Pony Fanfiction Thread

Urgh, despite several drafts, my latest is still quite rough. I need to keep it moving forward, though, so any feedback will be appreciated.

It looks like commenting isn't enabled.

Oops, sorry. I was dumb and set the drop down for the "specific people" box, instead of the "anyone with link" one. :I

Should be fixed now.

edited 27th Mar '15 8:02:33 AM by KuroiTsubasaTenshi

@Awesome: Do we even have one of those?

@JT: Maybe. The problem with bait and switching the reader to expect a dark fic is that the tags would probably ruin it and it's been done often enough to not be a surprise anymore

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In other news, I'm beginning to suspect that the red flag list was a terrible idea. Instead of provoking discussion about how stories present themselves and how audiences choose their entertainment, it mostly seems to be provoking defensive arguments about how I chose a flag wrong (in spite of the fact it was created by multiple people) and how such-and-such can be done well (even though the introduction has been re-written multiple times to emphasize that they are generalizations).

Because a lot of times, generalizations simply don't work.

Some of them, yeah hard to argue with it being a bad sign. Like typos and grammar errors in the title and/or description. Stuff pointing to a Mary Sue OC main character. Things that are just all around a sign of bad writing in general.

Others, are for more general and up entirely to execution, or simply YMMV. Maybe.... yellow flags.

Red flags are for general warnings, yellow flags are for quarantines. So a yellow flag would actually be worse.

edited 28th Mar '15 9:08:00 PM by CleverPun

Red means stop, danger. Yellow means caution, be careful.

That's traffic lights, not maritime signalling.

and which one of those do you think the average pony fanfiction reader is going to be more familiar with?

The term "red flag" comes from maritime signal flags. Using yellow in the traffic light sense would be mixing metaphors

edited 28th Mar '15 10:53:22 PM by CleverPun

Well, of course people are going to get defensive. Lots of people can't deal with thinking that their favourite work is being criticized, so even if a generalization is largely true, if their work falls into that approximate category and they think it's an exception (whether they're right or wrong doesn't matter, they're gonna pick a fight, regardless), they're going to complain. Those who agree probably aren't going to comment much (because they don't care for the subject material, since they consider it a red flag), whereas those other people are more likely to show up looking for a fight.

This is an issue that pretty much any criticism posted in public faces.

@Clever Pun: Well, this is odd. The author of a series I like just made a blog post about your story "The Elements of Excess", what he thought went wrong with it, and how he would fix it if it were his story.

Honestly, his proposed improvements don't really strike me as much better. At best, they're that oh-so-helpful "Your story would be better if it were a completely different story" suggestion.

Yes, I'm well-aware of how public reactions to critique often go (especially on the internet, thanks to the GIFT). The problem is that I had never really encountered it in this context before. I was trying to create a tool to help readers rather than critique a specific work, yet the end result was identical.

I suppose it's a new experience for me, and I was expecting something different.

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for the notice; I replied there. Short version; their analysis is apt (in some areas), but it focused on the wrong aspect of the story's failure.

@Clever: I think the problem is that red flags are so subjective that they can't be generalized. By definition, no one person is going to hold all of those red flags. The things that some people consider a red flag are going to be selling point for others. The problem the list runs into is in treating that these red flags are equally applicable to everyone, when they aren't.

As for "red vs. yellow" I don't think the source of the phrase is really relevant if the way people actually use it is completely different. I.e. while in their original use red flags meant "caution", 95% of the people who use the phrase "red flag" mean it for something stronger. Not necessarily, "I will drop the story the instant I see this", but with more emphasis than "this makes me wary".

It may not bring up discussion the way you intended, but I imagine it's still a useful tool for those who don't want to fight over it. Plus some of the flags do see detailed discussion in here, so there's that.

This.

Some things are sure signs that the story is likely to be bad. Poor grammer or typos in the description. Title isn't capitalized. Things that very very strongly hint the writer either is so new at this, hey have no idea what they are doing, or simply isn't even trying to put effort into the story.

Others are so broad, so general... you might as well just delete the list and replace it with one entry "It exists."

Like the sun. That's one of those "it exists" problems. We should get rid of it. Has anyone perfected a pony summoning ritual yet?

[nevermind]

edited 29th Mar '15 11:57:26 AM by Charbydis

Oh also...

Review of Flash Fog is up

Well, this is probably the best writing environment possible. I'm stuck at work with nothing to do, and my boss knows and is fine with that. I need to stay away from a lot of my usual websites because I'm on a work computer. The only thing I have to kill time is writing. So why can't I get anything written down?

I know that feeling.

It's a sucky feeling, isn't it? I think it means I need to take a different approach to this scene.

Well, my approach to writers block is generally "go work on something else for a while", and that's not really applicable to your situation.

I typically employ the "go do another thing strategy" too, although I've developed an alternative for when I'm really trying to push a chapter to the finish line. Basically, I just write down everything that comes to mind with regards to the scene/passage I'm trying to do. Single words, fragments, Buffy Speak, whatever. Even if the result looks like a mishmash of incoherent garbage, being able to visually fiddle with it sometimes lets me break through.

edited 30th Mar '15 10:20:10 AM by KuroiTsubasaTenshi

I just did something different. Just stumbled across the collaborative short story collection Clyde's Tales. In which Pinkie’s dad, Clyde, walks into fairy tales and fables, then completely derails the stories by refusing to hold the Idiot Ball.

I was inspired to write an entry: "Clyde and the Magic Cave".

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10eS3ChWx6GcEUd1m9J5KHoe8__haobm0zRVG5Fubl-s/edit?usp=docslist_api