Jun
12th
2014
Interview with Crystal Heart Entertainment · 7:50pm Jun 12th, 2014
Hey y'all, just letting you know about an interview I did with Crystal Heart Entertainment. They're a group who is trying to provide new members of our community with informative videos. They talk about older pillars of the community when it comes to stories, music, art, and things in general. The interview I did with them is embedded below, but you should go check out their other videos as well.
Also, this blog is tagged for Past Sins because the interview was largely focused on that story. Also, maybe I talked about something I'm working on. Maybes :3.
That swanky intro music makes me feel awesome.
An interview, nice. :) I'm jealous, but still, nice. ;)
"Most notably Past Sins and its side stories."
*sighs* Why doesn't anyone ever mention Better Living Through Science and Ponies? That was an interesting fic. Or Maybe a Mug of Hard Cider, or Wise Beyond Her Years? Not that there's anything wrong with Past Sins, it's just that nobody seems to give credit to the other good fics.
2201724
Well, when someone thinks MLP Fan Fiction, no one ever thinks about those stories, unfortunately.
2201736 They also generally don't think of Past Sins right away. That story comes after having read first My Little Dashie and then quite probably Sunny Skies.
2201738
Then we can solve this by simply noticing that it is both one of the most popular stories on the site and Pen's most popular story.
2201724 Better Living Through Science and Ponies is actually pretty weak as a story. There was no real challenge and a lot of the plot was very contrived. I mean come on, the main protagonist had fully functional portals as a cutie mark!
2201747 *chuckles* So? If the reader enjoys the story, do the details really matter? In the end the main purpose of writing is to entertain your audience, not write the critics' paradise. Pen Stroke is popular because he manages to entertain people not with just one fun story, but several. What more can you ask of an author?
2201742 Agreed.
2201751
Now get back to work on Dusk Shine, ye fiend!
2201752 Shuddup, it's mostly done!
I'm primarily holding off handing it to le proofies and then posting until Monday so that we keep a regular schedule. 
that was fun to wathch and i hope you enjoyed it PENSTORKE
I just realized something... Pen Stroke is a bird.
So, Penstorke, are you the stork that delivers baby pens around the world so that we may continue writing by hand?
2201750
Yes, because readers liking the story is entirely subjective and changes from person to person. Plus ignoring little details is idiotic because they simply build up in the end. Also writing standards are a thing.
What, critics aren't valid readers now? As it is, good luck improving without solid criticism, something most authors actually want to do. Empty praise does nothing but stroke the ego and is ultimately useless. Your white knighting is doing Pen Stroke no good.
Popularity doesn't mean much when someone can write a trollfic on the level of shit like Spiderses and become a hit. And what more can I ask of an author? How about to improve? The best authors strive to enhance their storytelling and over time usually do. Sometimes it takes someone pointing a flaw out to really notice it. Plus nothing is quite as awesome as seeing an artist of any kind surpass themselves.
2201808 You people take horse words way, way too seriously. Granted, a story that is of such a poor quality as to be unreadable or unbearable is a detriment to good writing. What I fail to see is how any of the writing from this guy falls under that umbrella. Perhaps I'm just too generous, but you guys just seem like the biggest buzzkills.
2201833 You're on a site dedicated to fanfics and you're really that surprised that people expect a certain standard of writing from author with several stories under their belt?
2201897 Not particularly surprised, just sad that people have stopped enjoying stories and seem to read them more for analysis than anything else.
2201920 Uh, most people read to enjoy and the critics usually just save what they have until after they are done reading. I usually read over once just to get what's going on before doing diving into the details. That's kinda why I pointed out that story's flaws earlier, parts of if came across as so contrived and inorganic that it slapped me out of my relaxed reading.
I mean encounter with GlaDOS at the end read more like a video game walkthrough than a damn story. GlaDOS acts just as predictable as she did in the game making the whole thing rather boring. That's pretty bad considering it was the climactic battle between pony and robot alicorn. Game mechanics are one of those things that don't translate well to writing as they limit what characters can do in the game. But in the story world GlaDOS could have stopped shooting the very same rockets that were being used to defeat her and freaking punched Chell or something similar.
2201938 Eh, you have a point. That's probably actually why I'm not a big fan of listening to reviewers, they point out every little flaw and it's a little hard to get those flaws back out of your head once they're there.
2201953 I'm sure most critics are like me and only really started pointing things out once we'd been exposed to enough stories to start recognizing patterns. Annoying as it's something as you've said that you can't unsee, but at the same time it makes it possible to avoid those mistakes when you're writing.
After I started noticing these patterns and tropes, I researched them and coupled it with the knowledge I gained from both writing and reading.
2201996 I suppose you could say it's a double edged sword then.
2202026 Pretty much
Thanks Pen Stroke for the plug and for doing the interview, I appreciate it.
Also sorry about the typo
i.imgur.com/kYDTZjL.png
note to self: don't post videos when you've had 4 hours of sleep at midnight...
A: fixed the typo, the last time i'm cutting out caffeine
I liked what you did at the end, "ta ta!" That was extremely unexpected really to me. Some parts of the interview made me laugh a lot! Or at least what I thought was funny.
But what if some youtube groups interview Pewdiepie? The most subscribed channel? Some people might be wanting a video like that.
WoW, Pen actually mentioned Strawberries?
Past Sins was the first fan fictions I had ever read. It was a recommendation from Dr. Wolf on one of his YouTube videos. I have no idea why I avoided reading anything, maybe because I'd read nonstop until I was finished.
After an eight hour reading session, I finished Past Sins and was thoroughly satisfied with it.
The story hit all my strings as to my reading tendencies. It was dark and dreary, dragging the characters through the mud. It has the literary dark tunnel you are forced to travel down, only spotting the occasional light that flickers as you approach where I'd pause and wonder what would be at the end of this tunnel. As I got closer to the end, I began to wonder if the light I saw was the outside world to greet me with the jubilation of daylight, or a freight train thundering down the track.
When I came out the other side, I found a fitting landscape. The sky was dark, the wind was howling and a torrential rain seemed to tear the land apart. Once the storm had passed, the sun poked gently from behind the black clouds. It was enough to know that things would be better, but the thunder that echoed though the air was a stark reminder of the storm that had just torn through.
I can see why this is considered a 'gateway' story, as from cover to cover it's a great story. It maintains a relative closeness to the characters everyone enjoys from the show, adds in a believable story and spikes the pastel world with just enough shadows to have a grim fairy tale feeling.
I'm glad it was the first thing I decided to read.
Well I just saw the interview. And I have a confession to make, I did not read Past Sins...well except the epilogue, but I did read the short stories that you wrote after. I came aware of Past Sins after read the comic strip that someone on deviant-art is writing. Funny, I got into this fan fiction thing after learning about Kkat's Fallout: Equestria. Again I did not read it except for the epilogue, but I did read through alot of the side stories, alternate universe or otherwise. ....I'm weird like that. Big fan of the fallout: equestria universe
A lot of the stories I've read so far have been good, although the ones with a lot of promise seem to just get pushed to the wayside.
What I'd love to see however, would basically be an inter-dimensional melting pot gone wild. It be awesome to take these characters wither they are the main 6 or fan made characters, from these stories and just throw them together into some weird situation. Imagine different main 6's, different Doctor (Who's)(Hooves), Discords etc all interacting with each-other. Exspecially since some species like the Changelings vary fic to fic. Its a pipe dream.... no way would different authors would even work on such a project.....I'm rambling.
Well if you ever get into writing another Nyx fic, i'll be sure to read it.