I'm searching for a conversion bureau story. I think it may have been deleted, hence me reaching out to this group after 3 hours of searching and google cross-referencing. I can't recall the name of the story.

The story involved a man who was hit with a blowdart or something like that with an experimental new serum from PER agents and manages to get to his house before collapsing. He has some kind of life insurance policy that offers restoring his body if he dies with up to 5 minutes of memories lost. During his transformation the nanomachines that monitor his lifesigns pronounce him dead, and a clone is created with all his memories, and is deposited automatically back at the house, with the last 5 minutes of his life missing. Confused, he enters his home to find his original body now a pony on the floor.

As you can imagine it has some interesting shenanigans, including examining how his personality and preferences change now that he is a pony, with his cloned self being his roommate. A lot of other stuff happens in the story (including a HLF ring run by robots at the local bed, bath, and beyond), but those are the things I remember in most detail about the setting and the gimmick. I believe his pony self takes the name Dice, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyone else remember this story? Anyone else have a link to this story?

Sounds really interesting. I'd read that.

Huh, now that you mention it, I can't seem to remember if I've read this in the past (or was on a to read list.) Now I'm kinda looking for it myself.

I remember this story, and my memory matches your description. It was a ways back, for sure. Looking through the old EqD compilation posts, I find that the story is Mirror Match by Silver Tie. The link is http://www.fimfiction.net/story/15173/The-Conversion-Bureau---Mirror-Match but the author has set a password on it.

5295249
5292873

Silvertie has left Fimfiction, and taken all of his work with him. Sadly.

The reason is this: when the hate groups were at their most active, they swarmed the other Conversion Bureau group, group 26 (this is group 22, it was first). Several of the admins of that group decided that the answer to the invasion of hate was to invite the haters in and let them add their 'deconstructive' anti-bureau hate stories (ponies are evil, kill all ponies) to the archives there. In order to somehow make peace with a group sworn to destroy the Bureau genre and remove it from the fandom forever.

This situation caused a lot of fuss, as you can imagine. The admins in charge of group 26 doubled down and kicked anyone who disagreed out of admin status - people such as myself, and Midnight Shadow, among others. I returned to this group (22) and opened it up again (I had closed it to help support the larger group 26). Silvertie (who was not an admin!) was on the side of the (fairly ruthless!) 'turn the other cheek' faction.

Long story short, the anti-bureau haters ruined group 26 and made the place toxic for many. As expected. In the end, Silvertie - (who had gotten so mad at me and Middy and others for disagreeing with letting the haters in that he had ultimately blocked us) - made a final blog post. The blog lasted two weeks, and then Silvertie removed every last thing on Fimfiction that he had ever done.

The blog post basically apologized to me personally, and admitted that letting the haters in had been a very bad idea.

It was all very sad, and very regrettable. Especially regrettable was the loss of Silvertie's stories. He was a very good writer, and his stories were among some of my favorites. I always praised him highly for his solid, well crafted work. I miss his stories very much. I wish I could read them again myself. Silvertie is missed... by me, at least.

That is why you cannot read Mirror Match... or any of his other works. They are not merely password protected - that is a bug in Fimfiction. They are entirely deleted. Gone. Like his account and his blogs. Deleted. Lost forever.

The anti-bureau haters ultimately killed the Bureau genre, but in the end they succeeded because the majority of those who led the Bureau community at the time failed to recognize that humans are not kind ponies. They did not separate reality from fiction: humans who hate fight to win, and destroy without remorse. You cannot make friends with humans who have made it their goal to see everything you create destroyed forever. It cannot be done.

In the end, it was a misguided dream of love that killed the beast that was the Conversion Bureau genre.

I used to be very angry with those who were my co-admins in group 26. Now, I just pity them. Their goals were noble, even if they acted terribly. Unfortunately, their goals were also impossible and irrational. True hate cannot be cured with kindness. Humans don't work that way, not with true hatred. Real hate can only be blocked, ignored, or opposed... closed minds are willfully closed, and do not choose to open. Kindness means nothing to a truly closed human mind or heart.

Perhaps... the group 26 admins just wanted ponies to be real a little too much?

5295415

I never understood the tolerance of the anti-conversion bureau stories as under the conversion bureau label. It made everything extremely confusing and I've had to explain the difference between all the different kind of stories to people multiple times, and I wouldn't even have counted myself a big fan of this genre until fairly recently.

I could see why the works gained popularity, and some of the other universes had some interesting stuff attached to them, but by confusing the label, anytime anyone has used the term TCB they could be referring to:

'Positive' Portrayals:

1) The Dying Earth conversion bureau stories set in your universe, Chatoyance. (This is what I think most people mean when they are referring to TCB stories)

2) Vaguely futuristic setting conversion bureau stories that aren't your universe in particular, but still have bad stuff that require pony intervention, which is kind of the setting of Mirror Match.

3) Modern day setting conversion bureau story where the Earth was not dying due to human intervention, but required the conversion bureau stuff entirely due to the barrier or some other feature that would still have a non-human caused doomsday scenario. I think the stuff like Cloudhammer's stories are set here.

4) The original story... which I haven't read, and from what I hear isn't good.

'Neutral' stories:

5) Deconstructions: Stories that explore how conversion is not a good outcome, in a variety of ways, but don't assume malice as an explanation.

6) Counters to Deconstructions: Stories that are generally positive about conversion but assume the issues from the deconstruction are either partially true, or that they are fair arguments. Every single story that had the protagonist worried that conversion was the same as death and they'd become a zombie trapped in their body or any such thing, even if that didn't end up happening, I'd group up here.

7) "Humanity is going extinct and the universe is a much poorer place for this" style stories. Even if ponies are portrayed positively, there is an absurd obsession with the uniqueness of humanities' form in these stories, and generally have people becoming magical humans later on in it. Otherwise, it'll usually be a story about ponies crying for the last human holdouts who die on principle or something. They can be really well written, but it's still what I would consider a neutral story.

Then, you have your negative portrayals. Still called Conversion Bureau stories, even if in almost all of them, the conversion bureaus are not major or even minor features in them, but are usually the first 'wave' of a backstory before moving onto a different phase.

They come in a very wide variety of stories, some of them fairly interesting to read, but the fact that when people say conversion bureau they truly, honestly consider these stories equally relevant is disturbing, since they are completely and totally the opposite of earlier portrayals.

If someone has the story somehow available (in the file form or online), please let us know.

5295567

The Three Rules of the Bureau are easy, simple, and very expansive... also, they are very definitive. None of the hater stories fit even one of the rules... so, they are not Conversion Bureau stories. Open and shut case!

The issue was never about whether stories about murdering Celestia and killing ponies before blasting off into space were really Bureau stories. They aren't. It was always about appeasing the bullies so that, maybe, the bullies would stop attacking people. That was all the internal Bureau conflict was about. Appeasement versus standing together. Appeasement won.

The haters were smart - I have to give credit where it is due. Most were wargamers, many came from Spacebattles, the majority seem to be gun nuts and Warhammer 40K fans. They understood the concept of 'poisoning the well'. They used it brilliantly.

If you take anything, and create a lot of really awful stuff named the same thing, then that will destroy the original thing. New people come, see 'Conversion Bureau', read a poorly crafted story about bayonetting Celestia, and run screaming. In the light of such an experience, the Bureau seems horrible, and anti-MLP, against everything they love. The 'anti' crowd churned out such illiterate crap by the truckload. The goal of poisoning the well is to make more crap than the original material... then statistically, people will find the crap more often than the good stuff. The good stuff is ruined - the very name poisoned.

It is excellent Clausewitzian Absolute War. They knew what they were doing.

If the Bureau had banded together, refused to engage with the haters at all, refused any quarter, and worked together to force the site admins to take the abuse and harassment (online and offline) seriously, then the Bureau genre would still be around. Capitulation to terrorism always fails. And online harassment and death threats and server attacks... and poison stories too... are all terrorism. They cause fear and revulsion. That is terrorism. And they were good at it. You have to give them that. Hat is off. Wargamers play to win.

The Conversion Bureau, as a pony-positive transformation story genre, is, I honestly think, the most imaginative and brilliant thing to come out of the entirety of Pony Fandom. An entirely new science fiction genre, a cohesive future history (in some cases), a setting in which anything was possible from magic to science, where real-world problems and issues could be explored... where the very nature of identity could be explored... the Bureau was truly genius!

Where others wrote porn, or violence, or empty pablum, true Bureau authors explored the human condition under a coat of pony paint. It was too good, and too mature, and too intelligent for pubescent Warhammer fans, and it was destroyed by mob rule led by some very nasty boys.

The entire thing was just sad.

5296137

You can download the epub version of the entire story with the wayback machine here.

If, for some reason, it goes away, I have a copy.

There is also a backup of all of fimfiction that is made every once in awhile.

I think there may be site that also copied every story chapter uploaded on fimfiction specifically to prevent stories from being lost when authors remove their work.

Ohhh, that's why the story seemed familiar, because I may have read it before, ah piss, all the stories gone and that aren't gonna be completed, but that's loooong in the past now. Wish I could say the same of my browsing habits here. I regret not delurking sooner and saying something nice to all of you folks when this went on at it's worst.

5296463 Awesome! Thanks!

5296437 They had a pretty good propaganda machine with lots of media in places (the TvTropes page is disgustingly biased) going, and as been said somewhere before, "repeat a lie enough times and it becomes truth." Though that too goes beyond FimFiction in our world. So now even when some of the original shitstorm starters have long left, some poor sap comes along, gets the revised edition of how things went down and goes on to cause more trouble for whatever reason.

Not to mention they had a label to demonize anyone that enjoyed TCB or had criticism/gripes/disappointment with the world (which is far different from outright hatin- wait, didn't they say criticism wasn't hate too after using that as an excuse to be dicks?) Doesn't take much effort to just slap "sycophantic misanthrope" onto someone to dismiss anything they say, then enjoy the free valid to kick down however you please. Still spreading their libel some of them are.

They've damaged if not outright ruined quite a few things for me personally; Ponies, Warhammer 40k (there's decent people and awesome projects people do, but then some of the other folks I've seen here that seriously see the totalitarian Imperium of Man as an ideal path for humanity to take scare me, aside from aforementioned assholes), and worst of all my faith in others. It's kinda gotten a little better, if by little since then.

Valuable lessons learned here though from the years, if hard taught. It pained me to watch all of this happen, everything hurled at each other, imagining some of the shit many of you went through. I know plenty of them are probably reading this now and giggling their asses off, but congratulations: you helped to make the world a darker place for alot of us instead of doing the sensible thing years ago and just doing something with what you loved instead of spending time on something you really, really, really hated. You've talked much of humans, but where was your humanity?

I've seen plenty here on FimFiction (and elsewhere) that wear human skin, but lack humanity...

5296463 I can't seem to get it working. I mean, I can get to the main page just fine, but I can't read or DL a chapter in either Chrome or Opera.

5295415 Wow ... just wow. I mean, I knew it was bad, but that hurts to read about it. Especially knowing how the Spacebattles-and-4chan set operate. Do you know where Midnight and Silvertie went after leaving? Do they still write? Not even for the Bureau or for MLP in general, just anything? I've loved everything that Midnight left here, and Silvertie is a legend who I've only encountered by reputation.

And does anypony have any thoughts on how to breathe life into the genre?

5297020 Oy, I have read through many, many threads, and just reading the stuff was awful alone, and I wasn't even the target/s being a lurker at the time. I do know Midnightshadow is still around, though has cancelled his TCB works (sadly, I really liked them), and as for his non-TCB fare is on hiatus due to life issues, though still being written. As for Silvertie, I have no idea other than he's gone off for good, and I don't blame him for the pricks still around and what's happened . Shame too, he had some nice stories.

As for ideas, I'll think a little later, tired at the moment. Did have some earlier...

5297020

I uploaded the copy I have to my google drive:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5aZGzB4AI_IT0ZIRmxSV1RKWG8/view?usp=sharing

5297062 Thank you so very much! Downloaded.

5297051 Ouch, that must have been awful to see. Glad I never looked into those old threads on the other group. Seeing what they did to a Star Trek fansite was bad enough, I shudder to think about what they did here. Agree with them about them lacking in humanity, or at least embodying only the worst of it. They behave more like Uruk-Hai, to be honest. Glad to hear Midnight's still on here ... have to hunt down his newer stuff. And yeah, I don't blame anypony for leaving either ... I was at best hoping that he left a forwarding address - for lack of a better term - with Chat.

Edit: And yeah, by all means get some rest. Glad to know I wasn't the only one wondering.

5297062

Canary? Do you happen to have 'The Conversion Bureau: The Coldest Dish' by Silvertie on a drive somewhere? That is my favorite story by him, and it is gone, and I would love to read it once more. I tried Wayback, but the actual pages of story were not archived.

Silvertie had some really well conceived characters in that one, and a fantastic exploration of one of the darkest human emotions - revenge - represented in a transformed, pony guise. The story was not only interesting, but an exploration of self and identity issues. Naturally I would find it brilliant.

I wish... it's too late for wishes. Alas. Anyway, any chance of that story?

5296437

It is excellent Clausewitzian Absolute War. They knew what they were doing.

Yeah, Clausewitz "War is the continuation of politics by other means" way of thinking can suck it. Despite what we learned from Fallout, war changes all the time. The fools didn't know why they were doing it. Fools because...

Wargamers play to win.

... they won shit. They ate shit. They became shit.

4chan people is beyond shit now (Thanks SJW retards)!

A real gamer war or not would have asked themselves: "Should I even be playing this game?" Would answer they didn't. Been putting money down on things and I would bet hard most of them didn't even read any stories. They didn't do any homework. All the accusations of people liking Chat's and friends stories being brainwashed applies more to these ass-hats.

A fool fights battles didn't need to fight with no gain. These people were and possibly still fools. Fuck 'em.

5297396

The individual page links don't work, but the 'download story' epub link does, so here is my copy of The Coldest Dish:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5aZGzB4AI_IODdzLVBVSlMtS0U/view?usp=sharing

Let me know if you have any problems.

5297689

It worked just fine - thank you very much! I get to read Coldest Dish again! Yay!

I found the site called FiMFetch that aims to archive all MLP:FiM fanfiction, from multiple fan fiction platforms.
And sure enough, there are Mirror Match and The Coldest Dish stories there, labeled as 'removed from Fimfiction.net'
Stories are available to read on the site and download; also in mobi format, in addition to the formats Fimfiction has.
So, it turns out, thanks to some dedicated fans, stories that are deleted from Fimfiction, do not disappear, not entirely.

5657405
Yep, FiMFetch is awesome that way. In a couple of other groups, we've set up archive threads for group stories that have been deleted. Maybe we should do that here?