Fancypants on Old Mare's Tales

“Let me have your attention for a moment,” said Fancypants. “Cause you’re talking about what… you’re talkin’ about… whining about that fic you screwed up and got rejected, some son of a bitch don’t want it on their site, somebody don’t want what you’re writing, some girl you’re trying to impress with your writing, so forth, let’s talk about something important. Are they all here?”

“All but one,” said Fluttershy.

Fancypants scanned the room, glaring at the so-called authors spread out before him in the office space. Most of them seemed to be barely paying any attention. Most were talking with each other, giggling, making little jokes.

“Well, I’m going anyway,” Fancypants said. “Let’s talk about something important.” Someone in the back began pouring a drink. “PUT THAT COFFEE DOWN!” said Fancypants turning his head to the source of the noise. “Coffee is for authors that can get on Old Mare’s Tales only. You think I’m fuckin’ with you? I’m not fuckin’ with you. I’m here from PG and I’m on a mission of mercy. Your name’s Caramel?”

The one pouring the coffee looked about nervously before timidly uttering a “yeah.”

“You call yourself a writer you son of a bitch?” said Fancypants menacingly.

“I don’t got to listen to this shit,” said Twilight, a lilac unicorn.

“You certainly don’t because I got good news for you. You’re all banned! The bad news is you all got just one week to regain your account, starting with tonight.” He paused for a moment to look back at the now-horrified faces of the authors. “Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. Because I’m adding a little something to this month’s writing contest.” Fancypants walked over to the poster board and motioned at the contest flyer. “As you all know, first prize is being featured on the front page of the Round Stable. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize is being indexed on the ‘your fanfic is smelly and you should feel bad’ thread. Third prize is you’re being Helldumped then fucking IP banned from the site.” Fancypants looked back at the group whose mouths were now hanging wide open.

“You get the picture?” he said. “You laughing now? You got a good story? The faithful librarians read your terrible shit for fun to laugh at while they jerk each other off in their IRC channel. You can’t write a fucking story that makes it on Old Mare’s Tales, you can’t write shit, you are shit, hit the bricks and beat it because you’re going out!”

“It’s just,” Caramel squeaked, “there are so few that can pass with the draconian rules on PG.”

“Draconian rules? Draconian fuckin’ rules? Welcome to goon-run sites, asshole. I’ve been in this business for three years…”

“What’s your name?” asked Twilight.

“FUCK YOU!” shouted Fancypants. “That’s my name! You know why you little shit? You came here in a pink goddamn hot air balloon. I came in a motherfucking airship. That’s my name. And you!” Fancypants then shifted his attention to Caramel. “Your name is wanting. You can’t play the goon’s game, you can’t pass the rules? Go home and tell your girlfriend your troubles. There’s only one thing that counts: getting your shit to pass.”

Fancypants then walked over to the blackboard and flipped it. On it was a string of letters that read out A, B, and C.

“’A’!” shouted Fancypants. “Assholes! You’re dealing with assholes. The faithful librarians are assholes and the only thing they hate more than their job is you! They hate you and they are assholes and your fics are declared guilty until proven innocent. The charge being that they are guilty of sucking balls.”

Fancypants pointed at the next letter. “’B’! Bitching! Someone is always going to be bitching about something in your writing. Sometimes it’s legitimate because one of you sorry sacks of shit decided you just HAD to include a creepy-ass romantic pairing of canon characters or you just had to make that poop joke. Sometimes it’s illegitimate like complaining about OC pairing bullshit. Either way, YOU WILL BE BITCHED AT!”

Next letter. “’C!’ Close! You close the fucking deal with the faithful librarians. You have to write the way they want something to be written. They can arbitrarily reject it based off the fact that they don’t like your tone. They can reject it because you decided to refer to a character as that ‘lilac unicorn,’ they can reject it because the dynamic you wrote between two characters is dumb and clearly meant for shipping bullshit. If you want desperately for your garbage posted on there, CHANGE IT SO IT FITS IN! Are you sad that you’d be selling out just so you can fit in? Too bad! Welcome to life! Adapting to any sort of environment requires selling the fuck out!”

Twilight snorted. “If you’re such a gigantic writing magnate, why are you wasting time with us losers?” she said.

Fancypants went over to Twilight and pulled out a stack of papers from his jacket and slammed it on her desk. “See this?” he said not moving his eyes from hers. “This is called ‘Growing Up!’ It took nine fucking months to get it on Old Mare’s Tales. Nine fucking months! Do you know why? It had one fucking tiny mention of a pairing with two canonical characters. Yet the faithful librarians fought tooth and fucking nail to get it on there. It was better than all of the shit every single one of you assholes ever wrote combined. It takes brass balls to get that shit onto OMT.

“But, you might complain, ‘well mine explores the complications of being in a gay or lesbian or interracial relationship…’ too fucking bad, go be a queer theory major or an interracial marriage counselor. That’s not what the assholes at OMT care about. ‘Oh, but mine is a deconstruction of the show by incorporating Fallout with sex scenes and violence,’ you might moan. That’s not a deconstruction, that’s just utilizing this show for your own masturbatory fantasies and shoving videogames into it and that’s not what OMT wants to fucking see.

“I’d wish you all good luck but you wouldn’t know what to do with it if you got it,” and he turned his attention back to Twilight. “And to answer your question: Why am I here? I came here because Ponygoons LLC asked me to, they asked me for a favor. I said the real favor, follow my advice and ban your asses because rejects are rejects.”

“Aaaaand end scene!” came a voice from the audience. “That was an excellent run. Bravo, Fancypants!”

“Oh, why thank you Mr. Toity,” said Fancypants. “I did work hard on rehearsing this.”

“I can tell,” said Twilight. “You had such a commanding presence. I almost really believed you were yelling at me.”

“Well, I never did consider myself an actor, but most certainly a business-man. Though I wish I understood what this play was even about.”

“Well,” said Hoity Toity. “It was written by some mad man who really hated shipping or something.”

“Strange,” said Caramel. “I know the post office isn’t the most pleasant place, but it hardly warrants this much vehemence. Oh well, shall we carry on with the next scene?”

“Yes,” said Hoity Toity. He walked over to the middle of the set. “Everyone get into place, scene two: Twilight begins writing terrible meta-fics.”