2012: The Lemuracolypse - Part Two: Elephant Burial Grounds · 12:59am Jan 15th, 2018
2012: The Lemuracolypse
Part Two of Twelve - Elephant Burial Grounds
F'naaaaaaaaa...
In all seriousness, though, 2011 still carries a rosy-hued color of being one of the best, happiest, most endorphin-riddled moments of inspiration and creativity in my entire life. Hell, I even wrote a blargh about it. Just a tiny one.
And it's strange, too. Because while 2011 was certainly manic and crazy and awesome and substantive, the material I churned out then wasn't nearly as pivotal or snazzy as the stuff that would come later. It's simply the fact that 2011 was the beginning of it all.
I wish I could make marsupials understand: between 2005 and 2011, I was stagnant. It was the creativity apocalypse, living forever in the dwindling shadow of These Black Eyes--a fic that was technically a failure in and of itself, and yet it became a 3+ million word experiment that nonetheless won me several friends, fanarts, a message board, and a legacy that shall never unglue itself from my mind.
But in the years to follow, I frittered and wasted the hours in an offhand way. Clusterfucked by college, work, and other distractions, I hopped off the daily writing train. As a result, I rolled downhill into Vegetation Valley, where World of Warcraft and Team Fortress Two and other perversions of weak and impressionable flesh gnawed on my loins for an eternity. Hell, I even tried out having a girlfriend--just for the heck of it. Long story short, I'm still here and still a wizard.
I would woefully contemplate stories and fanfic ideas--several of which have already been mentioned in this blargh. But I could never summon the enthusiasm to hop back on the train and just go... even if I no longer needed the track ahead of me. I was aimless... without any creativity to fill in the gaps in between. LB consistently joined me in this melancholic journey, and the two of us would wax nostalgic on a near-nightly basis about the good ol' days gone by.
Now here I sit in 2018, and more years have passed with me writing than the years I had previously "suffered" in not-writing. That's eight and a half million words of poni poni poni fiction, my friends. And with all that I've accomplished, I still smile on the inside when I think about 2011 in particular.
How curiously, bitterly ironic that--in looking back--there was actually very little for me to be proud of.
I mean that as a writer... and an accomplished creator of material in search of feedback. Because... shiet... just what kind of feedback could a brony fanficcer get in those days?
I had spent weeks crafting I Remember Rainbow Dash, only to have it critically torn to shreds, forcing me to start over again.
Then I spent months putting together the first two arcs of End of Ponies, and still that involved going back and re-doing large portions in order to achieve a certain level of impressiveness.
At long last, I had something to go with, and I submitted it to Equestria Daily. In the end, after all those sleepless nights of typing away in the dark hovel of Sedna, I was rewarded with...
...ten... maybe twelve comments at best. And most of them one line or one phrase or even one word at best.
Art by LazyBonesPony
In truth, yes, the comments section for fanfics on Equestria Daily sucks. It's always sucked. And--to be fair--that's not to suggest that I never eventually accumulated a decent amount of feedback on the site. It's simply that it wasn't the volume of reaction that I had initially expected... especially with the purple-flowery level of overwork that I put into that soon-to-be-corpsed elephant of a story.
It didn't help that I had an ego the size of Andre the Giant's prostate gland, and I somehow expected to be praised and to receive worship and to have EoP-flavored fanart concerning the fic overnight. On the surface, I was humble and polite. But deep inside, I was all "Move over, Sgt. Rob Penstrokekkatfire2012! There's a new neckbeard in town, and he's gonna gobble up the fandom with explosions and awesomeness!"
Lo and behold, becoming popular isn't as easy as one would think. It's almost like you have to have charisma, intelligence, and a knack for brushing shoulders. I, on the other tentacle, fumbled to get an extraordinarily verbose chronicle of a horsepocalypse across the page. There was simply no SS&E marketing division. As a lazy introverted asshole, I expected to somehow win attention and acclaim through the sole substance of my storytelling itself. And--well--I'm fucking SS&E, so that shit was never going to happen.
And here's the biggest mistake I made going into the brony scene of 2011. I was obsessed with making an impact on the macrocosmic scale. And while--yes--I would eventually accomplish most of the things I egotistically desired back in those dark days of pacing around inside Sedna, daydreaming... what I've enjoyed the most out of ponidom is the friendships I've made, the formulation of the Noble Jury, the creation of the Lemur Cave, and all of the many-many marsupials with whom I've had the pleasure of chatting, rambling, and picture-bombing. Oh, and then there's the Fuzzhead.
Keep in mind that I had come out of a six year period where the only social contact I really cared to make was online with my good pal Lord Belgarion. An awesome dude, that LB--but we had gotten to know each other so well that we practically had the same thoughts. I was making little to no effort to branch out and make new friends (Fug's TF2 doesn't count). Even when poni poni poni struck me with its quasi-furry lightning, I was in it mostly for the wordsmithery and not the horsewankery. I was still as antisocial as ever, and I didn't actually look forward to making acquaintances. One can perhaps use this as a means to excuse all of the lonely, existential themes that were prevalent in Ye Olde Skirts.
I had come to know a few names on the ponychan servers... at the top of the list was--of course--my knight in shining armor, the one and only, Mr. Candlestick himself, Vimbert the Unimpressive.
However... and this is where it gets really weird... I didn't necessarily want to become chummy with Vimbert. It's weird in hindsight and I really really regret it now. While I admired him and his critique and I still consider him today to be the sole reason I ever landed it "big" in the poni poni poni writing scene, I felt that it was "necessary" to keep a "professional distance" from the individual I deemed to be End of Ponies' chief editor... because I didn't want to affect his judgment somehow by buttering him up with social pleasantries. What I desired the most was Vimbert's vindictive judgment, so that my horse literature would come through hardened and bristled on the other side of the furnace. Isn'tthatsopatheticandsad.com?
I carried this lulztastically redundant mentality into the end of 2011 as I hammered away at the latest arc of End of Ponies. By then, my list of reviewers and editors had expanded to include theworstwriter, Warden, Razgriz, TheBrianJ and eventually Propmaster. Props in particular would end up becoming one of the best friends I've ever had, but I didn't welcome him with open arms at first. I didn't welcome anyone. I was in this fandom for the srs bsns of horse words and nothing else. How could I possibly afford to become friends with my editors?!?
Art by DarkFlame75
This made the work on Dredgemane--the Pinkie Pie arc of End of Ponies--all the weirder and perhaps even hypocritical. There I was, hammering away at a needlessly bleak allegory concerning religion, hope, and social camaraderie when I wouldn't even allow myself basic companionship with my horse peers. Strange that--in the midst of hammering out ponifiction that dealt with loneliness and isolation--I was still swept up in both elements. I do believe there is truth to the insinuation I've consistently made that the early Skirts works were all about exorcising specific demons within me. Hence, why they're so densely cold and full of despair. At least when compared to the substance of my work hitherto after.
Dredgemane was a friggin' tumor of a story arc too, proving that the only thing EoP was good at was getting bigger, dumber, and more pretentious. I remember taking two whole months to finish the dayum thing, writing long into the cold dark knights of 2011's winter. In the end, the arc took up half of the entire dayum fic--and it all centered on the member of the Mane Six whom I liked the least. A lot of my early writing was all about punishing myself, it seems.
And yet, upon uploading it... unveiling the story to the world as a late December gift just a few short days before Christmas...
...it yet again suffered from the seemingly impenetrable apathy of the EqD comments section.
And just like that, in less than four short months, all of the mania and enthusiasm that had brought me to that point along the Great Brony Ride had... more or less proven fruitless. Perhaps it's selfish of me, but I yearned for a far greater response than that which I had received... at least in view of all the stupid amounts of time and work that I had put into the apocalyptic narrative. It sort of threw a dull shadow over the holiday season for me... and I was a veteran of retail work who already didn't think much of Christmas altogether.
I quite vividly remember Christmas Day after the Dredgemane arc went up. I felt neither sad nor angry. Just... tired. Dull. Disappointed and drained. My family and I had gone to have dinner at my Aunt's house, and--like always--I had nothing to contribute to the social situation. So, after politely excusing myself, I went out for a drive. I parked at nightfall, and strolled around the area where I grew up. It was cold and dark, but there were a lot of people around. Apparently Hanukkah that year culminated at the same time as Christmas Day, and hundreds of people from the local Jewish Community Center had gathered about. There was a literal parade of cars with giant lit-up menorahs rolling down the street. People were honking, cheering, laughing. Electric bulbs hung in the vaporous chill. I heard guitar music. There was a dude in a walking dreidel suit. It was delightfully surreal, and I remember briefly feeling as if there was more to life than what I had chosen to obsess with over the past six months.
I decided that I needed a break. A "hiatus", as t'were... long before I knew what a hiatus truly meant... and long before I actually ACTUALLY knew what a hiatus truly meant.
And so, for a week or two, I leaned back and pondered on the future narrative of EoP. It was during that time, in long dark showers where faucet water and errant thoughts splashed against the dim red glow encompassing my mind, that I decided what the next arc of EoP would be about. It would be selfish. It would be silly It would be kaizo. It would be fun.
After all. Why not?
Artist Unknown
The Petra Arc was going to be an in-between story between Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. My decision for Scootaloo going back in time to visit Rainbow Dash before Rarity and Twilight would have made more sense thematically if I had eventually finished EoP, but that never happened. Nevertheless, I felt that EoP needed two things at that point. 1) A "buffer" to emotionally prepare Scootaloo for her epic rendezvous with her mentor and 2) a further exploration of the Wasteland and its inhabitants. The Petra Arc sought to tackle both of these things, and to do so with a non-linear storytelling format that essentially integrated three separate timelines into one: there was the story of Scootaloo as a foal, interacting with Rainbow Dash. Then there was the story of young Scootaloo immediately following the Cataclysm and what she did to survive alone. Then--at last--there was Scootaloo in the present, having to deal with goblins--both nefarious and otherwise--while on her quest to salvage Rainbow Dash's corpse in order to perform the time jump. I used The Godfather Part Two as my creative and structural inspiration for the storytelling device, and for that sake i gratuitously threw in multiple Godfather references and quotes while writing the early draft.
While the Applejack and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie arcs were mostly emotional and cerebral, Petra ended up far more superficial and action-oriented. This was done on purpose. I aimed for it from the very start. Since most of it took place in the apocalyptic wasteland of the present, I figured I had free rein to go back to the violent, action-packed style of EoP's expositionary arc. Also, since I was using multiple interweaving narratives to highlight the emotional poignance of the story, I figured that I didn't need to get inside Scootaloo's head quite as much. The Applejack arc was written very introspectively, and the tumorously large Dredgemane shiet was accomplished via a series of journal entries written by Scootaloo in the present. I thought that--for the Petra arc--I would write the action and details very close to the epidermal layer and just let the events and dialogue speak for themselves. Y'know... just like every fucking thing I've written for poni poni poni ever since.
But there's a problem when Skirts tells himself that it's a-okay to go "full kaizo." Just like Vince Russo's unfiltered abomination of a mindscape, as exposed unabashedly to the public in the dying days of WCW, being "uncorked" isn't necessarily a good thing. There are checks and balances put in place by editors on purpose. And in the case of EoP, such a tonal shift wasn't necessarily going to work. I found this out the hard way.
And I mean... the hard hard way.
Perhaps there are carbon-based organisms out there who can relate: having made so much progress in forward motion, only to suddenly deevolve with the creative intelligence of a tubeworm. And I had totally set myself up, too. For some reason, I decided that I should churn out over half of the Petra Arc's rough draft and then work on the rest of it while the first half received its "editing treatment." Of course, these were the days of Shin Skirts, and "half of the Petra arc" turned out to be about 100,000+ words. Vimbert, my chief editor, wasn't even able to remotely skim a feathery centimeter of that garbage right away. So that gave me time to work on the second half of the draft. By the time he got to the content and raged at how awful and neanderthalian it was, I was already putting the finishing touches on the arc's ending... which completely depended on the tonal nature of the first half. In other words, I had wasted two halves of the material by not being willing to wait patiently on my editors. If I had somehow agreed to upload the drafts in smaller, saner portions... then maybe I would have caught the abomination that I was foaling way earlier and changed the greater whole of the project for the better.
And it's not like Vimbert was the only one who knew that the Petra Arc stank to High Hell. Warden and Worsty were also scratching their heads over the choices in storytelling that I had made. They simply lacked the livid vitriol with which to express said disgust, unlike my shimmering knight who rode around on a flaming pie on high.
I had made so much dayum progress with EoP. I fixed past mistakes. I re-worked proper narratives. I aimed for a higher quality of grammar and literary execution. I took a popcorn sci-fi situation and turned it into a vessel for philosophical pondering. And then--in a manner of days, when my latest material was finally proofread--I saw all of that progress collapse and implode at the bottom of the ocean. It was like I exploded myself with a KerStoopid Bomb. Vimbert and the others--I'm certain--probably thought I was trolling them with the sluggish pacing and gratuitous action sequences. Also, characters that I had created to capture all-important themes and moods were cartoonish at best. I can't express this enough: the Petra Arc was horrible and atrocious in every conceivable angle that you could look at it. Don't believe me? Go check it out yourself.
Early Skirts horsewordery was something that aspired for greatness (often pretentiously). My writing in those days amounted to a series of accomplishments that leaned on the support and intercession of faithful editors. It was a noble time, a try-hard time. Perhaps--deep down inside--I was proud, selfish, and impatient enough to think that I could write without any editors. In the grand scheme of things, that side of me won out in the end. I think the textual lumping of the Petra Arc "Kaizo" Edition was simply an example of my truer lazier side trying to burst through the editorial chastity belt. Thanks to the like of Vimbert and Company, that beastly side was held back for a time, and the result was a bloody corpse... a bloody 200,000+ word rough draft of a corpse.
Just think about that for a second. Two hundred thousand words. That's like an entire Austraeoh or Things Tavi Says written... for nothing. Layers upon layers of chronological jumps, emotional setpieces, action scenes, melodramatic dialogue, three separate and intricately interwoven plotlines working to create a cohesive vision... all flushed down the toilet because I was too ahead of myself and too blind to see my own inadequacies.
It's 2018, and people still ask me why I won't continue End of Ponies. Ask yourself that very same question the day that you're standing at the altar and your significant-other of ten years spontaneously decides not to show up. Or maybe rip out your kidney and ponder over whether or not you should bother growing a new one in its place.
Art by tjpones
For those of you itching to preach, yes, the challenge of existence is to learn from your mistakes and move on. However, at that particular time, the utter collapse of the Petra arc was absolutely devastating. This was before I ever had it in my head that I could work on more than one story at a time. I had zero intentions of doing oneshots. The only thing that mattered--the only thing that I had my chest vacuole set on--was The End of Ponies. It was my one shot... my one and only flight down the Death Star Trench. Nothing else mattered but the execution of this "horsepocalyptic masterpiece." It was the manifestation of every happy, hopeful, ambitious, manic thought that had carried me from the blossoming memes of bronyism to that very moment.
And now it had crashed, collapsing into an ashen pulp against a brick wall. I was still far too attached to the basic elements of the Petra Arc storyline... and I knew it. Thus, there was only one way that I could get my head to clear itself from all the pain, frustration, anger, and disappointment.
I had to take a break from EoP. But what was I to do? EoP was all I had as a means of textual self-expression. Now, I was aloft in the dark, unanchored to the narrative that I had depended on so heavily since its earliest incarnation in Sedna and the initial distribution via Ponychan. I was aimless and confused and scared.
And what an appropriate time to enter...
To be Continued in Part Three: Horsemen of the Apocalypse
All elephants go to heaven. Sleep tight, my sweet horsepocalypse.
It's actually a strange feeling, thinking about EoP, because it was the story that brought me into the fandom originally. My first time reading it way back in the day, downloaded in pdf form from Equestria Daily, was an awesome time in my life. A lot of change happened around that time, and I'm happy with the path my life has taken since then.
I won't say that EoP was the sole factor in that, but it was certainly part of it! Of all the things that blossomed into all the happiness I undeservedly enjoy today, the MLP fandom is a massive part, and I may never have even given the fandom a second chance if not for that story.
Now, all that was only to say that I'm not mad or unhappy to see it buried at last. The story died years ago, and if anything seeing it put to rest is... bittersweet. EoP had an impact on my life, but that impact was only ever fully realized through the friends I've made and the community I've loved being a part of.
It may be gone for good, but that doesn't change the fact that I'm so glad we had this time together.
I don't know how you will take it after reading this but I really enjoyed These Black Eyes when it was getting out on Fanfiction.net. I remember I was looking forward to each new chapters back then and lost many hours of sleep reading when I should have been studying.
I still consider it one of the most fun Teen Titans fanfic I ever read and now I that I know this old story was from you, now I can guess why I liked your work when I discovered you on Fimfiction recently.
I have to wonder the strength of a rope that can successfully send off an elephant.
Looking forward to the next one.
I'm captivated in this... semi-autobiography. im ready for the next part.
Heh, I remember the days that Pen Stroke was the enemy to beat and MLD was the fic everyone read and all the writers sorta-hated for no real reason other than jelly-ness.
At the risk of further inflating that ego, I'm just going to go ahead and say it: You're the best thing that happened to this site. There are lots of stories that are more polished, and there are a (very) few authors who are more prolific, but the sheer volume of captivating horsewords you produce is incredible.
I'm sad I didn't get to read EoP while it was happening, but I feel privileged to still have been able to hop on the Austraeoh and Appledashery wagons.
End of Ponies was my first ponyfic. I'd say it did a pretty good job.
End of Ponies was one of the first few fics I discovered after joining this fandom at a time when I didn't even know what fanfiction was or that it was even an actual word and I still consider it one of my favorite stories I've ever read from this fandom. It may not have been perfect and was too wordy here and there but what mattered to me was I liked it and I ultimately enjoyed reading it and really wanted to know how it was going to end. I get why it was stopped but I still will miss it and will always wonder what could have been if it was ever completed. These blogs are awesome by the way. I look forward to reading more.
Hindsight is 20/20, artists hate their own work, people beat their heads against concrete walls, throw themselves at work in a Sisyphean manner, and no one can predict the future or changes over time...
...Yet flawed as it is, I still think that Petra Kaizo draft should have been released.
General consensus I've seen over the years is that people who have read EoP like the Dredgemane Arc the most. I see a lot of what made that arc so enjoyable present within Petra Kaizo. Life, death, struggle, survival, action, a quest, introspection, a meaningful bridging of the past and the present, hope....sprinkled with a little bit of silliness that's, let's be real here, is present and not faulted at in a lot of your other works (at least from what I've observed). Involving Pinkie in the mix was already bringing up the silliness to a high degree alone, also...
I mean...remember what we're still working with here.
The way the narrative timeskips were arranged was sometimes jarring. There were a few characters that weren't meant to be part of the scenery who didn't really differentiate themselves out from each other. There were some details included that really didn't add a dang thing. LONGFIC IS LONG. But at the end of it, I think it was coherent enough to be an enjoyable read, and something that was a releasable increment to the product as a whole. The flaws in the draft were offset by the expansion of the interesting people and places of the Equestrian wasteland a la Skirtsian lore, by Scootaloo's growth as a character, and by the continuation of the grand quest to look for hints in the past and present to find a way to fix the world.
No doubt it would have taken one or two lumps on the head from commenter critique after release (although it did even before it was birthed, let's be fair). It might or might not have increased the viewership. But at the very least, it would've kept the ball rolling a bit longer, leaving time to improve. Nothing's truly perfect. I mean, if everyone actually expected nothing but perfection, the world would grind to a screeching halt. Various bits of the Austraeoh saga didn't have very high marks and yet the story survived, and I think that still might've held true even though the two works have a completely different release structure.
*sigh*...
...But, things are the way they are now. I had the feeling a while back from the long absence of updates that it might not have continued. I've made peace with that, even though it still hurts a little. Nothing left to do but remember and try to move on. EoP's sprit remains in Austraeoh, and this biased marsupial looks back on its days with rose-colored glasses.
And I hope it gets fresh eyes which leave new reviews and comments.
4773690
Steel chain.
Yes it did happen, thankfully only needed once.
Rest in Pony, End of Ponies.
To this day I still daydream in the shower of what the rainbow dash arc would have been. I actually really liked the kaizo Petra arc, but I can understand how you wouldn't want to go back and rewrite what is essentially a long novel. Still, EoP was always my favorite story in and out of the fandom, and I will always wish I had closure. At least now I understand why it was canceled.
I remember looking at the comments for EoP on EQD before fimfic. I too was flabbergasted about how few comments there were. Maybe one or two an update. But what could anyone do? You were even mentioned a bit in /co/ and /mlp/ but that was the extent of the community. There really wasn't an audience back then for long form or darker themed fics. Yourself and raging semi were monsters in terms of productivity, and the fact that you did so with so little feedback relative to today is impressive, considering the needy culture on fanfiction.net
4773698
Those were some good days. I remember lurking around the site attempting to soak up as much horsewords as I could. Long before I developed a sense of taste.
I never would have read EoP if it wasn't for, well, the story that comes next in this apocalyptic saga. So if EoP hadn't died... who's to say I ever would have read it at all?
And I guess I can understand losing a six months, or a year, of work simply from lack of foresight and... wanting to go it alone. I know the feeling of hopelessness when it all seems to have gone to waste, and I know how difficult of a slump it is to get out of.
The fact that you managed to create BP after that... well, I'll share my comments about that in Part 3.
4773839 Well, your avatar does suggest you developed good taste in drinks at least!
Hopefully the reading list became as refined as the beverage!
The only two major fics of yours that i become engrossed in were End of Ponies, and Background Pony. The latter of which you added a piece of Fan art i had made, into your DA page.
I even have plans at some point of converting part of Scribbler's fic reading of BP into an SFM short animation.
Youve seen my comments about EoP i hope. I wont add anything more on that front.
As far as im concerned. I refuse to leave anything ive ever done unfinished.
And that includes my SFM animations that i took a break from.
That 2012 music is actually really great!
So, it's like when you are playing pokemon, and have been playing all day, and your battery runs out. You recharge your console, open the game and see your progress of the entire day is gone. It crushes your desire to continue playing now, maybe for some time. You may even be tempted to delete your save and start from the beginning. I know I have stopped many games after losing the last part of my progress. I can only imagine how losing the latest giant arc in your story could feel. A thousand, a million, a billion times worse, probably.
Writing is one of the best ways to exorcise your demons.
Ah. That. Damn, it’s been that long? I once remembered a time when I read actual books rather than what’s online. Then ponies happened. Or the end of ponies, if ya catch my drift. It was a bit of a process, finding that monster of a fic. MLD dragged me i , taught me that FiMFiction existed, which then showed me all the hottest fics there was!
By the time I found End of Ponies, it’s already cold.
Young idiot that I was, I didn’t care and got so into it that I became addicted. The literary horse drugs have barred me from accepting anything but fanfiction ever since! It paved the way for more longer fics, sometimes leading me to scoff at even the one shots—I regretted that months later—and as the years gone by, my lists of favorites would generally consist of fics at least 100k words long. It became a rule too: If it’s long, I read.
Even though it didn’t turn out well for you, I’m absolutely grateful that it existed. After all, it helped me find you.
End of Ponies is dead. Long live End of Ponies!