You know its strange really in my sporadic dealings with her she either ignored me, fought with me, or was very kind.

Yet despite this I couldn't help but find her strangely endearing. I think its mostly because I never could fully understand her or what point she was trying to get across.

And at the center of this paradox is the Conversion Bureau a story concept which has launched a thousand flame wars so to speak. I must admit even to this day I'm still on the fence as far as it goes probably why I ultimately abandoned the idea and this group. and yet still it does creep back into my mind every once and a while.

Though to be honest its largely due to her departure that I abandoned the group its just not the same without her around.

Though I think the thing that upsets me is that now I'll never get a chance to truly solve the mystery that was Chatoyance. It was always my wish to sit down and have a nice chat with her and maybe learn to understand her.

Well I guess that's my spiel sorry for the long rambling I just felt like sharing my thoughts with this group.

I don't.

She pretty much caused most of the drama in the TCB-verse.

I guess I do slightly miss her. She's like the Chris-Chan of the MLP fandom. Any reasoning with her was completely pointless, but it was amusing to see her rebuke all criticism as if her fan fics were sacred cows. Still, she did block me from commenting on her page and she has strongly influenced the fandom's perception of TCB stories for the worse. Overall, I don't want her to comeback in the end.

884317 884329 884355 Personally, if I need to get the sensation of interacting with her, I'll read Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust again. As for breathing life into TCB again, there's still Fangwarden. Aegis shows great promise, then there's my personal favorite, Option Gamma. I think it might be safe to say that Chatoyance went everywhere she wanted to with TCB, but wasn't willing to go anywhere else.

Now I think it is time we look to new horizons, look upon the past, and improve upon it. The ACB often criticizes us for having been based on stories of dubious quality, but I'd like to see how well written the first Alicorn Twilight story was, or the first human-in-Equestria story, and then have the ACB continue to say that we can't become something greater than the past.

Stories are about conflict, and if mere presence causes conflict in the real world, imagine the kinds of stuff we can come up with for something as simple as a lot of people becoming ponies?

884384

I don't think ACB believes TCB can't be something greater than it once was (although, with the bar set so low, it isn't hard imo). ACB's main criticism about the TCB verse has been that most of the authors writing for it used to perpetuate that 'dubious quality' you mentioned.

Although, now that TCB has shed so much fandom and the verse is waning in popularity, I don't think that will be much of the case anymore, or so I hope. A lot of the airhead 'Humans are bastards' types have pretty much dried up, hell, Chat's group that was suppose to be the "Alternative option" for all her die hard followers is a ghost town.

884446 Clearly they never heard the rule "90% of what's on the internet is crap". Goodness knows I've seen ACB produce its fair share of scatter-paced gun-porn crossovers that clock in at 1000 words before going dark for an inordinately long time. Just like I've seen crappy clop, hideous HiE, and god-awful Twilicorn fics.

884460 Hey! I am trying to make it better than some shooty fic here! I am trying to relay emotions and reality into my ACB fic!

Not this: RARGH STUPID PONY DIE NOW! *PEW PEW PEW MICHAEL BAY EXPLOSIONS!*

This: Pony looks at how Equestria has fallen so far, how they could do this to entire species without regards. Joins a group of ponies to promote peace, instead are casted as traitors and hunted down. Forced to fight for their life, they run towards to the humans, vowing to help them in their war with a corrupted Equestria.

That is off top of my head.

True, my main ACB fic was sort of like the first, but I grew way out of that. Final Message is a product of my time working with another author (Still use an editor cause I can't spot for shit)

Almost done with the next chapter by the way.

Not sure if I should post it now because what is happening in Boston...

I miss her too . It's thanks to her and Windchaser that I started writing TCB in the first place

884317
While I liked his writing, he was an extremely opinionated misanthropist that would always take any criticism as a personal attack, would deny any labels and would always run away from confrontation rather than defend his viewpoints. His ultimate abandonment of his account was rather unsurprising.

And yeah, I'm pretty sure he wasn't female: I've met enough drag queens in the artistic circles I frequent to kind of get the forcedly feminine speech patterns that you can only get from either some girl made out of crystal or some man trying to masquerade as a woman.

884317 Yeah, I suppose you are right...

If I didn't have undying hatred for her stories and how she puts herself on a pedestal, I wouldn't haven't have made the awesome stories I have now.

Thanks Chatoyance...

Thanks for all the inspirational anger and spite that makes me write my stories.

Chat's the entire reason I started WRITING AGAIN after a fourteen-year dry spell. I miss her terribly. Did she make some mistakes? sure, what author doesn't? But she was (and to me, still is) one of the best writers in this fandom.

884460

What is the inception of a bad TCB fic? Usually misanthropic cynicism which the author projects onto their story and the characters within.

What is the inception of a bad ACB fic? Bad TCB fics.

I'm not excusing those bad ACB fics. I've seen them. Yeah, many of them are as bad as you make them out to be, and some are worse. But those bad apples wouldn't be around if not for TCB, you can't be 'against' something that doesn't exist after all. If the original TCB hadn't been written so ham handed and poorly, (and had been finished) there might not even be a "TCB-verse" with which to have drama over.

884475 "Other Side" was not on my mind when I wrote that comment, though I imagine it was the inspiration for the likes of that Halo Crossover TCB fic and others of such ilk. The ones where no character motivation for Celestia is given?

884482 Chat spawned writers that she despised... 884487 and writers she might well have respected. And from my statement above, I'm sure you can tell I believe that the same might be said for you.

884480 Her, her writing, you liked her writing. I know, I was often confused regarding the gender of Chat for a while as well. But then, does it truly matter what gender she was? She was incapable of taking constructive criticism, unable to sift through a comment to discern what could be of use to her.

884490 And so you would blame the existence of such poor-quality fics on people other than the authors who wrote them? And instead on the author of other works, with no specific address of grievances? I'm afraid that such logic is questionable. Would you blame Mrs. Hitler for what her son did, as opposed to the man himself?

884495

And so you would blame the existence of such poor-quality fics on people other than the authors who wrote them?

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, you said it yourself.

Chat spawned writers that she despised...

And instead on the author of other works, with no specific address of grievances?

Those fics wouldn't be around if those authors didn't have something to nerdrage at. I never said I excused them, as I said, some of them are pretty crappy. But realistically, do you expect they would've been written if not for Chat and company? Hell, a ton of the problem was Chat running around deleting criticisms of her work and dropping mind boggling quotes that sound like something a Nazi would've said.

A lot of people decided to go out and make rage fics against it because they thought it was stupid, that was their way of addressing those grievances. But it wasn't until Starman Ghost that the series was really properly Deconstructed.

Would you blame Mrs. Hitler for what her son did, as opposed to the man himself?

If she'd ran around telling him "Jews are evil and they need to be purified" and some such, yeah, I would. (And hell, that's pretty much what some authors like Chat were saying, if you just replace 'Jews' with 'Humans').

Again, I never excused these author's actions. I'm just stating that the blame for their existence isn't solely on themselves. ACB fics are reactionary. They're reacting to TCB. TCB can't say the same, they aren't reacting to anything. The impetus of the TCB author is, or at least, used to be on themselves.

Given how thoroughly TCB has been Deconstructed. I think it's refreshing that we're trying to Reconstruct the verse.

884508 I said that Chat spawned writers she despised, not that I blame her for those writers. I do think that in the absence of Chat, they would have simply written a different story that was equally distasteful.

884519

Well, on this we disagree then. As in my opinion, a lot of these 'writers' wouldn't even have stories under their accounts if it weren't for Blaze and her. (But mainly I think, her, given how egotistic and hostile she acted).

884480

Woah, there buddy.

Chayo is a SHE because she says she is. Psychology has long know that physical gender, gender identity, gender roles and orientation are independent of each other. Take your temp kickban and strike one to mull it over. I've also screen capped it in case you think of violating this ban, in which case it'll go to the site moderators and you'll get a far more effective version.

Do I miss Chat?

No. Not at all. With her gone most of the bad-blood between the ACB and TCB is gone too. And frankly, I'm glad that she won't be updating or writing new distasteful TCB stories anytime soon.

884317

I think you're not alone. I suspect a lot of people left the TCB group because Chat's presence and contributions were a major element of the group's appeal. Not all of this attention was positive in nature, but it's very clear that Chat's passion, and readers' passionate response to her stories, brought a lot of life as well as controversy to the group.

People like Chat are the backbone of groups, and no group can stay active long without at least one such person to literally animate it. They provide a core feeling of association that keeps the members coming back day after day. Chat's departure is a major blow, and we've yet to see anyone come even close to filling the huge gap she's left behind.

Yeah, I miss her too - Shit, I gave her a fanart. She was pretty interesting and wrote with a degree of technical and thematic sophistication I appreciated, though her radical humanism could be a bit exhausting at times.

A lot of people seemed to miss the idea that her beef wasn't so much with humans as with the fabric of reality in general making them as instrumentally-minded as they were, something that seemed to come out of a sense of betrayal that there were actually no rules and no one in charge to make sure people were fundamentally taken care of - Essentially that it was the universe itself that was pathological. I think that's a contradiction in terms and totally disagree, but I don't just read things to be comfortable and reassured.

Hopefully she'll be back one day to finish "I.D.", I think that had the potential to be one of her strongest and most fun stories.

Not really.

Well, since my TCB-history predates hers (high five! ...anyone? no?) I won't say she contributed much to my writing... even though she probably did.

Anyway, I'd agree, I miss her even though the circumstances of her final departure left a pretty bad taste in everyone's mouths. I still hope to continue (even finish) my TCB-stories sometime, though. There's still some ground to cover.

She's gone? Well, you never know what you've got until you lose it. I don't really get the whole controversy around her. She seemed a pleasant enough person from what I've seen.

Yes and no.

Yes, because she was a competent author, had some nice typesetting and a general level of presentation that usually set her stuff out from the crowd. A level of presentation that most stories I see barely even attempt to rival these days. She was one of the few authors I could regularly look to the works of and find few grammatical errors.

And No, because now (hopefully) people will stop blanket-accusing all TCB as being part of or written by her; and no matter which of her stories I read, I usually had a bad taste in my mouth from how hard she sold the ponies and wrote their dialogue.

Well this was interesting to say the least.

I mostly created this thread because I was curious to see what would happen (blame boredom and insomnia). I was curious to see in retrospective what peoples thoughts on her were, and I must say for the most part I do agree with the sentiments of most.

While I did enjoy her stories mostly due to the fact that they were thought provoking. I do agree that her misanthropic tendencies were a huge turnoff. its sad really it makes me wonder what transpired with her that led to her having such a misanthropic attitude.

As for the group sadly the concept of the Conversion Bureau still puts a bad taste in my mouth and I don't see that changing anytime soon. By and large I've moved on to the optimalverse these days

To me Chatoyance was one of the reasons why the TCB is an interesting place. Not a nice, hugs-all-around, have-a-cookie place, but a place where stories would discuss more than who is best pony or even more clop yet another action-adventure. I don't know too much about the person behind the stories but her stories always got me to thinking, even if I didn't agree with her ideas in the end. TCB is a scenario about conflicts and about questioning the status quo. I have yet to find another author to put as much conviction and passion into stories about pastel ponies as her.
tl;dr:
Yeah, I miss her too. For her stories and for the way those tickled my brain.

No I do not miss her in the slightest

To me, she was a pretty competent writer, and a lot of her works were and still are deeply thought-provoking. Plus, part of me always got curious whenever one of her trademark posts appeared in my inbox.

To be honest, my only real complaint about her was her refusal to make amends with the ACB guys, even when the "war" between our two groups subsided.

She was, basically, the living example of how good authors can be, um, batty to say the least.
Still, props to her and what she has done.
(inb4 tons of downvotes)

Just to point this out, she is a transexual. She has an Encyclopedia Dramatica page devoted to her. She might not be talentless, but she was extremely and disturbingly opinionated and delusional in her beliefs. Just some food for thought.

As I've said in the ACB group during a recent discussion in which her name came up, Chat was a very verbose author, though her prose was a lot more purple than I usually like. However, she was almost wholly combative when it came to dealing with honest and non-malicious criticism of her work, which in turn generated the flak she had gotten from her critics because she refused to accept that her works could have any problems and this also extended to her view on ponies, which became truly creepy in some cases based on her comments. Her final few weeks on the site didn't exactly endear her to anyone either.

885745
Dude, I'm ACB and I can tell you that her being transsexual has no bearing on the matter. Please refrain from making it a point against her.

885745

I'm with 885813 here. There was no need to bring that up. Granted, I find her a poor author who attracted a following with her decent writing skills, but let's not get into personal stuff.

And let's just stick to calling her Chat/Chatoyance.

884519

Um... am I an exception to the rule then?

885813 885893 Sorry, I didn't mean to get anyone mad at me, it's just that some of those things just really disturb me. If you want I won't bring it up again.

886008
Then as a request, please redact your post to remove her real name. It serves no purpose to have it publicly listed here.

886056 Done.

885813>>885893
When I read it, it appeared to be in response to the one guy up there who said Chat was clearly a male.

884551 Aye, she was the best of us, and also the worst. Though if I may be so bold as to offer general praise, I find your writings to make me feel... warm, and... joyful.

884604 Indeed, she had made that point on several occasions from what I saw, though that was exactly where the line between her writings and her perception of reality seemed to blur.

884824 885361 I believe that the phrase that might be relevant here is "there is always a spark of insanity in genius."

885893 Contrariwise, in Chatoyance's absence, there are writers who would have still created great works.
Whether I prescribe to the belief that your stories are in the field of great or horrible is beyond the scope of this discussion.

To be honest, I really dont miss her.

This thread is causing far too much drama and already two people have violated the rules.

-Locked.-