//------------------------------//
// Prelude 
// Story: Fanfiction.yes 
// by Muggonny 
//------------------------------//

The office was gray.

Everything in the office was gray.

The walls were gray, the cubicles were gray, the air was gray, the coffee was gray with taste, the janitors were gray with age, the employees were gray with remorse for working in a gray office, and even the water was gray with hydration. The depression was gray.

Vanilla Decaf, no matter how morally gray everything seemed, is a very hard worker. Every day she arrives to work at FrandfictionCo., one of the biggest fanfiction publishing companies in Equestria, and reads manuscripts for twelve hours; but in secret, she likes to write her own fanfiction. Vanilla loved the concept of fanfiction: the ability to take someone else's creativity and turn it into her own was enough for her to give it a shot. When she wrote her first story she was amazed by the response it got. Fat Ponies Do Remarkable Things five hundred copies with the exceptional one hundred likes to five dislikes ratio on M.A.G.E.net.

After that day, she worked harder than ever before to hopefully one day be on top. She wrote and she wrote, but every time she had a good idea, she had another idea on top of that. Soon there was a gray bin of abstract ideas in the corner of her cubicle. When no one was looking, she would write fanfiction. If she didn't like what she wrote, she would crumble up the paper into a ball and throw it into the bin.

Finally, she decided to take the time to get serious. Magic Trix's was met with a dull response, numbers rounding to a five like to zero dislike ratio with only forty-two copies sold. She was glad nobody disliked her story, but she was upset that it hardly sold any copies.

Since then, Vanilla worked harder than ever before – sort of. Every time she wrote something down, she found herself getting frustrated, and proceeding to erase everything she had written. Any other writer would have told her it was good and give her advice on how to improve it, but Vanilla wasn't any other writer. She was the perfect wannabe.

It must have been six months until she actually wrote something with redeemable quality. But, to her demise, the story was met with three likes and six dislikes. This bothered her. There's no reason to be ashamed of six dislikes, but to her, it was how the numbers outweighed each other.

Vanilla lost all motivation. That is until she was reading a manuscript about an alicorn OC and came to a sudden realization: she didn't have to be original about the way she wrote. She could write a clopfic because everyone will love it, or a meta story, because it makes fun of the things ponies don't like. She got her pencil and began writing. As soon as she was finished, she looked it over, scanning the words over and over again.

It was probably the best thing she had ever written. She didn't care who liked it, she cared who loved it. That's what mattered. The critics wouldn't like it, but the audience, however, would LOVE it. She knew they would. 

Adding a few minor adjustments, Vanilla opened the top drawer of her desk and threw Fanfiction.yes in with Fat Ponies Do Remarkable things.