Pony Fanfiction Thread

So according to the tropes page, in the Chatoverse version of TCB, Ponies go to Heaven before being reborn in Equestria once more, which is denied to humans. Obviously, it's her going on the Humans Are Bastards again, but let's approach reincarnation and the afterlife from a different perspective: Tibetan Buddhism.

They don't go to heaven on death. When they die, they go to Bardo, the intermediate state between death and rebirth (as do ALL beings, not just those with magic but let's stay on topic). Their souls are dazzled by visions of heaven and paradise (in Buddhism, though, it can run from anywhere to visions of Buddhas to imagining being tormented by demons), but in reality this heavenly glory is nothing more than an illusion, and by failing to recognise it they're still tethered to the physical world and worldly attachments, thus being trapped in a state of Samsara. In Buddhism, reincarnation is a bad thing: rather than returning to Earth to enjoy life again, we're still trapped in the physical world, and too caught up in trivial attachments to things to realise we're basically rats in a Skinner Box. However, if one realises that they're only imagining these visions of Buddhas and bodhisattvas and demons during the Bardo state, they can become enlightened and escape the cycles of Samsara, thus achieving Nirvana.

Bardo and Samsara in TCB are metaphors for megalomania and hatred. Rather than worldly desires tethering them to reality, their othering and imperialistic condescension towards humanity creates an atmosphere of destruction, hypocrisy and hatred that harms the very beings they in their delusion believe are "saving", all reinforced by the propaganda that they're the only ones who are "lucky" enough to be reborn and going to "Heaven". Just like realising that the sights of Bardo are nothing more than hallucinations enables one to be liberated from the cycle of death and rebirth, it's through realising these delusions of grandeur are exactly that and are harmful rather than benevolent can they break free of their hatred and prejudice.

Heck, this would make a fantastic idea for an original work in itself, not just MLP fanfiction.

edited 7th Apr '17 6:50:11 PM by SantosLHalper

If I remember correctly, they also have to face judgment from the God of Death himself about what form of reincarnation they're fit for as well, if they're to be reincarnated.

He has white stones and black stones. Every white stone represents every Good deed and the black stones.... well, you get the idea.

Afternoon At The Summit: Chapter 5 "Monkeying Around" Live

edited 10th Apr '17 1:03:05 PM by God_of_Awesome

Here is the introduction to my review of the first chapter of Tobias Drake's "Single Point of Failure". Why am I just dumping the introduction here without the rest of the review? Because this introduction is pretty long so I want to get it out of the way before I post my even longer review. So. Enjoy and please tell me if I did anything wrong or right. Don't worry. I won't bite.

''Alright, I'm doing it. I'm finally fucking doing it. I'm finally doing a review. So. So! SO! Let's start with some background. The story that I'm reviewing is called "Single Point of Failure". "SPF" takes place in the universe of the popular children's show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the fourth generation of the MLP franchise. Now, when I say "popular children's show", I mean it in the sense that it's not only popular among children. It's a widely-spread perception that a inordinately large part of the fan-base of a children's show featuring pastel-colored horses are, well, anybody but children. Teenagers, college students, grown-ass adults- all of these demographics have not a little part of the demographic that enjoy the show. That includes the writer and your reviewer. Now, you may be asking, why is that? Why is a children's show popular with people of all ages?

(Shrugs) Hell if I know. This is shameful for me to admit it but for a fan of the franchise, I've never actually WATCHED a full episode of the show. My first experience of the franchise is with a Youtube video that was a crossover with Ace Attorney called "Turnabout Storm" and I mostly watched it because I'm an Ace Attorney fan. I've played the entire damn trilogy about, what, four or five times? Now, I'll admit, I was a bit interested in MLP after "Turnabout Storm" because, well, I guess...it seemed entertaining? I can't remember particularly WHY I got into MLP in the first place but I do remember kinda hating it for a couple of months before I finally gave in to "the black sorcery of pastel-colored horses." Look, I was a strange kid!

But enough about me. Let's talk about the writer, Tobias Drake of Colorado, United States. Mr. Drake, according to his accounts, was actually a very unlikely convert to the Herd. Apparently, Mr. Drake had been anti-Brony for years, making "cracks about their masculinity because that's what folks did" and, as he admits, for no good reason. Now, to T. Drake's credit, he does have a rep around the myriad threads of TV Tropes as an ardent feminist, defending all sorts of things from Pumpkin Spice to Sailor Moon to even the friggin' Tinkerbell movies. He also admits how arbitrary and contradictory it is to give shit to bronies like he's a member of the Toxic Masculinity Party while he writes "entire essays about Toxic Masculinity in other threads." "I realized I was being arbitrarily unfair to bronies a few months back, but I was still hesitant to watch the show because I'd seen an awful lot of hateful, antifeminist rhetoric in other threads by people with pony avatars." Fortunately, he managed to work past his prejudices thanks to the help of the popular webseries, Death Battle, a series where two characters from two different franchises fight each other because people REALLY want to see Rainbow Dash fight Starcream and Luke Skywalker blow up Harry Potter's' head. Mr. Drake had seen the Death Battle episode where Pinkie Pie faced off against Deadpool, the Merc with a Mouth and, thanks to some peer pressure from a roommate, finally began to watch the show and, apparently, found it immensely enjoyable. A day after he first posted on the MLP:FIM, he began posting reviews of the show and the Equesteria Girls movie, first very short-hand but soon, they gained momentum, becoming longer and longer with more substantial analysis, little sections about his favorite ship and even running gags!

He has been assimilated. He is now part of the Herd.

We are the Herd. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile.

Sorry. Too obvious to let go.

Cough, cough. Yeah, sorry to dedicate about 3 paragraphs to, you know, NOT the story I'm reviewing but I feel I need to provide a background. Review 101. So. A couple of days after he showed up on the Pony Story Thread*, he posted the rough draft of the first chapter of "Single Point of Failure" for proofreading, commentary, etc. He hadn't written stories for fifteen years so, yeah, he's right about needing help. And the final draft of that chapter is the one we'll be looking at, kiddies. So let's FINALLY crack open "The Calm" and see how T. Drake's first chapter of his first story holds up.''

edited 30th Apr '17 7:35:48 PM by fredhot16

Ooo, a biography. I am this close to having a Wikipedia entry.

Nope. Not even close. You're not that important to these people and no one warrants their own Wiki page just by having a biography written about themselves.

Fine, spoil my fun. You'll all be sorry when I win an Emmy for my half-competent ramblings about gay ponies!

Currently, your wiki entry just says FUCK YOU I'M A DRAGON over and over for six pages.

And a teenty, tiny disclaimer at the bottom, "Not actually a dragon."

This one wound up being a lot harder than I'd anticipated and I'm sure it needs quite a bit of work. But here it is: Chapter two of Surprise Party, drafted.

edited 12th Apr '17 10:05:39 PM by TobiasDrake

Hahaohfuck

Going to take a look at this. Also, Tobias, I've noticed something from my trying to make a review of your stories.

They're pretty damn long.

My chapters tend to be about 7-10k words. Single Point was 60k in total, which I think qualifies it as a novel. Isn't 50k the novel minimum?

Na No Wri Mo has 50k words as the goal, so yes, I'm assuming that's the minimum required for a work to be considered a novel.

Fanfic has a tendency to get excessively long, since there's no publishing limitations. Take a look at the word counts for some of the longest stuff on FiMFic. It's crazy.

I believe 40K is the technical definition of a novel, actually. Either way, you've hit it.

I had an idea for a fanfic using the TCB setting, but set in the year 1937, around the start of the Spanish Civil War. I'm trying to sort some things out here and there, such as the ponifaction process, but I want it to be a Althistory setting.

Playing it straight or playing it OSotS style?

Bit of both.

On the one hand, prepare for the adventures of Albert Einstein and Pinkie Pie! On the other hand, Equestria will be ravaged by war.

Einstein develops the theory of narrative causality? I may have to read this when you're done.

Yeah. Gonna be pretty fun to write when I get started.

Chapter Two of Surprise Party is now live.

And now it seems Twilight Sparkle herself is doing fanfic in-show.

Man, writing Surprise Party has been an adventure. It's very different from what I've written before. The idea sort of came out of nowhere.

Ever since I was a kid, one of the first things I'd always work out when I write is the resolution. Here is my conflict, now how is it supposed to end? That way, I can can work forwards from the beginning, backwards from the ending, and find how the two intersect. The ending is always flexible, of course; a sequence in the final chapter of "Single Point of Failure" involving a Lotus-Eater Machine was one of the last additions ever put into the story, because it made the conclusion flow more smoothly than what was originally intended.

"Surprise Party" is complicated, though. I think it's because it revolves around a pair that's...I guess "non-essential" would be a good word for it. I have a bunch of plans and Pinkiedash was never part of them, so there's no clear guideline in any of my outlines for how this story will effect later events or rules for what needs to happen here in order to flow into what will happen there.

So even though I have my written outlines for how this story's supposed to go, it still feels like a lot of it is improvisational and there's no telling what's going to happen to the larger plan because of it. In short, Pinkie's little excursion messed with my plans about as much as it did with Rainbow's head.

Sorry, I just needed to vent a little.

edited 19th Apr '17 12:20:05 PM by TobiasDrake

Welcome to my writing style, writing by the seat of my pants.

...

Related: I have a Raridash scene initiated by Dash even though she has zero-interest in Rarity that way. That was a beat that I had planned, just a scene I wanted to make and a vague idea where I'd put it. (What happened is Rarity and Rainbow run into Blueblood. Rainbow wants to kick his ass for what he did to her friend, but feels she needs a better excuse, quickly pretending to be Rarity's SSP. She then ends up just yelling at him.)

More unplanned little bits: Some of the other beats leading up to it, such as Cheese and Pinkie's speculation which scary villainess died to be reincarnated as a baby, were unplanned but I love 'em. (Their first choice is Zesty Gourmand and eventually conclude that Starlight Glimmer must have died in the half-hour Pinkie lost sight of her.)

Heh. Unplanned diversions can spring up like wildflowers sometimes. I've found those bits often wind up being the funniest, because the characters just run wild.

The second chapter of Surprise Party has a flashback gag where AJ gets carried away and reveals a nefarious ulterior motive to a romantic gesture that lands her straight in the doghouse. That was not in the script, so to speak. My notes for the scene were simply: AJ and Twilight behave sweetly and sappily to contrast Pinkie and Dash's awkwardness. The two "couples" share stories about each other. Either AJ or Twilight makes a comment about Dash and Pinkie being a couple. And then I had a set of prescripted dialogue lines once Pinkie starts correcting the assumption.

That's, uh...not what happened. Being out of focus for "Surprise Party" was supposed to be their opportunity to be diabetes-happy for an arc, but those two just can't quit finding things to bicker over.

edited 19th Apr '17 2:14:14 PM by TobiasDrake