War fics irritate me. It's not a matter of their quality, really: most of them are written by competent authors with a reasonable understanding of how to string together a standard fantasy/sci-fi plot. Regardless, there's something inherently uncomfortable to me in the mixture of ponies and violence. Even leaving aside the show's kid-friendly tone, Friendship is Magic's modus operandi has always been the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Even when confrontation is inevitable, foes

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I actually first heard about Mortal in the aftermath of Friendship is Optimal's release. I'd been looking at a fanfiction thread on LessWrong when someone brought up a story they were writing that was "a response to Eternal and similar fics". As Eternal is one of my favorite pieces of fanfiction, I filed the fact away in my mind and resolved to check it out when it was finally released. Naturally, I wound up not

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The summer before last, I happened upon a website named LessWrong with a focus on science and philosophy explained through a ridiculously lengthy series of blog posts. Because I'm a person with no real commitments and a tendency to read large amounts of text on the Internet, I went through most of it over the course of a summer and vowed to apply it to my everyday life.

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Do you remember Riven? That game from the nineties where you wandered around a bunch of islands and solved some puzzles? Near the end, there was a moment where you discovered a linking book to this strange-looking age called Tay. The frontispiece was a giant tree that held an entire stone fortress in its branches, and you thought you were about to discover an entire new section of the game with new puzzles and wonderful art design. And then you actually get there and discover that the

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Sometimes I get to talking with friends about the tropes in fanfiction that really interest us. Some of us love intricate plotting, some restrained and showlike character interaction, and one or two have a weak spot for HiEs. One thing most of us agreed on, though, is that we like seeing the show's characters thrown into strange and distant lands. Maybe it's because many of the show's characters can work in a variety of different unexplored contexts. Maybe it's because Equestria is a place

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