Phoenix Storm felt as if she had lived a wonderful life. She had a caring husband and wonderful son, and other than the fact her son rarely visited or wrote to her everything was perfect in her world.
However, a letter from her son inviting her to Ponyville for a celebration provided the perfect opportunity to not only see him again, but also to finally meet the mare that stole his heart. Little did she know that this was no ordinary celebration and would have to relearn everything she knew.
Written for Pride Month 2021, and is my official "coming out" story. As such, if you find it in your heart to help trans people across the globe, you can donate to the Transgender Law Center here.
Chapters (1)
10873391
I have no clue, hope you enjoyed it...
10873393
Anything queer, everything trans gets a lot of un
merited downvotes. My own stories got them, don't feel bad about it. See it as a sign that your work is meaningful enough that someone wants to shut you up.
10873397
This happens every year, sadly. People show their true colours and downvote-bomb LGBT stories
It's very sad, really. After all, love is an emotion, not a political statement.
10873408 That's... counterintuitive when you think about it.
10873422
Especially since MLP is built on themes of love and acceptance.
I find stories like this to be heart warming cause while I'm not trans myself I do know someone who is even though we kind of fell out of touch before that
10873408
Love isn't an an emotion only but a choice as well, I'm contradicting you just building more on your statement.
Loved the story its was a fun read.
Congratulations on the feature box! It's well deserved!
10873393
10873397
10873408
10873422
It's the same crew that pitched such a fit about pro-nazi stories getting the boot. They like to share the stories between themselves to collectively downvote it for no reason other than "Trans evil!" You'll also see a bunch of downvotes on your coments but rarely ever will they actually reply and reveal themselves. Take it as a point of pride that you were good enough to get their attention. Racist bootlickers, the lot of them.
Eh, in my understanding the thing behind the downvotes is most likely the opaque line of "preachiness" most of the opposition really focuses on, as can be seen by the other Pride-themed stories that got featured recently not having nearly so many downvotes.
Right in the summary, it marks itself as the author's notice of "coming out". The sole purpose of its existence as far as the summary is concerned appears political messaging for active acceptance of the author's life choices. Not just the general political movement, the summary makes it out to be looking for personal affirmation.
Need I remind you where this fanbase started? 4chan is rather infamous for its anonymity obsession. Nearly everyone in that rather sizable part of the fanbase is going to immediately look at this as egotistical attention-whoring and go so far as to downvote it.
Had the summary not included the bit about it being the author's "coming out"? I imagine half the downvotes wouldn't be there. Because making a political point of your personal life has alot more going against it than just "bigotry".
People come here for stories about cute ponies. Not political screeds, not relabeled excerpts of author's lives, ponies.
(Edit: To be clear, I'm not one of the downvotes, I'm just commenting on the matter fast someone who actually bothers to occasionally look at those parts of the Internet to be able to talk about the few outlier opinions I have.
Because I really, really don't care for the weird "agree-off" most of the "Left-wing" spaces have, if I post something it's going to be damn near universally critical of opinions I see as common around me.
And for some reason only the "Right-wing" spaces actually allow habitual dissent like that. I have gone ham on fire and brimestone idiots. So many times. And even when they're the moderators, nothing)
This was so beautiful and sweet! Bravo, you and Cloud were both very brave, and I applaud you!
Plot is kinda there and meh but I like the world building, dialog and characters a lot.
10873776
Thanks. I can already see the downvote brigade have hit you as well.
10873875
Well said. It's quite sad that fans of a show that conveys messages of love and tolerance for those different to ourselves have somehow utterly failed to grasp said message, but we shall not let them beat us.
This may vary from reader to reader, but I couldn't help but notice how much you love to use long, complex sentences. Those are somewhat hard to read, and when it's dialogue it comes off as very clunky. Try to re-read your story before publishing. If you having a hard time reading dialogue you know it needs editing.
Narration also can use a bit of trimming.
Also, a lot of telling vs. showing. I'd sure love to see Stratus doing things rather than hearing about it from other ponies.
This heavy sentence is just... Why it exists? It's big and heavy, it spells out the obvious. I'm not sure about other readers, but I cringed.
If every citizen has to donate, shouldn't we call it a 'tax'?
When those who are on minimal wage have to pay exactly the same tax as the rich ponies? Yeah, no. It's not even the same percentage. This kind of thing is exactly what makes people tick.
Why use 'dynamic' here of all places? The line would sound a lot more like AJ (and a lot more natural) if you dropped the word.
Oh, this is a massive cringe. He is a wonderbolt-tear flier who can match Rainbow Dash? Why not just find a replacement for Rainbow from a reserve, like reasonable ponies? Why the whole world bends over backwards in this case for Stratus to shine?
Ah. Put as little effort as possible to bring your mom the big news and then be furious with her when she is worried. The best tactic, the mark of a true adult!
Wow. Just WOW!
Sorry, no. This text needs a lot of work on all levels.
Well this brewed up quite the shit storm didn’t it? To be clear, I have not read it, and don’t intend to read it for the sole purpose that I don’t really read stories like this, ‘this’ meaning one shots, unless they are comedic. Something tells me this isn’t supposed to be funny, but the comment section sure as shit will be. For the record, I don’t have a problem LGBT stories existing. I will not critique this story as I don’t know what the contents are. Imma just sit back and watch. I am a neutral spectator in the nightmare that will be this comment section and I’m excited for the ensuing arguments that may come. Have my pity like though. I do kinda feel bad for you because this is gonna keep popping up in your notifications with comments you’re likely not gonna want to read for potentially weeks. Have my pity like
10874080
That 2bit "tax" was actually an Andy Griffith Show reference, I threw it in there to see if anyone would get it.
The section about business and the economy was showing how things are under Twilight (and worldbuilding)
Sorry you didn't enjoy the story, however, I do appreciate you took the time to actually read all the way through and give a full critique instead of "oh look it is a trans story so lets downvote bomb it!" like what happened when I first published it. Take care!😁
10873938
A great many peoples very existence is...political. In speaking of politics there is a element even assumption that you can...turn off your politics. But if you arent what the world, your country, or a random group of strangers want then...well? Or can bare to look at...?
What can you do? When a group of folks want to ruin your day? For nothing but your...?
Let alone that politics itself is in every action we take. Its in so many ways woven into who we are as much as the choices we make. From soceity and...beyond.
Ps. Buzz anyone?
Pps. This is largely addendum that people I think speak on...how daily actions, from society, and folks (groups alike are political) This is largerly ignored under the belief that people should just...shut up and be quiet? But, what are you saying when you tell people to be silent? To not have a voice?
That last bit is not about you more a general hash of words.
10873938
go outside. touch grass
10874221
I'm happy to provide, I hope it was helpful.
Better luck with your next story!
10874346
Everyone are affected by politics. Pretending you're 'more political by nature' wins you no favors.
If an author wants to make some sort of statement through a work of fictions, there are ways to do it. Morphile just pointed out that most authors on fimfiction (and on the Internet in general) are doing it poorly.
10873875
10873408
10873397
A downvote in general means nothing more than 'I don't like this' or 'I disagree'. Making such a big deal out of a downvote is childish. Also it's worrying how often people are raging against the empty void instead of discussing the story they're commenting on.
This was sweet! I’m happy for you!
:)
10874482
I would agree on the downvotes, save for two things. First, the sheer number of votes when compared to every other story in the feature box (both up and down) says that people are using them to express a political view far more than as a statement on the story itself.
Second, I watch this pattern of mass downvotes happen on pretty much every openly trans story especially if the story makes a statement about fighting back against oppression.
Congratulations! That was a sweet coming out story, it made me smile!
p.s. Why isn't this in Transgender Bronies group ?
10873969
Yeah, but I don't count the votes I count how many people have read the story
10874510 thanks for the tip
10874529
The thing is, I don't know what that number actually means. Did I count just for clicking to the story, without having clicked the chapter to actually read it? How about after I've posted this comment? How about the people who also didn't read it, but gave it a thumb anyway for political reasons?
10874529
Same.
I liked it, but I do feel the story suffered from being so short. Too much new history shoved into our face as things we should long since already know about....but were never told. Too much telling, not enough showing, so to speak. Instead of TELLING us, "Oh this is a thing now and here's how it happened in as few words as possible", it would have been better served to get into a little history first. To build things up a little more.
It feels like there should be like 3-4 chapters beforehand that I was supposed to have already read, before this one.
Also: Congrats on coming out.
Congrats on the feature, well earned and it's nice to see Trans Pride up there as an Enby myself. That being said, not sure if I'm a fan of the story itself, it felt... short, like something was cut off. I believe someone else said this, but you spent too much time on character history and not enough in the present y'know?
10874482
What do you mean by railing against the void?
Being depressed and not knowing how to deal? A lack of the ability to convey feelings? A feeling of sucidual ideation? Then, what does it mean to police people that equally so want to express those feelings? When they have no other outlet? Naturally a fiction site is not...ideal. Whos to say that all people grew to be healthy and able adults that know...what to do in those situations?
This does not excuse cruel behaviour. But if the world could be a better place? Should it not be from a place of wanting a better world? And asking how people get to the point where they hate other people? Becauese sure its just dislikes? But can it also be said that this is a genuinely a reaction by anonymous folks that do not like, Trans, gay, and...probably woman? That inspite of innocent dislikes can be traced back to very real and harmful behaviour.
Aka...sociological problems that bleed into everyday fanfiction. People are more then, people who read fanfiction. Which all the comments on this site prove. We are all people that exist outside of this space. That effects how we interact (if we do at all...) in truth a great many people need help. But...rarily if ever get it.
10874570
The votes are a lot of times people who haven't read the story as a whole but just for no reason it seems to me.
10874826
That has basically nothing to do with what I said. It's also not entirely correct; they downvoted as a proxy for downvoting the entire concept of trans people. Let's hope none of them realize that the "trans panic" defense is still on the books...
10874966
Technically it does, the trans heart for the cover picture cues in the reader. The heart and the tagging was a bit of a clue.
10875055
Yeah, I was taking issue with the "no reason" part. And also my original comment was about not knowing what the view count actually means and therefore being unsure that your method was even valid to begin with, so you completely forgot to have a segue back to the original topic of "literally anything remotely relevant to the story".
Don't know why there's so much drama over one story but anyway...
I really liked this, especially the ending with the poem. Almost got a little teary-eyed, ngl 🤣.
Regardless of what anyone says, you did a good job.
writing self indulgent stories is good actually
No, Lmao
10874623
+1 to everything.
I like the story, but I feel that something is missing that would make it even better.
A few chapters explaining the 'how' of the many things that happened without the mother's knowledge would've been perfect.
I upvoted because fuck the haters. Fuck cops be gay do crime
This story has its heart in the right place, but it needs a lot of work. There are big problems with run on sentences, and over-use of accented dialogue. Accented dialogue is fine in moderation, but with the levels it is with Applejack here, it drags down the pacing, making it harder to read. There is also a lot of long exposition dumps, telling us what's going on in detail. Let the audience figure things out for themselves, and relate these experiences more to character emotions; that is to say, their reactions to unfolding events.
But the biggest problem with the story is about show, don't tell. Now, this is a general rule and not an absolute, but so often you state a character's emotions outright. What's frustrating is that you've demonstrated you can show emotions without directly stating, like:
See? These are strong expressions, and I can easily tell how up in arms Phoenix is getting. Overall, my advice would be as follows:
1: Focus on body language and non-verbal communication, instead of stating emotions.
2: Narrow the cast down a bit, giving more time to a smaller number of characters to develop in relation to one another.
3: Consider what theme you're trying to express with this story. Throwing multiple ideas in a blender doesn't work without much progression, so you can focus on how you're getting the point across.
Keep writing, and perhaps look on youtube some basic dos and don'ts of creative writing. I recommend the youtube channel "Hello Future Me" for this purpose. Take care :).
10875767
^ THIS!!!
Actually....following up on what Mystic Mind stated, I think a large part of why this failed, was due to the all the stuff on being Pro-Herd (Polyamory), which had all these complex relationships that SHOULD have been fleshed out beforehand. This reads as a Sequel and NOT as a Stand Alone Story. If you JUST made this a Coming Out Story, WITHOUT all of the Polyam stuff that would have kept things more simple, easy to follow, and given a great little Coming Out Story.
An this is coming from someone who is in multiple different Polyam Relationships.
So I'm not against the inclusion of Herds (An allegory for Polyam), merely that there wasn't NEARLY enough content to support them.
TL:DR the inclusion of Herds as an Allegory for Polyamory makes this overly complicated, leaving out too much context, and just makes things more confusing. If it was JUST a story about how the Mane 6, Cadence (and possibly Shining Armor), this would have been a very nice Coming Out Story.
If you REALLY want to shove in stuff about Herds, ESPECIALLY with Complex Relationship Dynamics, created a chapter BEFORE this to SHOW how everyone got there.
Tranny-copter
10876469
Oh?
Brony Fandom: Love and tolerate.
Also Brony Fandom: 👎
The hypocrisy is stifling.
10873397
Becoming Who She Is 69 upvotes, 24 downvotes
Crash Blitzkrieg 15 upvotes, 4 downvotes
She Rings Loudly For An Audience Of One 38 upvotes, 13 downvotes
Falling In Love Again 212 upvotes, 74 downvotes
Dusk To Twilight 93 upvotes, 37 downvotes
Lies We Tell Ourselves 66 upvotes, 37 downvotes.
Blueblooded Bluebell 411 upvotes, 39 downvotes
It is not anything resembling a general rule. This story very much has something particularly unwanted about it, as shown by having a quite sizably higher downvote ratio, and larger number of downvotes total than any of these other examples that are largely well under 2:1 up:down. Blueblooded Bluebell has been in the feature box several times, has nearly four times the upvotes, and under half the downvotes.
Going down the story lists of the Transgender Bronies group linked, very few are downvoted like this. To go over three pages of the MtF folder of the Transgender Brony (as such is the largest category for *reasons*), this appears an exhaustive list of stories with over 20 downvotes and a ratio worse than 40% downvotes:
Dysphoria of a Transmare 8 upvotes, 20 downvotes; first comment has zero downvotes and establishes problem being excessively paint-by-numbers approach.
God Bless This Union 59 upvotes, 45 downvotes; Author deleted three comments that presumably contained some of the reasoning, leaving only their declaration of "transphobia"
Her True Self 20 upvotes, 27 downvotes; second comment, same user as the first, brings up failure of basic Ponyfied grammar, and other comments complain about the grammar structure
Hearts In Harmony 12 upvotes, 21 downvote; Story is longer-form, but is a crossover that, by the comments, is basically throwing the other series' established norms in the trash for low-level interpersonal drama
Closeted Pride 33 upvotes, 24 downvotes; literally zero comment downvotes, comments include one stating that it doesn't "feel" like a story but rather a near-exhaustive list of "pride" subjects.
Finding Destiny 23 upvotes, 75 downvotes; "Rhyme has always felt out of place in the world. for on the inside, he was actually a girl. one day he tells his family that he wants to be a girl. They accept him yet a drunk driver runs into the family and kills everyone but Rhyme." Standard Grimderp Brigading
In My Head 53 upvotes, 47 downvotes; Finally another example of my presumption of this story's downvotes, as it has OC, AU, and "Other", sharing the summary's exclusive focus on the transgender drama and having zero attachment to the show, with noted bewilderment in a comment at ponies in cars.
Shining Armors Confession 21 upvotes, 45 downvotes; Comments note both terrible grammar and bizarre nonchalance about the topic.
Rose's Broken Soul 20 upvotes, 48 downvotes; Read the summary, weep at horrid grammar.
So, in summary: The heavy downvotes appear to center on other story elements like ridiculous darkness, come from terrible technical skill at writing, or arise from being near-solely political screed. The general body of trans-focused stories does not have anywhere near as bad a ratio as this one, they tend to be below a 3:1 up:down ratio.
10876311
I have to agree. This would be a nice coming out story, but the different plotlines thrown in at random times made the story feel disjointed, and at times I didn't see that this was a character coming out as trans. I also kind of feel for the mother here, because she is expected to take this in stride, when it opposes some of her moral views by the next day. It would make more sense if they gave her at least a couple days to come to terms with it, and I feel that she was very accepting for having her world flipped around. The poem at the end was sweet, and so was the general themes about love and acceptance, but it feels more like the rest of the cast is pressuring Phoenix Storm into accepting this in a fairly short time and attacking her when she expresses her confusion. It makes me feel sorry for her, instead of sympathetic to Cloud's plight, especially as we don't see Cloud struggling with this or how to tell her mother. There was some unnecessary world building added on, and I just feel like this would work better as a two chapter story rather than a one-shot. I would really like to see a more developed relationship between Cloud and Phoenix Storm, but aside from some of the problems I mentioned, this was a heartwarming story.
10876502
Another issue is that there's no pre-existing framework that you are referencing, which makes it a lot harder.
If you're going to shove a lot of new stuff in at once to the reader, the easy way to make it better is to rely on other stories that have come before. Like if it's about Time Travel, you could reference something like Doctor Who, even if it's NOT a crossover for Doctor Who. You could also use it to make sense of "Bigger on the inside, than outside"
But you don't reference anything for the Herds. You just introduce complicated relationship dynamics with multiple herds and polycules shoved together. Which also makes it seem more preachy. Not to mention will makes things noticeably more confusing for people who don't know much about Polyam. Heck I'm in multiple polycules and I STILL didn't fully understand and get all of the crazyness of the various different relationships, including how they combined but were also separate.
But...it's also kind of misleading Summary. You say it's a "Coming out as Trans", but it's just as or probably even MORE about Herds/Polyam. I got waaaay more info on Polyam, than I got of the Trans character an their journey. Heck first thing we get is NOT her being Anti-Trans, but instead just "Traditional" and "Anti-Herds". LOTS of talk about Herds, before you even HINT at Trans* stuff. Plus stuff with the GF was kind of confusing, as hard to tell how much of that might have been Code for "This is your son doing things as a Woman".
Also, with the way it's written....it just doesn't really feel or read like "This is my PERSONAL coming out story". It sounds nothing like a memoir or biography. Unless you somehow introduced your Mom to multiple different polyam relationships at once, while also coming out as Trans, and how you were in multiple different Polyam relationship groups at once. Along with your Mom just almost magically changing her opinion in less than 24hrs about both Herds AND Trans* stuff. Which seems INCREDIBLY unlikely.
Now if this was instead, you saying, "Hey I'm Trans*, and I wanted to tell a Trans* story to reflect this", it would have be better to focus on that. That or give a chapter dedicated to JUST the forming of these herds. This just feels like halfway through a story
You rushed this story too much on what you wanted to Say & Write....and not enough on how you would ACTUALLY write the journey to that end.
In a somewhat related example, people really didn't like the Avatar The Last Airbender Movie. Partly due to the time restriction, where too much was TOLD and NOT SHOWN. Which lead to it not feeling anywhere near as fulfilling and just felt like tons of info shoved at you with little to no content. Just a bunch of facts, rather than understand different individuals as people.
10873938
100% this. Well said.