Meta

by Argembarger

Rating: teen
Tags: Comedy, Romance, Adventure, Flim and Flam, Sex, Random, Human, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 2207

Description

I need a snappy phrase to lure in readers. Rainbow Dash grows seven butts! Hilarity ensues! Fluttershy gains the confidence to kick Snips and Snails in the face! Rarity eats a dress! But seriously, I'm trying to think of what kind of description would be best for a story like this... And the snappy stuff I just wrote will show up on the main page and attract thousands of readers, so now I'm safe to think up the actual description. I suppose I could do the obvious thing and make excuses, tell the reader that this story is supposed to be stupid and not to be taken seriously, but I think that would be disingenuous as hell, and condescending to boot. The reader doesn't need their hand held. (Actually, they probably do. Readers are flighty and easily confused.) They should (in a perfect world, which this is not,) be able to tell from the content of a story whether or not it is meant to be taken seriously. Driving home the point just makes you seem like you don't have any confidence or initiative as an artist. You have to take risks, sometimes. So I think the best description for a pure meta-fic would be a self-referential description. A transcript of my thoughts while trying to come up with a meta-description for a meta-fic. And this was it. You just read the description for a meta-fic. I hope it excited you and made you want to continue reading the story, because that is the purpose of a description.

Published 2012-05-19 17:24:01 UTC
Last updated 2012-05-19 17:24:01 UTC

Chapter

The brony stared at his or her (I choose to make the brony’s gender unknown through the use of “him or her” because I want to subtly implant the idea in the reader’s head that this brony, in fact, is them. Subscribing to a specific gender might ruin the effect, even though 99% of bronies are men and it is in most cases safe to go with “he” and alienate the tiny minority of female readers. I choose not to do that. I respect my readers. (Isn’t it obvious how much I respect my readers?)) computer screen and sighed. (This opening statement establishes a lot of different details at once. This is a human, this is Earth (probably an Earth similar to our own, in the real world) and this human brony is depressed or exasperated by something.) Two of the fimfiction.net featured pieces were meta pieces. Stories with conflict and characters were going out of style, and the brony had to keep up with the times (The brony subscribed to the timeless adage, If you don’t keep up with the times, you ain’t worth a dime). He or she decided to sit down and write a meta commentary on metafics and post it. Clearly, this “meta” concept was a new and easy way to get a lot of attention as an author. (After all, everyone knows the entire point of writing in the first place is to get a large readerbase. Fanfiction is a cutthroat game, and it’s serious business. (Lives have been made and broken around My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon pony fanfiction.)) What we’re doing here is very important and will matter in the long run. (My own brother died over My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon pony fanfiction.) Scientists from the far-flung future will look back at our legacy, and be stunned by the quality of our My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon pony fanfiction. (That’s why I write My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon pony fanfiction--to avenge my brother who died over My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon pony fanfiction. (Repetition is a staple of the comedic arts.))

The brony could be you. He or she could be me. (It’s probably me, but I’ll never admit that. Self-inserts get downvoted all the time, and if “Meta” gets downvoted, it won’t be able to make it to the feature box. As everyone knows, if it don’t make the feature box, it ain’t worth a dime.) It doesn’t matter. This is a third-person limited omniscient story (in past-tense!) that will follow a single character that you’re expected to relate to (or, ideally, put yourself into the shoes of,) and put yourself in the shoes of (or, at least, relate to). It’s the everybrony.

There were lots of things the brony could prod fun at in a metafic. He or she could purposefully incorporate a bunch of different pony fic clichés. (Rainbow Dash loses her ability to fly! Twilight Sparkle messes up a spell! Pinkie Pie is a tormented, broken soul who murders ponies in the basement of Sugarcube Corner! Celestia is immortal and infallible! Nyx or something! Ponies are awesome when they’re gritty and grimdark! Shippin’ ponies is bad and you should feel bad! An OC pony you know nothing about does something you don’t care about in a strange setting for reasons that are never explained! (Self-insert shipping with Twilight Sparkle, who is attracted to Asperger’s!)) As long as he or she claimed that it was done on purpose in the comments and description, it would be considered a metafic instead of a trollfic (even if the fic is written out of bitterness and meant to anger or annoy people. All that matters is that the author apologizes for it, or something.)

(The only differences between metafic and trollfic are how many apologies the author puts in the description and how seriously he or she wants it to be taken. (A lot of authors can’t handle writing true trollfic, even if they really want to. They usually mutter something about artistic integrity in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon pony fanfiction scene. (Ponies: serious business, (I wish more authors could loosen up and stop taking themselves so seriously all the time) and don’t you ever think otherwise.)))

She or he (Isn’t gender equality wonderful? But yeah, it’s most likely a dude. (If it’s in fact me self-inserting myself, it is most definitely a dude, because I am in fact male (or a girl pretending to be male))) could also take a controversial subject in ponyfic, like [Human], [Crossover], or Shipping and deconstruct it mercilessly to appeal to both the fans of the tag who appreciate the humor, and those who hate the genre and think the brony is tearing it apart. The author’s actual intentions don’t really matter. It’s all about reader interpretation.

(If you obfuscate your purpose enough, people are likely to ascribe some noble idea behind the creation of your metafic, or at least, an idea they share or sympathize with. Stay ambiguous. Never own up to a side. It’s the only way you can make everyone happy at once.)

Yes, it was clear to the brony that a fun little metafic was the way to go. He or she opened up OpenOffice Writer (I decided not to use my own word processing software, Microsoft Word 2007, here, because it might break your suspension of disbelief if you don’t use Windows. OpenOffice can be used on almost any platform for free, so it’s much more likely that this everybrony character I’m attempting to write would use it.) and began slapping down some words.

Of course, some My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic characters are going to need to be included in this meta-commentary, or it won’t be considered relevant to the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fandom. (I am taking pains here to say the title in its entirety, because there are purists out there who are fans of the earlier generations of the show and spite Friendship is Magic a bit for hijacking the default meaning of “My Little Pony”. (I only personally sympathize with the plight of G1 fans, because G1 is awesome, but I’d better not mention that in my meta-fic or I might get vote-bombed by haters. (Hopefully I nested it deep enough that anyone who’s dumb enough to blindly hate like that won’t have enough patience to get this far. (And if they do, I won’t care, because downvotes on a metafic can’t hurt my fragile snowflake feelings.)) That would be terrible.) (The actual reason I’m doing it is so that I can boost my wordcount with three extra words wherever My Little Pony would be sufficient, because I don’t actually have anything of any value to say here. All words past probably 500 are pretty much artificial at this point.))

(The easy solution would be to just toss some ponies in as a random non-sequitur, like this: )

Twilight Sparkle stood next to the brony and said, “Wow, you sure are trying hard to get noticed, aren’t you?” (Twilight Sparkle was savvy to what the brony was doing, because A) she’s smart and B) the very brony she was talking to was the one writing her dialogue.)

That’s the way. The brony smiled at the thought of a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic pony in his or her own room, especially Twilight Sparkle. (True facts: many bronies would want to honestly meet a talking cartoon pony in real life, and would probably go through terrifying lengths to make that desire a reality if they could.) She was his or her favorite, and he or she could relate the most to her. He or she, too, was a socially-awkward genius! He or she too was consistently misunderstood by his or her friends of lesser intelligence. It was the perfect match!

“Oh, brony of reader-defined gender,” Twilight Sparkle said to you (I’m making the idea that the brony is actually you explicit now. Did you catch that? I wrote a nice, long buildup, to get you used to the idea, and now I’m dropping the ‘y’ pronoun (“you”), and with that, you’ve fully assumed your role as the character in my story. You’ll love this next part, if you love shipping.), “I love an exaggerated case of high-functioning autism. Come here, handsome/cutie (Choose whichever is most appropriate and ignore the other one for maximum excitement), and let Twilight Sparkle (that’s the horse’s name) give you a kiss. You deserve it.” (If you hate shipping, you should probably skip the next paragraph. Things get… really steamy. Not clop, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you did anyway.)

Twilight Sparkle leaned forward to put her sensitive, mobile horse lips over your own. (I did research for this fic! I looked up horse lips on horses.about.com. Here’s the definition they gave me, for your perusal: “Horses have very sensitive mobile lips. They are able to seek out tufts of desirable grasses from the less desirable. They often explore items by nuzzling with their lips. Slack or floppy lips might mean a sleepy or very mentally disengaged horse.” –source) Twilight’s lips definitely were not slack, nor were they floppy. (That would indicate mental disengagement, and she was too aroused by your mild case of self-diagnosed Asperger’s to be mentally disengaged.) She was seeking out tufts of desirable grass, and by grass I mean your tongue, and she explored your mouth (which can be considered an item) by nuzzling it with her mobile horse lips. You spent the next 40 minutes making out with a little horse.

(It is now safe to read, if you hate shipping, although the following sentence refers to the previous paragraph, so you may want to skip that one as well.) The act of making out with a fictional horse in his or her imagination gave the brony inspiration for a metafic. (Now it is truly safe for haters of shipping to read the story (as you slip your tongue into Twilight Sparkle’s quivering nostril (I just hijacked my own commentary and subverted my own intentions. (I’m a jerk sometimes.)))) He or she would write a metafic about metafic! It was brilliant. No one has ever done that before. (Not even one single time.)

The brony decided to call it “Meta”. It was a simple title, but the brony thought that it conveyed the intention of the metafic well. It was pretty short, though. The brony hoped it would get noticed and clicked on. (Sometimes, the determining factor for whether or not a fic was read is how noticeable it is. The brony (you) was taking a big risk with such a short title. (Perhaps you should make up for the tiny title by making the description stand out? (Oh, here’s an idea: The description should be the train of thought you rode on while thinking of a good description. That’s brilliant! You’re such an excellent author.))) He or she briefly considered calling it “Adventures in Meta-Recursion: A Parenthetical Odyssey for the Clever”, but that would be stupid. (I mean, calling the reader “clever”? You’re just giving the reader way too much credit and respect, now. (I’m joking! I respect my (your) readers. (Ha, no.)) No, “Meta” would do fine.

The brony had another clever idea: he or she would write the fic, and then he or she would go back through and embed a bunch of comments and meta content in parentheses around the entire story (and make the entire thing completely impossible to read (but that’s okay, because it’s meta. Readability is completely unimportant.)). Maybe he or she would make a few passes, and embed parentheses within parentheses (within parentheses (within parentheses (I don’t know why I’m doing this (Let me take some time out from saying anything relevant to let my mind wander (within the realm of the parentheses, those without focus become lost and confused (Especially when they’re embedded really strangely). because each layer follows a different train of thought.) for a little while as I think about the consequences of writing and publishing a fic like this. (Oh wait, I don’t have to think very hard. Nothing bad will happen. (My readerbase has zero expectations of me, and I have zero expectations of them. I throw my stupid bullshit at them, and they read it, and that’s the way it works.) In fact, I’ll probably get some likes or watchers from this.) People will either appreciate this or hate it, and I’ll be amused either way.), but it’s probably for a good reason. (I hope.)) until you want to break my neck.) until it all gets really stupid.). It would make the fic wacky and difficult to read, but it would also make it insanely meta. (Do you see what I did there?)

Yes, all of these were excellent ideas. “Meta” would get featured for sure.

The brony wrote and submitted the fic to fimfiction.net (the premiere home of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic cartoon pony fanfiction on the Internet.)

It can be found here: Meta