What is the best option for writing fanfic now that the show

>>29759069
>We've now got a ton of contradictory elements that mess with both the logic and the tone of the show.
Such as?

>>29759069
IMHO
Must have in a fiction:
>Whole mess with the toxicolor changelings - completely undone, with or w/o retconning of connected events
>Whole mess with a Furry Fart - retconned her to be just a very powerful unicorn.
Highly desirable:
>Whole mess with Twilicorn undone, with or w/o retconning her new princess status
Logicaly sound:
>Cadence as an Alicorn also fucking undone - let her be just a unicorn or even pegasi, because she is anyway useless and haven't done anything significant with her magics anyway, so you can actually have a pegasi ruler.

>>29759082
the only one i can think of is the dragon aging process which is inconsistent at every turn. i highly doubt OP can name many others if there are any, let alone a ton.

>>29759069
>No matter what, people will get angry because of their interpretation of canon (headcanons). So is there a way to minimize that while staying true to your vision?

The second you try to be as inoffensive as possible to other peoples head cannons, you will fail. If you have an idea you wish to explore in greater detail, go for it, otherwise, in an effort to be as inviting as possible, you will merely regurgitate everyone else's established opinions.

Its not about working with or around peoples head canons, its about making the one you create seem likely enough or believable enough to be accepted and enjoyed.

>>29759069
What you want to do when you're messing with the canon is have it be internally consistent and not overly complicated.
Generally that means ignoring shit, pretending it doesn't exist like you said. That could also mean going back in the chronology, starting the story earlier in the canon than when the problematic elements were introduced.
Also, the changes have to matter to the story. I disagree with >>29759157 here, I don't think any story /necessarily/ has to retcon or change anything. To do it haphazardly just because you don't like the elements is confusing to the average reader. It needs to have a reason if you're dealing with AU. Going back in the timeline gets around this, but is less flexible than just creating a new canon.

There will always be shit-flingers that get mad about you contradicting their interpretations and tastes, but most people will be able to suspend their disbelief as long as the changes are consistent and warranted.

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>>29759069
It depends. When writing stuff, I tend to avoid canon characters and places altogether and keep things vague enough that these contradictory elements can exist in tandem, or separately as readers choose to believe. You don't necessarily have to hang a lantern on everything, this is one of the perks of writing fanfiction, you're dealing with a setting that your readers are going to be familiar with, so going into explicit detail is often unnecessary.

Doing it that way does limit your options in what you can write, however, in which case you start selectively using canon, as other Anon's here have said.

>writing fanfiction

Find something better to do with your free time. Chances are you'll write tens of thousands of words that fewer than a hundred people will read and even fewer will enjoy. Speaking from personal experience.

>>29760101
>I wrote because I wanted to be horse famous.
Die.

>>29759069
Write what you want. What I did was start with the base part of the show I liked, namely season 3 when I wrote, and spun from there a tale of my own imagination to make it hopefully interesting and still remaining faithful to the characters while allowing character growth based on what was happening in the story.

>>29759082
>>29759187
Magic is a mess with no rules.Alicorns make no sense (are they born or made). There is a fuck ton of unexplored areas on the map, and no one knows what is there, or why they're there in the first place.

Easy, make the main protagonist become an alicorn through the most tedious means possible, like eating a quesadilla. Make it into the parody that truly defines the state that the show is currently in. Because the best art, is the art that makes fun of art itself.

This isn't about what's canon or not, but I think we should just get rid of greentext.

>>29760333
Well half satan, how does getting writefags to write in a more book like fashion sound?

>>29760134
What's the point of creating something if nobody cares

And I'm not talking about fame here.

>>29760355
It would be an improvement. And considering the restraints that greentext has of being in a 2nd POV, I think that it would be alot easier

>>29760390
I do agree. Would be a pain having to slice the story up into parts to post here on 4chan, but it would make it easier to read and open up new ways to write.

>>29760379
>Only doing things for people's approval
Gonna live an empty life, doing that senpai.

>>29760390
Greentext isn't exactly constrained to the 2nd person at all; it's just the preferred POV for most authors.

Anyways, reading contiguous, classically formatted stories on forums is fucking awful and looks terrible; the character limit gives a stunted feeling to a lot of scenes.

>>29760355
/d/ does this. They post what they write in bins, and keep the thread alive by discussing their, and others stories.

>>29760390
Greentext is limited to 2nd person.

>I walked up to the bar.
>Staring down an ugly son of a bitch while cleans a glass
>"Give me your finest fuckwit."
>He stares right back at me.
>"25 bits cock sucker."

Green is written in 2nd person because it's easier to tell a second hand story with no attachments to the characters.

>>29760473
*isn't*

>>29760473
>/d/ does this. They post what they write in bins, and keep the thread alive by discussing their, and others stories.
While I do like this idea alot, sometimes it's the posts of the stories that is all that's keeping the thread alive, save for people bumping for more.

Perhaps discussion on where the story should go, not so much in a CYOA style, but just ideas and paths that might be interesting that the writefag might take and run with.

>>29760412
>Gonna live an empty life, doing that senpai
>Implying people who for some reason published 1,000,000 word fanfictions that barely anybody read and spent hours working on them live full lives

Writing is meant to be read. Created things are supposed to be admired. If you don't think that's the case, fine, but for me, there's no point in putting much effort into creative work if nobody cares about it.

>>29760379
To improve?

Maybe you could write a better hook for your story or to shill in the writefag threads.

>>29759069
Frankly, write what is most appealing to you. It sounds cliche and retarded, but ultimately writing for others is never tremendously helpful and it wholely depends on how you feel about particular elements. Do they really rustle your jimmies? Sweep 'em out. Are they neither helpful nor unhelpful, but contradict with the theme or aesthetic you are going for? No need to keep them, but you don't have to specifically contradict them either. Are they actually constructive to the story you want to tell? Keep them in, even if some others don't like them.

Some people are totally cool with ascending alicorns, and I've seen some pretty good ascension-by-trial stories. Some people think anything but immortal, demigod alicorns is utter heresy - and I've seen those ideas adapted very well too. Here's the really cool thing about "your vision": It's yours. You get to pick what you want. Just for the love of God don't try to bend yourself in knots pleasing others.

You ask about writing "fixfics". My honest reccomendation: Don't. By definition, a fixfic is out there only just to "fix" something the writers do badly, but that also limits them and I've seen very few good fixfics. Try, instead, to do better than they did. Don't just go out to slap a bandaid on what you see as a wound in the canon, but build your own world with its own flesh and blood and skin and so on. If that happens to follow a course you find more desirable, so be it.

>>29760214
>Magic is a mess with no rules
seems to me its a strain on the mind. spells mentally are like lifting heavy weights physically. do it too much and you get worn out. lose focus and it fails. some weight is just too much. what sort of rules are you looking for?
>Alicorns make no sense (are they born or made)
both. celestia, luna and flurry were all natural born alicorns. twilight and cadance both ascended through some powerful magical means.
>There is a fuck ton of unexplored areas on the map
thats not a contradiction that messes with the logic and tone of the show

>>29759082
Twilight having no friends, but then she gets a BBBFF. Celestia was super respected despite being worfed every single chance. Pinkie pie saying she was friendless on the farm and then three seasons later she remembers fond memories of her making rock candy with Maud as a filly. Discord is supposed to be smart and witty, yet he gets fooled by a simple double-cross from Tirek.

These don't tick me off as much as the more basic changes to the show, but you did ask for direct contradictions instead of me rambling about inconsistent characterisation, a lack of adventure/focus on slice of life, or throwing out the medieval esthetic completely. I can't have it feel like an episode of S1/2 and the latest season at the same time, can I?

>>29761298
>seems to me its a strain on the mind.
There is only one unicorn this ever happened to. Twilight, and there has never been another instance of it happening again.

>what sort of rules are you looking for?
How about rules that make sense.
>Unicorns only have two spells
Even if you ignore Twilight and Glimmer, Shining has three (levitation, barrier, and beam) and Sunburst can only do one (levitation).

And how about spells with some "strain" as you call it. So far there have only been a handful of spell that you could call tasking (the fake wing spell, and teleport), but so far, it seems like every new spell made comes with no risk at all, nor is it even tiresome.

> celestia, luna and flurry were all natural born alicorns.
The book states that celestia and luna are born, but this quote from the show says otherwise.
>Princess Celestia: The birth of an Alicorn is something Equestria has never seen!
>Princess Luna: It is beyond even our understanding.
So if they weren't born, then how did they get there?

>twilight and cadance both ascended through some powerful magical means.
Same thing with cadence. The book mentions how she ascended, but the show never touches it, so how did she become an alicorn?

>thats not a contradiction that messes with the logic and tone of the show
It is when there is a giant skull sitting on top of a mountain for whatever reason, and it wasn't there before.

>>29760214
>There is a fuck ton of unexplored areas on the map, and no one knows what is there, or why they're there in the first place.
>bad for writing fanfics

Pick one.

>>29762359
THIS ANON GET IT!

>>29759187
>i highly doubt OP can name many others if there are any, let alone a ton.

Dash becomes a Wonderbolt but doesn't need to go to practice in the show except in episodes specifically about it. How does that work?

The show now includes arcades, skyscrapers, branded food wrappers and drink cups, billboards, and candy trains. What do the ponies have and not have? Nobody knows, their tech level is too ambiguous now.

Dragons are greedy, asocial, and live independently, but they have a dragon king who hands down his power every now and then to another dragon. He controls them all with a magic scepter. This says so much about dragon society and yet contains no explanation.

There are five alicorns now. Luna is arguably the most powerful because she has now twice taken near-successful steps to destroy Equestria. Once as NMM and once with the Tantabus. Meanwhile, Celestia can't defeat a paperclip. Yet Glimmer tops Twilight in raw strength, which means by the transitive theory Glimmer must also be among the most powerful characters. What's the deal with alicorns?

NMM's original rebellion lasted less than five minutes, which I guess is why nobody remembered her a thousand years later.

The character's no longer have solid personalities. They still fit a trope, but they've boiled down to "quiet one, sporty one, farmer". Twilight completely dropped her original trope and took up a different one after becoming princess.

Griffons live in poverty, but they live in poverty because they don't try hard enough. Clearly they're too reliant on welfare checks, and if they'd agree to work together then they could eat cakes instead of complaining about how they don't have bread. Kind of spoils most character exploration you can do with them, since they feel like an analogue for welfare queens.

I could go on, but the above are just some of the reasons we're not seeing a lot of convincing, widely read fanfics anymore.

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>>29763086
>we're not seeing a lot of convincing, widely read fanfics anymore.

The community is just too split now. 4chan used to be one of the few places you could create content and have it get noticed. Now there are dozens of different places each with their own specific likes and dislikes and very little intermingling. I mean look at all the sites we have to search through to find something theres 4chan, (8)Chan, EQD, FimFic, Fanfic, the list goes on.

To put it plainly, horsefuckers, bronies, and casual watchers are just too divided to have popularity anymore.

As much as I dislike to say it, Fallout Equestria, My Little Dashie and that god awful Rainbow Factory are the only real fanfics that have any footing simply because of their timing, they were all made early enough in the fandom (or at the peak) to get the most attention. We simply don't have that level of fans anymore so the desire to make something decent isn't really worth it.

>>29759157
In my personal headcanon, S6 finale was a dream Glimmer had. None of that retardity happened. Same goes for Flurry Fart, who isn't real.

Cadence isn't a real Unicorn, just a filthy mutie, and "She fought off a love-stealing witch and became a goddess" is a cover story Celestia pulled from her ass.

Dragon ageing... Dragons can get big, ugly and dumb by getting greedy. Dragon badlands are too barren for young ambitious tards to get big and the big ones are too lazy to do anything except sit on their hoards. Alternately, dragons get bigger by getting older and richer while staying sane, keeping their mind in the process.

>>29760101
True
>>29760134
Fuck off with that "Horse famous" cancer. The writer wants his works to be appreciated, and he wants feedback, he's not some money-grubbing cancerous fame whore for wanting more out of life than your nihilistic impotent lazy ass. Take your worthless petty outrage and use it on someone that deserves it, like that animator-exploiting jew ILoveKimPossible.

>>29763086
Actually, back in S1, I made my own Griffon OC. Her name is Aquilla, and she was adopted by loving pony parents. She grew up hearing stories of the awesome badass Griffons, and wanting to be like one.

Then she went to the Griffon Kingdoms, saw it was a shithole, saw everyone was just a nasty cunt instead of a genuine badass, and went back to equestria, taking work as a secretary for my main OC Silver, who she caught parkouring around Canterlot and considers genuinely badass.

...No, you're right, Griffonstone became a shithole ever since it lost its national treasure and national pride, and you can't do shit with that. You can make individual members of the shit race non-shitty by making them better than the rest(Gilda) or a lover of superior equine culture(Gabby), but that's about it.

>>29763137
So, what are you going to do about it? Think of a good idea, a solution to this problem, and I'll roll with it. The problem isn't really a lack of unity by itself, it's a lack of communication between the different tribes. Some kind of system where people that read good fanfics and spread the word about them on other sites would fix this problem wonderfully.
>But what if someone says "Fuck off, 4channer"?
Point out that while you go there, you're not really "A 4channer", you just post there, and excluding you for posting in places they don't like is something a liberal redditor would do.

>>29762359
Bad. The more unknowns you deal with, the less consistent the world your writing becomes, as you have to make up new things to fill those unknowns. Add on to that if you decide to add more of those unexplored areas to your story. Is it impossible to do, no. But most people just end up making not Equestria, but with name drops from Equestria in the fics they write.

>>29763086
All of these are easily solved with literal third-grade tier creative thinking.

The show's lore isn't broken. You just don't care enough to try anymore.

>>29763086
>What do the ponies have and not have? Nobody knows, their tech level is too ambiguous now.
As opposed to when? The fucking very first episode? Many of those things appeared throughout S1, most notably a fully functional DJ turntable booth in Art of the Dress and literal skyscrapers in Applejack's flashback about her time in Manehattan.

>>29763258
>All of these are easily solved with literal third-grade tier creative thinking
The problem with the third-grade tier thinking that you're operating on is that when you solve one conflict with it, all you do is open up a thousand new conflicts. Everything should fit together like a neat jigsaw puzzle and make a complete picture. If you take a pair of scissors and cut up some of your puzzle pieces to make them fit in places they didn't before, then what the fuck are you going to do later in the puzzle when you cut up the pieces you needed?

>>29763271
A one-off device, that presumably ran on magic and fit the pony's special talent, is just creative flair. Branded drink cups implies corporatism. Corporatism implies industrialism and intellectual property. These things smash natural and romantic elements. It's important and makes a difference.

>>29763271
You've got a western town, a medieval castle, ,post-industrial skyscrapers and modern props. And that was just the first season. That's good for a writer on a timeline for a cartoon show who needs to sacrifice consistency for a joke/pacing/brevity, but not good for a fanfic writer who is willing to put in the time and research for free to ensure a quality product.

There's probably older examples of fanfics trying to explain this bullshit, but it seems that everyone is focused instead on the newer gaping problems with the lore like with >>29759157 .

>>29763271
>>29763772
I think a lot of it is the scale of the inclusions. Yeah, S1 had gag turntables and skyscraperish things in the background, but they were held back to one-off brief gags and blurry background elements. Plus, as >>29763351 points out, many of those could be written off as unicorns being unicorns.

Now, those conflicting elements are front and center.
> We've not just seen maybe-skyscrapers in the background, we've had ponies walking among literal New York City streets.
> We've not just had a barely-seen DJ gag, we've had motorized cars thrown together on a whim.
> We've not just had a pony with modern-looking tools, but put an entire industrialized washery in the spa's basement.
You can't just call "background gag" on things like that anymore; they're in-your-face core portions of episodes. If you deliberately ignore them, then you're making a conscious choice to bend the setting. If you deliberately include them, you're forced to reconcile that with the more fantastic, pre-industrial portions of the show.

>>29763086
>I could go on, but the above are just some of the reasons we're not seeing a lot of convincing, widely read fanfics anymore.
Everything you said is correct, except for this. The reason every person in the fandom had read X, Y, and Z back in the 2011-2012 days is that there simply weren't very many good fanfics aside from X, Y, and Z. Now there's a billion and a half words on fimfiction.net, so everyone can be a lot more selective in what they read.

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>>29759069
The best /mlp/ fics are ones that don't give a fuck about the canon and go by the writer's own interpretation. See Exchange.

>>29763208
>The problem isn't really a lack of unity by itself, it's a lack of communication between the different tribes. Some kind of system where people that read good fanfics and spread the word about them on other sites would fix this problem wonderfully.
What problem are you trying to solve, here? The fact that there weren't any stories in 2016 that rose to the level of Cupcakes or MLD, where you can assume basically every person in the fandom has at least heard of it?

I don't think that's much of a problem. There are enough options, and the novelty of MLP has worn off, so nobody's going to read something just because it has ponies in it. Not when you can go to /mlp/'s fimfic general, or Reddit's fanfic link-swap thread, or any major group on Fimfiction, and they'll give you a dozen recommendations for good fics in any genre you care to name.

>>29759069
Write small-scale stories that focus on a small cast. Avoid anything that would change the world or how things work. Don't try to write an epic adventure unless you've got the skill to wrangle the canon of the series. Write simple, down to earth stories that are about one or more characters in a situation.

>>29759069
It's called the AU tag or the "I started writing this before X happened so X doesn't happen in this fic" author note.

Or you git gud and actually write your fic well while rolling with the cards canon has dealt you. Consider it a challenge.

>>29759157
This is a terrible idea since it reeks of a fix fic, which nearly everyone hates. Readers don't mind if changes are there from the start (AU) or if certain events are ignored because it would fuck with the already in-progress story, but doing blatant retcons like that would generate a lot of flak.

>>29760101
>writing for the readers and not because you enjoy it
Posting it online and people actually reading it is just an added bonus.

>>29761584
siblings arent the same things as friends.
being a relatively powerful and benevolent ruler for over a thousand years has respect owed on its own merits and being defeated by equally powerful or even stronger foes doesnt lose that respect.
its easy to be blinded by your own ambitions. that said you can be fooled when you want to believe something rather than thinking about it objectively.

season 2 also broke the medieval aesthetic all on its own.

>>29761685
>The book states that celestia and luna are born, but this quote from the show says otherwise.
>Princess Celestia: The birth of an Alicorn is something Equestria has never seen!
>something Equestria has never seen
>Equestria has never seen
>Equestria

Not him, but:

1. Celestia and Luna have been around before Equestria's founding.

2. It fits in with my headcannon that natural born alicorns like Celestia and Luna originated from a land outside Equestria much like how the elves of Middle Earth were not native to that land but emigrated there from Aman aka the Undying Lands. Equestria had never seen an alicorn birth before because until then no alicorn that had set foot in Equestria has attempted to procreate. The part about it being beyond their understanding was due to the fact that one of the parents was a unicorn and so they probably expected their foal to be of only one of the three tribes and not all of them at once.

The whole ascension thing also fits in with Norse Mythology from whence J.R.R. Tolkien drew inspiration for his Legendarium. The Norse believed that certain heroic figures could ascend to elfhood after death, such as the case with King Olaf Geirstad-Alf of Norway. If you recall in Magical Mystery Miracle Cure prior to Twilight's ascension it looked as if the Elements of Harmony had disintegrated her (there was even a frickin' scorch mark on the ground where she had been standing!) so one could safely assume that the elements killed her and then brought her back to life as an alicorn.

>>29759082
Tell me a single thing that's logical worldbuilding from the last three (3) seasons.

>>29760101
kys fucking retard.

>>29760214
None of those are contradictions
>Magic is a mess with no rules
Magic does not have to have rules but I would argue this is a boon to writers they can come up with there own ideas of how magic works if they wish.

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>>29767352
The fact that the Crystal Heart prevents the Crystal Empire from succumbing to the surrounding harsh weather explains why Sombra didn't simply destroy the heart to keep it from being used against him. Without it, his subjects would freeze to death and he would have nothing and no one to rule over. As for why the Crystal Ponies live in such an inhospitable place, you could ask the same of people who live in Alaska or Siberia but my guess would be the mine mentioned in the Journal of the Two Sisters.

>>29767340
>le ebin Luna meant that it has happened outside equestria maymay
You are an even bigger faggot then op if that was the case she would not have fucking said it.

>>29767340
>Spike: [accent] The three leaders agreed to share the beautiful land, and live in harmony ever afterwards. And together, they named their new land...
>Main cast: Equestria!
From Hearth warming Eve. Sorry about that head canon.

>>29767438
con·tra·dic·tion
ˌkäntrəˈdikSH(ə)n/
noun
noun: contradiction; plural noun: contradictions

>a combination of statements, ideas, or features of a situation that are opposed to one another.

>a person, thing, or situation in which inconsistent elements are present.

>the statement of a position opposite to one already made.

You have one source saying that Celestia and Luna was born, and other saying they weren't, contradiction. You have one source saying that Cadence ascended, but other not mentioning at all, contradiction. You have an area that is unlike anything on there entire Equestrain map had on it before, even if you add comics, it's still the most out of place thing on it, contradiction. The rules of magic says one thing, there are examples that says otherwise, contradiction.

>Magic does not have to have rules but I would argue this is a boon to writers they can come up with there own ideas of how magic works if they wish.
That all fine and dandy, but what rules have be stated have been ignored thus far.

>>29767487
>>29761685
Anyone have a ddl link for the book?

>>29764301
>technological inconsistencies have existed since the beginning
>"T-they were just gags so they don't count!"

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>>29767519
The three leaders were still alive when they approached Celestia and Luna and asked them to rule Equestria. Luna even took Princess Platinum down a peg after she mocked them for thinking they were even worthy of ruling when they didn't even have their cutie marks yet (they were teenagers in alicorn years while adults in normal pony years).

Also...
>You have one source saying that Cadence ascended, but other not mentioning at all, contradiction.
It's not a contradiction if it wasn't even mentioned in the show. It just means that the book was filling in that gap in Cadence's backstory that the show decided to ignore.

>>29759069
>now

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>>29768058
No.

>>29759069

>>29759069
Using canon characters over anon is god-tier - or at least not shit-tier.