Update & TBA commentary

Hey everyone!

Since a ton of people I know on this site decided to blog yesterday, I figured I'd tag along and make a blog of my own. After all, in one of my blogs from forever ago, I did claim that even if I'm not the biggest fan of writing blogs (especially about myself), it would still be appropriate to communicate with all the people who decided to click the "follow" button, and thus grace me with their attention.

That said, I'm doing more or less okay. Things aren't too interesting in life outside of FimFic, with the possible exception of a new band I'm organizing, and a few more vacations I have planned for August. As for the horse words, my main focus is going to be Wires and Equestria Delivery, but I'll try to toss in a few other things on the side, provided that I find the time.

Obligatory teaser picture...

Before I delve into a really long rant about something completely different, I'd like to pose a question to you all, hoping that some of you are better at keeping track of the fandom than I am: aside from EQG 3, is there any major official or fan-made MLP project out there that is scheduled to come out in the near future? Bonus points if it's something that's been talked about for months, if not years. Think on the level of "Double Rainboom", "Snowdrop", "Fighting is Magic", or whatever else.

Anything like that coming out soon? Not so soon? Within the next 100 years?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give! Have a cute Rarity pic:

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Aside from all this, I also figured I'd do a little commentary on a certain side project of mine: The Best Authors. For those of you who aren't aware yet, you are all filthy skrubz The Best Authors is, for lack of a more concise way of describing it, a shameless ripoff of a video game reviewing group called The Best Gamers. The only major difference is that the latter pretends to be obnoxious and stoned CoD fanboys (and girls) reviewing overhyped AAA and indie games, while the former is obnoxious and stoned Fallout:Equestria and Cupcakes fanboys* reviewing overhyped MLP fanfics. Beyond that, the main goal is identical: piss off as many people as possible, and also deliver a bit of well-deserved criticism to works (and even creators) that did not receive enough before.

*NOTE: the description doesn't apply to every member of the group, but no matter what style they employ, the general idea is the same: be as aggravating as possible, at least to those who have no sense of humor.

"Why?" you may ask. Well, over the years I spent on FimFic, I ended up seeing one too many contests, site blogs, and popular reviewing groups give the spotlight to hideously overrated fics, and the commentary they attached to it tended to be even more nauseating. The interviews, in particular, felt like shameless circlejerks, to put it bluntly. The questions were barely relevant, they were lazily copy/pasted off a template, and there was barely any attempt to go in depth with the stories, which is the part that's actually important. People can claim that "durrr, it's the internet, plus it's an MLP fanfic site, so who cares about quality and professionalism?", but that's exactly the kind of attitude why no one takes the internet (and bronies in particular) seriously. And to top it all off, the stories themselves hardly ever seemed like "rare gems" that hard-working people managed to unearth. They were either stories written by overrated authors who already have a million followers anyway, or stuff that people spammed into every recommendation box on the site.

Meanwhile, I managed to stumble across TBG, and it seemed like the perfect attitude to counter this onslaught of terrible content. It spits in the face of fanboys and hipsters alike, and you're only dumber if you try and take it seriously. In a way, it was fighting fire with fire. I bet RC64 and the gang wouldn't be too happy if they ever found out about my project though. They kinda hate bronies. Not really for liking the show, it's more related to how they despise memes in general, and to be honest, the way MLP and bronies kept infiltrating everything turned into a sort of "meme" as well. There was no rhyme or reason behind putting a hidden unicorn level into Diablo 3, for example. It was just Blizzard jumping on a stupid internet bandwagon.

This idea was also a good "symbolic shift" for me in particular, since my previous outlet was a group that reviews fics in the style of Zero Punctuation.** And in retrospect, ZP is a series that I wish I had realized sooner was an overrated piece of turd all along. No matter how much Yahtzee pretends he's a "master troll" among the fanboys of overrated games, all he does is put on a snobbish, know-it-all tone and turn every detail of a game into an overlong and unfunny sex joke, thus appealing to the shallow sense of humor of his preteen fanbase. He complains about "no story" in multiplayer-focused games, he complains about "aggressive linearity" in AAA shooters (despite being a Half-Life 2 fanboy, which is almost as linear), he shits on Nintendo every chance he gets, the list goes on. Even if I never cared about the stuff he bashed, it felt incredibly annoying and pretentious, especially when he'd pretend to be "self-aware" about all this. And even if I look away from it all, he simply stopped being funny years ago, and the fact that he refuses to stop or change the style of his little cash cow is unforgivable.

**My criticism of ZP doesn't apply to the group here on FimFic. I personally got tired of reviewing in the style of ZP, but there are other reviewers who write some really good stuff there. If you're a fan of ZP, I recommend taking a look.

Now, after watching it for just a few minutes (or seconds, even), you could argue that TBG is no better, perhaps even worse than ZP in this regard. Whether it's funny or not to you, I can't really argue about that. Comedy is subjective, after all. But if you ask me, even a 2 minute video by TBG has more effort put into it than any ZP review, since the former has actual gameplay footage, music selection, editing work, etc. And unlike ZP, the guys in TBG aren't trying to convince you that they're smart. Quite the opposite, in fact. To me, that's a hell of a lot less pretentious than a cranky British dude who acts like he knows how games should work. Did anyone ever wonder why no one hired him to create a game for them so far? I do know his scrip for Duke Nukem Forever got rejected, and he wrote a dumb webcomic and a couple of games no one remembers.

Bottom line is, I wanted to emulate the same attitude TBG has against overrated video games, and wield it against fics here that deserve it in my eyes. I want to piss off the whole clique of overrated figures on FimFic, and I even want to piss off those who are already in the "pissing off" business (*cough cough*). In fact, I actually wish I'd have found out about TBG sooner, since I probably would have made video reviews in their style about other fan-made works as well. Yes, you probably figured it out by now: that's (part of) the reason why I posed that question at the start of the blog. I could technically still do them today, but the hype about those past works is long gone, so it would be like beating a dead horse at this point, no pun intended.

Is it because I'm a bitter jerk on the inside? Probably. Is it because I hate the fandom? Not really. I only hate certain parts of it, though at times that happens to be the vast majority of the fandom. Is it because I'm jealous of other people's success, being a fanfic author myself? In part, yes. But above all, I just want to do it to amuse myself. I want to throw off the polite exterior I normally have and say what I actually want to say about the things I see. I want to see certain people get a well-deserved kicking, especially those who pretend to already be "above" others. I'm the kind of hipster that hates other hipsters and deliberately speaks in favor of un-hipster things, just to stand against the trend of being "un-trendy".

And I guess I also want to try and make people laugh. So far, I've been told I kinda suck at it. Who knows? If you want to find out for yourself, check it out here:

Thank you for your kind and avid attention. Over the next couple of blogs, I may or may not write a few additional commentaries about some of my individual reviews in TBA. Also, if you find the group entertaining and would like to work with us, we still eagerly await any newcomers. Send me a PM if you're interested.