissified. Seriously, though, I wonder what femboi name I'll give him: Cinch Runway???
More than anything, though, the prospect of G5 has given me something to look forward to this year. Isn't that what matters? Yes, I know people are used to disappointment, but I doubt I'll have my heart broken in the long run. The proposed synopsis of the film has the potential to spark unnecessarily cringey social media bickering, but you could upload the picture of a stale cheese sandwich to Twitter today and fanboys/fangirls would still do the same, so f'naaaaaaaa.
Something that I find myself telling myself daily--on a mental level--is:
Just chill, man. Just chill.
This phantom mantra may or may not be resonating with the voice of a 78-year-old oligarch enjoying meme ice cream, but it helps. It helps with the little things, which--given time--amount to big things. Like bombing Syria. Whoops, I did it again. Ahem...
Just chill, maaaaaaaaaan. Things will be alright... even though they'll never be alright. So... let's be alright with being alright until it's not alright before it becomes alright again. The cycle simply does its thang; leave kicking and screaming to car and plane wrecks, where they belong. Where will all someday belong.
But for the time being, it's ten years from 2011. Pony has ended, and Pony is beginning again. A line by Quark at the end of DS9 comes to mind, and the nostalgia boner is not lost to me. I dunno about you, but it leaves me feeling good. Good enough to blargh post. Well, that, and femboi Flash energy. But 4chan knows all about that, don't you, Zaid?
>>"Hey, remember when Skirts was good?"
Skirts was never good.
-SS&Ech!
...
I don’t know what to make of that first image.
Ooooh, I've missed the Lemur Posts!
Hope, so long and unremembered dream, is ours, once again.
G5... I reserve judgement.
5482137
Flash is obviously riding Twilight like a storefront child-attraction.
If I could skywrite "Just chill" over every inch of the planet's atmosphere, I would. Words to live by, truly.
Here's to whatever may come.
Hitch Trailblazer is the broiest of bro's. Before we learned his name, I referred to him as "Himbro." Because A, he interacted with Sunny in what I took as a familial way, and B, as other have pointed out, dude gives of very strong "90's Brendan Fraiser" vibes.
Click the single line between the bullet point list and chain.
Oof. I know that feeling all too well.
But it's a non-ratioed motherfucking sissy fetish fic!
Giggity.
...are you related to Beck?
Gotta love the positive vibes.
I've been there, too. It sucks.
Stay shiny, man. You got this.
I kinda feel this, since I seem to have suddenly devoted all my severely negligible writing energy to muscular anthro women who are alternately very angry and very protective. <.<
Been a while since I've seen one of these posted. I do have to agree, 2021 has been a bit of an interesting year thus far. I mean, it did come after the apocalypse, so I should have expected something at least eye turning. That being said, as much as I like to meme on my hate boner for the new stallion character, I honestly don't feel anything of the sort. I'm real excited for the new poner and the new hate filled boners this fandom seems to develop with pony as of late. I'm sure it'll be something at least entertaining, and with all the bad news in the world, something cute and comfy and wholesome is exactly what I like after a long day's work.
Honestly you might be lucky just feeling content these days. Even if you're churning out questionable... content!
5482232
i.imgflip.com/i920r.jpg
Line breaks are "hr" within square brackets. I also sat and read the whole thing, but brrrr... mine tiny (and young!) brain deems this beyond its capacity. Even if I do understand n' stuff, (think I do), I doubt I have any wise comments to add to the matter.
Meanwhile... here's
best G5 ponprettiest G5 princess pegaponderpicdn.net/img/2021/3/17/2573336/large.png
1. If you consider yourself only slightly less racist than JonTron, you should...work to be less racist than that.
2. I sent you a friend request on Discord two weeks ago. It's still showing as outgoing. I was thinking of deleting it a year from whenever I sent it, Anyway, I have something I wanted to show you because I thought you might like it. It's just a screenshot of dragon that looks like Belle from Beauty and the Beast, from the game, Dragon City. Also, I do want to actually have a conversation with you about audiobook permission stuff. If it's okay to message you more without the friend request being accepted, please let me know.
I asked you about doing readings back in 2019 (under the Imploding Colon account), and since it looked like you were gone, with no response ever, I didn't think I could really ask about using the "red-on-yellow" eyes thing, especially since it was very different context, maybe it wasn't something I really needed to ask about, since Discord's eyes are canonically red-on-yellow anyway, transferring magic in whatever way is too, and so on. Still, somewhere in my browsing of things, I saw screenshots of a conversation you had with Ponky where he asked permission to use a thing of yours, and you said you liked being asked about such things. Then I felt guilty, like maybe I actually should have asked, even if it was meant as small tribute. Perhaps because it was a small tribute. I mean, what if one day I want to write a story where Rainbow's eyes are "ruby" red the entire time and not just "red" when I'm invoking "wooo, vampire power!"? And it would totally be a thing inspired from you.
All of that is to say, I would like to be able to ask your permission for things like the above stuff, either through Discord or PMs or whatever works best for you.
3. On the subject of writing, it's good that you've found something to make you happy. I started to write here about your own writing helped me find happiness in mine, but it was more long-winded than I felt appropriate after awhile. Basically, there was a near-year gap between when I initially wanted to write MLPFIM fanfic and when I got a boost from reading the Austraeoh series to really do it and publish not too long after.
I would love to see an Ofolrodi update, but I think you writing something that makes you happy is more important than that.
love that first image fill my head so my fanfic ideas
Well, if I could go back to 2011, I would certainly do some things differently. I do not know if things would work out better or worse though. Like writing a story when you have a power outage and lose a full chapter -- it is never better on being re-written. I would appreciate seeing my parents again though before they both had cancer, and died.
What is interesting is, if one had the ability to travel like that, one would have to worry about being patient zero of covid to the unsuspecting people of the time. In prior years the potential of being the new typhoid mary if you time traveled wasn't even a thought.
What is interesting about fimfiction is how it has moved backwards in time. You see a lot more things like HiE these days than you did a few years ago. What is popular is like 2011 or 2012 era fics written or continued today.
Or the world could use a new Background Pony level fic....
I am nervous about Gen 5. No magic for unicorns and rampant speciesism just makes for less of a world one could see oneself in and enjoying. I think they are missing the boat a bit losing that element of escapism in these times. FiM had the feeling that the world viewed was in some ways a better place than the world we are in, while G5 feels like it is at best equal.
YES! You like it!
All the words you said here about Generation 5 and a new beginning ring extremely relatable to me. I also look forward to Generation 5 and a new start and, most importantly, a new chance immensely, it is literally a new chance for me because of reasons I haven't disclosed yet (and won't disclose in a simple comment like this) and I have the same emotional feelings that your words carry here.
Generation 5 will be great! Everyone who doesn't think so needs to dislocate a few steps out of their velocity and take more time.
I know; socializing's hard. It's hard for me, too. I only do it because loneliness is harder.
( ͡⚆ ͜ʖ ͡⚆)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿ ̿
You take that back. DELET Dis.
...On a more sane note, reading some of your work was, and still is, the best time I spent on this site.
I see myself in some of this, and I agree with some of this, and I don't know how to end this sentence :(
Yes.
Yes!
Things can suck Objectively™, but they're only satisfying if we decide they are, ain't they?
I am content knowing that you are content.
We haven't spoken much recently, but I am always around to chat if you'd like (and maybe trade some tunes).
hey man, at least you're not a ghost
I can relate to this. Always enjoy these updates
🐛