Weeks after Rarity undergoes a complete meltdown, Princess Luna suggests she join a club called the "Block Party."
It's not a very fun party.
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shortskirtsandexplosions
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You're back you're back you're back you're back you're back
Thank you, Skirts.
eeee
Edit: aaaa
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And you're welcome. You're so very welcome.
It felt like a self-insert story. Turns out I was right.
Damn, just damn, man.
I'm sure we all can relate to this little bit of metaphysical philosophy, in one way or another. Really, it all just coagulates into a short tale of an artist, and his need to do... things. Be them good, sad, comedic, or just a little fluff for fun, it all adds itself into a image of our own history.
The greatest lesson I can take form this is to just let the tides carry you along, and live life with a serene feeling of being able to get up and work at your own pace. No obligations, no forcing out fruitless thoughts, or drabbles, just letting the wind take you with its breeze.
Considering I too have had talks with others about stuff similar to this, this story hit me hard, and it was nice. As Comma Splice would say, "A good kick in the ass can be good, on occasion."
Also, I like how this is title "The Block Party," as in writers block, or of any other block of an artistic pursuit.
OwO
I really needed to hear something like that. I've had art block with my photography for well over a year now, and I've lost the will on starting up my business, just sitting around waiting for that one big inspiration to roll around. I never really considered this sort of angle.
So, uh, thanks. I guess.
And it's good to hear from you again.
7786341 derpicdn.net/img/view/2016/10/3/1264093__safe_solo_oc_oc+only_simple+background_comic_bat+pony_artist-colon-hispushkaa_oc-colon-deaxuma_owo.png
From the random tag and description, I expected something a bit more silly, not something so... philosophical. Which I liked a lot, this is a very, very good fic, just was surprised. Love the mix of characters, and how the discussion jumped from topic to topic. Sometimes a sounding board helps.
Small typo
mane
Congrats on what I hopefully interpret as being back, and on this being an interesting read.
It placates some nihilistic fears I had, and I enjoyed the differing thoughts and perspectives - namely, what holds and spurs a creative endeavour. Also, seeing things from what I understood to be as your point of view towards your own work from multiple angles was a treat to sit and think about. You really couldn't have put it clearer. I couldn't help but also enjoy the fact that you had to post in a story to say that you're back, you madman you. But welcome back.
Glad to see youre still going.
Its always a pain when Cerberus stands over your house.
The Black Dog of Depression Hell.
Im still trying to wwork out, if writing a daily diary full of daily banalities and basic life, how I managed to miss most of 2015.
Powerful PM.
I hope you thanked them tenfold.
...And we could all use a place like that on occasion.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Lovely to see you again, my friend.
.... damn skirts, and I thought the 167 unread chapters in my library was a behemoth backlog.
At first, I was trying to figure out which of the ponies was you. But them was all you.
You know, your blogs never made a lick of sense to me. Weird, and cryptic, and... full of pictures of hairy arms at Disney. But this? Stories like this are... I can see your soul.
You have the soul of an artist. A chef. A musician. A soul full of ancient wisdom who occasionally ends up marooned on a cold rock somewhere in deep space. You have the soul of a world-weaver bearing a powerful instrument, trying desperately not to be forgotten. You have the soul of an adventurer, crossing continents to bring harmony and love to the places that are in such dark turmoil that nobody ever thought they could change.
Wonderful. It's good to see you again, and thanks.
Right off the bat
It's a Skirts story.
Edit:
I think I'm beginning to see why you wrote this NOW.
Edit2:
I didn't need to know that.
Favorited, because everyone needs a good looking-glass.
7786859 The myth is that it's only four.
Sometimes, we just need to take a step back and simply see.
Welcome back, ya big lemur.
And the roller coaster of life rolls ever forward, screaming out of a plunge to climb once more. And if we're lucky, maybe there will be something unexpected to excite us up ahead.
Have a great day, everybody.
Creatives are the strongest of us. A factory worker can get sick of his job, doing the same thing over and over again, and it takes strength to continue monotonous work. But that's just it: it's just work. A pattern. A mold. Creatives are different because they are the ones who make the molds. They are the dreamers; traveling deep into the discourse of a human brain and pulling out something beautiful. They are the ones who question what is and what is yet to be. They create the future, while most of us are just content to play with the tools and toys they create.
A creative is a god.
They shape the world. They create life. They bring feeling to paper. They give joy to words. They breath life into an abyss. They are the ones who work tirelessly for every single brush stroke, key press, or bow draw. They are the ones who battle with the world around them. They challenge everything. They are the gods of creation, meaning. Purpose, to a lesser extent. It's a lonely to be a god, because all of your friends are just extensions of yourself.
~ Chapter: 13
Truly. Here is a man who understands art.
Who has made a testament of art, to art.
A solipsistic piece, in its very essence.
A lonely star in the deep dark night.
Existing as a blink of absolute beauty.
The nature of the very universe.
And it is that we try to capture in our vision, our comprehension, our art.
Art is the manifestation of the world through the filter of experience and skill of an artist.
To express our thoughts of the world in any form, is art
Some is beautiful and vivid, others lifeless, and cold.
Art is the human expression, a voice calling through the endless void.
The artist, the pinnacle narcissist in the beautiful dance of the universe, so absorbed in its mighty gown, it dances arrogantly upon the floor, a solo.
For they dance tirelessly in robes unparalleled, across the floor of the grand ballroom.
And the people cheer, enraptured are they by the dance.
But the dance must end, some gracefully fade into the crowd, others abruptly and awkwardly, having run out of dances to dance, clinging awkwardly to the limelight, wishing to forever be the dance that has been.
But they aren't.
And everyone must go home, carriaged through the stormy night, leaving the dancer alone upon the floor, trying again and again to dance that most beautiful dance.
Artists, particularly hate the rain you know, it drowns out everything, the music, the time drift off in the sound of rain.
Rain cares not for the dance, nor the dancer upon their lonely stage.
They how very much hate to walk home in its company, for its very cold and lonely, so much so many artists cannot bring themselves to leave their abode's.
I think they have spent to much time dancing and not enough watching.
I rather like the rain.
To watch it is to see the true face of the universe, nothing is more inspiring.
You can spend you're entire life dancing alone on the ballroom floor, trying to capture that beauty.
But no matter how long you do, never will you know a beauty that is like the dance of the rain.
Art is reflection.
Never forget that it's merely a facade.
The entire universe is a dance, that is all our inspiration, and our eventual conclusion.
If you find you have no more inspiration.
Remember to live the world you're in.
Even if it must someday end, take a little dance in the rain.
Okay, I gotta ask. where'd you get the picture?
For a moment I thought it might depict the Bacchanalia, but I think there are probably too many clothes for that...
Also, an entertaining read, very glad you did it.
Routine car maintenance involves oil changes every 20,000 miles or 3 months, using the headlights at night, and shifting gear when on steep inclines. Fuzzy creatures do best with friends. Cast Magic Missile on the Darkness.
Spider Georg is an outlier and should not have been counted.
Everyone should read this, and I daresay everyone will need to at some point.
To join in the chorus - yea. This was nice, and resonates even as one whose output is comparatively meager.
Do not shout into the void.
Speak to it tenderly. Reunite with a lost lover.
Simply be.
This was heart wrenching, honest, deeply personal, beautiful and exciting in a strange way...
Good to see you back skirts.
Well, this is certainly a lot more thorough and, uh, direct than Daring Dam.
... Will Cyan Sings be heard again?
Fuck.
You think I wanted a dick-slap of mortality?
So, for once I'm going to forego the typo hunt, and just say that, as an artist who's gone through ennui...
This just did nothing. It feels like an echo chamber that's unhealthy for every character involved, it builds up to a moral that's incredibly predictable for anyone who's experienced this and is (I'd assume) somewhat crushingly depressing to anyone who hasn't yet experienced it, and it paints the entire experience of being creative as a self-destructive and ultimately meaningless cycle of falling deeper and deeper into total worthlessness on every level.
Would probably prefer actual writer's block to the Block Party.
Ah, you are (not) alone. There are no answers here, only compassion. Couch your desperation in companionship.
7788436 You have it both right and wrong.
You say that you'd prefer artist's block to the Block Party. But they are one and the same. It is not somewhere you want to go, but rather, it's somewhere you inadvertently stick yourself. A cage for the mind. And that's the trick: none of it is real.
The "echo chamber" is where you're right. "Luna" says it herself: there was no invitation. Luna did not invite you here. You invited yourself here. Every person you meet here is a proxy, a construct of your self-aggrandizing imagination, and their only purpose is to inflate all of your fears, your doubts, your misgivings. They misdirect you from the truth: that everything you're experiencing, you have created for yourself. Luna did not make the echo chamber. You made the echo chamber. And you put Luna there to make it feel like the echo chamber is real. It's all a delusion of the self.
The "story painting creativity as self-destructive and meaningless" is where you're wrong. You say that this story posits that artistry is just a cycle of worthlessness. But you've conflated artistry with the Cycle. So says the story, the Cycle is not artistry. The Cycle is the Block Party.
The Block Party is not like Alcoholics Anonymous, because unlike AA, The Block Party is not the bridge of rehabilitation that takes you from alcoholism to normalcy. The Block Party is alcoholism itself.
You're right to not want to go to the Block Party. You shouldn't want to go to the Block Party. It's like jail; you don't go there, you end up there. If you find yourself there, it's because you did something wrong. And your only goal from thereon is to leave it.
Rarity woke up when she realized she was actually alone at the Block Party. There was no Rara, no Donut Joe, no Vinyl Scratch, no Luna. There was only Rarity.
Heart-wrenchingly beautiful.
Well, this hits unsettlingly close to home...
I think I need to the part where I do things. Tried again recently (If one were to find my art blog, they would see I abandoned the Inktober challenge after two days,) and need to try again, but routine is just so comfortable right now.
This will make me think about stuff.
7788758 Most of your points are true, and I acknowledge that. However, two counterpoints...
1. 'You say that you'd prefer artist's block to the Block Party. But they are one and the same.'
Far be it from me to make assumptions about someone's subjective experiences, but I can personally attest that no part of the atmosphere depicted in this story matches my personal experiences with writer's block. Not all of us construct elaborate mental parties where helpfully concise abstract representations of various aspects of our personality vie for our attention. From my perspective as someone who only gets to deal with boring old disembodied lack of motivation, the Block Party is not artist's block. It might be for other people, but to me it's not.
2. 'The "story painting creativity as self-destructive and meaningless" is where you're wrong. You say that this story posits that artistry is just a cycle of worthlessness.'
Again, subjective experiences. Two people reading the exact same words can come away with different ideas. The only way either of our interpretations is given any more validity than the other is if one of the most famously cryptic and non-communicative authors I've ever heard of comes down from above and confirms which message they were trying to convey.
I will admit your interpretation is far less pessimistic than mine, of course. Of that there can be no doubt.
Yeah, musicians block here. This was therapeutic.
7786633
lmao i'm up to 800+ now
7789144
Fair, and I'll concede that. My mistake was using "you're right/wrong" instead of "I agree/disagree". I'll amend my post to correct this.
That being said, it is certainly interesting to think about and worth discussing.
I never posited that the Block Party is a universal experience; I meant it within context of the story. Me saying "the Block Party is the same thing as writer's block itself" is the same thing as me saying "the sun revolves around the earth in MLP:FIM". It's true to the universe at hand, not our universe as a whole.
Furthermore, it's not meant to be reflective of your experience, it's meant to be reflective of the author's. Your perception of writer's block is your own, and it's not currently up to debate, since it's not what's being put on show. The story isn't meant to challenge your perception of it, it's meant to act as a lens into which you peer into the author's perception of it, and their philosophy on how to handle it. Naturally, there's a very high chance that it won't mesh with what you perceive to be writer's block, because the story isn't about you.
If you don't relate to the story, that's fine, but that's another topic. Our discussion is not about how you relate to the story. Our discussion is about how, in your words, the story "paints the entire experience" of writer's block.
I feel like the reason why I have a more optimistic perspective on it is because I tried to incorporate the context of the piece's existence to deduce the author's intent. Specifically: why it was created, and the author's state of mind when creating it. This isn't stuff we can know for certain, but it's stuff we can guess at based on their actions.
What we do know for certain is the following:
— The author is coming out of a months-long hiatus, with the appearance of wanting to write again.
— At the end of the story, Rarity ultimately woke up and returned to performing her art.
These two facts clue me into the likelihood that the author is themselves optimistic—or at least trying to be—about their return to art; I don't think the story could possibly have ended the way it did, or be posted at the time it was, if they weren't.
Sure, sometimes artists create art that's contrary to their true feelings at the time. But I'm sure we can agree that this particular author is quite unsubtle about his penchant for self-indulgence.
7790342 Building from that, I suppose my pessimistic approach is more grounded in the fact that the only character I was actually able to relate to was the author of the Shadow Spade series, who's depicted as a caricature of nihilism with no motivation to do anything. But since his experience reads like a cartoonish exaggeration of something superficially similar to my own experience, it comes across as very preachy and overdone and deeply devaluing of his entire career and what aspirations he used to have (which, as an aspiring professional author, is very disheartening to me).
It's not helped by the fact that he's the only dream-construct written with enough depth that he seems like a real character, which is why I didn't immediately twig to them all being constructs; I just thought Donut Joe and Rara were flighty, superficial nothings who were just shoved in to provide a weak counterbalance to the nihilist approach to creativity.
In all, I'd definitely say that my personal bias and struggle to find a character to actually relate to (you'd think I'd have stopped trying to do that with Skirts' work) strongly skewed my perception of the story's overall tone and message.
Very touching and thoughtful. Well done.
Everything we experience is merely a construct of our own minds, a small pool of illusory light in the vast darkness of the unknown. To create is to make that pool larger by force of will alone, to push back the boundaries of the gulf of nothingness, and become more than you were before that act.
This story was beautiful, Skirts. It captures so well the exhilaration of creativity, and the soul-crushing heartache and fear experienced when it fails. And it then it gives hope without implying guarantees. Well done, dude. And thanks.
durandal.dnsalias.net/imgur/fightclub.jpg
7786478
But it's her main concern.
Deeply resonant and insightful. Thank you for sharing such a personal meditation on the nature of art and its creation with us.
This hit so close to home. I have been struggling with my own creativity as a musician for the past 3 years (I haven't written a single song in that span of time). I feel like this could have been pulled from my own mind. I don't suppose you might revisit this concept with other members of the poniverse? I would love to see this story expanded upon.
Thank you, Skirts! Thank you so, so much.