#ponies not from any specific franchise tag

[kewpiekills]

weird emo girl who works at the retro video game store and wants you to call her a good girl

V V slightly less emo puppy version V V

[urara04]

Tags masterpost

Post categories

image - either a single image or a few, with no correlation

comic - multiple images in a row, making a cohesive story (usually only fandom-related)

video - pretty direct, all posts that feature a video

text - a text post, ranges from fanfic to full on essays, or just tumblr banter

quote - a smaller text post, not worthy to stand amongst the longer ones

gif - either a single gif or multiple gifs, doesn’t matter, special gif posts will be tagged this way

screenshots -  a very specific kind of image post (they’re a special kind of humor to me)

interactive - usually text posts where the OP made a quiz or something fun to reply to

ura talks - adding my own commentary just... anywhere

Fandoms I ever reblogged

The common pattern is that the full name is typed out, but that’s not a guarantee

assassins creed - Assassin’s Creed franchise (2007-) by UbiSoft

Any specific games under the franchise are tagged with their full name, like ac iii or ac odyssey

the owl house - The Owl House (2020) by Dana Terrace

genshin impact - Genshin Impact (2020) by MiHoYo / HoYoVerse

pretty cure / precure - Pretty Cure franchise (2004-) by Toei Animation

detroit become human - Detroit: Become Human (2018) by Quantic Dream

teen titans - Teen Titans (2003) the tv show by DC Comics

steven universe - Steven Universe (2013) by Rebecca Sugar

my little pony - My Little Pony (2010) by Lauren Faust

monster high - Monster High (2010) by Garrett Sander

Artist and writing tips, tricks, references and whatever

writing - writing reference - writing tips - writing prompts - main tags used for writing

writing romance - writing fluff - writing family - writing hurt/comfort - writing angst - writing friends - writing au - writing other - more specific writing tips/prompts

art tutorial - main tags used for art

drawing perspective - drawing backgrounds - more specific art tutorials

Post-specific tags for the vibes

serious - either for big world events that are not good, or some very depressing news in general

fanfic - either shameless advertising, or I reblogged a fanfic

relatable - posts I found wayyyy too relatable to not keep on my blog

introvert - goes hand in hand with #relatable, really

Expansion on the franchises

Assassins Creed (2007-)

ac i - Assassin’s Creed (2007)

ac ii - Assassin’s Creed II (2009) and it’s DLC

ac brotherhood - Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood (2010) and it’s DLC

ac revelations - Assassin’s Creed Revelations (2011) and it’s DLC

ac iii - Assassin’s Creed III (2012) and it’s DLC

ac liberation - Assassin’s Creed Liberation (2012)

ac black flag - Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (2013) and it’s DLC

ac freedom cry - Assassin’s Creed Freedom Cry (2013)

ac rogue - Assassin’s Creed: Rogue (2014)

ac unity - Assassin’s Creed: Unity (2014) and it’s DLC

ac chronicles: china - Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China (2015)

ac syndicate - Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate (2015) and it’s DLC

ac chronicles: india - Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: India (2016)

ac chronicles: russia - Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia (2016)

ac origins - Assassins’ Creed: Origins (2017) and it’s DLC

ac odyssey - Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (2018) and it’s DLC

ac valhalla - Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (2020) and it’s DLC

ac mirage - Assassin’s Creed: Mirage (2023?) and potential leaks

Pretty Cure / Precure (2004-)

futari wa pretty cure - Futari wa Pretty Cure (2004)

futari wa pretty cure max heart - Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart (2005)

futari wa pretty cure splash star - Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star (2006)

yes pretty cure 5 - Yes! Pretty Cure 5 (2007)

yes pretty cure 5 gogo - Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo! (2008)

fresh pretty cure - Fresh Pretty Cure! (2009)

heartcatch pretty cure - Heartcatch Pretty Cure! (2010)

suite pretty cure - Suite Pretty Cure♪ (2011)

smile pretty cure - Smile Pretty Cure! (2012)

doki doki pretty cure - Doki Doki! Pretty Cure (2013)

happiness charge pretty cure - Happiness Charge Pretty Cure! (2014)

go princess pretty cure - Go! Princess Pretty Cure (2015)

mahou tsukai pretty cure - Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure! (2016)

kirakira pretty cure a la mode - KiraKira☆Pretty Cure A La Mode (2017)

hugtto pretty cure - HUGtto! Pretty Cure (2018)

star twinkle pretty cure -  Star☆Twinkle Pretty Cure (2019)

healin good pretty cure -  Healin' Good♥Pretty Cure (2020)

tropical rouge pretty cure -  Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure (2021)

delicious party pretty cure -  Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure (2022)

hirogaru sky pretty cure -  Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure‎‎ (2023?)

All other characters

Assassins Creed (2007-)

desmond miles - layla hassan - altair ibn la’ahad - ezio auditore da firenze - aveline de grandpre - edward kenway - shay cormac - arno dorian - shao jun - evie frye - jacob frye - arbaaz mir - nikolai orelov - bayek of siwa - aya of alexandria / amunet - kassandra - alexios - eivor varinsdottir - main characters of Assassin’s Creed (2007-)

clay kaczmarek - rebecca crane - shaun hastings - malik al sayf - mario auditore - henry green - fellow Assassin’s from Assassin’s Creed (2007-)

lucy stillman - cesare borgia - haytham kenway - deimos - main antagonists of Assassin’s Creed (2007-)

elijah miles - petruccio auditore da firenze - leonardo da vinci - side characters of Assassin’s Creed (2007-)

The Owl House (2020)

luz noceda - the protagonist of The Owl House (2020)

amity blight - willow park - gus porter -  main characters of The Owl House (2020)

belos / philip whittebane - the collector - antagonists of The Owl House (2020)

camila noceda - vee noceda - caleb whittebane - flapjack - evelyn clawthorne / whittewife - masha - side characters of The Owl House (2020)

emerald trio - belos!hunter - whittebane brothers - honorary tags for The Owl House (2020)

veesha - lumity - miscellaneous ships in The Owl House (2020)

Precure / Pretty Cure (2004-)

yumehara nozomi / cure dream - nono hana / cure yell - all Pink Cures in Pretty Cure (2004-)

higashi setsuna / cure passion - hino akane / cure sunny - all Red Cures in Pretty Cure (2004-)

kurumi erika / cure marine - kaido minami / cure mermaid - all Blue Cures in Pretty Cure (2004-)

kurokawa ellen / cure beat - ruru amour / cure amour - all Purple Cures in Pretty Cure (2004-)

westar / nishi hayato - bibury - all antagonists, either main or minor, in Pretty Cure (2004-)

Detroit: Become Human (2018)

connor / RK800 - kara / AX400 - markus / RK200 - the main characters of Detroit: Become Human (2018)

hand anderson - side characters of Detroit: Become Human (2018)

connara - miscellaneous ships in Detroit: Become Human (2018)

Teen Titans (2003)

robin - starfire - raven - beast boy - cyborg - the main characters of Teen Titans (2003)

robstar - miscellaneous ships in Teen Titans (2003)

Fandoms and characters I kinda just... don’t care about...

my little pony - mlp equestria girls - monster high - mahou shoujo site - the random fandoms I once reblogged but am tagging now

sunset shimmer - starlight glimmer - cleo de nile - ghoulia yelps - rina shioi - also the associated random characters by said random fandoms

World events

net neutrality - here

Other miscellaneous tags

reblorbo - untagged - q - just some automatic tags I use to keep the mess that is my blog just a little bit in order

tumblr - amazon - random companies

bots - porn bots - yeah this is just my tag dump now

[mikkeneko]

Got tagged by @veliseraptor for a writing meme!

How many works do you have on AO3? What’s your total AO3 word count?

193 works over 10 fandoms;  2,591,823 words.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

I would count 10 real ones. Dragon Age; Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle; Critical Role; Marvel Cinematic Universe; The Untamed; The Witcher; Cardcaptor Sakura; Fullmetal Alchemist; Gundam Wing; Weiss Kreuz. Some of these pre-date the existence of AO3, and some of them are better off that way.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

A Villain State of Mind; Cover Up the Sun; Laughing As I Pray; I do solemnly swear; The Morning After.  All Loki fandom fics. Not too surprising as that was the most mainstream fandom I wrote for, and they’ve been around for a while now, lots of time to accumulate stats.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do! I have a somewhat complex set of criteria for when I respond and how. 

I will respond to all  comments left on works in my current/active fandom except  for: comments consisting entirely of emojis (mainly because I have no idea what to say to that) comments consisting of single words (same) or comments that seem to be about something other than my fic entirely or focus entirely on negativity (i.e., the commentor is using this box as a space to rant about how much they hate a character, the show, or another author/trope.)

I will usually but not always respond to comments on my next-to-last fandom. On older fandoms I will respond only  to especially long or thoughtful comments, or ones that specifically ask a question that I can answer.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

That would have to be Rise From Ash,  the Loki timeloop fic I wrote in MCU. Since it was intended to lead into Avengers, it naturally had a downer ending since we know how Avengers went for Loki; but the story also ended with him having a major mental health break and resolving to kill himself in order to end the timeloop, so, uh, that was pretty unhappy.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I think that the Never Gonna Tell A Lie series has to qualify for this one by default; two fics of the “characters from wildly different series meet in a bar” format, spanning seven different franchises.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Occasionally. I can’t answer in a lot of detail because I make a conscious policy of thinking about these comments as little as possible, so I tend to forget the details. Off the top of my head I know I received a few comments on my MCU fics of people complaining that the fic was nothing more than a Thor-bashing exercise (it wasn’t intended as such, but you can’t control how the audience will receive, I guess.) And then there was the whole infamous “ableist torture porn of a mentally ill man” episode.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I can recall. It may have happened that I just don’t know about.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Have you ever had a fic translated?

A fair amount! Sometimes people will leave a comment asking permission to translate. I have always granted it. Sometimes they go through with the translation and sometimes not.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes! In Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle I co-wrote a couple fics with @faux-fires which were a lot of fun. (Which... doesn’t seem to be on AO3, huh. But Not Quite Paradise  is still on ff.net.)  And more recently @cerusee and I have been trading scenes back and forth for each other’s stories.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I don’t know if I have just one. Maybe Kurogane/Fai. They really manage to straddle all my favorite ship dynamics.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Both of my WIPs in Critical Role fandom, Molly’s Moving Castle and Fjord Mustang’s YEEHAW! Fun and Pony Ranch,  are at this point probably never going to be finished. Partly because of Characterization Marches On; the characters that I thought they were when I started writing were not the characters they ended up being in canon. But mostly just because I’m no longer really in the fandom. 

Wonder if it’s worth closing out the WIPs on AO3 with final chapters describing how the fic would have ended?

What are your writing strengths?

I can do humor, I can do horror, I can do heartbreak. I can write a complex outline and stick to it, I have a fair amount of discipline and perseverance. People occasionally compliment my character voice, so I’d say that’s decent. I can spin up a plot for just about any situation. I love  adapting canon to AU. My dialogue is pretty punchy and my action sequences are adequate.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I’m really bad at writing OCs, as I admit to every darn time this comes up. I’ve also recently realized that I have a strong tendency to avoid writing about characters I don’t like, on several fronts.

The first way that manifests is that if there’s a main/good guy character who the fandom likes and I dislike, I will avoid writing about them whenever possible. I don’t do character bashing. (Which means that if I am  writing about a protagonist character, even if they’re being a jerk and the narrative is whacking them for it, that doesn’t mean I hate the character. It just means that the story requires that they get a good whacking, Thor.)

But the second way this manifests is that I will often just... avoid writing about the bad guys, if they’re unpleasant and I dislike them. Which in shorter things is fine! We’re here to read about the characters we like.  But in longer or more plotful things, that means that all of the villain’s bad things happen off screen  if they happen at all, so the audience doesn’t get a chance to really build up anger against them, so their eventual downfall is less satisfying.

I’m also weaker at writing romance than I would like, I’d say. If it’s a story that has a plot, the romance will frequently get shoved in around the corners or at the last minute. If it’s a story that’s supposed to be about romance, the characters will usually sidetrack into having philosophical discussions about moral relativity when they’re supposed to be flirting.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I’m not sure I understand the question. I don’t think this has ever come up in my fic. I do not speak any other languages fluently enough to have ever tried to write any part of my fics, dialogue or otherwise, in a language other than english. Is this asking my thoughts on other  people doing that? Sure, why not?

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

That would have been Gundam Wing! Gosh, it’s been so long that I barely remember what  that first fic was. But the biggest thing I wrote for that fandom was a ghost story on a space station, which was not very good, objectively, but I look back on it and think it had some seeds of a pretty cool horror/psychological drama going there. 

Was Duo Maxwell really  haunting the space station? Or was Heero Yuy just going mad with grief? Who can say.

Tagging! Well, Lise tagged me, so she’s out. How about... @hollyand-writes (if you have the time to spare,) @curiosity-killed, @thethirdamell, @plotdesigner, and @cerusee ?

[soyouareandrewdobson]

The first comic: Maturity or rather the lack thereoff.

Something I commonly saw within the last decade was people arguing that animation has reached a new peak by the amount of quality in storywriting put into them and some even claiming cartoons have become more mature, particularly compared to shows of the 80s and 90s. Dobson too joined the trend and as such made this little comic in 2015 titled “Mature”, in which he argues that cartoons for children are more mature and handle serious subjects better than any media tagged with an r-rating or not following the format of animation.

  While I admit that the comic is not the most offensive and insulting thing Dobson has ever created when soapboxing about nerd/american culture, I do think “Mature”  actually in composes quite a good insight in how Dobson does not understand concepts of storytelling and overhypes the achievements and merits of children entertainment to a degree that is hurting the “cause”. Which greatly annoys me as a fan of storytelling and animation in general and paints Dobson as incompetent in the field of work (cartoonist, comic writer/artist) he tries to engage in. And I can bring this lack of understanding by Dobson down by just one simple question:

What exactly counts as a mature subject here?

 Dobson randomly accuses any form of fiction that is not a children’s cartoon or comic to have no idea how to approach a “mature” subject, but he can’t even give an example of what he defines by this term.

See, for me a mature subject is e.g. an social, emotional or political issue we as humans can correlate to in the real world. Either as a result of personal experience or a bigger picture in our history and culture (such as racism, poverty, existential dreed, personal/emotional growth, any form of oppression etc.) Something that does not only drive a story forward as a source of conflict or a character’s backstory/arc for the sake of entertainment, but may even make us think afterwards.

 And as much as I like cartoons, I do not think this is something children cartoons do most of the time.

 And before I get accused of thinking cartoons are only something for kids or that a thoughtful story can not be told via the medium of animation, let me put a few things into perspective.

Unlike Dobson, I do not have an educational background in animation. However, I grew up with a lot of cartoons, animated movies and comics from all over the world and thanks to the wonders of the internet read up here and there on the different ages of animation and certain tidbits in what went into the making of certain works of fiction and why they may have been a huge thing in the time periods they emerged in.

As such I know that the medium of animation can be used to not only create “child appropriate” content, but also movies like Barefoot Gen, Fritz the Cat, Felidae, Animal Farm and so on, which tackled themes of social issues, political worldviews and personal/historical tragedies.

 Then there is the fact, that depending on the culture, there are very different interpretations in what can be considered “child appropriate” in certain parts of the world and therefore what themes a cartoon may tackle. Like how in European children cartoons such as Alfred J. Quack there was a story arc resembling the rise of Adolf Hitler in power, to tell about the heroes of the show working in the underground against an obvious fascist regime. Or how in certain Japanese children shows the subject of death can be rather common, while in American cartoons just mentioning the word “die” seems a red flag to some studio executives. Lastly, a lot of early animation, (particularly western animation) did not even start off as something targeted primarily at children. Animation started off as a technique to tell a story through “moving pictures” and some of the first animated shorts ever had a huge fanbase of adults and children. “Snow White”, Disney’s first animated movie back in 1933 was a technical marvel at the time. A movie we nowadays mostly consider a children’s movie with a slightly dull story compared to other Disney outings, was back then a risk that earned Disney multiple Oscars and was appreciated more by adults than it was by children, despite being based on a fairy tale. A type of story mostly considered “appropriate” for kids.  

 What I am trying to say is, that I am aware of how not all children cartoons are the same and can vary in terms of “maturity”. Something I think Dobson can’t, because he also can’t see that there is a huge variety of “children” cartoons.

 Despite his background and claims to consider animation an art, Dobson has shown a huge lack of knowledge or admiration for shows/movies that do not fit into the specific mold of “western animation primarily targeted for children and airing on american television”.

And that is not a claim I make half-heartedly. I have done research on the guy, I know how he likes to brag when he considers he found a great cartoon or something interesting. So I find it telling that aside of nostalgia for certain 80s and 90s cartoons we all know, Dobson’s recommendations and taste in shows seems to be primarily focused on just the most recent stuff everybody else likes/a very small pool of rather generic shows. I am not saying he should be contrarian on principal and e.g. dislike Gravity Falls, but he lacks initiative to look out for new and old stuff himself.

I in fact remember when he asked twitter first if he should give Wander over Yonder, one of the best cartoons of the last decade, a chance, cause it seemed he was too chicken to have an opinion on his own.

Then again, weirdly enough, Dobson actually tends to be contrarian for the sake of it, till someone he respects or sucks up to tends to have a different opinion on a show/movie. For example, while he acts like Frozen is a great movie franchise and defends the second movie to the point he becomes anti-feministic when a woman has a different opinion than him on it, he actually gave the first movie a terrible review on deviantart back in 2014. Accusing it of “same face syndrome” and a shame to the name of Disney. Obviously that was also before the hashtag #GiveElsaaGirlfriend became popular and he went so far as to hint he thinks an incest ship with Anna was great. And Legend of Korra? According to first deviantart posts by him garbage. Which was an opinion swiftly changed the moment Korrasami became popular in the fandom by season 3.

 The point I want to make with this digression is, that there are a lot of past actions by him hinting on the fact that Dobson kinda despises animation, when it does not fit within a very narrow niche of things he likes. Further indicated by his disdain for “adult” animated shows or hostility towards foreign animation, except the occasional movie by Studio Ghibli for example.

 Because of this lack of a bigger picture, I do not think Dobson is aware how in terms of story, cartoons can heavily vary. And when it comes to mature subjects, you can’t really engage with them if you lack a story carrying them in turn. Let’s look again at the comic. What cartoon characters do you see in it, when Dobson talks about how he believes children cartoons “treat these (non-defined) mature subjects with FAR more respect than the hardest “dark, grim and gritty” stories”?

Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony, three main characters of Spongebob, Steven Universe, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Blossom from the Powerpuff Girls and Mickey Mouse. You want my opinion on them? None of them are from any cartoons tackling mature subjects in a huge manner.

 However, they are from great shows. (Well, everyone but Steven, but I explain that later.)

See, this is where putting cartoons into perspective within the vast history of animation, comes in handy. Cause looking at them it is undeniable that people put effort into these shows. Effort in the animation and the writing in order to create an entertaining product, decent enough that not only little kids can enjoy it as a mindless distraction, but even older people can find merit in it, thanks to characters with decent personality, good humor, world building and even an engaging story. But all of that doesn’t make these shows or any story necessarily tackle a “mature subject”. Sure, the latest incarnation of My little pony was not as saccharine as its predecessor but rather cartoony as a good 90s show, but that doesn’t mean the new version is the Schindler’s List of animation (excuse the hyperbole). Same for the other cartoons, with Dobson also not acknowledging the fact that Spongebob e.g. had quite some dips in quality over the years (and even made pretty awful jokes about serious subjects such as suicide) or that Steven Universe, while tending to tackle mature subjects for its story (like trauma, war, abuse, self esteem issues, racism, rape and homosexuality) has failed multiple times over its run (even back when this comic was made) to treat these subjects not just as plot and drama points, but also with enough respect within the narrative, to the point a lot of former fans of the show turned their back on it, cause they had enough of the issues they could relate to being simplified and resolved in a cookie cutter manner so Rebeca Sugar could tell a whimsical story about gay space rocks and forgiveness.

 Let us not even forget the fact, that while there is a huge number of cartoons with decent writing and value to them (and that those were not only created within the last 10 years or so), there is also just a lot of garbage out there that counts as “kids animation”. Cartoons and movies that were written with not a care in the world and at times outright more mean spirited as some of the stuff Dobson likely hates in life action. Are you telling me those toilet humor driven garbage piles of creativity are mature?

 The point I try to make is, Dobson’s GENERAL statement that kids cartoons tackle mature subjects better than other form of media, is factually wrong, because a lot of shows don’t even try to be mature in the first place. Which however does not mean, there aren’t attempts made at being mature or tackle a mature subject.

 Growing up with cartoons since the 90s, I saw quite a few cartoons once in a while having episodes with themes to them that were surprisingly “dark”, dramatic or related to issues I and other kids could also see and relate to in the real world. Bullying going out of control, eating disorders, school violence (even school shootings), dealing with the passing of a loved one, to name a few basic ones. Gargoyles and Hey Arnold were two very important cartoons for me in that regard, with Gargoyles showing me how dramatic a good action cartoon could be when compared to other action cartoons at the time (like Ninja Turtles) and Hey Arnold episodes like “Helga on the Couch” giving me a rather somber look into what “therapy” looks like closer to reality, while normally being a show with the slice of life adventures of a kid in the big city.

And I do highly appreciate that nowadays there are more cartoons doing ongoing storyarcs and as a result of actually having more drama to them, adding tension and character development to their plots. Things we did not quite have to the degree we have nowadays back then in the average show. But it is debatable if those things are equal to “mature subjects” such as racism, abuse or trauma. Cause at the end of the day, a lot of kids cartoons tend to only scratch the surface of those things in order to flesh out a plot, instead of making the plot about those issues. Which at times is even for the best if you ask me. Cause we should not forget, these shows and movies are made for kids. And because of their age, a lot of kids lack at times the knowledge and experience in life to properly understand the themes and subjects some people may try to convey with their work. Particularly when you want to tackle subjects such as trauma, abuse and war which lets be honest, a lot of people can’t even comprehend in their complexity as adults. So how are kids supposed to comprehend them? One way, in my opinion, is by simplifying them and turning them into part of a narrative instead of the main focus of the narrative. But that in itself doesn’t always work and can have negative consequences in multiple ways. For example by making the story suddenly non engaging, delivering the subject in such a manner that people can get the wrong message of what you are trying to say or (at worst) simplifying it to such a degree, it becomes outright offensive to others.

A good example that comes to my mind for that would be how Captain Planet back in the 90s tried to tackle the subject of AIDS in one episode. On one hand, considering how the disease was a big deal back then but no one openly talked about it, you kinda have to give credit to Captain Planet to tackle it. On the other hand, is a subject such as a deadly disease that back then was barely researched and killed millions, really something you want to tackle on an overly preachy (but considering whose company produced it, also very hypocritical) kids show, where most of the time the solution to a problem was not even grounded in reality? And spoilers, the episode treated AIDS not even as the big deal it was, but as something the villain would exploit to spread a rumor on the ill kid, because that somehow equaled a chance to pollute the world more. Not really mature, if you ask me.

 What all of this ranting is boiling down to, is that Dobson failed to make a case for how kids animation is able to tackle mature subjects, by not putting his opinion in the bigger context of what animation is/can be and what he means by the term “mature theme”. All he did was just indirectly soapbox that he thinks every other form of media is incapable of being about a serious issue, in doing so also insulting the art of storytelling in itself by disregarding anything not expressed in funny pictures specifically made for children or manchildren on tumblr who want to act they are the big boys, cause a cartoon horse made them feel sad.

He did so by making a very weak argument, not being able to present it in a manner that was hard to debunk and by drawing a comic in which everything looks surprisingly lifeless and like the least amount of quality and effort (things I argued can make a great cartoon) was put into it.

 Which ironically, is the total opposite, of being mature.

And lastly, can’t believe I have to say that, but Dobson, the Pokemon’s name is Butterfree, not Butterfry. Butterfry is what you get when you make a statue of a Futurama character made out of something you put on your bread.

[fanfictionlive]

I am going to do an experiment - Follow up 1

Hi everyone,

Sorry for taking so long to follow up. Depression and work have made my life worse in a loop. Yeah. Meh. Let's move on.

Here is the link to the previous post -

TLDR. I wanted to try a different pairs with popular and unpopular fandoms using the same story and see how it pans out.

First things first, the fandoms and the pairs.

Popular fandom popular pair - Ron and Hermione (The wizarding world franchise)

Popular fandom unpopular pair - Bucky Barnes and Scarlet Witch (The MCU)

Unpopular fandom popular pair - Maeve Willey and Otis Milburn (Netflix's Sex Education)

Unpopular fandom unpopular pair - Rebecca and Hector (Crazy ex-girlfriend) Do you guys even know who these people are :P

Popular fandom controversial pair - Jacob and Renesme (age 18) - Twilight Saga I personally hate this pairing. For research whatever.

Unpopular fandom controversial pair -

Help me out with the last one, please! 😄 😄 😄 😄 😄 😄

I have kept the pairs from movies/tv-shows to eliminate variation. I will try to them into the one template story without changing too many elements that will introduce more variations.

Fiction work counts on fanfiction.net

Harry Potter - 821K

The MCU - collectively many!

Sex Education - 121

Crazy Ex-girlfriend - 54

Twilight - 221K

TBD

Okay, so I need to write a generic rom-com with the standard formula ~5 chapters and 20K words. Should work right? Wrong. I will address your comments concerns and questions from the previous post first.

How do you define “popular” and “unpopular” fandoms?

A. With the number of works and general popularity of the fandom. Ex. Sex Education is moderately popular as a TV show but in the fanfiction world, there aren't many works. The priority here is how many words are there.

I will try to post Anonymously. But I need to figure this out.

Yes, I will post on AO3 and FF both. Since both work slightly differently the quantitative factors are different (ie. comments/reviews, hits/views). The results will be considered separately and never together.

Tags should be same beyond the ship - it's a brilliant suggestion

I will most likely use the same titles and summary - otherwise, that itself is a variation

Right now I am sticking to cishet couples

"So yeah let me predict that the sad result of your experiment will be "ships count more than good writing" - Most likely yes.

I find there’s a sweet spot in the popularity of a ship where you will get a lot of reaction. When it’s too popular, it’s easy for your fic to get lost in the masses and the readers to be pickier, but it has to be popular enough for there to be a demand.

Yes I want to see how that plays out

What exactly are you hoping to measure? Response statistics? I think in some cases, this will depend more on the specific fandom than its size.

Yes, as answered previously.

Have you thought about when they’re going up? Times and day of the week? Will you be keeping that consistent?

Yes, I am going to post at 3:30 pm GMT - odd time any fandom, normalize for all

Initially, all results will be accounted for only two months from the date of first publishing

I will start a little bit later. Since many countries are opening in the post corona world and some counties are still under lockdown, this could be biased in readers.

Yes I will be posting the results here with links to some cool infographics and diagrams

How jobless am I? - Very

​

That's all for now folks!

submitted by /u/owlpod1920 [link] [comments] from FanFiction: Where Magical Ponies battle Imperial Titans https://ift.tt/37kkJXq

[yeonchi]

Kisekae Insights #1: Introduction

Ever since I was little, I thought that my life was one big story. Influenced by the people and events in my life, the things I saw and the games I played, I started to form an imaginary universe full of possibilities. As the years went on, my universe evolved as new characters and things were introduced. However, as I begin to retire from the imaginary universe to focus on real life, I look back and realise that while I promoted or teased this universe to my friends, I’ve been very reluctant to share it with the public - until recently.

Yes, this is the “personal project” I’ve mentioned on things like the Sea Princesses reviews, Series 12 of the Thirteenth Doctor Reviews or this random post I wrote about a song parody I did. Yes, it is linked to my posts on the Yui Hirasawa Waifu Network. Yes, it’s kind of a revival of the Yui Hirasawa Kisekae Project that I started in 2015 and soon forgot about, but not really.

The coronavirus lockdown, coupled with a desire to not exactly escape reality, but make it somewhat bearable, has enabled me to post more frequently on Tumblr. Having recently opened up my personal project to everyone on my Facebook friends list (if they wished to read it), I have decided to share some aspects of it publicly on my Tumblr, under the title Kisekae Insights.

Out of respect to the privacy of myself and everyone I’ve mentioned in it (don’t ask), I won’t be revealing full details about characters and storylines influenced from my life (any such characters mentioned, where applicable, will be anonymised) and I hope the people on my Facebook can respect this. However, I can share details about characters and storylines influenced from other things, as well as theories I made as part of the project.

Doctor Who (specifically the Moffat era) was the main inspiration of this personal project. Inspiration was also taken from other sources, but it’s too hard to list them all here; you’ll gradually see them as you go through. I never really thought about naming this before, but I eventually decided to gather it under the Doctor Who banner. For the purposes of this series, however, we’ll call it the Kisekae Project. The Kisekae Project was originally meant to be a collection of fanfiction works based around the stories of my personal project, but I gave up on it because real life was getting to me and also because I decided that it was better to write new stories than keep adapting old ones.

While my personal project has developed over the years (with settings going back to the early 2000′s), it was only during the last decade that I started writing it up. I’ll be splitting the project into three phases, with Phase 1 being from 2012-2013, Phase 2 being 2014 and Phase 3 being from 2017 to the end, with 2021 being the estimated end date. I took a break in 2015-2016 to focus on my high school stuff, but I did do some “director’s cut” rereleases of old stuff.

The universe of the Kisekae Project is one where you can get from Melbourne to Tokyo in a few hours through a network of tunnels and freeways passing through Cardiff and Sao Paulo. You can also get there through (the top half of) Taiwan or Shizuoka Prefecture. It should be noted that the real-life counterparts of said cities are not the same as those in this universe, meaning that they are copies. There’s also a thing called “One Country, Two (Naming) Systems”, where places and suburbs in Melbourne are named after places and suburbs in Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan or whatever. To that point, Melbourne can just be called Hong Kong. It’s an extra layer of privacy for you and a fun thing for me.

Because I have an ego as big as the fucking sky, I wrote myself and a lot of the people I know into the project and also made what are essentially self-insert characters for a number of franchises. The project is heavily inspired from my personal life, so I tried my best to make it as accurate as possible while taking massive liberties for the purpose of entertainment. Did I forget to mention that the project is basically one massive crossover fanfic?

While this is my project, there are portions of it that I “didn’t” write because other writers “wrote” it. I might not know the full details for those portions, but in some cases, I may have some idea how they go, so those portions will only be explained briefly when they come up.

For some reason, I can get very technical about things and thus I have a tendency to explain or seek explanations for things that people can’t understand, which is part of the reason why I started this series. However, there are some things that I just can’t or don’t want to explain for some reason, so in those cases, I will have to invoke Zi-O Rule 3:

There is no set schedule for this series. There is no set length for this series. There is no set format for this series. If I don’t explain something, chances are that I will explain it later. I might repeat things I stated in past instalments if they’re relevant to the topic. Think of this as a collation of notes into a universe I’ve held dear for most of my life.

I’ve made Photoshop composites and Kisekae/Pony Creator models for this project, but I’ve never drawn anything original because, well, I’m not that artistic. Would I allow people to draw things based on this project? Probably, but as long as I’m informed beforehand. Sadly, I’m not one for commissions because of my financial situation. Also, I may have taken ideas from other people’s arts, headcanons, fanfictions or OCs, but I promise to give credit where it’s due, so maybe get ready to be put in the spotlight or thrown under the bus.

Hopefully this should make up for my lack of involvement in fandoms over the years. Anything relevant to the Waifu Network will also be simulcasted there, but please be sure to follow this blog (or the tag “kisekae insights”) if you want to follow the series.

[atomi-cat]

ATOMI’S FAQ

Before sending a message, be sure to check here. Your questions may have already been asked by someone else.

If you send me a message that has already been answered here in the FAQ, it will be ignored and deleted.

About my blog:

This blog is both my personal blog and art blog. Here I’ll answer questions, post updates, and post art. Everyone now and then, I may reblog something.

Commission page:

It’s right here!

Boneheads related:

What are the Boneheads?

           Basically, the Boneheads is both an AU (alternate universe), and a series of comics centered around the idea that skeletons from different walks of life and different franchises, will mingle and interact with each other. The comics themselves focus on:

Manny Calavera (Grim Fandango)

Sir Daniel Fortesque (MediEVIL)

Lewis Pepper (Mystery Skulls Animated)

Manolo Sanchez (Book of Life)

Jack Skellington (The Nightmare Before Christmas)

Brook (One Piece)

The group also has two honorary members, Sans and Papyrus (both from Undertale). Basically what that means is that whenever the situation calls/addresses the group as a whole, Sans and Papyrus will be with the group. Otherwise, they’re not around most of the time, unless the message involves them. Any other interactions with the main group won’t involve the entire group.

Can ( Insert name here) be a part of the group?

The answer is no. At this time, I’m not adding any more members to the group or honorary group. My reason for this is because I don’t want the comics to become crowded and unfocused.

What about a cameo?

At some point I’ll add other skeletons in the form of a cameo, but I don’t know when, and that doesn’t mean cameos can apply to any kind of character. Bottom line, if I don’t want a character to appear with the boneheads, they’re not going to.

Do the Boneheads have their own ask blog?

As of right now, no. At some point, I do have plans of moving the comics to a different blog. For now though, the comics can be found on my blog under this tag:

#boneheads

Can I send in a message asking the boneheads something?

At the moment, no. Due to how many messages I still need to answer for the boneheads,  bonehead-related questions are on a message hiatus. If you wish to ask me a question about the boneheads, I will answer it the best I can. Otherwise, your message will be ignored and deleted.

When will the next boneheads comic come out?

When it’s done. I don’t have a set schedule for the comics, so I don’t have a specific release date. I ask that you please be patient, as I’m the only one working on them, and I’m trying to get them done as fast as I can.

Can I make fan art/ fan fiction/ etc. for the boneheads?

Of course! I originally started making these comics for fun (I still do), so I see no reason why you can’t have a little fun yourselves. And if you feel like sharing, be sure to send me a link.

Content related:

What kind of art to you make?

Mostly Digital.  The kinds of content I tend to make are sketches, comics, fanart, illustrations, and storyboards. Every now and then I’ll make an animatic or an animation.

Which fandoms are you a part of?

This is always a weird one for me to answer. Whenever I talk about what fandoms I’m in, I’m mostly referring to what shows/video games/movies/ that I’m currently interested in. Because outside of that, I really don’t consider myself all that invested in a fandom community. I’m happy to talk about the stuff I like, but I mostly stay away from the community as a whole.

Anyways, for stuff that I like, gosh there’s a lot. Off the top of my head, my current interests are:

skeletons, MSA, pokemon, Wander over Yonder, Steven Universe, My little Pony, GravityFalls, a few anime, Megaman, Disney, Over the Garden Wall, Undertale, and Sonic the Hedgehog, and many, many more.

Can you draw__________?

Most of the time, the answer is going to be no.  This is because I’m working on a lot of different things at once, and thus, don’t always have the time to make artwork for that request. If you’d like, I’d be more than happy to work on your request if you would be willing to commission me for it.

Can you please draw Lewnolo?

No. A thousand times no. For those of you not in the know, Lewnolo is the name of the ship for Lewis Pepper and Manolo Sanchez.  Let me make this clear. I do not ship them. I don’t dislike them, per say, but I have no interest in the ship and don’t wish to create artwork for it. I mention this ship in particular, because it’s the one I get asked about the most. But as long as I’m talking about ships, under normal circumstances, I will not draw shipping artwork for ships I don’t like.

But, you’ve made Lewnolo artwork before! Why won’t you do it now?

Let me ask you this. WHEN did I make that artwork? Cause I can tell you. Anytime I’ve ever made Lewnolo artwork, it was during a challenge called the Kiss Meme Challenge. The challenge involved someone sending in a number with the description of a type of kiss, and two people or a ship attached to the message. I only had a few objections to what I would and would not do; otherwise, I made artwork for a bunch of different ships, despite my own personal feelings. Lewnolo was one of those ships that I was indifferent to. Also, if you go back and read the tags for the artwork that was made for the Kiss Meme, you’ll notice how it’s tagged under “kiss meme”, or something along those lines. You will never find the Lewnolo artwork, or any artwork that was made during the kiss meme under the boneheads tag, because I don’t consider it a part of those comics. The Kiss Meme art only pertains to the Kiss Meme. Nothing more. So there.

If you really want me to draw Lewnolo artwork, you either wait until I do another art challenge when you can send a ship in as a request, or you commission me to draw it.

What about if you draw (insert different ship)?

I’m gonna say no to this, too. I have ships that I like, sure. But there’s a time and a place for it, and I have no interest in creating artwork for any ship I don’t feel invested enough in.

Again, if you want it, wait for another art challenge, or commission me.

If you send me a request for Lewnolo, it will be ignored and deleted. If you continue to do this (anonymously or not), I WILL BLOCK YOU. You have been warned.

Do you like Creepypasta?What about SCP Foundation?

Not really. No. I’ve heard of some of the more well-known ones before, but I don’t go out of my way to search for them.

Do you draw NSFW?

No. This one isn’t really a Frequently Asked Question, but I’m saying what my stance is on NSFW now.

Can you watch/listen/read (insert content here)?

If you can provide a link for me, then sure thing!

Do you have a tag for your artwork?

Sure do! My artwork is under:

#atomi’s art tag

Can we submit stuff to you?

I don’t have a submit box, but that might change in the future. For now, if you want me to look at something, please send me a link.

Do you do RP (role-play)?

No, I don’t. This is not a rp blog.

Do you have a P.O. box?

No, I can’t afford one. Sorry about that. ^^;

Can I do a voice dub for one of your comics?

Go for it! Just be sure to credit me, and provide a link to either my blog, or the orginal page where you got the comic from. I would also like a link to the finished product, please!

Personal-related questions:

Where do you live?

I live in the United States. I don’t wish to say more than that.

What’s your name?

You can call me Mel. I’m also fine with being addressed as Atomi.

Can I get your skype?

I only give out my skype to my friends and family.

Can I make artwork of your characters/your muse?

By all means, go right ahead! Just make sure to credit me and send me a link.

(page is subjected to change, and will change when the answer to an FAQ changes or if I add something new)

[kewpiekills]

what about these horses?

[junker-town]

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is the latest victim of NBA restricted free agency

Why restricted free agency is so weird and how it impacted the two-way shooting guard’s summer dreams.

As the NBA luxury tax has gotten more punitive and NBA teams have gotten wiser, irresponsible contracts in unrestricted free agency are fewer these days. This isn’t to say that there are no more bad contracts: Chandler Parsons and Joakim Noah signed large deals despite being major injury risks a year ago, and contracts for Timofey Mozgov, Luol Deng, and Solomon Hill looked dicey before the ink dried.

But compared to the mid-2000s, back when the luxury tax was just an annoyance and not a crippling factor, and when franchises were still adjusting to a high-dollar NBA where you needed accountants within the basketball operations department, unrestricted free agency has become rather safe.

It’s restricted free agency where peril truly lies.

Restricted free agency is a bizarre concept, and it’s weirder in practice. Even it’s name is an oxymoron and an accurate reflection of the tension it embodies. Players falling under the tag are both free and restricted!

Let’s go through what makes restricted free agency so dangerous for players and teams alike, and specifically how its quirks impacted Kentavious Caldwell-Pope this summer.

The restricted free agent pool is odd

The first thing to know about the trouble with restricted free agency is that the only player who become restricted free agents are good players with question marks or overachievers.

Let’s deal with the latter first. Many second-round picks or undrafted rookies sign three-year deals with team option at or just above the minimum contract level. If these prospects don’t pan out, their teams cut them loose, usually early. If the prospects do pan out, these end up being some of the most valuable contracts in the league.

But at the end of those three-year contracts, the players become restricted free agents. Having played for little salary (relatively speaking), they are hungry for a payday. Teams face being forced to pony up lest another team come in with a crazy offer. This is how the Mavericks got Chandler Parsons from the Rockets, and the Rockets got Jeremy Lin from the Knicks. Sometimes, teams are appreciative of the overachievement but unable or unwilling to pay up. This is how the Kings lost Isaiah Thomas and the Jazz lost Wesley Matthews (albeit after one year).

Then there are the good players with question marks. Really good players -- future or current stars -- don’t make it to restricted free agency, and if they do, their teams lock them up immediately. The best young players usually sign rookie extensions after their third seasons. Some don’t, and become restricted free agents ever so briefly after mutually agreeing to a new contract (as happened with Klay Thompson, Kawhi Leonard, and Draymond Green) or being yanked into a new max contract (as happened with Jimmy Butler). Below the star level, it’s not so simple.

Take Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, for example. He’s in the news because he is no longer a restricted free agent. But he was only ever a restricted free agent in the first place because he’s a nice player with a couple of serious flaws, and no one can agree on what he’s worth. His camp surely thinks his defensive prowess is worthy of a fat extension. Doubters question his inability to create a shot and his inconsistent shooting stroke. There are questions. There is debate.

If Caldwell-Pope could shoot with consistency, we wouldn’t be here: Detroit would have locked him up. If Caldwell-Pope weren’t such a nice defender, he might have jumped at any offer, or Detroit might have declined to extend a qualifying offer in the first place, making him unrestricted. (We’ll get back to this point.)

So we start off with a weird player pool. Now we had some hurdles from the team side.

Chasing restricted free agents is hard

Teams with restricted free agents have the right of first refusal. But they need to be given time to review contracts that their RFAs sign in order to decide whether to match it. How long should they have? A decade ago, teams had a week to decide. We’re now down to 48 hours, which seems appropriate. But that still creates a timing problem for teams extending offer sheets to restricted free agents.

Another wrinkle is that free agency in general is frontloaded: most players want their status resolved ASAP, and take all of their meetings within the first few days of July. However, nothing can officially be signed until the moratorium ends on July 6. The Otto Porter ordeal provides a good example of the timing issues chasing an RFA creates. The Nets reached a deal with Porter late on July 4 after the player met with multiple teams over four days. The match clock didn’t start ticking until the moratorium ended on July 6. The Wizards had until the end of July 8 -- Saturday — to officially inform Porter and the Nets of their decision. For four days a huge chunk of Brooklyn’s cap space was tied up in the Porter decision, despite it being pretty much a lock that Washington would eventually match.

That’s fine for the Nets, who need to keep chasing free agents given their draft situation. But it’s too big a hurdle for most teams. This ties in with our next point.

The RFA team pool is weird

It’s not just the waiting that hurts. It’s the fact that in chasing restricted free agents, teams have to clear cap space first without knowing if they’ll get to keep the player they are chasing. You can’t extend an offer sheet without the space or salary cap exception to absorb it.

This is different from chasing unrestricted free agents. The Celtics, for example, recruited Gordon Hayward, an unrestricted free agent. Once Boston landed him, the team proceeded to clear space by trading Avery Bradley, rescinding Kelly Olynyk’s qualifying offer, and renouncing a few free agents. Had Hayward been a restricted free agent, the Celtics would have had to clear the space before Hayward signed the offer sheet ... and then risked losing him to an incumbent team match while already having lost the assets it traded or cut free.

As such, the only teams that get into the restricted free agency business are those with already existent cap space. Few teams are willing to perform cap sheet gymnastics just to submit an offer sheet, and rightly so.

One more minor twist: RFA offer sheets must be at least three years in length. So teams with one year of cap space to burn aren’t in the game. This is why the Lakers weren’t available to RFAs — L.A. wants to retain its cap space for next summer.

Player value is tied up in extremes

All of this contributed to Caldwell-Pope’s weird July — one that isn’t over yet. Few teams were in the market for restricted free agents in the first place. It was believed that it would take a big contact to pry KCP away from Detroit — this likely turns out to have been not true -- and of course Caldwell-Pope isn’t going to sign a contract less than what he believes he’s worth.

The relatively free market that exists in NBA free agency doesn’t apply to RFAs: there is a structural bias toward hefty, cumbersome contracts or no contracts at all. Reasonable RFA offer sheets are few and far between only because there is no point in an outside team offering a reasonable contract -- it’s just going to get matched! If you really want the player -- like Brooklyn with Porter -- you need to go for big dollars and annoying contract terms. (Porter will reportedly get paid half his annual salary each October 1. Given that his salary is around $25 million per year, this is pretty annoying to the folks writing the checks.)

Furthermore, if the player is willing to take a reasonable deal, he’ll just agree to it with the original team and bypass the games. If the original team values the player highly, they’ll likely make a generous offer to avoid the contract trickery that restricted free agency brings.

Caldwell-Pope thought himself worthy a Porteresque offer sheet. Whether he’s right or wrong, through the first week of free agency no team with interest in chasing restricted free agents agreed. NBA norms would dictate that Caldwell-Pope continue searching for a rich offer as more cap space dried up. We’d get a threat from his agent about taking the qualifying offer in an attempt to pressure the Pistons into offering a deal. Either some stalking horse team would make an offer to force the issue (the ol’ Enes Kanter resolution), Caldwell-Pope and the Pistons would find middle ground, or he’d take the qualifying offer after giving up on the 2017 market (the Greg Monroe doctrine).

Stan Van Gundy, who runs the Pistons, doesn’t do norms. He decided that with Avery Bradley in tow, he had no interest in retaining Caldwell-Pope at the price he is likely to command and rescinded the qualifying offer (making KCP an unrestricted free agent) and renouncing the Pistons’ Bird rights (meaning KCP will not be re-signing with Detroit even as an unrestricted free agent).

Van Gundy’s rash move may have been foolish — we’ll see how Caldwell-Pope pans out, but renouncing valuable players you could still extract value from is usually a bad idea -- but it had a huge impact on how the player’s summer will wrap up. There are two routes: a one-year balloon contract with a team preserving cap space for 2017 (hello, Lakers) or a more reasonable, closer-to-market-value multi-year deal (perhaps with the Hawks).

Getting out of restricted free agency has its benefits. But Caldwell-Pope’s foray into the market was damaged heavily already. What a weird system.

[aboutthemponies]

About clop and the sexualizing of ponies

This is not something easy to write about. The subject I’ll be discussing is controversial, and it hits hard on an emotional level. Any attempt to discuss it usually is barred down by every kind of bias and logical fallacy in the book. Yet every time the subject is brought up, my mind screams with unspoken arguments and dialogue, and they haunt me, to the point that I’ve written and scrapped this essay many times. What follows is my best attempt to discuss this, and while it might not be perfect, I will finally be at ease sharing these words, knowing that I tried my best.

The subject is clopping, so if you’re not willing to have a mature, adult conversation at the moment, it’s best to stop reading now. Most of you are probably well familiar with the C word, though there will always be some who aren’t, so to be brief, a long time ago on the forums of 4chan, there was a set of “rules” declared that the internet must follow. While most of these rules are forgotten (you can look them up if you want), one stands out infamously. “Rule 34: There is porn of it; no exceptions.” R34 (as it is frequently abbreviated) is very much more like the law of gravity than a rule; there is no denying it nor its implications. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is not the exception of this rule, but rather the most prominent example of it. Tens of thousands of pornographic images of MLP characters exist, and there’s so much of it that MLP probably has more porn than any other fandom in existence.

Most people’s reaction to this fact is polar. In one camp we have the audience of this porn, which takes delight in its existence, and in the other camp, we have those who don’t view it and think it’s pretty messed up. This isn’t to say there is no middle ground in between; like all dichotomies, the reality is more of a spectrum, but for the most part, people’s opinions lie on the ends of this spectrum. Either you’re glad it exists, or you’re horrified by its existence. The point of discussing clop is not to change your opinion it; after all, the response to this material is an emotional one, and people can’t ignore what their emotions tell them. Instead, we must apply logic and reason to understand the issue, and what it means for the MLP fandom.

If you’re interested in why people seek out this pornography, ShellyD provides an excellent, objective commentary on the subject. While ShellyD does a great job addressing the “why” question, his presentation doesn’t delve deeper into what this means for to the fandom. It does, however, shed light on the complicated nature of human sexuality, which is something that our species has pondered for forever yet surprisingly isn’t openly talked about in nations like the US.

While sexuality is a very large and nuanced topic, in this day and age there are two ‘rules’ that are pretty much universally upheld. Sexual behavior must be consensual among all involved parties, and it also must be safe. In most cases, as long as those two criteria are met, the sexual practice in question is considered to be okay, regardless of how other people view it. It is from this angle that most people in favor of clop justify it. As clopping only involves one individual, it is consensual, and it’s obviously just as safe as normal masturbation, so many cloppers will ask, “What’s the problem? When did clop ever harm anyone else?”

I’d like to point out here that by the above logic, consensual and safe sexual behavior at any time, at anyplace, in front of anyone, is okay, and that’s just too large of a stretch to make. In the real world, there’s a lot more rules at play: laws, morals, social norms, etc. Why such rules exist is an interesting conversation in it of itself, but there’s no denying that here context is king; having sex with your partner in your own home is very different than having sex at work, in a school, or in public. The same applies for masturbation and all other sexual activities.

So when we talk about clop, we’re talking about a very specific context, the MLP universe. As well all know, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a show dedicated to ideas like kindness, generosity, honesty, loyalty, and laughter, all bundled up into an idyllic package. While this show means different things to different people, there’s two obvious things that we can say are true about FiM:

Its primary theme is the idea that “Friendship is Magic”

Its target audience is young girls

These two facts alone ensure that the show never is going to dive into sexuality at all, as it is not age appropriate but also not relevant to its platonic themes. This makes the show itself a bad place for porn, and I don’t think there’s anyone actually hoping for the show to include sex scenes any time soon.

What’s more controversial is whether the MLP universe is an acceptable place for porn and sexual activity. To be more definitive, the MLP universe consists not just what we see in the show, but also what we don’t see, and this is why it’s much harder to judge whether the universe is the right context. We simply don’t know everything. However, one can take context clues from the show to discern whether sexuality does exist within the universe.

The base assumption is that the show is representative of the universe like any smaller sample of a larger data set. So if sexual behavior (arousal, intercourse, etc) exists in the universe, we’d expect to see hints of it in the show. However (and perhaps strangely), there aren’t any hints of this in the show: the characters are never horny, they are never suggestive, and most don’t even experience romantic attraction with the exception of a few crushes. Even among pairings like Shining Armor and Cadence, and Mr. and Ms. Cake, their relationships aren’t different than that of close friends. The only hint towards any sexual experience like what humans have is that the opposite gendered couples have offspring. In other words, reproduction is possible, but its mechanism is unknown. We do, however, know of one canon mechanism of reproduction: parasprites reproduce asexually by vomiting their children.

Any further explanation starts making assumptions, but from what we’ve seen, it’s fair to conclude that the characters are asexual and only act in platonic ways (with an occasional burst of romance). This also aligns with Lauren Faust’s intention “to give girls a respectful interpretation of the thing they like.” Because young girls aren’t sexually aware, any world they would imagine would be platonic (perhaps with some romance) like Equestria. This all leads to the conclusion that the MLP universe isn’t the appropriate place for porn, due to the show’s design.

Rule 34 of course, states that there’s going to be porn, no matter what, so what happens when you take a platonic universe and make porn of it? The result is an act of transformation; in the original work all the characters were strictly platonic, and in the derivative work the characters all turned sexual (or hyper sexual, as pornographic works try to be as arousing as possible). As this transformation is from one extreme to the other, it’s not surprising that some fans dislike it. After all, if an individual likes a work because of its specific characteristics, removing those characteristics is a sure way to get them to dislike it.

But to look beyond the individual and their preference, what does this transformation, from platonic to sexual, mean to the fandom at large? The fandom (by definition I’d say) is a place to celebrate the show with others online and in real life, so the fandom’s goal should always be to do just that: celebrate MLP:FiM. This includes the creation of fanworks like art, music, and stories because these works typically reflect the same things we love about the show, whatever it may be. But because clop is transformative, it does not reflect the established characters and their platonic relationships.

This puts clop into a category I call non-appreciative fan works, and in it falls anything that celebrates ideas opposite to ones in the show, like blood and gore as another example. This doesn’t mean that these works are bad, evil, or shouldn’t exist, it’s just that they don’t celebrate the show like other fan works, and by using the same franchise to push the opposite message, these works can disrespect the show. How much they disrespect the show depends on the fan work itself; a long fanfiction with a well explained sexual relationship wouldn’t be disrespectful at all (it also wouldn’t be pornography), but an image showing the entire Mane6 being raped would be incredibly so. Typically, the more sexually explicit a work, and the less context provided, the more depreciative the work is, though this scale is different for every person.

The best way to handle non-appreciative fan works is the tried and true method of tagging. Works that are particularly sexual or particularly bloody probably aren’t what fans of the show are looking for because FiM isn’t either of those things. It’s also better if the tagging systems are nuanced; there’s a big difference between a work that’s sexual, and a work that’s pornographic (in case I haven’t made the distinction clear, pornographic works are sexually explicit works with the intention or effect of being as arousing as possible). The same nuance holds true for the “saucy” works; is the pony’s butt there to be arousing, or is it there because that’s just where butts anatomically go? If done properly, this ensures that no one accidentally views works that contrast what’s explored in FiM.

Part of this is also not pushing the clop agenda in the rest of the fandom. As stated earlier, the fandom’s goals should be to celebrate the show for what it is, and clop deviates from that, so promoting it beyond acknowledging that it exists is unfair to people who wish to avoid it. The same holds true for people who intentionally attack cloppers; cloppers are also allowed to celebrate MLP:FiM, and seeking them out to yell at them is worse. Discussion with the intention to understand one another is always fine, but sadly it often turns toxic (for the brave souls who wish to understand, I applaud you and hope that you don’t receive nasty comments like I have).

The other issue that should be resolved is the misunderstanding between the two most opposite sides. It’s always okay if someone judges MLP:FiM as a bad place for sex because of the context, and it’s always okay if someone likes the porn. But when a member of the fandom discovers the clop (or a clopper), and they find the sexual transformation disrespectful, how do they know the artist/person isn’t trying to be disrespectful? Short answer is that they cannot know, unless cloppers/artists try to make that clear. For example, when someone states, “I love clop,” what do they mean? Is it the image of consensual sex between two of their favorite characters that they like, or is it the image of all the show’s cast being raped that they enjoy? These are two very different things, so if cloppers don’t want people to assume the worst, they should be more specific. The statement “I love clop because I like sexual fantasies between my favorite ships” is much more descriptive of what the person actually enjoys, and it also explains their motivation. Really, any short explanation should be enough to rid people of doubt that one is trying to be disrespectful.

Now to quickly summarize everything I’ve stated above: Clop is a hard thing to discuss. The subject tends to polarize people, which likely due to how complicated sexuality is. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with clop, though the judgement is ultimately based on whether one thinks it’s appropriate given the context of My Little Pony: Freindship is magic. Because it’s a show about friendship, and because it depicts its characters platonically, many will reach the conclusion that porn of the show is not appropriate. Anyhow, clop is a transformative work, which means that it should be tagged and available, but not promoted and not hated. Misunderstanding can hopefully be cleared up by having cloppers explain to non-cloppers that they mean no offense when the two worlds do collide.

At the end of the day we still can all celebrate pony together, and diversity within the fandom can help make it a great place.

[kewpiekills]

Just wanted to say I really love your chubby transgirl Pinkie so much! Super cute design and she really resonates with me!!

i’m really glad you like her >_<!! here’s some bonus doodles of her from my sketchbook

[kewpiekills]

horseplay with the gf

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