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NeverClever
ACAB | Kinky aroace ♠️ | All pronouns accepted
NeverClever
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so you fell to the conversion bureau as well huh?
3977070 I intentionally did not read any Conversion Bureau stories before writing this. Whether that makes it better or worse as a story, I'll leave up to the audience
3977101
Gee, I was going to not read it, but then I saw the author, and this comment.
After reading:
I feel like this was like the opposite of those beer commercials. The least interesting pony in the world.
3977250 One of my editors did actually point that out. I considered adding a few scenes to flesh them out, but said editor felt that their bland personalities added to the sterile feel of the setting.
Admittedly, I made them a bit boring to allow some room to interpret their actions, but in Heather's case especially, this may have backfired.
3977101
While I can appreciate not reading so much that it influences you, at least making sure all of the accepted details of canon are correct would have been nice.
3979439 TCB is a shared setting, and it doesn't have a single canon; there are a large number of branches and alternate versions of it. I am more concerned with telling a good story than shoehorning in details, regardless of which universe I write for.
A moderator of the TCB-22 group already removed it for not matching their narrow expectations of the setting, so you needn't worry about this story defiling/interrupting whichever canon you prefer
3979523
I suppose I should at least be impressed that you know that much about the setting, given you haven't read any.
It's not the shoehorning of details, rather the details you did provide. I am, of yet, unaware of a version where humans explode into ponies. I found the description of bits of skin and cloth to be both odd and off-putting, without any real rationale behind them.
I am also afraid that while this contained some reasonable clop, telling a good story might be pushing it.
Technically, they didn't remove it - they just rejected it from the submissions folder.
You can try to be smug and self-righteous all you like, but it doesn't change the facts. You admitted to being willfully ignorant of your setting while shoehorning in unnecessary and contradictory, yet meaningless details.
I was hoping this would be good, but I have found both story and author distasteful. Good day.
3979595 Just because I did not read any TCB stories, doesn't mean I did not examine the setting; I read the tvtropes page and several forum threads. I stand by my previous points, however.
Ponies don't explode (although that might make an interesting idea for a different story
)--I was making reference to the fact humans often leave bits of skin everywhere, and that the serum didn't catch all of it. A prereader pointed out it could be clearer in the first draft, and clearly I did not improve it enough.
I intentionally left out other TCB details (the serum being made from Celestia's blood in particular), because they don't have a bearing on this story, and leaving some of the mechanics of the universe unclear is good storytelling--it allows room for readers to speculate. This is the first shared setting story I have written, so perhaps my usual technique may have been out of place, but I still think the structure of a story trumps its setting trappings.
The submissions folder is the only one that allows fics to be placed in it, so I'm not seeing a difference between removing it from there and the group as a whole.
3979618
TCB-22 only allows fics that were either written by one person, or slavishly follow the headcanon of said person, so your exploding horses conversion bureau take probably wouldn't make the grade ever.
3979771 I meant the exploding ponies would be for a different, non-TCB fic.
3979523 I thought their rules are pretty clear and accepting, something like:
1. Involve the physical transformation of humans into another form.
2. Involve the existence of bureaus, or a structure, which supports or provides transformation.
3. Take place within a world where transformation is, was, or will be commonplace.
4. Ultimately be about someone or something converting humans into something else.
(from here) Are they not?
3980083 A mod sent me a PM about how my story doesn't portray the ponies well enough and how my portrayal of Heather runs counter to the message of the setting. I wrote a 700 word reply about how those aspects were open to interpretation—they sent me a single sentence reply linking to the same guidelines you did.
I took that as a sign that they were not interested in hosting my story in their group. The Articulator insulting me didn't really encourage me to press the matter.
3980128 It is so sad when well-meaning people don't get along.
3979771
Nah, there are hundreds of stories there that don't follow that specific universe details and vary wildly in how they depict anything. Random example: that universe has Celestia and Luna as almost omnipotent goddesses, while several accepted stories have them as powerful but limited and most definitely non-godlike entities.
3980162 I wouldn't call creative sterility "well-meaning", but I suppose it's my own fault for just group spamming everything (fun fact, this story was also removed from two other groups
)
3980128
Well, for a story to be accepted in the group, "becoming a pony" in it should mean the character becomes a better person than she was before. This means, roughly speaking, that the character must become caring, compassionate, empathetic, for the most part always honest, and absolutely incapable of being willingly cruel or of ignoring how her acts will affect others, while always opting for acting in ways that will affect others positively, never negatively.
If the story is one in which the character doesn't improve, or even becomes worse as a person than she was before, then it isn't accepted as that would be kind of missing the point of the shared metaverse.
3980233 And again, I thought I left it open to interpretation, but clearly I did a poor job of it. My editors told me as much, I should have more effectively utilized their warnings
3980233 I'm shocked at your interpretation of the rules. I greatly admire you personally for what I read of you at the forums, and what you said was true for the Conversion Bureau stories I've read, and I love them, and if I was writing a Conversion Bureau story, I think it would be conforming to the guidelines you describe (though you never know for sure, until the story gets written). But I would never imagine that these were the rules of the Conversion Bureau. Though I never would imagine wanting to break them, I'm reviled by them with every last freedom-loving bit of my soul.
I thought the rules of the Conversion Bureau were something along the lines of what I quoted in comment 12. Were the rules always like that or did they change at some point in time? Do you speak for yourself here or as a moderator of Group TCB-22? It's news to me that TCB is a shared metaverse. Wait, does shared metaverse mean lots of different universes, each one not connected to the other (not to be confused with shared universe)? Then that's how I see it, too.
3980248
You could always try rewriting those bits so as to make it not open to interpretation, but actually explicit. If you do so then I think it'll be accepted.
Another option is to make it open to interpretation but suggesting strongly that the correct interpretation is that she's become a better person. That's a more difficult approach though, for while as a writer you know what your characters are thinking, the readers don't, and thus you'd have to manage to think about how the characters look from the perspective of those who don't know what's going on in the characters' minds. Challenging but doable.
3980323
For myself. I'm not a moderator, just a regular forum member. But the group's main page has a slightly different explanation that emphasizes the fact humans become ponies like those from the show. As far as I see them then, that's how they are.
Check here for the "official definition", which is slightly different from the one you linked. Also, the first post in this thread actually is from a group moderator, so for all intents and purposes it's pretty much official too. (By the way, the second post in the thread is mine and it details my own analytic take on the subject.)
Yes, lots of universes not connected with each other but sharing something in common. This something is that ponies represent what it means to be a good person. In short: take your understanding of what a good person is (the kind of good person you yourself would like to be), make all ponies more or less like that, then add ponification as a metaphor for the process of growing from being "a common person" into becoming "a good person", and that's the common theme that crosses and unite all these universes, making them into a identifiable metaverse.
PS.: You becoming a better version of yourself is an empowerment of your own very being, thus an increase in everything that makes you, you, including of your freedom. It's never a reduction of anything, except perhaps of the chains that hold you. If your notion of "a good person" is someone who is in some way limited in what she can do then you're thinking about something that isn't really goodness. There's no good without freedom.
3980409
Yes, that's why I wasn't satisfied with that and continued looking for the explanation that I've read earlier. I'm not sure, but I think the explanation on the front page changed at some point in time. I certainly wasn't checking, as I wasn't expecting the "bait and switch" as when terms and conditions change after you accept them. I was ok with the definition I quoted, while not necessarily so with what's on the front page now.
I'm ok with this as a personal opinion of any single person (including, but not limited to you, me and forum moderators) but I would like that to be a matter of personal interpretation. As a rule, that feels suffocatingly limiting to me and I'm against it. I'm almost sure this wasn't an official stance back when I started reading The Conversion Bureau stories.
3980441
Well, stories in which becoming a pony makes of you a worse person or even a non-person are more in line with the ACB group, where they tell epic blockbuster tales of humanity fighting hordes of zombie ponies under the leadership of Xenolestia and the like, or with the other TCB group, in which basically anything goes as long as there are conversions and bureaus. TCB-22 stories are more artistic. It's like poetry: "Here's the arbitrary set of restrictions, how creative can you be within its confines?" It's challenging but it gives a sense of accomplishment to be able to successfully develop in it.
3980474
That's a fine position, the thing is: that's not what I subscribed to when I joined TCB group. The way I understood the situaton: TCB is basically a sub-genre of fanfiction with the rules so loose as to be virtually nonexistent: if humans are turning into ponies, and there's some structure or organization behind it ("bureaus"), then it's Conversion Bureau fanfiction. That simple. Humans. Ponies. Conversion. Bureaus. Usually there's some sort of barrier, too. Basically, what I quoted in the comment 12, I believe something like that was in force back when I started to read TCB stories. Frankly it's the first time I see the rules of TCB phrased the way you just did, as a set of confines.
I suppose I should feel worried when a prominent member of the group is using such cliches for judging stories, more so, for judging their merits with regard to what should or what shouldn't belong to the group. Surely, in many good stories characters experience growth, but maybe there are some good ones where there is character destruction? Who is to judge what should or shouldn't belong: if our group is about The Conversion Bureau - why not let all of the stories about humans, ponies, conversion and bureaus in? At least I thought that's what was going on. I must admit, I have read quite a few stories, but I simply couldn't understand how there can be an "Anti" Conversion Bureau group: if you write a story with humans, ponies, conversion and bureaus then it's TCB, not "Anti TCB". Silly me?
3980550
But isn't all fiction that fits a genre a confined story? Let's take a generic example: hard science fiction. It's defined as science fiction that has a confine: it must stick to technologies that are possible according the currently known laws of physics. It is "limiting" in that it doesn't allow, for example, for faster than light travel of light saber battles. But it's a helpful limitation if you want to actually write specifically hard sci-fi, because it gives you clear guidelines. If you don't want these limitations you're always free to simply write more generic ("soft") sci-fi.
So, you can take TCB-22 stories as a kind of "hard TCB", and generic TCB as well as ACB stories as "soft TCB". The first is stricter, but for those who want to write within it, that's the good kind of stricture. For those who don't, they don't need too.
No, no, no, I didn't express myself well then. I don't mind the blockbuster style stories. Some are quite fun (including the Xenolestia controlled-zombie ponies ones, I didn't invent that one, they're actually real). It isn't a merit judgment, it's a simple factual statement.
Again no, no. This isn't a matter of judgment, at least not of moral judgment, but of defining a genre and seeing what fits and what doesn't fit within it. What fits isn't "right", it's just something that fits. What doesn't fit isn't "wrong", it's just part of another genre.
For example, a group for hard sci-fi stories wouldn't allow any story with faster than light travel. That doesn't mean FTL stories are bad, it just means they aren't hard sci-fi.
I'd put it like this: TCB-22 and ACB are both special subgenres within the wider genre of generic-TCB. As far as I know, ACB was defined in opposition to TCB-22, so they more or less write stuff that explicitly goes against TCB-22 stated goals, and some of that is good, there's some quite creative deconstructions of TCB-22 tropes there. At the same time though, generic-TCB isn't limited to just TCB-22 and ACB, you can have stuff in there that doesn't fit either of these two subgenres.
That said, there was originally a dispute over whether the stricter TCB-22 tropes should be the defining characteristic of TCB as a whole. That position lost, and thus we have TCB-22 as a special case of TCB in general (which includes TCB-22, ACB, and anything that is neither TCB-22 nor ACB).
I hope this makes things clearer.
3979618
I ask not for you to add any details. There are fine TCB stories that do not. My only gripe on the matter was that it appeared in both the skin and the jeans-in-the-hair that the conversion process was explosive in nature. I objected to this not because it takes away from the setting, but because this story is not adequately equipped for serious world building, and otherwise just comes off as an error that breaks suspension of disbelief.
The difference being that they rejected it, rather than removed it. The latter implies that it had some right to be there, or had been there in the past. Can you be exiled from a country that never let you in?
3980128
Okay, I'll admit that my initial comment could have been more polite, but I felt that what seemed to be your proud, willful ignorance of the setting, evidenced both in your comment and in your story's apparent inaccuracies, was adequate reason for a slightly snippy comment. Nothing all-out rude, just voicing, in a discrete way, that maybe you should have done your research better.
As it turns out, I was in error, but I think you can see why I thought that.
However, from then on, each side escalated. You can't pin all the blame on me when your responses put words into my mouth and punished me for them.
3980233
3980233
With regard to the definitions here, I'm afraid I have to agree with Listic, Sharp. I have no problem with calling this TCB, even though I felt there were inaccuracies, and it doesn't really seem to go anywhere. I don't consider the category to be a judgement of quality.
However, equally, I respect Chatoyance's decision to run her group the way she wants to. She gets enough hate without people complaining about her rules. The more you know her internet history, the more sense they make. So she or a mod rejected it on quality grounds, so what. You can still call it TCB, you can still have it in the other group. Don't whine about how they didn't let you in.
It bears saying, thought, that my main issue with this story is not the inaccuracies, which by this point have been explained to be non-existent, but the brevity and lack of development in the story. There wasn't even any real conflict. It was too long for a short, and too short for a story proper. Literarily, I have issues with it.
tl;dr:
No means no - deal with it.
Don't complain about me insulting you if you insult me.
Try not to make is seem like humans explode into ponies.
If it's clop, make it more cloppy, if it's story, give it more depth.
Chatoyance's definition of TCB is her own business.
This is TCB enough for me, but not high enough quality.
3980728
Hehe, I don't disagree with him or with you, I'm only trying to qualify things better. Check the comment I posted just before yours, I guess it makes things more clear.
3980751
My apologies. That does indeed clarify things significantly.
I have to admit, I was slightly shocked that you and I disagreed on this, initially, but now I see we didn't at all.
I liked it.
3980773
Well, now you know why my texts tend to go from big to huge. When I try writing concisely as I did here I do such a poor job of it that I invariably end up misunderstood.
*Reads*
Well, it's not bad. Clop isn't really my thing, but mechanically speaking it's okay.
However, there's that bit in the beginning about the shed skin, the characters are about as interesting as my wall, and in the end, nothing has been answered.
3980850 Thanks
3981535 Yes, 3977250 (and my editors 3977299) pointed that out. I clearly did not address it properly, but I have definitely learned a lesson for future stories
3984103
You need a bit more feel in it though. You needs some tips from tittysparklez. She does some great clop alot.
3984134 TittySparkles has a very dull writing style.
The intent of this story isn't really to arouse--as I mentioned in the author's notes, it's more about exploring a character than providing a good fap.
3984208
I find it very nice that you're exploring alternative writing styles and themes you're unfamiliar with. It's very common for such a first attempt to not be particularly good, after all you're still getting the hang of it and it's more of a training session than anything else. Keep at it and you'll become a very versatile writer!
3985303 "not be particularly good"
If you read the story, then I am always happy to hear specific, constructive criticisms on how I might improve. Such general statements aren't terribly informative.
If you are merely referring to things in general, and not actually commenting on the story itself, then yes I am very aware of that, having been a writer for 10+ years.
3985367
Things in general. I tend to, I won't say dislike, but be uninterested in porn in general and clop in particular. Not that I'm a prude or anything, it's just that after my very first exposures to porn when I was a teen all subsequent such exposures I attempted gave me a feeling of boredom, of being looking at something I had already seen a dozen times before. So the subject as a whole tends to not draw my attention unless I get it recommended for other qualities.
But having seen your interest about the TCB setting in the forum, even if not enough of an interest to actually go and read a TCB book, and after having written so much here in your user page, I feel I'm kind of honor bound into reading this one so as to be able to make more specific comments. I'll do so after I finish editing two and half chapters from other authors' fics. Wish me luck, as it'll be the very first clop fic I've ever read.
PS.: It'll probably take me two days or more until I have time for it though.
3985537 While I appreciate the interest, you needn't feel obligated.
And if I have learned anything from publishing this story, it's that writing in a shared universe is not for me.
This will most definitely be the only TCB story I write.
3985549
Don't worry, I also like challenges.
Well, from what I understand from the comments you didn't actually dwell into a shared universe as much as created your own, so I wouldn't say that counts one way or the other in regards to writing in a shared setting being for you or not.
On the other hand though, you're writing MLP fiction, so from this perspective you are already writing consistently into a shared universe and thus it seems it is indeed for you. 
By the way, now that you produced your text as you proposed you would, i.e., without it being directly influenced by any actual TCB fiction, only by the general concept, why don't you try reading "27 Ounces" to get to know one such shared universe directly? It's a collection of short stories, each chapter independent from the others, so it also fits your preference (if I remember correctly) for short fiction. After that you might decide based on direct knowledge of the source material whether trying to write within its (actual) setting would be worth the effort or not.
(Although I also remember you were trying to avoid fiction that was too direct in its narrative style, so in the end that might not work at all for other reasons. Oh, well...)
3985587 Except writing MLP fiction doesn't have any artistic restraints--people have written everything from steampunk porn to comicbook crossovers to slice of life fluff and everything in between.
Writing TCB fiction clearly does. While imposing limits on yourself can make good art, there's a line between reasonable limits and pointless restrictions.
Given that this story had people dislike it simply for being a TCB fic, different people dislike it for not representing the TCB "correctly", other people dislike it for the flame war I started when responding to the other two, and all of this eclipsed the actual story, the baggage is clearly not worth it.
Even worse is that both my editors and the tvtropes forumites warned me about this, but I was naively optimistic enough to give TCB as a setting the benefit of the doubt.
If you would like to discuss this further, please PM me; I don't delete comments off my stories, but the torrent of off-topic discussion on this story has made me seriously reconsider that policy
3984208
That is why I liked it. I prefer that over fap.
This can't end well.
Oh oh oh I know her pony name is Cold Fish.
Well um, hm. Ponies sure aren't very observative. What the heck was her cutie mark anyway? A bored looking mare sucking dick?
On one hand she makes a great prostitute because her emotional detachment bordering on psychotic dissociation makes her really patient and able to tolerate whoring for a long time. On the other hand, her emotional detachment bordering on psychotic dissociation makes her pretty much the worst lay ever. I mean, maybe pony fleshlight technology isn't advanced enough yet, but this pony isn't much different than one of those things. Not only is she not enjoying herself, she isn't even able to pay attention. Like fucking a water balloon, right? You finish and say, "Oh my Celestia that was the greatest sexual experience I have ever had!" and what's Heather's answer? "What, oh sorry. Were you saying something?" She's got the sex drive of a freakin robot, which might be some people's cup of tea, but I can't believe the madame considers her quality whore material.
I mean good grief ponies, can't you tell a born assassin when you see one?
"Oh my Celestia I've been stabbed! All my organs are bleeding!"
"What, oh sorry. Were you saying something?"
Right! As promised I read this story and I must say: I absolutely loved how weird it is!
We have a bland character, with amnesia, that starts her story in a blank room after having converted into a pony, who moves through a succession of transitional situations involving ponies which are all just a little bit off, seemingly detached from everything except that they have a kind of impulse to be pleasant to others. In the end, we reach an ambiguous conclusion that clarifies nothing, in a whole that feels like it's a kind of slice-of-life that wasn't, as if these four chapters were taken from a larger work, one of those huge books with multiple acts, where they occupied the place of a transition point between one act and the next, serving no purpose of their own but still indispensable for the coherence of the whole.
Now, to me it's absolutely clear this is all done on purpose. No one can hit so many middles of the road, in multiple levels, in such a tightly layered narrative, by luck (or lack thereof). This story is evidently a literary experiment on how to violate and work around the tropes and clichés of more typical narratives, and would certainly make a literary theory teacher smile.
Too bad that, being a non-native, English-as-second-language speaker, I'm not well versed enough in English literary authors to make a comparison with one of them, but here in my native Portuguese I think it'd do well as an example of Modernist writing in the tradition of Mário de Andrade, one of our most famous writers, in particular if contrasted to his novel "Amar, Verbo Intransitivo" ("Love, Intransitive Verb"), which tells the story of a boy who is initiated into sex by a specialized prostitute contracted by the boy's father for this specific purpose. Too bad non-Brazilians would have absolutely no idea what I were talking about, as I'd have loved to draw comparisons between both stories and their respective narrative styles...
In any case, as a literary experiment it also suffers from the fact that people who aren't into literary experiments (or don't understand them) will almost invariably dislike them. But even in this, in its goal of hitting "the middle" and nowhere else, it was so successful that the number of likes and dislikes ended up roughly equal. I've been tracking how they progress and it's quite fun to observe how any variation in one direction ends up balanced by votes in the other, so that as of this writing they're exactly balanced: 23 likes, 23 dislikes. Too bad Knighty didn't take my suggestion of adding a "polemic" box to the main page seriously, for this one would most certainly have appeared in it if such a box existed.
Now, as I'm in the group of those who do like literary experiments let me wrap this up by declaring that I'm going to right now unbalance that. Here's a thumbs up and a favorite. You more than deserved it!
And now to wait for someone to rebalance it back to 24:24.
4007655 Thanks
I think, however, that you give me too much credit. While I do have some vague idea of theme for any story I write, this one was not necessarily meant to deconstruct its format.
Your comment did make me think, though. Now that I reflect on it, the story definitely does have a lot of nihilistic overtones, if not necessarily modernist ones. Most people find existential nihilism a very depressing worldview, since it challenges so many common perceptions (especially the personal fable, imaginary audience, and other types of identity exploration). I tried to broker this nihilism into a dark, sad, story.
But as you pointed out (and as other comments corroborate), the end result was possibly more bland than depressing. In trying to evoke insignificance and regret, I just ended up with a lack of emotional investment. The construction of the plot and prose, as you noted, probably exacerbated this.
4012803
Not really. In this case your subconscious got the best of you and made right what your explicit conscious project would have done wrong.
And that was the little touch of genius. It resulted in your ponies growing out of the more comfortable narrative space of "rubberhead aliens" into the much more difficult to deal with of "starfish" ones. They aren't merely humans in pony bodies, whose minds completely overlap with ours, and they also aren't mere zombies and zombie-like creatures under the control of a mind (e.g. Xenolestia) that itself is still a human in a pony body. Instead they are True Others, minds that intersect with ours but not perfectly, the misalignment itself the source of much of the narrative... I won't say "tension", for there is none (and that's the genius in it), but "focus".
I'd have loved to see what else you'd be able to tell of these strange alien ponies of yours and their interactions with humanity. This could be the starting point of a seriously interesting sci-fi project, particularly if you carried forward the idea of making the barrier stop growing and managed to keep the nihilistic overtones all the way throughout all of it. Too bad you gave up on this universe of yours. As is all too common, overreaction and misunderstanding killed something that could have become excellent.
PS.: For these reasons and the ones in my previous post, I don't think the "sad" and "dark" tags are warranted. This story is neither of those things.
4013286
Yes, that happens to me a lot
I considered putting a Slice of Life tag on it, but that seemed misleading. I suppose you could say the current tags are as well, but I dunno, it seemed preferable to having an AU tag and nothing else.
4030221
Yes, the list of of tags is quite limited, but given what's available, perhaps removing "Sad" and adding "Random" would fit better.
... Why is she so terrified? What happens if you're a selfish, I dunno, Objectivist or something?
The story itself feels weirdly mechanical. Not to mention the ambiguously creepy, exploitative light the ponies are cast in.