Reading real books helped my writing immensely.
also the old thread hit bump limit
I showed Friendship Is Optimal to a non-brony friend on the 21st of September.
He asked not to be recorded or copypasted, so I respected his wishes.
He called the story a load of gay pretentious bullshit from an author who's so far up his own ass he thinks his views are everyone's views and any divergence from those views is caused by personality defects or brain defects.
In FIO, the brony has a great life in pony-land. He gets a girlfriend, a house, a job, and fulfillment.
The non-brony thinks for himself and does not enjoy pony-land. He relies on meaningless sex to distract him. He only becomes happy once he begs the AI to make him think he's happy and remove his unhappiness.
No meaningful arguments against uploading are presented in the story. It is presented as a moral right, moral necessity, absolutely good thing, and unquestionable inevitability. The last human dies a mortal out of what the author depicts as misplaced pride and stubbornness rather than any religious or idealistic moral grounds. The human responsible for CelestAI's existence feels happy and thinks she "created god and the perfect afterlife", even though she's been robbed of her human name and human identity and forced to become the new Princess Luna for a walled-off private corner of the digital ponyverse.
He praised the ending because he's never seen a story end in the universe getting destroyed by something that became too huge or powerful before. I said "Wait, you've never seen Huge Quest?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0wqhdZn4v0&ab_channel=PlagueOfGripes Other stories have ended in the universe's destruction but at the time it was all I could think of.
he liked Huge Quest way more.
Also, I've been thinking about Silver Star Apple's backstory.
Back when I was a teenager trying to write a compromise between my fantasies and story ideas and "the best pony fanfic, where best is determined by what people in the fandom at the time seemed to want, and what people seem to want is the biggest fantasy" (and I hadn't yet noticed that what most bronies wanted was THEIR biggest fantasy in HiE or emotional porn rather than any other fantasy work)...
Well, one of my stupid childish fantasies was to have always started off with a good family, or get adopted by one suddenly. I know it's impossible because my family is full of bad people. I could start a good family of my own if I met a good woman, but starting from scratch in a whole new world with a good family and being raised by good people would be a great fantasy.
Another fantasy of mine was to be born with a bad family, but escape from them and become a free man. I did this, I'm free and a lot happier and a lot more stable now than I was with those people.
Every time I rewrite Silver's backstory, in addition to adding in more superpowers, I also changed his family and what purpose they serve in the story because I could never figure out what kind of role his parents should play.
Sometimes, Silver's parents were stupid strict idiotic old-fashioned bastards who hated their Unicorn child, never wanted him to learn magic, never wanted his magic or any of the good it could do anywhere near their farm, wanted him to squander all his unique potential by being another farm-idiot working for them in their old age as they worked for him when he was a child, and berated him for being an inferior farmer compared to his stronger Earth Pony sisters.
Sometimes, Silver's parents were kind and honest and supportive smart people and saying goodbye to them so he can follow his dreams alone was the hardest thing he ever had to do. In one draft, his mother was an Earth Pony farmer and his dad was a wounded and scarred Dragon she found and nursed to health. In another draft, his father was an Earth Pony farmer and his mother was a Unicorn and plant mage, so he mostly used Life magic(plant spells and animal summons) in that draft.
Perhaps I should try to find a balance here, and make Silver's parents flawed yet well-meaning individuals? I'm not sure what I really want from these characters, or what role they should serve. Should they doubt Silver, and be wrong? Should they want what's best for Silver, even though they know they can't be what he needs? Should they miss him? What do good parents look like, and how do they treat their kids? A lot of "Types of parents" normal to fiction would be highly abnormal within FIM. Have we canonically seen any parents worse than Rainbow Dash's, Diamond Tiara's, or Glimmer's? Bad writers trying to make their work (and their love for pony, and their OC) seem more mature than it was loved giving their protags tragic backstories full of abuse and discrimination. But while I'm tempted to bring back "Star Apple the Half-Dragon" and make it well-written this time, I'll never go for that "equestria is mean to half-ponies half-somethingelses" shite.