Why do we hold contests? Shouldn't we all just be satisfied with writing a good fic?

File: luna, princess of space.jpg (1.9 MB)

2nd for best 2uo!
Enjoy this conveniently packaged Tuna: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/246579/luna-princess-of-space

>>43249985
Um, since one of those list entries itself has commas, you should've used semicolons to separate all of them this time.

>>43249987
Contests are fun.

>>43249987
writers need incentive to write or else they get fat and lazy and die. theyre like hamsters or something, i dunno. giving them a contest to win is like dangling a little carrot in front of their hamster wheel

>>43249987
Because we should always strive to find a way to monetize every single hobby.

>>43249988
Oh that's a Twilight x Luna fic? I've had it in my to read for over a year. I think I'll pass!

>>43249961
I mean, I know this is a conversation-ender, but you're just wrong. Biologically men and women have basically the same body heat (+/- 0.5 degrees different or less) that itself gets equalized more by stuff like larger muscle mass in men producing marginally more heat. Maybe you touched like one guy's stomach at some point and it was cold because they were cold, and this gave you an internally wrong expectation, but the same could happen if you touched a girl who happened to have a cold stomach at the moment. Guys and girls flat-out do not have different body heats, they all have equally warm stomachs. Go around touching random guy/girl stomachs at random points (aka not after a cold shower) and you'll find their temperatures are equivalent since that's just biology.

>>43250062
Nah, girls have warmer tummies.

>>43250078
Whatever makes you feel better. It annoys me when people lie to exaggerate the object of their fetishism (women are hot = I like women = it'd be nice if their tummies were warmer = girls have warmer tummies), but I've presented the truth, and if you want to lie and pretend otherwise, go ahead. Everyone else knows you're just retarded.

You're ignoring the obvious: A woman's tummy is sexier when your child is inside her womb.

>>43249866
That doesn't mean she won't try!

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>>43249995
>fun

>>43250085
That sounds like pedophilia with extra steps.

>>43250079
Spoken like someone who has neither a girl nor warm girl tummy.

>>43249995
I did consider that, and I did consider taking out the comma (I took out the comma in "actually, we're all Jewish"), but I decided I preferred it as it is. I reject your English and substitute my own.

>>43250062
>Go around touching random guy/girl stomachs
Anon, I...

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>>43250062
>Go around touching random guy/girl stomachs at random points

>>43250153
That's how you get accurate results. I'm not suggesting actually doing it, but if you did, you would find that their stomachs are of equal temperature. As opposed to touching 1 person's stomach and deciding forever that every person of that gender has stomachs of a certain temperature. (Though I think they just outright lied when they said "not in my experience," rather than actually having any experience with it.)

These threads are supposed to be about writing fanfiction

>>43250185
We're fans of tummies and our beliefs about their temperatures are fictional.

>>43250185
This is all for my fic about Twilight going around touching ponies's tummies to see if earth ponies, unicorns, or pegasuses have warmer tummies.

>>43250185
I don't think a tummy-related fic would go over well with the crowd I write for, sadly.

>>43250185
Why do that when we can talk about midriffs and early Christian sexual theology?

>>43250195
>tummy-related fic
I have been tempted for years to write a fetish parody fic where Dash is taking a nap on a cloud and the narrator just goes on for 2k in increasingly flowery detail about her belly button. Haha wouldn't that be funny?

>>43250315
Those kinds of stories are fun. I've had a guy tell me his favourite story of mine is one where Queen Chrysalis spends two thousand words falling over herself.

Fics where—hold on one second, I need to get the door.

>>43250677
Behemoth

>>43250677
I kidnapped and raped this anon in my basement.

>>43250688
I searched for that on fimfiction and nothing came up.

>>43250704
Try foalfetch.

>>43250677
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/500819

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Remember not to give up, Anon!

>>43250833
Why give up when AI can give up for me?

>>43250896
Why give up when I can give up?

>>43250022
Based

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>new fic that's out has an AI generated cover
>take a closer look
Uh
Yeah okay

>>43251347
I'd read a body horror about a pony being slowly anthropomorphised.

>>43251366
She's got five legs man

>>43251377
Kinky.

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>>43251366
You could just do a one shot where you narrate Twilight's first time going through the mirror portal and make it a lovecraftian experience of her body shifting against her will into a freakish form.

>>43251377
I don't think that veiny purple thing is a leg...

>>43251366
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/463727/anthropomorphic

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>>43251404
That's her boot, Anon.

>>43251366
>She's got five legs
That, or she's just happy to see you.

>>43251570
>Sunset's left leg in Equestria Girls has been a dick with a boot on it this entire time
>her actual left leg is a shriveled little chicken leg the size of a fork

Given recent comments from the author, I predict a new Magic Mirror On The Wall, Who Is Mightiest Of Them All? chapter soon.

>>43250092
Is that a Power Puff Girl?

>>43251366
How about this?
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/85294/id-that-indestructible-something

Any fics with ponies learning ancient knowledge from old dragons?

>>43251708
Any fics about me kicking your fucking ass?

Oh good, another AI slop author bit the dust.

>>43251740
damn, I was hoping it was starscribe.

>>43251743
Prism Slash.

>>43251740
S

>>43250315
>I have been tempted for years to write a fetish parody fic where Dash is taking a nap on a cloud and the narrator just goes on for 2k in increasingly flowery detail about her belly button
do it. but it's from Scootaloo's perspective. and then they do the sex.

>>43251998
That's retarded. There's no way Scootaloo could fly up to a cloud.

>>43251998
>sex
ew
go away, fag

>>43251740
No, he's not banned. He just had all his fics nuked.

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>>43251740
Who?

>>43252123
That's better IMO. Means they can sit and be ashamed.

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>>43252185
Author that was in like 3 slots on the sinbox that joined last week. Pumped out like a bunch of AI generated fics at once because some people just fundamentally seem to not enjoy the creative process.

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Any fics with a mare trying to get someone to have sex with them because the mare feels bad about them working so hard and thinks they deserve it?

>>43252199
He actually had four in the box this morning. You could hardly be more obvious about using AI. The rate alone gives it away. Also, it’s more proof that Fimfic readers are retards.

>>43250677
>I need to get the door.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/450955/the-door
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/403114/passages
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/465791/vertical-vertigo
Prepare to enter the scary door.

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I'm doing it ma, I'm really doing it

>>43252601
Thank you for the horror recs. I haven't read all of these but the Mayor Mare one was really good.
I'm also looking at different thumbnails and noticing how common it is to have horror fanart of a stitched up Rarity.

Why do I torture myself by trying to get through bad fics

>>43253534
Because you're afraid of good fics.

>>43253592
No I just read all of them

>>43253594
Then go back to read the ones you haven't read in a long time until new good fics come out.

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>>43253534
Because you loathe yourself on a subconscious level. You can cure this by being consumed with hatred towards something else instead ^:)
>>43253594
Name every good fic /fimfic/

>>43253654
>Name every good fic
The ones where Rainbow Dash dies!

>>43253654
The ones where Rainbow Dash lives and kisses mares

>>43253654
The ones where the mares Rainbow Dash kisses die.

>>43253654
The one where Rainbow Dash kisses dead mares.

>>43253704
You mean this week's book club fic? The jury is still out on whether or not that one is good.

>>43252602
So much lactation porn words, wow.

>>43253534
You never know. After 200,000 words a big twist might retroactively make the story really good. Better keep reading just in case.

>>43253534
me personally? I just have nothing better going on in my life.

>>43253534
Because the author once wrote peak or what past you thought was peak before you matured became retarded/degenerated . Perhaps you’re in denial that either one of you changed. A sunk cost masquerading as loyalty.

>>43254137
>A sunk cost masquerading as loyalty.
Hey. I found my review for this week's club.

>>43254160
That’s how I feel about most club fics I finish.

>>43254215
I dunno, sometimes we like them, partially.

>>43254217
I remember everyone liking Eyes on You. Even that guy who hated Trixie to the point he misread parts of the story had a mostly positive impression of the rest of the story.

Satre's No Exit, except its about the flower trio.

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/589615/daring-do-and-the-curse-of-avarice
Exactly two months after I started writing it, the Daring Do fetish fic is now fully up, for the zero people who have a cartoon fetish but admittedly refuse to read incomplete fics.

Now that I've tasted the lustful power of writing 5,600 words in a single day, I can return to the mire of futilely grinding out 500 a day in my deadfic.

>>43254640
Nominating this for the club.

Someone from /fssbc/ come lock this guy up.
first time the demon core wasn't the right answer wtf

>>43254714
>spoiler
yeah, i think the arrowhead has a higher rank.

>>43254223
I don't like it much. It's an amateurish unremarkable fic probably written by a high schooler, and this general's reasons for glazing it elude me.

>>43254468
Who's the deserter? I like deserters, desertion is cool.

Rainbow Dash + Applejack = Toph Beifong

>>43254864
Okay Hemingway

>three slopfics hit the site in a row
Grim.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/591007/roaring-thunder
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/591003/a-tale-of-two-ponies-who-kinda-ruined-twilights-life-at-some-point-aka-eea-eternal-errors-association-neighsay-hates-this-title-but-tempest-insisted-its-accurate
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/590991/the-runt

>>43255264
>The Runt
>AI cover
>ratings and comments disabled
Kek.

>>43255271
>member since '15
>only posted a few stories in all that time.
>Suddenly post a slew of fics in the span of a week
Hmmmmm...

>>43255271
I wouldn't trust anyone using that OC as a profile pic.

>>43255472
What profile icon would you trust?

>>43255645
2D OC looking at the left frame with the Everfree in the background.

>>43255645
Thomas the Tank Engine icon
I wouldn't trust them to write anything good but I'd like, trust them in terms of being nonthreatening

>>43255264
The last two have already been nuked. First one is still up though.

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>>43256227
Justice gets served. Eventually. Probably. Knighty said if people report them they take a look.

>>43256278
I've gotten a couple genned fics taken down before only for mods to put them back up after enough whining from the authors and/or readers. It feels like all it takes for a fic to get put back up is for the author to go “nuh uh” and they consider that good enough

>>43256298
They're entirely too generous. Even if it's obviously and completely genned slop, as long as the author claims it's not, they'll keep it. The mods may as well be cogsuckers themselves.

>>43254652
Kek. Can't be any worse than the one they're reading now. At least I didn't have to write an 8k long blog post explaining the ending.

>>43255645
Pony Maker OC, of course. Has to be red with a black mane, though.

>character is obviously a self-insert for the author
>they're consistently treated the worst out of everyone
Explain.

>>43257085
Treated by whom? If by other characters, then these other characters must be assholes. If by the author himself, then maybe he just wants a challenge.

>>43256680
What if he's black with a red mane?

>>43257102
>What if he's black
I'll let you figure that one out

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How is that writing going?

>>43257564
Just passed 5k on my current chapter. Hope to go past 8k once it's over.

>>43257564
Got only a few scenes left to write and close to breaking my previous writing record.

>>43257085
Overcorrecting when trying to avoid the mary sue accusations?

>>43257085
If I'm the author then it's because that's my fetish.

>>43257869
Is that you with them sexy digits, Goose?

>>43257085
Sometimes it's written by a masochist who gets the same kind of self-indulgent enjoyment out of it as someone else writing haremslop wish fulfillment. For every power fantasy, there is an equal and opposite powerless fantasy. See: all the chicks fantasizing about being raped and abused and murdered

>>43257811
How do you write an OC that's a pathetic loser but doesn't come off as you trying to avoid making them come off as a mary sue?

>>43257943
Give them at least something positive that makes the audience want to root for them.

>>43257943
They can't come off as too big a loser. Like Rainbow Dash.

>>43257943
I don't usually write these kinds of characters, but it seems like it's a bad idea to make "pathetic loser" be entirely what they're all about, just like with mary sues and being perfect.
Sure, they're a talentless good-for-nothing, but how do they *feel* about it? Are they trying to change their situation or have they completely resigned themselves to their fate? Do they still have people who care about them or are all bridges in their life long burned?

>>43257943
claim it's autobiographical

Every character should be at least a little bit pathetic in some way if you want them to be compelling. Look at the Mane 6.

Is it weird when you can just tell an author writes descriptions like they've got a diaper fetish

>>43258065
A character doesn't necessarily need to be pathetic but flaws are common. For some stories it's possible to have a protagonist character without major conventional flaws, but then you need to change the rest of the story to have it still be compelling, and move the thematics or emotions out of the character. There are many ways to write a story.

>>43258057
I dislike pathetic loser characters more than Mary Sues.

>>43258096
That's pretty fair actually, at least having mary sues in your stories can lead to some good action scenes where they kick a metric ton of ass or situations where something else about author's wish fulfillment tickles your fancy as well.
With terminal losers you're kinda fucked if you're shit at character writing.

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>>43257943
Really, there are tons of stories with OCs like that, like the king in The Creature, or those in the variety of antagonists from The Bug in the Cave, but presumably you mean pathetic OC MCs.
For that, I was going to give the main character of CiaM as an example, but technically he's supposed to be Shining Armor.

>>43257085
Mentally ill author who hates himself for no good reason.

>>43258578
What's a good reason to hate oneself?

>>43258605
Take a look at >>43258230

>>43258610
All that cunny ruined by anonshit is truly disgusting.

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>>43257085
>Explain.
It's part of the standard Mary Sue defense. Another common thing is some form of disability or other form of impairment that can be treated as a "flaw" to prevent them from being accused of being perfect. The Mary Sue checklist and its consequences have been a disaster for original characters.

>>43257564
I've been too busy drawing fetish art of my fic that's 3x more popular than the story itself. Pic related.

>>43257564
I've been too busy the last three days, but I'm planning to knock out a few thousand words now that I've got the time. Now that I'm faster I'll be taking smaller breaks between commissioned chapters rather than a longer break once I cycle through my queue.

>>43258893
>I've been too busy drawing fetish art of my fic that's 3x more popular than the story itself. Pic related.
Nice, kek. What's a fetish story with no scenes just begging to be illustrated?

>>43258631
>generic hentaislop
>ruined by generic hentai protagonist
Eh?

>>43259238
Cunny is based and Anon is cringe. It's really not that hard to understand.

>>43258605
i mean if I only wrote AI fics I'd hate myself.

>>43260191
Fic where Luna, being autistic, gets super into trains?

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>>43260209
Nope, but you can have https://www.fimfiction.net/story/459048/natural-ones

>>43260209
>when working on the 30,000 piece Horse Lego Ultima Chima Battle Set, Luna and Twilight begin to grow close

Autism fics that are actually good?

>>43260618
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/500819/

>>43260209
gonna add this to my list of fic ideas that I'll never write but daydream about writing whenever I remember it

>>43260622
So every fic of yours

>>43260620
Alright, enough time has passed since CRV. Tell the cops I fell for it of my own free will.

I can't wait for the secret book-club tomorrow!

>>43260622
Aaand I'm done. This one didn't really leave a meaningful impression to be honest, was pretty by the numbers corruption POV-MC horror. Still, the prose was decent, even if the smut was dull.

>>43260957
Did you mean to reply to >>43260620?

>>43253654
The one where Rainbow Dash lives and kisses me

>>43261075
Scootaloo, aren't you a little young to be on /mlp/

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>>43261080
yes. yes I am

>>43260991
..yeah..

There will be a slight delay 15-30 minutes? before the anchorpost. Sorry.

>>43261501
that's what I get for actually waking up early

>>43261502
Sorry, sorry, I'll get the post out soon. But this fic is difficult for me, and some of the reasons why are such that I am not sure I want to include them in the post.

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The GLT secret crossover that even the author didn't know he was writing in,
>/FSBC/

I completely changed my opinion on the fic twice today. To start off, I'd like to address what I consider the "objective" points. Firstly, that the style is really thick. Secondly, some parts stretch for perhaps too long. Thirdly, the 5th chapter is different from the rest. Lastly, that the ending was a Choice.

1) The style we've discussed to death last week. I stand by it more than not, and I applaud the author for using it, even if it alienated a chunk of readers. You can disagree. I also disagree regarding certain elements of this style, but not enough to condemn it.
2) I will not defend the first chapter this week. It was, like parts of week 1, 33%+ too long. It would do the same thing better without the Cloudsdale trip, imo. I was growing weary of the story in that part.
3) Like, wow, I am partial to these kinds of "not apocalyptic" visions of the end times, and here the imagery with the waves clashing, the sun going out, the stars, etc. The world simply went to sleep in its eternal rest, and that part was great. Even had I disliked part 1, this would be enough to sell me on it, and I went from wanting to leave it without an updoot to immediate green button press. Also, while I have mixed feelings about how the conversations with the hallucinations/delusions were handled, the descriptions of RD and her state in this chapter were effective.
4) The ending is close to ideal. It could not be written or imagined better, and if you didn't like it, you didn't get the story. And that's fine. I'm very glad I managed to connect with the fic.
And 5) I was right and the plot was always about the mood and RD processing the end of the world.

Now, the more difficult part. I'll rant for like 5 minutes and post this, so (You) can skip this part if you only care about the fic.
I feel a connection to this story because of something else, too. It is objectively horrible on a technical level, but the amount of parallels it has to this fic is unreal, down to the ending, though I had a more typical plot there. I clearly disagree with the author about some things, but still. This makes it difficult to stay objective this week.
But there is something else. Sometime after the thing I've alluded to above, I've read Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou, also known as GLT. I've wanted to write a fic inspired by it for a long time now, and the idea has been my #1 idea for the next fic ever since. This fic, though, feels like it is approaching such similar themes that the author must've accidentally drifted onto identical thematic tracks. I remember something like this happening once before in the bookclub, but it's such a rare occurrence that I'm still amazed when the glitch in the matrix happens. Good. There's quite a lot that this fic could've messed up and still appeal to me given that.

I was this close to using a nonpony pic for this week. I'll save that for reply #1.

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>>43261522
Fucking WEW
>an open book on the table catches rds eye... so she can build a mini twilight out of books
Fucking kek, can't have actual plot show up, no no no
>turns into a twilight tulpa
>>>>the open book actually DID progress the plot
wtf, after how... boring week 1 was I was not expecting it to turn into actual schizo kino. imagine if we went 1 chapter further before the first club
>"How could I just...give up like that?" "Because you already have,"
Kino tulpa betrayal
>"We're leaving, and...we're not coming back."
>"You have to move on. Do you really want to spend the rest of you life here...here in this big, empty world...alone?"
tfw your tulpa tells you to kys
That was actually kino though. I'm surprised, but I actually really liked the 2nd half. And I think the first half being such a slog just made the 2nd half more kino. Although the Cloudsdale part really did go back to feeling like the first half, it at least had the additional layer of Rainbow's delusional visions. Aside from Cloudsdale though, the rest of the fic actually was much better about not staying in one place too long. And I actually liked the ending. Twilight threatening to just become a pile of books again if Rainbow doesn't get it together was great, and I'm glad it never really came down to it. I was also surprised that it really was just what the description said. I was speculating that Rainbow was maybe stuck in some sort of endless purgatory due to the nature of the element of loyalty. Like her spirit would never be at rest because she was so loyal to all of Equestria that without it, she will just endlessly try to find 'it' again and never move on.
I also read the huge blog about it and it didn't really change my thoughts on anything. I definitely did think she was reunited with everyone in the fields of Elysium or something, since they all vanished before her, but in the blog the author just says' lmao, nope that's just the feeling of them she shoved in her heart. I don't really think that makes much sense though, even though obviously none of this makes much sense. Why would she finally accept the calamity and then move on to her own personal world all alone? I figure either she accepts what Twilight says and then remains in the physical world alone but accepting of that and somehow finds a way to be happy. Or she accepts what Twilight says and then has the strength to leave her tulpas behind and walk through the sorry-you-missed-the-apocalypse door that sends you to where everyone else went when they vanished. Anyways I ended up liking it even though week 1 was kinda lame

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>>43261523
>I actually really liked the 2nd half.
Yes!
>the Cloudsdale part really did go back to feeling like the first half
Absolutely, yeah. That was the one bad part about the second half of the fic, but the delusions made it more interesting.
>I was also surprised that it really was just what the description said.
Yeah, the decision to play it straight and just go for the very literal ending was a little surprising, but not in a bad way. I was so ready for a clumsy ending, but no, the author actually had the guts to do what the fic wanted.
>I also read the huge blog about it
I don't, and I don't intend to. I think a story should stand on its own, and the author doing out-of-story blogposts is clumsy and awful. I mean I might sometimes read one if I'm curious, but as far as I'm concerned, they are 100% not canon to the fic and at most what I said—a curiosity.
>I definitely did think she was reunited with everyone in the fields of Elysium or something
She didn't? That's how I read it too! Whether she died-died or just passed into the afterlife in some other way, I was sure this is the "they're in pony!Heaven now". That's how I read the ending to mine, too See, this is why I don't read blogposts.
>even though week 1 was kinda lame
I wanted to like the fic and what it was doing, but after the week 1 discussion followed by the Cloudsdale part of chapter 4, I had almost given up on it. Luckily, we were rewarded in the end.

>>43261522
>2) I will not defend the first chapter this week. It was, like parts of week 1, 33%+ too long. It would do the same thing better without the Cloudsdale trip, imo
Completely agree that Cloudsdale felt like part of week 1, whereas everything else this week was very different
>The world simply went to sleep in its eternal rest, and that part was great.
Also agreed, I like the day very quickly ending once she gets home. She just watches the sun travel it's whole arc, then the stars racing to the horizon, very nice. The author says this was from Narnia or something, but I think I'm glad I didn't know that
>And 5) I was right and the plot was always about the mood and RD processing the end of the world.
Yeah, passed about ch2 it seemed like there wasn't even a mystery to uncover, just Dash's slow realization. But I definitely did not expect what we got in week 2 aside from maybe the finale of Dash leaving the world behind in some way or another
>GLT
check the blog for the fic if you haven't kek

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>>43261531
>I think a story should stand on its own, and the author doing out-of-story blogposts is clumsy and awful
I mean I'm the same way but when someone here posted that the author wrote like an 8 page blog I was curious. They mostly just explain the way they wrote the story because it was getting negative reactions from a large amount of readers. It's not important to read, but they use picrel in the blog lmao
>but after the week 1 discussion followed by the Cloudsdale part of chapter 4, I had almost given up on it. Luckily, we were rewarded in the end.
when Rainbow got the gang back together and just started flying was when I knew it was getting good

>>43261522
That was a bad story.

This week begins with authorial desperation. He at last realizes that a world with only one living being has few narrative possibilities, and those were exhausted early in chapter 1. But he is writing an opus, and to be a proper opus, the story must be weighty. He must find a way to go on.

So Rainbow Dash copes by hallucinating her friends. Gradually she forgets she's coping. Simultaneously, the author is not good enough to maintain distance between himself and her mental state. In a gross dereliction of duty, he soon writes the objects as if they're as real as she believes. When one remembers that Rainbow Dash is only ever talking to herself, her conversations become laughably nonsensical. And even this backdoor introduction of other characters doesn't alleviate our boredom. Rainbow Dash does exactly what she did before, search for others. There is still no plot or conflict, and she is still the only being with agency, so the story remains as pointless as ever.

5,000 words from the end, when something finally happened, I thought, "This feels like The Last Battle. Am I remembering right? At least something's happening." Actually, it was worse than if nothing happened. If nothing had happened, then the story would have been internally consistent. This way, it's not; nothing prepares us for or is compatible with the apocalypse. If this story is about the Rapture, why is Rainbow Dash the only pony left? Is it because Top Cunt is literally the only sinner in Equestria? (Could be.) But where's Satan? Where's the tribulation? The Last Judgment? At least Rainbow Dash makes it to heaven afterward; the vivacity of the world on the other side of the door resembles The Last Battle's description of Heaven.

Whatever. I was going to shrug and move on, but then I read the author's blog post, and that made everything so much worse.
>My story is so fucking important that I'm going to write 8,700 words breaking it down for you.
>It was obvious from the beginning that this was the end of the world, and if you didn't understand that, you're stupid.
>I wanted this story to be understandable by and applicable to everyone no matter their background, so I stole from a well-known Christian allegory.
>Rainbow Dash's fragile mind improves enough to let her go through the door, but because she was hallucinating her friends before, you should have known that all the ponies on the other side of the door are also hallucinations.
That last one particularly rankles me. I read it in exactly the opposite way: She was hallucinating before, but going to the other side of the door is transformative. The other side is brilliant and lively. It has bees, butterflies, birds, and "little furry creatures." It seems real. We should expect the ponies on the other side of the door to be real, too. I don't think the author's interpretation matches their own story.

I shouldn't have read the blog. It really offended me. Now I can't not downvote the story.

>>43261522
Alright, so we finally get to the "talking to yourself" bit. It's fine, if a bit cliche. What's worse is that we spend even more time doing the same shit as the previous chapters except now we have a peanut gallery. I feel like this should have happened way earlier in the story, but maybe that's just me getting angry thinking about how you could trim this story down to 10-15k words and it would probably still land the same for me except I would have spent 45 min on it instead of a couple hours.

Anyways, the requisite time skip finally happens in the penultimate chapter and we get some decent dialogue at the start (at least emotionally). Then we get the "move on" moment where the imaginary friends leave except not really, as Twilight sticks around to guide Rainbow through the author's literary edging session. This feels like a mistake in a sense to me, since Rainbow is now being told to let go instead of coming to that conclusion herself. You could make the argument that it is her telling herself to let go, but the author's insistence on referencing whatever the hell "further up, further in" is (from the comments it's from the Chronicles of Narnia?) makes it feel like "Twilight," now just "the books," is the voice of something bigger. It feels out of place.

I'm still not sure if I'm mad or just disappointed by the last chapter. I don't think it materially adds anything, and after scrolling through the comments (and skimming the blogpost) it seems it just made everyone confused. What's the point of hammering "you need to move on" into the reader only to turn around and go "look, all your friends are (maybe) here!" I feel this would have worked way better minus that scene and instead have Rainbow see a town or something on the horizon for her to go to, since that would actually be moving on and finding new friends/a community as what seems to be the point of the story.

At the end I'm mixed because there's a real emotional weight here buried in too many words. It was obviously a very personal topic to the author even before reading the blogpost but the execution just wasn't for me. I wonder how I would have felt if I read this back when it finished instead of now? Probably mostly the same for the style, but I was unemployed for most of 2022 so maybe I might have been more inclined to overlook it for the idea of moving on after being trapped in an awful situation. Or maybe I would have hated it all the more for trying to pull off a happy ending like that, where you just give up and get rewarded with what's implied to be a perfect life.

Sidebar: it was really funny looking through their other stories and finding it half anthro porn, half "serious" stories like this one.

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>>43261522
Despite my better judgement, I finished the fic. I also read the author's blog on it. I have some things to say.

First, the writing mostly maintains the same low quality. The pic related paragraph from Ch. 4 is especially atrocious and screams amateur writer trying to be overly descriptive for the sake of it even when the subject matter is comically mundane in contrast. HOWEVER, miraculously, once the apocalyptic cataclysm begins in Ch.5, the verbose style actually begins to work. Since this an incredible, larger-than-life event, it does actually warrant excessive descriptions of awe and wonder, and the writing works surprisingly well to convey this in particular. That was the first and only part where I was actually liking the fic for more than a single paragraph at a time.

Perhaps, all along, the author just wanted to write an apocalypse story. Except without all those boring pesky parts where you need to explain why anything happens, just the parts with the great destruction and the surviving party acting horrified and dismayed.

After reading the author's blog, I stand by this impression.

I really hate to use the term "navel-gazing", because it often gets thrown around to shut down discussion of unconventional & experimental things altogether. But in my eyes, this story deserves it. In his blog, the author makes it clear he prioritizes themes over plot. Which I think most good fiction does, to an extent. But not to this degree. He wonders why people didn't understand that the world literally did end, and RD simply needed to accept that. And at no point does it seem to occur to him that people are treating reality as metaphor because it's too vague and implausible to come off as anything else. Why did everyone but RD disappear? Why did the flood only happen when RD had searched all of Equestria? Why did the sun choose the most dramatic time to finally set? We don't get answers for any of this.

(cont.)

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>>43261573
But obviously, that's not the point. This entire scenario was just set dressing to explore how a person such as RD might react to being left all alone in the world. And I wouldn't be doing this dumb nitpicking if the fic actually did some interesting exploration, but it doesn't. It has one semi-interesting idea of RD talking to her friends in her head, and I think even that overstays its welcome. Outside of that, what's left? RD flying around Equestria and crying every chapter in a clumsy five stages of grief allusion that takes entirely too long.

And, above all else, I have one question for the story: why did this need to be an end of the world scenario at all?

If the author really wanted to tell a story about dealing with grief, why couldn't it be a more down-to-earth tale of one of RD's friends dying and the works? I fail to see what the rapture angle brings to the table, aside from just tickling the author's fancy in giving the events a grander feeling I guess. If anything, I think it takes away from the story's message.

Consider pic related, the rousing speech "Twilight" gives RD near the end. What "new people" is RD going to meet? Everyone is gone. The world has ended. In fact, what IS she going to do after she has accepted her loss, especially since the author debunks that RD actually went to some higher plane with everyone? I guess you're not meant to think about that so literally, because it was just a metaphor. A clunky metaphor that doesn't make sense within its own context. A completely unnecessary metaphor for a theme that could have been expressed in a story much more down-to-earth and much, much more concise.

I guess it's poor criticism to harp on about what you would've liked to see instead of what the author wrote. But I really do fail to see the value of the author's "literal apocalypse" angle here, and clearly so did a lot of the readers. Combined with the exhausting writing style, this is a fic I thoroughly did not enjoy.

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>>43261522
I would read another story by this author if it had tighter writing, because I did enjoy the style and I appreciate the concept. But, I still have some issues that stop from liking it. Also, the author made a blog post that spells out everything if you got confused.
>Chapter 4
Here, RD is having a Castaway moment. I don't know if this particular beat works for me. RD also feels too self-aware here. She knows Twi and the others are fake but still keeps up the game anyway. I think this type of desperation would work better if there was an explicit and long time skip from the previous chapter. That said, I did enjoy the scenes with RD and Fake Twi, and the flashback scene with RD's parents.
>Chapter 5
Now that RD has spent four chapters flying into empty houses, waxing nostalgic and feeling bad, it is time for the story to end. What does the title "Sorry We Missed You" even mean? My guess is the "we" refers to the unseen forces who popped everyone away, saying, "Oopsies, we forgot to get Blue Fast." It was very nice of them to wait until RD finished her model of grief before fully destroying the world. Or needlessly cruel, depending on who you ask. This chapter also references Narnia, but I never read that series. I do think the idea that RD uses her memories of Twi to talk herself through the situation is sweet. That's another highlight of the story for me.
>Chapter 6
I think a lot of anons here will be unsatisfied with how the story ends without answering anything. I personally wouldn't call that a flaw, because keeping the mystery unexplained can work. I just think here it comes off dry and muddled. This story is just using the scenario of "RD being the last pony in the world" to tell a story about her coping with grief and loss. My issue is that the story takes a very long-winded route to deliver this message. I wouldn't read it again, but I also wouldn't stop someone from giving it a fair shake, as I can see some appeal.

>>43261548
>This week begins with authorial desperation. He at last realizes that a world with only one living being has few narrative possibilities, and those were exhausted early in chapter 1
>even this backdoor introduction of other characters doesn't alleviate our boredom
Ah but I disagree. The story only got enjoyable when Rainbow started imagining the fic had more characters. And I don't really think it came out of nowhere either. As some in the thread like to claim, rainbow struggles to hold this fic together and even admits that in the fic when she's in the library and she realizes it should've been Twilight and not her. So after 1: flying to Canterlot and 2: trying to read, she's out of ideas and she just starts to go insane. And as you say, ultimately they don't really give her any new ideas, she just starts talking to herself while far more thoroughly exploring all of Equestria.
>Simultaneously, the author is not good enough to maintain distance between himself and her mental state. In a gross dereliction of duty, he soon writes the objects as if they're as real as she believes.
I think that was the point though. Early on when it's just Twilight and definitely still Rainbow's voice, Twilight (Rainbow) explicitly tells Rainbow that she can't know anything Rainbow doesn't because they're the same person. But Rainbow leans into the delusions and goes searching for what I imagine to be weeks or months with her imaginary friends and the author makes a point to show her physical degradation afterwards. At the same time Rainbow sulks in a corner while her friends argue behind her showing her mental degradation after being alone for so much time.
>the last battle
Haven't read it and frankly I think if you have this fic would be worse, which so far seems to be the case
>It was obvious from the beginning that this was the end of the world, and if you didn't understand that, you're stupid.
>but because she was hallucinating her friends before, you should have known that all the ponies on the other side of the door are also hallucinations.
Yeah these are dumb lol, surely the author can understand that even if both descriptions and the first half of the fic show the world empty, that doesn't necessarily mean that the world stays empty or even really ever was empty. It reads like they took their own writing completely literally and never tried to think about anything else happening. And the author just asserting that everything in the final chapter was in dash's mind is just retarded
>That last one particularly rankles me. I read it in exactly the opposite way: She was hallucinating before, but going to the other side of the door is transformative
Completely agreed. Rainbow even holds her hoof to her chest and then another hoof joins hers. It's a perfect transition for her delusions to make way for real ponies again. To say that it was just her mind being at peace or something is ridiculous.

>>43261522
This is my first time participating in the book club—or any club for that matter. It’s also my first time writing a review or summary of anything.
I re-read the entire story over the last week— I also read the entire thing for the first time over the last week.
During my re-read I made several observations. And I'd like to share some of them with you.

1. Doors. There are exactly 5 moments in this story where Rainbow Dash closes a door. And the first three are in this second chapter; Roseluck's house; AJ's parents’ room; And Rarity's room. These three moments all have something in common; Death.

Its the most obvious for AJ's parents:
>"An even larger room, the bed big enough for two, the window shutters closed and a thin layer of dust coating the furniture. She closed the door again silently."

Roseluck's being more metaphorical:
>As she drew nearer, the spot took on the familiar delicate shape of a flower, a rose, its bud awkwardly laying against the ground. Its long stem led down to a small clump of earth contained within a pot, partially cracked against the street.
>she passed the fireplace, paying no heed to the mantelpiece decorated with framed photographs of a little redheaded mare named for the flower in the broken pot surrounded by her friends and family.
I’d say that the rose in the broken flowerpot is obvious in its symbolism.

Before we move on however, I’d like to direct your attention to this part of the second passage: “paying no heed to the mantelpiece decorated with framed photographs”.
The writing here tells us that Rainbow doesn’t care about Roseluck. Not in a bad, mean-spirited way, but in the way that you don’t have any attachment to a stranger—unlike your friends.
This is going to be relevant later, so keep this in mind.
To properly explain the third example; Rarity’s room. I’m going to take a detour and talk about two other points before returning.

>>43261612
2. Unfinished business, signified by unclosed homes.
There are two other interesting observations I made during this scene.
The first is that the door to Roseluck's house "stood slightly ajar". I think that a home not being fully closed is a sign of unfinished business in life/not being unable to move on. (I’ll elaborate on that just after my next observation.)

The second is that the faucet is leaking:
>"After a few seconds, a fat, heavy drop of water collected on the faucet, then fell down into the sink"
Rainbow Dash turns it off:
>"she . . . then twisted it the last little bit to the “off” position."
And then, when she leaves:
>"she swiftly exited the house, reflexively pulling the front door closed behind her. She plopped down onto her rump, staring blankly at the lonely flower before her."
Let’s think about this.
The door "stood slightly ajar". She goes in and turns something off. And then she closes the door when she leaves. (Notice the “staring blankly at the lonely flower before her” part. Further reinforcing that RD has no attachment to Roseluck.)
There's two other times in this chapter where Rainbow Dash turns something off. And in both those times the homes are not fully closed either.

There's the Library:
>"she carefully locked on to an open window in the side of the tree"
>"she zipped over to the oven and promptly turned it off"

And the Bakery:
>"The top half of the door before her was wide open . . . several large, smoke-filled ovens later, she was reasonably confident that she had averted the sort of catastrophe that had almost befallen the library."
Every home that wasn’t closed has had something Rainbow Dash has turned off. And every home that was closed, has not.

I want to point out that the two times Rainbow has closed a door so far; AJ’s parent’s room, and Roseluck’s house. Have been the homes/rooms of ponies she has no attachment to. This contrasts with her actions inside the library and the bakery—homes of ponies she is very attached to. Where despite turning something off she doesn’t close anything when she leaves, and in fact, opens something.
This brings me to my next point:

>>43261614
3. The opening of a home symbolising denial.
Let’s look at what Rainbow does in each of her friend’s homes/rooms. (In the order she searches for them.)

Fluttershy’s cottage:
>”She . . . propelled herself forwards towards the door, tackling it . . . the door was sent flying backwards into the house”

Twilight’s bedroom:
>”Within seconds, she had thrown open the bedroom window and hurled herself out of it.”

Applejack’s bedroom:
>“She quickly opened the window and hopped out.”
Notice how Rainbow Dash is becoming less violent? With Fluttershy she literally breaks the door off the hinges. In Twilights bedroom she had “thrown open” the window “and hurled herself out of it.” Whereas in AJ’s room she “quickly opened” and “hopped out”.
This trend continues with Pinkie Pie and Rarity. But before we continue, I want to talk about AJ’s room, specifically the three rooms she visits before.

Rainbow first opens AJ’s parent’s room; Ponies she has no attachment to. The story explicitly mentions that she “closed the door again silently.".
Then she opens Big mac’s and Applebloom’s rooms; Ponies she has some attachment to. The story makes no mention of her closing the doors again.
And then she enters AJ’s room, a pony she is very attached to. In this room she not only leaves the door open but ends up opening the window too.

What’s interesting about this scene is that it shows us how Rainbow’s behaviour changes depending on her attachment. Or, in other words, depending on how unwilling she is to accept that their gone.

When entering the room of ponies that she accepts as being dead she closes the door.

When entering the room of ponies that she doesn’t accept as dead, but are only slightly attached to, she leaves the door open.

When entering the room of ponies that she doesn’t accept as dead, and that she’s very attached to—extremely unwilling to accept as dead—she not only leaves the door open but opens the room even further.

From this scene I think we can say that the closing of a door, the closing of a room, represents acceptance. Which of course, means that opening a room, whether it be by window or door, represents denial.
Let’s move on to Pinkie.

Pinkie’s attic room:
>” She tore herself away from the window, swiftly leaping back into the air and sailing down the stairs.”
She doesn’t open the window. But there’s no mention of her closing the “top half of the door” of the bakery, that “was wide open”.
This is interesting as not opening the window signifies that Rainbow is moving away from denial, and not closing the bakery door signifies that she’s not yet at acceptance.
Rainbow started off acting very violent, very angry, in her search for Fluttershy, becoming less so as she searched for Twilight and AJ. And now, with Pinkie Pie, she’s started to lose hope; started to accept.

Now that we’re at Rarity’s room I can return to my first point and the third example of Rainbow Dash shutting a door.
I’ve got a lot to say about this scene.

>>43261618
1.Doors (again).
Now we come to Rarity's room. This one being the most metaphorical and—to my mind—the most interesting of the three.

It's important to remember here that this is the last of her friends she's looking for:
>"She had been putting it off all day, searching that building, the last of hundreds, and the last of five,"
>"It was the final door, the final room, the final hope she had left."

Once she enters, she mistakes a mannequin for Rarity. And upon finding the truth there's this paragraph—full of symbolism:
>"She stood there, as still and lifeless as the simulacrum she clung to. . . . She stood there as the heavy metal stand attached to it clattered against the wooden floor, tolling out as loudly as any bell. She stood there as the mannequin stared back up at her with its silent, still, empty face."
There are three parts of interest:
>"as still and lifeless as the simulacrum she clung to"
>"tolling out as loudly as any bell".
>"the mannequin stared back up at her with its silent, still, empty face."
We’ll talk about the first part later, as it’s not relevant to this current point.

>"tolling out as loudly as any bell".
When I read the second part on my re-read, I immediately thought of it as representing the death knell of Rainbow's "final hope she had” of finding her friends.

>"the mannequin stared back up at her with its silent, still, empty face."
And I saw the third part as Rainbow coming face to face with the fact she won't see any of her friends again.

Now let's look at the first part of the next—and final—paragraph of the chapter:
>”She took a step backwards, then another, and then...she flew. She flew out of that room, the wind she whipped up pulling the door closed with a loud slam.”
The shutting of the door being the moment she accepts that fact.

Wait! Hold on! I’ve made this super fucking cool discovery. Take a look at the first part of the Wikipedia page for ‘Death knell’:
>A death knell is the ringing of a church bell to announce the death of a person. Historically, it was the second of three bells rung around death, the first being the passing bell to warn of impending death.
The death knell is the second bell; Rung upon death. The first bell warns of impending death.
Now look at this passage from when Rainbow enters the Boutique:
>”The door swung open smoothly, just as it always did. The little bell hanging above it sounded its cheerful ring, just as it always did.”
That’s the first bell!
I fucking love how the “little bell”—the bell warning of impending death—is described as sounding “its cheerful ring”.

I’ve just—as the anchor was posted—discovered another ringing.
>“Rarity!” she shouted, her voice ringing with pure joy.”
Now look at the rest of the first part of the Wikipedia page:
>and the last was the lych bell or corpse bell, which survives today as the funeral toll.
‘Toll’ which is exactly how the sound of the metal stand is described.
All three bells are accounted for.

>>43261554
>Alright, so we finally get to the "talking to yourself" bit... I feel like this should have happened way earlier in the story,
I did have the same thought, I think the story only gets good when more 'characters' show up, but now that we're done I think the earlier parts were somewhat justified. I think the week 1 discussion was correct about every scene could've just been shorter. But I think having her in all of those places alone was good and the author definitely wanted to travel through some stages of grief before imaging her friends talking to her
>since Rainbow is now being told to let go instead of coming to that conclusion herself
>insistence on referencing whatever the hell "further up, further in" is
>makes it feel like "Twilight," now just "the books," is the voice of something bigger. It feels out of place.
I *kind of* had this thought as well, but somewhat justified it by thinking it WAS just her coming to that conclusion. It was just her own mind telling her to stop. "Further up further in" was just a now insane pony's mind saying 'give up, accept it' but in terms that don't make sense consciously but do on a subconscious level. I think Twilight could've started chanting pretty much anything right here and I would've accepting it. That said I think having this final moment having the repeating phrase being a reference to something is a horrible decision and I'm very glad I didn't know about it. At this exact spot in the story, the very last thing you should do to a reader is make them think of something else. This was maybe the only spot in the story where there was real momentum in the reading and that's ruined if you get the reference.
>"look, all your friends are (maybe) here!"
kek
>and instead have Rainbow see a town or something on the horizon for her to go to, since that would actually be moving on and finding new friends/a community as what seems to be the point of the story.
Huh, that actually could've been interesting. Especially if it was left up to us to determine if it was Ponyville or not. And it DID seem like the moment she accepted her friends and Equestria was gone she got it all back. But I mean I guess that's just what happens when your the last person alive and you finally kys yourself and everyone was just sort of waiting for you.
>Sidebar: it was really funny looking through their other stories and finding it half anthro porn, half "serious" stories like this one.
lmao I also kek'd at that

>>43261623
Unfortunately, I’ve run out of time. This has been my first time writing a review, or summary, of anything, so I’ve been very slow.
Here’s some of the observations that I haven’t managed to fully finish or organize.

>"as still and lifeless as the simulacrum she clung to"
This first part interests me because I don’t think it’s only referring to the mannequin she’s holding.
Here’s two definitions of ‘simulacrum’:
>A simulacrum is a representation or imitation of a person or thing.
> An unreal or vague semblance.
If we define a simulacrum as ‘a representation of a pony’, then I can think of exactly five other simulacrums that she clings to. Five that she clings to so much that she carries them around wherever she goes. Five that she’s—literally—being weighed down by.

Two moments of foreshadowing:
>She wouldn't want them to be met with flooded homes if they came back.
Said in chapter 2. Foreshadowing for when Equestria floods.
>”she realized that she had flown at least a hundred feet from the edge of her cloud, and must have passed over every inch of land within that radius. Despite this, she had found nothing of note other than a few patches of clover and wildflowers.”
Chapter 1. Foreshadowing for even the insects being gone. If insects were still around, she would have noticed them instead of only finding “a few patches of clover and wildflowers.”.

Doors. The 5th example
The fifth moment is of course, in chapter 5, when Rainbow locks her memories away. A process described as the shutting of a door:
>She took hold of its great, heavy door, then slowly pushed against it. Her heart pounded in her chest and her breathing quickened as she struggled against its weight, throwing herself against it with all her might. Slowly but surely, the door swung closed, a single soft click sounding as it was finally shut.
This is the moment she accepts everything.

>” She flew down the stairs and through the showroom, passing through the gazes of the mannequins that maintained their vigil there.”
Now, I was immediately struck by that very interesting word choice of, 'vigil'. So, I looked up the definition and found:
>"A vigil is a period of purposeful wakefulness, . . . typically held for someone who is ill or during a time of mourning.
We’re constantly seeing RD drinking energy drinks. And in chapter 5 she is described as having “Bags the size of cloud banks hung beneath eyes”.
The fact the day never ends means her period of her vigil never ends.

>>43261522
>immediate green button press
You should read Narnia, or at least the last few chapters of The Last Battle, because this is just a worse version of that.
>The ending is close to ideal
I can imagine someone believing this if they hadn't read the blog post. That someone might be you, but it's not me. A story like this needs its metaphors and symbolism to be coherent or else it doesn't work. This story fails at that. You can divide it into "pre–Narnian ripoff" and "post–Narnian ripoff", and both of those pieces make sense on their own, but they don't make sense together.
>>43261531
>the decision to play it straight and just go for the very literal ending
Kek, whatever the ending is, it's not literal.
>She didn't? That's how I read it too!
When the author makes this claim, he's more delusional than Rainbow Dash ever was.
>>43261523
>the rest of the fic actually was much better about not staying in one place too long
That's fair. I should give the fic more credit for this.
>>43261532
>The author says this was from Narnia or something, but I think I'm glad I didn't know that
Yeah, I would have thought this was kino if I hadn't been saying, "He took that from The Last Battle. And that, too. Look, it's The Last Battle again. More The Last Battle. There's literally nothing original here, it's all just The Last Battle."

>>43261573
>pic related paragraph from Ch. 4 is especially atrocious
Yup, agreed. And as some of us have mentioned ch4 (or at least parts of it) fits more with week 1 with frankly annoying passages like that. I think the addition of characters helped a lot to stop the fic from stooping quite that low ever again
>HOWEVER, miraculously, once the apocalyptic cataclysm begins in Ch.5, the verbose style actually begins to work
Agreed for sure on this one. It almost feels like it should've started without all these words, but gradually introduced more and more of them as Rainbow spiraled and got closer to acceptance
>He wonders why people didn't understand that the world literally did end, and RD simply needed to accept that. And at no point does it seem to occur to him that people are treating reality as metaphor because it's too vague and implausible to come off as anything else.
kek yeah, it's delusional to question why everyone didn't just take the descriptions at face value. Why would they have even read the story if that was the case
>>43261578
>Consider pic related, the rousing speech "Twilight" gives RD near the end. What "new people" is RD going to meet? Everyone is gone. The world has ended. In fact, what IS she going to do after she has accepted her loss, especially since the author debunks that RD actually went to some higher plane with everyone? I guess you're not meant to think about that so literally, because it was just a metaphor.
lmaoo, um we as readers should know when the author is being literal or metaphoric mmkay? Completely agreed though. I have no idea who these new people would've been. Even weirder since she finally agrees and then just remeets thousands of NOT NEW people and lives happily ever after. Even if you take the ending literally or metaphorically, they are not new people. What did they mean by this?

>>43261586
>I think this type of desperation would work better if there was an explicit and long time skip from the previous chapter.
I think the timeskip we do get is a nice bridge between her consciously playing her friends and then unconsciously doing it. She is still somewhat lucid in the first scenes with her friends but she loses that at some point during her search
>Now that RD has spent four chapters flying into empty houses, waxing nostalgic and feeling bad, it is time for the story to end.
>"Oopsies, we forgot to get Blue Fast." It was very nice of them to wait until RD finished her model of grief before fully destroying the world
fucking KEK
>I do think the idea that RD uses her memories of Twi to talk herself through the situation is sweet. That's another highlight of the story
Agreed. Again it echoes the sentiment some thread posters have that RD is insufficient as a protag where her most productive moments are when she emulates her friends. But I did like it. Maybe part of her (shattered) mind knows that she's willing to believe and pretty much do anything Twilight says so it makes her deliver the message

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>>43261540
I only skimmed it, but oh wow! That's insane! Very based, though. I can now almost respect him despite his anthrofaggotry. Although if what he (and anons) say the Narnia references is true, that's pretty bad.

>>43261548
>But he is writing an opus, and to be a proper opus, the story must be weighty. He must find a way to go on.
I don't think you're being fair to the fic by saying that. I believe that a lot of what you're criticizing here as being caused by a skill issue is completely deliberate and good, such as RD losing herself in the hallucinations so much that the narration treats them as if they were real. That was really nice.
>no plot or conflict
The only plot here was RD coping with her situation, and that plot advances meaningfully. Even though I was dumb and didn't pick up on the chapters being linked with stages of grief, note that in week 1 I said it was clear that each chapter feels differently—and now we get a thematic explanation of why.
>The Last Battle
I didn't read that so I can't really comment on the degree to which this references it, but having the book close on RD after she makes peace with it was also good.
>I shouldn't have read the blog. It really offended me. Now I can't not downvote the story.
See? I maintain that no blogpost can ever touch a story, and it's your mistake for taking any of it as real. It's just his interpretation, no better than yours or mine. And in this case, it's an interpretation that's just wrong.

>>43261554
I wish I had more to add, but skimming his reply now, it seems that twianon already said what I wanted to say.
>where you just give up and get rewarded
She didn't "give up", though. She understood what happened and made peace with it, explicitly without giving up or forgetting M5 or whatever.
>Sidebar
Kek, but not everyone can have good taste.

>>43261573
>The pic related paragraph from Ch. 4
I don't know how much of this was me being tired vs all of (You) making me like the story less, but yeah, ch.4 felt the worst on the writing side even though the hallucinations were good. And yes, the ch.5 apocalypse is great.
>without all those boring pesky parts where you need to explain why anything happens
This was a good part, actually. It's not important to the story, and it makes the ending feel that much more final, imo. You're just made aware that the word will end now and there is nothing to be done about it. The way RD's real world becomes almost like a metaphor is fine, because why wouldn't it? Everyone else is gone, so it makes perfect sense that the world would end with her.
>We don't get answers for any of this.
We do. RD is the last. Why would the sun still shine if RD was ready to move on? Once she accepts the end, the end can happen. It's as simple as that.

>>43261554
>I feel like this should have happened way earlier in the story
As critical as I am of this device, I think it does make sense to wait a little before introducing it. Rainbow Dash's mental state isn't going to crumble that quickly. We do need to see her wander around on her own first. I think you're right when you say:
>but maybe that's just me getting angry thinking about how you could trim this story
Yeah. The whole story is too padded, and if there was less padding, she'd start hallucinating earlier.
>>43261554
>the author's literary edging session
kek
>whatever the hell "further up, further in" is
I looked this up: Right after Narnia is destroyed (so a little different from this story), the characters are all on the other side of the door. Aslan orders them to go "further up and further in", directing them to begin their journey to Heaven.
>What's the point of hammering "you need to move on" into the reader only to turn around and go "look, all your friends are (maybe) here!"
I wonder if this confusion is a side effect of the author stealing so heavily from The Last Battle. In that story, going to the other side of the door reunites the living characters with those who previously died, and they all go to heaven together. Maybe that was what inspired the author to reunite Rainbow Dash with all the other ponies. But he didn't think through all the implications, which is why everyone got confused.
>instead have Rainbow see a town or something on the horizon for her to go to
Yeah, that would have been better than what we got.
>>43261573
>miraculously
A startlingly appropriate word
>the verbose style actually begins to work
That's because it's not the author writing it, it's C. S. Lewis. Whatever your feelings about Lewis's work, he was a skilled writer.
>navel-gazing
That largely sums up my opinion of the author's style.
>>43261578
>why did this need to be an end of the world scenario at all
I think it's because the author views his Opus as Serious Fiction that makes a Statement. He wants to say something he sees as big, so he writes about a big event. This is the same powerscaling crutch that superhero movies fall into. Instead of creating drama by making the characters more interesting, they make everything bigger. At first just a city is threatened, then the Earth is threatened, then it's the universe, then it's all the universe's timelines, then it's the multiverse and all its timelines...
>>43261578
>If the author really wanted to tell a story about dealing with grief, why couldn't it be a more down-to-earth tale of one of RD's friends dying and the works?
If that was all he wanted to do, then yes, it could have been that. But I have a pretty dim view of the author's skill, so I don't think he knew how to write that story.

I'll be honest I thought this fanfic was a nothingburger but it turned out it has real themes and is deepish. I haven't read it but it's not usually the stuff I read. Good job of the writer then.

>>43261605
>The story only got enjoyable when Rainbow started imagining the fic had more characters
But we all (I think) agree Cloudsdale wasn't enjoyable. Adding characters didn't improve it. Rainbow Dash in the library struggling to figure out what happened is an improvement not because of the other characters but because it's different from what came before.
>>43261605
>At the same time Rainbow sulks in a corner while her friends argue behind her showing her mental degradation after being alone for so much time
Yes, and that's what I think is the author failing at his duty. The objects begin to talk among themselves as if they were real. What they say doesn't make sense if they're entirely in Rainbow Dash's head.
>>43261612
>This is my first time participating in the book club
It's not a book club, it's an anonymous support group for fanfiction readers.

In one respect, I'm not sure I agree with your comments about doors. I think that you get the symbolism right, and it is something I didn't pick up on. But I have to say I'm not convinced that it was so conscious on the author's part. I've written elsewhere that I don't think the author is very good; it's possible that he was this careful with doors, but I have trouble imagining that he was.
>>43261626
>I’ve been very slow
If you expect to have something long, consider pre-writing your posts. Some of us do this, and it does help the club get going.

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>>43261578
>why did this need to be an end of the world scenario
Because this is a fundamentally different story compared to your alternatives. The weight of the situation is drastically different when she's the actual last pony, and make it feel grander. Like in GLT, it gives RD's role a greater meaning, imo—while there is no one but her left to judge her, she is responsible for deciding how ponies will end, and what will be the end of their civilization, regardless of how much she cares about that. So yes, this is a story about RD, but the scenario succeeds in giving it an almost mythological framing.

>>43261586
>RD also feels too self-aware here.
Eh, I liked it. The fact that she's self-aware, I mean. She needs Twi and the rest so much she intentionally RPs as them for her confidence and the sense of purpose, and this segues nicely into her being no longer consciously aware of her delusions next chapter.
>"Oopsies, we forgot to get Blue Fast."
Lmao, that's hilarious. I'm choosing to believe this is what the tittle means.
>My issue is that the story takes a very long-winded route to deliver this message.
Yeah, I can't be too upset at anyone not liking this, because it's clearly not everyone's preferred style, but it worked for me.

>>43261605
>I think that was the point though.
Yep, this is true. To the surprise of no one, ambitious fics are worse when you're choosing to misinterpret them by starting with the assumption that the writer can't write.

>>43261612
>I re-read the entire story
>I made several observations
Oh, wow. That's a lot, and I say that as someone who struggles to meet the 3k char limit on a regular basis.
>>43261614
>There's two other times in this chapter where Rainbow Dash turns something off.
Huh, neat. I didn't dig so deep into the symbolism of it, thinking that it's trying to evoke the mood of the situation instead. Closing the doors is a clear enough acknowledgement of her putting the final period in the story of those ponies, but the turning off of the faucets and what not is imo more about her making sure that everyone and everything got a tidy ending. She might not be fully aware of why she's doing it, but that's how I read it. And it's another thing that tells us that the end of the world was very sudden.
>>43261618
>The opening of a home
I'll admit that I didn't think of it, but you could convince me that this is intentional and one of the signs that she's not ready to let go. The symbolism holds up well enough.
>>43261626
>I don’t think it’s only referring to the mannequin
Oh, definitely. The story emphasizes her inability to let go of them, and this is likely an early hint.

>>43261624
>every scene could've just been shorter.
Yeah, it's hard to debate that imo. As much as I like the fic after the ending chapter(s), 1-4 are all somewhat too long even taking the style into consideration.
>the repeating phrase being a reference to something is a horrible decision
Yep, yep. I'm also glad I didn't know that one.

>>43261626
I gotta applaud the thorough analysis. Even if I don't think the story is worth it, it must have resonated with you to go back pinpointing specific details of foreshadowing. I suppose it's impressive that the author managed to both characterize RD and support his story's themes, at least in this early section. You might tire yourself out if you try this for every story the club reads, though.
>>43261676
>>43261752
>Once she accepts the end, the end can happen. It's as simple as that.
This makes sense until you know that the author is pitching the story as being about dealing with grief of loss. The end of the world angle goes against that and renders this message very questionable, at least as stated in the story.
But also, even if we didn't have the author's blog and the story really did end with RD ascending to a higher plane with all her friends, I still wouldn't like it much for the writing alone. It just destroyed a lot of my goodwill for the story, I agree with >>43261554 that it could've reasonably been trimmed to be less glacial. I think last week you replied that the glacial pace might be a feature and I suppose it could be read as emphasizing the torturous monotony of RD's existence. But things like the chalkboard paragraph seem like pretty clear-cut evidence that this is just the style the author enjoyed wallowing in.
>>43261694
>That's because it's not the author writing it, it's C. S. Lewis.
Maybe the author was reading Narnia and got hit with the vision of RD stuck in a crumbling world, and then worked his way backwards to create a theme and story around this. Just speculation, of course, but it would explain the disconnect between the theme and the apocalyptic framing.

>>43261761
>>43261765
I saw that.

>>43261612
Yo wtf, crazy high effort post. Good job.
I would imagine some of this is unintentional though. I kind of doubt the author knows the history of the death knell and intentionally set up 3 different rings throughout that scene. I do like your observations of the homes and the doors though. It makes sense Rainbow is quicker to leave her friends' rooms since those'll be the places that most drive the point home that something bad has happened and will spur her on to attempting to fix it. Which just sort of entails finding her friends somewhere else for the most part, with Rarities room being the last one and thus the one where she is forced to admit defeat in a sense and start expanding her search
Unfortunately I can't imagine rereading this any time soon (because of the first 3 chapters) but the flooding foreshadowing is very nice and I commend you for apparently paying particular attention to those early parts and giving it a reread.
>>43261626
>Unfortunately, I’ve run out of time. This has been my first time writing a review, or summary, of anything, so I’ve been very slow.
kek, club posters are all over the place in terms of time, if you're sleeping or going to work or something there might well still be discussion afterwards. Also I don't want to say you put too much effort into your post, but I can imagine if you stay with us you might refine your style a bit. My style is I just say "kek" at stuff and agree or disagree with points other people make ^:)

>>43261634
>When the author makes this claim, he's more delusional than Rainbow Dash ever was.
kek See?
>There's literally nothing original here, it's all just The Last Battle.
Yeah that's unfortunate, The Last Battle is a cognitohazard for this fic surely. Also it's this sort of thing that makes me think some of what Sunburstfag said was just a coincidence. Does the author know about the 3 bells of the death knell? Did they plan every house's entry and exit for RD? Maybe, maybe not.

>>43261676
>I can now almost respect him despite his anthrofaggotry
kek
>It's just his interpretation, no better than yours or mine. And in this case, it's an interpretation that's just wrong.
kek & agreed, bro should reread his own story maybe
>This was a good part, actually. It's not important to the story, and it makes the ending feel that much more final, imo.
>The way RD's real world becomes almost like a metaphor is fine, because why wouldn't it? Everyone else is gone, so it makes perfect sense that the world would end with her.
Completely agreed. Starting with RD literally clearing every house in ponyville and ending with her staring at the horizon of the ocean while her 'friends' argue behind her and then the entire world sinking is great for both expressing her mental state and acceptance as the final entity in the world. I actually really like the idea that the flood is the ending of the world because Rainbow Dash is finally leaving it

>>43261634
>because this is just a worse version of that.
I could never get through Narnia. Not the writing, but the story of it and the extremely literal way in which it chooses to wrap its Christian message. That always felt unsatisfying after reading Tolkien. But if this scene really is just ripped off from there, then the fic is worse than I'm giving it credit for. That's a shame.
>it's not literal
Literal as in the story isn't about RD in a coma or something like that, and that the world really did end.

>>43261694
>The whole story is too padded,
I would say the last two chapters aren't. And it really is as simple as cutting out the last scene from chapters 1-4.
>That's because it's not the author writing it, it's C. S. Lewis.
Obviously I can't fully comment on that without seeing the source, but the style was consistent with the previous scenes, so I'd think that even if the scenario is heavily inspired (nothing too wrong about that, as long as it serves a narrative purpose), the actual style of the scene is still his.

>>43261713
>What they say doesn't make sense if they're entirely in Rainbow Dash's head.
I think it's RD struggling to separate them from reality. Despite willingly buying into the delusions, she's subconsciously aware that they aren't real, and this argument is her trying to deal with it.

>>43261765
>until you know that the author is pitching the story as
It wouldn't be the first time that someone wrote a story and subconsciously leaned on some themes that made it good in a way different from what he intended. Writing is such a complicated process that it's obvious people would never be able to understand what they're actually doing there, assuming they're any good and not just mechanically putting wordswordswords on a page. And given his interpretation of the ending, the mismatch between the story and the author's vision happened here to some degree. Again, it's never good to trust these post-story blogs and why I've never written one.
>But things like the chalkboard paragraph
It's a bit hard to make this argument because I agree with you that some of the writing is clunky. Both on the scale of the whole story ("filler"-like scenes) and even in each scene, where a paragraph here or there will go over the line and start to drift towards being meaningless again. That line is subjective, but some examples are very clearly bad, like that chalkboard paragraph you quoted. They're not all like that, and I would even say that the majority isn't like that. But if they annoy you, then yes, you're entirely justified in disliking the fic.

>>43261780
>Did they plan every house's entry and exit for RD? Maybe, maybe not.
It depends on how much credit you want to give him, but the opening/closing of doors feels convincing, imo. There's also the question of whether it was deliberate, or if he "accidentally" stuck to the mood and subconsciously leaned on symbolism to deliver it. It happens quite a lot, imo.

>>43261713
>It's not a book club, it's an anonymous support group for fanfiction readers.
/fsasgffr/? I thought this was /fsbc/
>I think that you get the symbolism right, and it is something I didn't pick up on. But I have to say I'm not convinced that it was so conscious on the author's part.
Yeah, I wasn't really sure how to word it but I agree with you. ( >>43261612 ) I think if you got 10,000 people to write Rainbow Dash going into these same rooms and houses in the same order a statistically good amount would write it the same way. She wants to leave her friends rooms quicker, both AJ and Twi's rooms are in an upstairs part of the house and thus a window is optimal for exiting. Fluttershy's house she fixes her little bird houses and then walks out I think but it's also the first house so she isn't desperate, and just thinks Fluttershy is in town. By the latter part she has subconsciously figured out everyone is gone. Of course every pony and every bug in town weren't hiding in the town hall right? And shutting a door is polite and you might be more polite to people you are less familiar with because you don't know their boundaries etc. Of course, nothing you said is wrong since they're just (good) observations, but as this other anon says, you might've pulled out more than the author put in.

>>43261752
>she is responsible for deciding how ponies will end, and what will be the end of their civilization, regardless of how much she cares about that. So yes, this is a story about RD, but the scenario succeeds in giving it an almost mythological framing.
again, nice way of putting it. It's very philosophical to think about the last being experiencing something going away. It's like reverse death, or death in a different direction. The first being to die and the last being to die having similar experiences
>She needs Twi and the rest so much she intentionally RPs as them for her confidence and the sense of purpose
Yeah I liked this aspect for sure. Her role and Twilight's are so different that she would rather recreate Twilight than try to do Twilight's role herself.
>To the surprise of no one, ambitious fics are worse when you're choosing to misinterpret them by starting with the assumption that the writer can't write.
kek

>>43261765
>I gotta applaud the thorough analysis. Even if I don't think the story is worth it
kek, at least it was a short one
>You might tire yourself out if you try this for every story the club reads, though.
Imagine the Pianoman reread. Or around the meme in 89 days kek. Damn we read some bad shit, Sunburstfag chose a decent one to hop into at least discussion wise even if not everyone liked it (which gets the best discussion)
>and I suppose it could be read as emphasizing the torturous monotony of RD's existence
yeah, if this style progressed and got more heavy as the fic went on it would've been far better than just starting at full blast

>>43261767
kek, discord is a brat

>>43261799
>It depends on how much credit you want to give him, but the opening/closing of doors feels convincing, imo. There's also the question of whether it was deliberate, or if he "accidentally" stuck to the mood and subconsciously leaned on symbolism to deliver it. It happens quite a lot, imo.
Yeah, again wording it is a bit weird and I touched it with my 10,000 writers bit, but it's like gravity right? We all know about it, and yet Sunburstfag was the one to point it out here. But humanity as a whole for thousands of years has had a deeper meaning for doors. I wrote a fucking essay about doorways in some artsy history class I took years ago and doors, doorways, arches, tunnels etc all have a subconscious meaning to people even if we never explicitly think it. And thus even if you never explicitly explore the thoughts and meanings behind it, we might all behave similarly at the same doors in those same situations. I really like the observations he made, and I'm not even sure if he said anything about the author at any point but it might really have all been coincidental. And he didn't even mention it in his 9k blog kek

So, what are we reading next week?

>>43261923
There were like a bunch of submissions but no vote IIRC.

File: the fall of AI.jpg (1.2 MB)

>>43261522
After skipping most of the second half of the fic, I stopped at the timeskip when Rainbow returned to the Treebrary, weathered, after confirming that the disaster permeated the entirety of Equestria.
The Po1 impressions were pretty intolerable, but
>The world simply went to sleep in its eternal rest, and that part was great.
Yeah, I think this was the only part of the whole story that was riveting and I did enjoy reading it. I did not particularly like that it simply happened with no reason. Just "now is the time for the world to finish ending because the story is also ending."

>>43261548
>She was hallucinating before, but going to the other side of the door is transformative.
>I don't think the author's interpretation matches their own story.
Yeah, I didn't read the whole blog post, so I thought that she did die and go to Christian heaven and reunited with her friends. I agree with >>43261676's take that he's misinterpreting his own story, probably due to not writing it well.

But
>Once she accepts the end, the end can happen. It's as simple as that.
>I actually really like the idea that the flood is the ending of the world because Rainbow Dash is finally leaving it
It is that, but the way it's written all the way from the point where Dash says "I'm ready" to the end of the fic just keeps undermining that.

>“In that case,” said the books, “I think...it's time we wrapped things up.”
>The mare turned back to her friends, a puzzled look on her face.
>“What do you mean?” she said.
>“Turn around,” said the books. “See for yourself.”
(the flood happens)
>“You've had a long day,” said the books, “but it's time for this day to end.”
>The mare was about to ask what her friend meant, but before she could speak, she noticed something that stilled her tongue.
(the rest of the apocalypse happens)
So, for most of the period it's happening, you have to work to convince yourself that the Rube Goldberg apocalypse that was fun to read is caused by Rainbow and not just because the author would rather write something more fun than her stages of grief.

>>43261612
This post chain was more fun to read than the story!

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>>43261923
The Monster Mash, hopefully.

>>43261752
>ambitious fics are worse when you're choosing to misinterpret them by starting with the assumption that the writer can't write.
My opinions are objectively true facts.

In all seriousness, I think my opinion is so heavily influenced by having recognized The Last Battle that I just can’t view it in the same way as others. While I was reading, I didn’t like how the inanimate objects were treated, but I got more negative on them after recognizing The Last Battle and yet more negative after reading the blog post.
>>43261799
>I could never get through Narnia
I first read it when I was like ten or so. It was just a fantasy series at the time, though The Last Battle made me go “WTF?” (Well, not exactly that because I was ten.) I reread Narnia as an adult because I wanted to actually understand it. It’s okay? If you don’t recognize the Christian influence, then it’s a decent kid’s fantasy until The Last Battle. But if you do recognize the Christian influence, then your reaction is going to depend almost wholly on what you think of Christianity.

>>43261959
>This post chain was more fun to read than the story!
kek, for sure more fun than the part of the story they were talking about

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>>43261959
Meant to emphasize that in both cases of the apocalypse progression, Rainbow is as startled as the reader to see that it is happening. She should've been more accepting of it if the story is meant to convey that her acceptance is what's causing it.
Also, forgot to back up another post, and lost it in the sea above. Someone said that the prose could've been short and to the point at the start, slowly mixing in additional description towards the eventual goal of its circuitously descriptive style once it reaches the more physical apocalypse at the end as a sort of additional layer of description for Rainbow's deteriorating mental state. That would've helped the story so much, it would've certainly been upgraded from bad to just forgettable. I know some people here would say that being memorably bad is better than forgettably average, though. I don't agree with that, but even if you do, I don't think the idea behind that applies to this fic, writing it better would be writing it better. And It couldn't have been good unless it featured a better pony.

>>43262059
>And It couldn't have been good unless it featured a better pony.
Aaaand there it is

>>43261823
>Imagine the Pianoman reread
The HIE genre is not for the faint of heart. It’s not just about sending humans into the world of Equestria; it’s about transcending the boundaries of fiction itself. Just as you wouldn't expect to stumble upon a Shakespearean play in a high school drama class, or find the nuances of a Tolstoy novel in a community book club, you simply cannot expect mere /fimfic/ posters to grasp and master the profound depths and soul-stirring complexities of the HIE genre. It's the apex of storytelling. Too intricate, too delicate, too soulful for most to comprehend, let alone capture in writing. The problem isn’t with the genre. The issue lies in its towering grandeur, which is just too monumental for the average writer. We don't lack good HIE stories; we lack the literary giants to pen them.

File: fy.png (34.8 KB)

>HiE isekai human is superior story with an AI generated thumbnail
We're reaching peakslop.

>>43262112
Next week's club fic?

>>43261522
>>43261923
Oh, right! Next week!
[Voting]
A quick look at some of the recent suggestions gives us maybe these three? And any others you'd like to champion of course.
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/578488/the-unrequited-thespian + sequel
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/1451/the-monster-mash
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/301077/broken-symmetry
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/67042/the-traveling-tutor-and-the-librarian

>>43261959
>because the story is also ending
>you have to work to convince yourself that
To me, the fact that the thematic collapse of the world happens exactly when it does is already a near-definite proof that it was meant to happen like that without the meta reasoning, and that "books" (RD, really) calling it out as it's about to happen is an argument supporting that, not undermining it. But again, the fic is a bit like Subjunctive in that it tries a lot of fairly unconventional things, succeeds at some (but clearly not all) of them, and then it's up to you how much credit you want to give it.
>pic name
kek

>>43262016
>I first read it when I was like ten or so.
Yeah, that's when I read LotR and found that I couldn't really go from that to the imo much less interesting world of Narnia. I tried, and it was one of the few books that I didn't finish as a kid. That was when the first two movie (then movies) were popular, too, and I've always had a bit of a contrarian streak so that didn't help.
>you don’t recognize the Christian influence
Which meaning of 'recognize'? The 'to perceive something as existing' or 'to admit its importance'? Because it's so in-your-face that I don't think anyone can miss its parabolic nature even as a kid. It's deliberately very blatant about it and wears its allegories on its sleeve because you are supposed to read it this way.
>depend almost wholly on what you think of Christianity
Well, this and Lewis's use of it. I am completely fine with religious themes taken in the "Christian mythology" (I dislike the term) trashy pop way when it's all that is being done with them, but using a deliberate religious allegory for a fantasy story like that doesn't sit right with me at all. Reasons of religion aside, I just think it makes for a very poor story and an awful storytelling device. It's all solved. LotR is how you write "Christian fiction" well, if you want to do it. With all the respect to Lewis, I just really dislike how he chose to write Narnia.

>>43262146
Voting on Traveling Tutor or Broken Symmetry

Mare test

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>>43262162

It turns out that The Last Battle is public domain in Canada, so you can get it from Project Gutenberg: https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-lastbattle/lewiscs-lastbattle-00-h.html
I'm going to quote some relevant passages, starting at Chapter XIV, "Night Falls on Narnia":
>Then the great giant raised a horn to his mouth. They could see this by the change of the black shape he made against the stars. After that—quite a bit later, because sound travels so slowly—they heard the sound of the horn: high and terrible, yet of a strange, deadly beauty.
>Immediately the sky became full of shooting stars. Even one shooting star is a fine thing to see; but these were dozens, and then scores, and then hundreds, till it was like silver rain: and it went on and on. And when it had gone on for some while, one or two of them began to think that there was another dark shape against the sky as well as the giant's. It was in a different place, right overhead, up in the very roof of the sky as you might call it. "Perhaps it is a cloud," thought Edmund. At any rate, there were no stars there: just blackness. But all around, the downpour of stars went on. And then the starless patch began to grow, spreading further and further out from the centre of the sky. And presently a quarter of the whole sky was black, and then a half, and at last the rain of shooting stars was going on only low down near the horizon.
>With a thrill of wonder (and there was some terror in it too) they all suddenly realized what was happening. The spreading blackness was not a cloud at all: it was simply emptiness. The black part of the sky was the part in which there were no stars left. All the stars were falling: Aslan had called them home.
>The last few seconds before the rain of stars had quite ended were very exciting. Stars began falling all round them. But stars in that world are not the great flaming globes they are in ours. They are people (Edmund and Lucy had once met one). So now they found showers of glittering people, all with long hair like burning silver and spears like white-hot metal, rushing down to them out of the black air, swifter than falling stones. They made a hissing noise as they landed and burnt the grass. And all these stars glided past them and stood somewhere behind, a little to the right.
>This was a great advantage, because otherwise, now that there were no stars in the sky, everything would have been completely dark and you could have seen nothing. As it was, the crowd of stars behind them cast a fierce, white light over their shoulders. They could see mile upon mile of Narnian woods spread out before them, looking as if they were flood-lit. Every bush and almost every blade of grass had its black shadow behind it. The edge of every leaf stood out so sharp that you'd think you could cut your finger on it.

>>43262180
Later from the same chapter:
>At last something white—long, level line of whiteness that gleamed in the light of the standing stars—came moving towards them from the eastern end of the world. A widespread noise broke the silence: first a murmur, then a rumble, then a roar. And now they could see what it was that was coming, and how fast it came. It was a foaming wall of water. The sea was rising. In that treeless world you could see it very well. You could see all the rivers getting wider and the lakes getting larger, and separate lakes joining into one, and valleys turning into new lakes, and hills turning into islands, and then those islands vanishing. And the high moors to their left and the higher mountains to their right crumbled and slipped down with a roar and a splash into the mounting water; and the water came swirling up to the very threshold of the Doorway (but never passed it) so that the foam splashed about Aslan's forefeet. All now was level water from where they stood to where the water met the sky.
>And out there it began to grow light. A streak of dreary and disastrous dawn spread along the horizon, and widened and grew brighter, till in the end they hardly noticed the light of the stars who stood behind them. At last the sun came up. When it did, the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly looked at one another and gave a little nod: those two, in a different world, had once seen a dying sun, and so they knew at once that this sun also was dying. It was three times—twenty times—as big as it ought to be, and very dark red. As its rays fell upon the great Time-giant, he turned red too: and in the reflection of that sun the whole waste of shoreless waters looked like blood.
>Then the Moon came up, quite in her wrong position, very close to the sun, and she also looked red. And at the sight of her the sun began shooting out great flames, like whiskers or snakes of crimson fire, towards her. It is as if he were an octopus trying to draw her to himself in his tentacles. And perhaps he did draw her. At any rate she came to him, slowly at first, but then more and more quickly, till at last his long flames licked round her and the two ran together and became one huge ball like a burning coal. Great lumps of fire came dropping out of it into the sea and clouds of steam rose up.
>Then Aslan said, "Now make an end."
>The giant threw his horn into the sea. Then he stretched out one arm—very black it looked, and thousands of miles long—across the sky till his hand reached the Sun. He took the Sun and squeezed it in his hand as you would squeeze an orange. And instantly there was total darkness.
>Everyone except Aslan jumped back from the ice-cold air which now blew through the Doorway. Its edges were already covered with icicles.

>>43262184
(continued)
>"Peter, High King of Narnia," said Aslan. "Shut the Door."
>Peter, shivering with cold, leaned out into the darkness and pulled the Door to. It scraped over ice as he pulled it. Then, rather clumsily (for even in that moment his hands had gone numb and blue) he took out a golden key and locked it.
>They had seen strange things enough through that Doorway. But it was stranger than any of them to look round and find themselves in warm daylight, the blue sky above them, flowers at their feet, and laughter in Aslan's eyes.
>He turned swiftly round, crouched lower, lashed himself with his tail and shot away like a golden arrow.
>"Come further in! Come further up!" he shouted over his shoulder. But who could keep up with him at that pace? They set out walking westward to follow him.
Chapter XV is titled "Further Up and Further In". Here's an excerpt:
>Then they all went forward together, always westward, for that seemed to be the direction Aslan had meant when he cried out "Further up and further in." Many other creatures were slowly moving the same way, but that grassy country was very wide and there was no crowding.
>...
>It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia, as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it, if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones: yet at the same time they were somehow different—deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there, you will know what I mean.
>It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried:
>"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"

>>43262187
Finally, from the finale, Chapter XVI, "Farewell to Shadow-Lands":
>For now they saw before them Caldron Pool and beyond the Pool, the high unclimbable cliffs and, pouring down the cliffs, thousands of tons of water every second, flashing like diamonds in some places and dark, glassy green in others, the Great Waterfall; and already the thunder of it was in their ears.
>"Don't stop! Further up and further in," called Farsight, tilting his flight a little upwards.
>"It's all very well for him," said Eustace, but Jewel also cried out:
>"Don't stop. Further up and further in! Take it in your stride."
(Here they swim up the waterfall.)
>A long valley opened ahead and great snow-mountains, now much nearer, stood up against the sky.
>"Further up and further in," cried Jewel and instantly they were off again.
>...
>"Further up and further in!" roared the Unicorn, and no one held back. They charged straight at the foot of the hill and then found themselves running up it almost as water from a broken wave runs up a rock out at the point of some bay. Though the slope was nearly as steep as the roof of a house and the grass was smooth as a bowling green, no one slipped. Only when they had reached the very top did they slow up; that was because they found themselves facing great golden gates. And for a moment none of them was bold enough to try if the gates would open.
>...
>And what came out was the last thing he had expected: a little, sleek, bright-eyed Talking Mouse with a red feather stuck in a circlet on its head and its left paw resting on a long sword. It bowed, a most beautiful bow, and said in its shrill voice:
>"Welcome, in the Lion's name. Come further up and further in."
>...
>Everyone you had ever heard of (if you knew the history of those countries) seemed to be there. There was...
(A very very long list of characters from previous books follows.)
>...
> "I see," she said at last, thoughtfully. "I see now. This garden is like the Stable. It is far bigger inside than it was outside."
>"Of course, Daughter of Eve," said the Faun. "The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets."
(I doubt Lewis intended this to be sexual.)

So there you go. This is what I was remembering when I was reading this week's fic.

>>43262146
Voting for the cutesy Celestia romance because it's the furthest I can think of from the last two stories we clubbed.

>>43262146
Voting Unrequited Thespian or Broken Symmetry.
>Which meaning of 'recognize'?
I meant "perceive something as existing." When I first read it, I had literally no idea that it had anything to do with Christianity. I guess Sunday School didn't work on me. But I once met a woman who was a preacher's kid, and she said that even as a kid, she recognized what it was immediately. She hated Narnia with a passion. She had grown up hearing about Jesus every day, and the last thing she wanted from her fantasy world was for it to sound just like her father.
>Well, this and Lewis's use of it
Yes, that's an important caveat. As an adult, I find Narnia to be too heavy-handed to be consistently enjoyable fantasy. The parts that are good fantasy are overwhelmed by the parts that are preachy. Sometimes they're hard to disentangle; as regards style and execution, I think Reepicheep's ascension to heaven in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is really good, but Lewis's "subtext" is as subtle as a kick in the face. LotR never tries to be so direct, and that makes it more compelling, not just as fantasy but also as Christian fiction.

>>43262146
>Coco x Celestia
Sounds like too much crack AND diabetes for my taste
>Monster Mash
I was gonna suggest postponing this for a little while, since it's only been a month since Kaidan, but this is the only one in the list I'd be willing to vote for.
>Twilight x Moondancer sci-fi drama
Could be good I guess, but my interest in this is very mild.
>Twilight x random OC (?) SoL comedy
Not an awfully exciting selection this week, eh?

>>43262146
>[Voting]
I vote for the Celestia Coco story.

>>43262245
>Sounds like too much crack AND diabetes for my taste
Needs more brat kink stuff, right?

>>43262385
Depends on which of the two is the brat

>>43262146
voting for travelling tutor or monster mash.

>>43262146
I feel like we'd get some fun (derogatory) out of self-insert stallion/Twilight, so Traveling Tutor? Book clubs are better when they're miserable.

>>43261522
>>43261531
>GLT
You should get on and fully read the superior sequel already so you can be prepared for when the prequel comes out.

>>43262467
At the rate we've settled on, the story would take three or four weeks. Before committing to it, I'd want someone to confirm that the story wasn't pure stinking garbage. Because when I hear "Twilight Sparkle x OC stallion", that's my immediate suspicion.

>>43262654
Georg is usually a pretty good writer, though it's a gamble on whether or not he can keep the plot. I liked Buggy and the Beast well enough.

So, are we not doing another exquisite corpse this year?

>>43262180
>Narnia
Is it worth the read? Harry Potter forever scared me away from picking up childhood fantasy books again.

File: 3761976.jpg (1.1 MB)

>>43262747
the last collab fell apart so

>>43262748
If you keep in mind that it's for children, and if you don't mind the Christian allegory, then it's generally decent. It helps that each book is short, so it's less of a time investment than massive series like Wheel of Time or Game of Thrones.

You could read just The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (which is the actual first book, despite the idiotic chronological numbering scheme adopted by recent US editions). It's a complete story all on its own (Lewis didn't originally anticipate writing sequels), and it's also the most culturally significant part of the series.

>>43262754
Yeah, because we're a bunch of shits who won't do a thing if we're not pressured. The anthology was a nice idea, but it lacked the sense of responsibility the corpse had.
I say we try again, and this time let's give a deadline of ~3 weeks. If someone goes beyond that time and hasn't delivered, the next person jumps in line.

>>43262837
I say if someone goes beyond that time without providing anything we should legally be allowed to fuck his pony waifu in front of him.

>>43262837
Okay, then. We need a way to sign up. The old group still exists, so we may as well use it: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/204388/voting

I remember liking the rules from last time:
>FiM only
>Rated T
>Early seasons only
>No HiE
>No AUs
>No crossovers
>Max 3,000 words per chapter
And we'll need someone to kick it off with a first chapter.

>>43262112
I opened this just so that I could report it. Instead I found an autistic isekai with gems like this:
>It all happened in the blink of an eye.
>I blew straight through the portal the instant it appeared.
>…And right on the other side of it, there was this giant, fat, bleach white skinwalker with huge, dopey eyes, a crown, and a massive narwhal horn. And it was just standing there cluelessly like a moron.
>It might have been a wendigo now that I was thinking about it. But it was definitely gay. You could tell just by how colourfully flamboyant its hair was. It was all rainbowy and full of sparkles. And it was poofy like an afro.
>In any case, I mowed it down with my cyber truck.

>>43262966
It reads kind of spitefully, to be honest.

>>43262979
It's extremely spiteful. The author sounds like a smug autistic asshole who can't function in society, and it might be one of the most HFY fics I've run across on the site. One chapter was fun, but I don't think I could read a whole longfic that was like this.

>>43262979
It's just baby's first rationalfic. The author's probably like 15.

>>43262876
Will TSG do the honors, or should someone else give it a shot?

>>43263030
I think he did a fine job last time, but I'm okay with anyone competent doing it.

>>43262979
The cybertruck part makes me hope that the twist is he's actually not anywhere as smart as he thinks he is and his shit where he's like "the horses don't understand germ theory" is him being straight up wrong.

But he probably thinks the cyber truck is actually cool.

>>43263010
>a smug autistic asshole who can't function in society
So you're saying he hangs out here.

>review https://www.fimfiction.net/story/591047/celestias-stone-cemetery

5/10. Maud finds Celestia's dark secret buried beneath Canterlot. It's a very interesting horror premise let down by poor pacing and a strange lack of suspense or dread. Maud's in the crystal caves, then Celestia just shows up and starts her evil villain monologue. The author doesn't set aside enough time for any kind of building dread or tension. It feels like the entire middle third of the fic is just missing.

The author also kind of wrote themselves into a corner with the plot. Luna's apparently been trapped, conscious, in a stone prison for a thousand years, yet her mirror pool clone seems to be completely oblivious of that horrible reality. At least doesn't have a retarded oneshot horror fic ending.

>>43261522
>it's an "the author fucks up the ending and has to write an 8,000 word long apologia blog post" fic
Night Shift's ending would have been funnier.

>I didn't want to reference any specific religion's eschatology
>So I used the one from one of the most famous works of Christian allegorical fiction instead
The blog post is a real treat. The most baffling part for me is God rapturing every living thing on the planet, except for Rainbow Dash. He Cntl+A's every name, then made sure to scroll down to Dash and uncheck hers before Cntl+Xing. And there's no explanation for why, either in the story or the 8k blog. God confirmed for hating Top Cunt so much, he made the end times happen and created a New Heaven and a New Earth explicitly without her.

It's actually a comedy fic premise, now that I think about, but it's played hilariously dead straight instead.

>>43261554
>half anthro porn, half pretentious naval gazing
The duality of Fimfic writers.

>>43261578
>why couldn't it be a more down-to-earth tale of one of RD's friends dying and the works?
I thought the same exact thing. "Fluttershy gets mauled to death by an animal and Dash is just a little too slow getting to her to rescue her" would be a far more pointed wangst plot for her dealing with grief than God going "lol, you don't get in".

>>43262979
Of course it does. It's HFY. An Academic Visit is probably the only HFY fic that isn't, and that's only because the griffons are the punching bag.

>>43263030
Nah, I'm gonna have to pass this time. I got too many other fic ideas taking up space and now there's the addition of art to juggle on top of that.

>>43263136
There's a flattening thread on /d/

>>43261626

I’ve seen anons saying that I’ve been looking too deeply into the story.

I completely agree—In fact, I have a perfect example of me doing so.

I didn’t read the author’s blog until just a few hours before the anchor post.
Because of that, I didn’t know that ‘Further Up, Further In’ was just a reference, so I spent some time looking for a deeper meaning of it

There are these two very similar—near identical—scenes where Rainbow Dash goes ‘Up’ some stairs and while doing so goes ‘In’ to her memories.
Look at this segment from chapter 1:
>”She froze . . . A few moments later, she . . . forced her legs to resume the climb.”
>”As she turned her attention to the wall . . . she suddenly felt the . . . tension . . . within her dissipate. Hung along that wall . . . were a myriad of memories . . . Images of friends old and new . . . With . . . these familiar smiles guiding her way, she hardly noticed the darkness as she ascended the last length of steps and finally reached her bedroom door.”
Rainbow Dash goes up; She has difficulties going ‘further up’.
Rainbow Dash then sees pictures which make her go ‘In’-wards. This allows her to go ‘further up’, as she does so, she sees more pictures which make her go ‘further in’; Sort of like a feedback-loop.

Compare that segment with this one from chapter 2:
>”One last set of stairs hugged the rounded wall . . . As she approached these . . . she looked up at the wall to her side, only to see the . . . little pink mare's life . . . laid out before her in photograph form . . . The happy memories that came . . . to her as she ascended those steps kept her distracted from her rising fear . . . she felt her hoof meet level ground and gazed upon the last photo in the line”
This is basically identical to the first segment. Going inwards helps Rainbow Dash go ‘further up’. And the further up she goes the more pictures she sees making her go ‘further in’.

There was a third segment from chapter 4 that I was going to analyse, but it was here that I decided to read the author’s blog.

>>43263353
Here’s another example of me looking too deeply into something.

Look at this passage from Chapter 1:
>”she could see . . . Ponyville's homes, and the brightly lit windows that gave glimpses of the lives going on within those walls.”
We then see three glimpses:

>”She saw a cute little filly lying in bed, lovingly clutching a stuffed animal while she listened to her mother tell her a bedtime story.”
When I re-read the first glimpse, I immediately made a connection between the filly, “lovingly clutching a stuffed animal”, and this passage from chapter 4:
>”She . . . looked down at the little rainbow-maned filly who sat at her hooves. She saw . . . the old, worn stuffed animal she clutched tightly to her chest.”
I thought to myself: ‘Oh! Are all these glimpses going to relate to Rainbow Dash in some way?’

>”She saw a group of gruff stallions sitting around a table, each one staring a hole into the playing cards he held before his face.”
Upon re-reading this second glimpse, I had trouble relating it to Rainbow Dash.
I could only think of how these stallions are so invested in their cards that they’re not talking and enjoying each others company.

I was about to dismiss these glimpses as not representing anything, but then I decided to look up how many cards are in a hand.

Five; for most card games a hand is five cards.

I immediately started thinking of how this second glimpse could symbolise how Rainbow Dash is holding onto her friends so much, so closely, that it’s blinding her to other potential friends/sources of happiness.

>”She also saw a little old mare in her nightcap blow out the candle by her bedside, plunging her home into darkness. She noticed several other homes follow suit, the warm lights gradually vanishing as she passed by them.”
This third glimpse only reminded me of the stars falling into the ocean that swallowed Equestria. But the image of the lights of home vanishing as the night goes on is so generic that I didn’t think it was related.

>>43261765
>it must have resonated with you to go back pinpointing specific details of foreshadowing.

Not really, no.
You see, I was watching this writing lecture, and they talked about how every piece of writing has three lives.

When you:
read it for the first time.
reflect on what you’ve read.
re-read it.

I had also finished my first read and I realised I had nothing interesting to say about it. So, I decided to re-read it, thinking that I’d make some interesting observations to share.
(The lecture also talked about how being an attentive reader can make you a better writer.)

>>43263136
>I got too many other fic ideas taking up space
Just flatten them

>>43263357
SunbustAnon, you're really living up to your flag. Perchance do you have a childhood friend who is now the tyrannical leader of a commune?

>>43262876
I made a thread: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/204388/voting/thread/573396/2026-collab-attempt

>>43263593
If you do, you should fuck her.

>>43263012
We will never escape the curse of Big Yud.

>>43263718
For the greater good.

>>43263738
But don't you want to see how this cyber truck owner epically owns this...
*Checks notes*
Functioning nigh-utopian peaceful society of industrialized talking horses with his understanding of math and numbers?

File: Hey Sunburst! I've got the electric prostate stimulator all hooked up and the cock-milking device is primed and ready! Do you want to wear the maid outfit or the bunny suit.png (840.3 KB)

>>43263739
Wanna stop a killer, you gotta fill'er

>>43263785
Fics where Twilight bursts down Sunburst's door and explains that if he's not regularly fucking Starlight all of Equestria is doomed?

>>43263357
>I had also finished my first read and I realised I had nothing interesting to say about it
fucking kek
Dude this guy should've hired you as a paid commenter to make his story seem better and probably make the other commenters like it more. Then he wouldn't have had to write the blog. I can practically guarantee you the things you mention this time are coincidences but it's hilarious watching you find them all anyways. I think if you can this much stuff in a story like this (not that the story was bad necessarily) then it probably is helping you become a better writer

File: 1913159.jpg (2.6 MB)

>>43263869
Seems more like his mom's job.

Best fics about Glimmer being a rapist?
All welcome but preferably male victim

>>43264225
Usually I see ones where Glimmy is getting raped. And usually by Chrysalis

>>43264333
Nah I want to see my girl win. Bonus points if it's weirdly ideological for her.

>>43264471
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/555728/morning-burst

About all I was able to find

Zaid I swear if you got your Discord account hacked.

>>43264504
Kek, what's going on?

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>>43264507
Bog standard crypto scam. Remember to always keep Common Sense Antivirus up to date.

>>43264512
Sad.

>>43264488
A dreary state this fandom's in, but thanks anyway for your effort.
Insane to think how few people have looked at the mind control mare and thought she might make a good rapist.

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>>43264524
She simps too desperately for a male nanny and folded the moment Twilight talked her down. Mind control or not, she's just not got the backbone to be a rapist, let alone a professional one.

>>43264525
When you're in desperate circumstances, you learn to make do. Our Town simply wasn't big enough to employ a town rapist, and somepony needed to do the job. Glimmy was the natural choice.

>>43264225
There's a few and you're best off looking in the mind control and fetish groups but off the top of my head there's Obedience is Magic.

>>43264525
I feel like ruling a town premised on violating the soul of everyone in it is a pretty good notch for a rapist's resume

>>43264530
A real rapist doesn't fold under pressure. She'd never make it outside of the amateur circle.

>>43264533
She folded on changing the past, not on violating souls. She got overpowered and overthrown in Our Town.

>>43264757
No, she got chased out. If she had been overpowered, the show would have depicted her getting raped.

>>43264813
>No, she got chased out
I fail to see how one could happen without the other
>the show would have depicted her getting raped
Now, I really do hate to insist my grasp of show-writer intention is superior, however..
But ultimately, I'm not ready to give up on my girl. I think she's ready for the big leagues. Basically all of her concessions concern mares, so there's at least some good opportunity here for her to take rightful possession of Sunburst.

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Yay, words.

File: EVERYDAY_WE_STRAY_FURTHER_FROM_CELESTIAS_LIGHT.png (330.3 KB)

I must admit my sins to horse God (Celestia) and admit that I have been getting back into the swing of writing through my depression by writing non-pone fiction.
Horsewords SOON™ though. Maybe.

>>43264847
Be the rape you wish to see in the world, anon.

Is Stardust actually good? A lot of it feels like very wordy filler.

>>43263166
And it's usually shit and descends into petty artist drama all the time because the Discord's a circlejerk they can't vent on. But even if it wasn't, Global Rule 15 still applies.

>>43264524
Join the club. I'm still waiting for a Jonestown fic, either parody or serious.

>>43264937
The movie was better.
>>43264943
Just look at the pictures, man. Mods don't care about GR15 on some boards anyway, a thread on /u/ stayed up for a month and hit bump limit with a humanised pony OP and multiple other MLP pics in it.

>>43262146
My vote goes to the traveling tutor and the librarian.