Crap I Hate In This Fandom (or at least, one specific part of it) · 2:50pm Jul 11th, 2017
HEY GANG, WHATTUP!
So...clopfics.
Hey, HEY! *stands at the door, holding a shotgun* Nobody's leaving yet! Y'all sit your asses back down! You saw the title and still came here, now you're in it for the long haul and have nobody to blame but yourself!
Now, let me get one thing straight up front: I don't hate clopfics. I think their presence is a little weird in a fandom like this, but I understand that this site and the fandom around it are big enough where clopfics are pretty much an inevitability. You get a group big enough, you're going to get a lot of sexual feelings coming out to air. Especially when the group is online, where so many of us use the Internet as an escape from our own sad, lonely, non-sexual little lives (he said while typing a blog on a pony fanfic site in a house where he lives totally alone).
So yeah, I get clopfics. I understand why they're here. I may not like 'em, but I don't feel a burning rage towards them that makes me want to post a 95-page rant about them being a symptom of declining morality in an industrialized society. What I DO hate, however, are some of the specific cliches we see in clopfics all the goddamned time, or even in stories with a sexual theme to them. These cliches are just terrifyingly prevalent here, and they're so damned idiotic it makes me want to tear out what little hair I have left. To me, they just break any immersion that might have built up, especially where we're supposed to be reading a story, not just a clopfic.
Now, I will admit, these are just my opinion. I'm sure there are some people who come to these stories specifically FOR these tropes and cliches, but for me, they just nag at me and I just have to get a good ol' rant off my chest. So without further ado...
1) TALKING ABOUT SEXY DRESSES AND CLOTHES THAT LEAVE NOTHING TO THE IMAGINATION
They're ponies. They're naked, like, 95% of the time. You don't get leaving less to the imagination than that.
2) SUDDEN INCEST
Guys, look. I get incest. I may personally be grossed out by it, but I get it's a turn-on for a lot of people. I understand it if we're reading a fic that's centered around an incestuous relationship, because shit, if it says right there in the description that's what I can expect, then I can't exactly complain when *gasps* Shining Armor and Twilight kissing!? NUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH...
What I don't get is when it pops up in a story that might not have even been tagged for it. Maybe a clopfic, maybe just an actual, M-rated story, but yeah I can go into a story not tagged a clopfic and expect a little sexy times and be perfectly okay with it. What breaks it for me is when, totally out of the blue, the writing starts talking about Twilight Velvet seeing her son in a school play and spontaneously becoming a pedophile!
What!? Why!? That shit doesn’t just happen! You don’t suddenly decide your sister is bangable after some random day working on the farm! Even just seeing a family member in any sort of sexual light should be a massive gross-out moment! But I see it all the time where, suddenly, some random pony decides someone in their part of the genetic pool looks really hot! Even that, without any sort of physical contact in the story, with people suddenly having to resist the urge to dive face-first at their sister’s vagina, just break it for me. What, we didn’t have enough sex in this story? We really have to shoehorn it in here, when one character sees their brother in their Royal Guard uniform for the first time? As a guy with two sisters, I can confirm that seeing a family member in that light is a pretty sickening moment for anyone, and seeing them prance around in a bikini should realistically inspire the exact opposite feelings. It’s unrealistic, and it just makes me roll my eyes every time I’m reading a story and suddenly Big Mac starts internally monologuing about how hot his sister looks when she gets all sweaty.
3. EVERYONE HAS THE SAME FETISH. EVERYONE.
Be it bondage, diapers, foalcon, or what have you, suddenly everypony in the world has whatever fetish you have. Peeps, I got nothing against fetishes. Hell, I consider myself a bit of a bondage dom! And I love to see whatever people are into get some representation online. But every single story I’ve seen, EVERY SINGLE ONE where a fetish is explored, always has the same fetish being played out in the minds of literally everypony in the world.
These stories could be an exploration of someone trying to live a double life, trying to balance who they are in the bedroom with the face they have to wear out in the real world, but instead we’re taken to some weird reality where everyone is a pedophile because reasons. It happens all the time, and I’m just kinda sick of it. Why is it that in your dark clopfic, we see a filly rescued from the guy who was holding her in his basement, only to get molested by literally every cop on the police force? The fuck? The point of a fetish is that it isn’t common, and the idea of someone having to resolve those two sides of themselves is just so rare on this site that it just gets stupid.
4. EVERYONE’S A MORON
This kinda harkens to the old horror trope of cops and teenagers in horror movies all being so blindingly dumb and incompetent they might as well just serve themselves to the beastie with a nice Cabernet on the side. I see it a lot in kidnapping and rape fics, where the Mane Six, as well as the police forces, the royal guard, and every single princess are just all so damned blind and/or oblivious that they totally fail to notice the bullshit that has to happen for the evil plot to take place. Wow, so nopony noticed a national hero suddenly disappearing and being replaced by some actress? Like, not even a changeling, but some regular pony in that role? Not even the friends and family she has spent years around? And even though everyone must know hypnosis magic exists, there is literally no countermeasure to it being used to mentally enslave a high-ranking member of the Equestrian government? Ooh! Or how about the filly trafficking ring taking place literally in Canterlot, literally within eyesight of the princesses? Yeah, okay.
5. EVERYONE’S OOC
Ooh! Ooh! Shining Armor is now an evil rapist who uses his position with the guard to silence everyone while carrying out the most brutal rape scenes you’ve ever known! And! And! And guess what!? Night Light can only get off if he’s whipping Twilight while he’s fucking his wife, and Velvet is a submissive little battered mare who just goes with it! And let’s not forget that Big Mac loves taking Applebloom around behind the barn and fucking her little flank for all it’s worth, and is too cold-hearted to acknowledge her screams!
Look, if you’re going to write characters THAT totally OOC without any explanation, then they aren’t the ponies we’re used to seeing now, are they? They’re just a bunch of random jackasses who apparently resemble them. I can pay a couple hobos to put on wigs and tails, start kissing, and tell you it’s Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy finally realizing their true feelings for each other, but you’re probably not gonna believe it, right? You’re just gonna wonder when the perfect moment will be to make a break for it so you can tell the cops about the obviously deranged man in the park forcing homeless people to make out. And you’d be right to. Look, if you were going to write a story with characters that totally OOC, why did you even bother to make it about those characters then? You could’ve just written a story with completely original characters, why did you even bother telling me it was Shining Armor and Twilight?
And for the love of God, please don’t try to justify yourself with “They might be like that off-camera, you never know!” That’s using the gray area left by the show to excuse your lazy writing. A character only exists insofar as what the writer creating them has shown us. I fucking know who Shining Armor is, I fucking know who Cheerilee is, don’t bother trying to convince me that this serial rapist you’ve shoehorned in with their name is actually them.
Shit, now that I think about it, I guess this last one can be applied to fanfics in general. Look, don’t get me wrong, I’m cool with some OOC stuff, that’s how we got “Rainbow Factory,” and “Cupcakes.” It’s obvious that those stories are set in some weird alternate reality where one or two characters are wildly different from the show, though. You know what to expect going in! The problem arises when someone is trying to write a story that’s obviously meant to be set in the Equestria we know and love, and then somepony does something wildly and stupendously out of character, like someone’s tone and mood bounces around all throughout a single conversation or Twilight suddenly reveals herself to be a unicorn supremacist, and now it’s no longer a story about the ponies I knew like I thought it was, but a story about some weird alien shapeshifter who, at some point, takes over the body of somepony I know, with a dismissive announcement of “they might be like that, you don’t know, that’s just the way it is here!”
No, that’s lazy-ass writing, that’s what that is.
6. PAYED vs PAID
Okay, I know this one has nothing to do with clichés, I just wanted to point out a new spelling error that I didn’t used to see, but has since been spreading, like a wildfire of stupidity.
PAID: <past tense>, verb, to reimburse someone for goods and services.
PAYED: <past tense>, verb, naval term for letting out rope or chain, specifically for mooring or anchoring.
Christ alive, get it right, please.
WOOH! Long rant is long. So again, I want to reiterate: this is all just my opinion. Please, by all means, go ahead and write to your heart’s content about Twilight Velvet molesting her kids, don’t let an angry engineer from Michigan put a damper in whatever makes you happy, brah. Just know that you’re adding to a total tsunami of shit that is literally inundating the fandom with barely-believable plots, hopelessly bad characterization, and mental images that most of us could really do without. Now, I want to point out that these clichés would just be annoying if they weren’t as prevalent as they were. The problem is that there are so many fucking stories that repeat these same clichés, literally hundreds out there that tread through this entire list like they’re going grocery shopping (yes, even that last one). It might have been shocking at first, but at this point, years later, with literally hundreds of stories using these clichés under the pretense of being shocking and edgy? The most you'll get out of me is an eyeroll.
At least, that’s just how I look at it.
Agree with you 100 per cent!
I never read any foalcon fics at all. I think they all should be banned.
I almost immediately leave any story where the ponies are not the ponies I know. I might like a grimdark story, if they have a good explanation as to why Fluttershy or some other pony has become evil, like mind control or something.
I wish there was a way of favoriting blog posts on this site...
Sorry, I seem to have triggered you....have a muffin?
4598715
Dude, don't worry about it. I love your story, really! It's just...seeing some of these things in a recent chapter when I wasn't expecting them turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. Anyway, hope to see more from you soon!
4598715
Ugh, that still sounds more critical than I want it to...screw it.
Story like.
You good.
Me looking forward to more.
4598898
Is okay
Fair comment
Me not hurt, just work harder