--Thunder Bolt--

Bwahahahahaa! Awesome! There aren't enough brohoofs for that! Twilight = Tenenbaum? Luna/NMM = Fontaine/Atlas? Trixie = (memory slip) that guy who makes you take pictures for his "masterpiece?" Cupcakes!Pinkie = the creepy plastic surgeon that cuts people up... Rainbow Dash = the scariest Slicer of the bunch! Sweetie Belle = a Little Sister, also the voice for the Gatherers' Garden machines (because, *squeak!*)

"I didn't sleep last night either! Yippity! Yippity! Yippity! Would you like a Red Bull/Starbucks Double-Shot cocktail?"

"How can I look this badass when I'm plotting evil, and not come up with anything better than 'invade Equestria with teenage zombies?'"

"The Apocalypse doesn't need four horses. I'm enough allllllllll by myself."

Now zat I don't have Fluttershy anymore, Photo Finish needs ein new big sensation! Ah! Silverstar! Strike ze pose! *FLASH* Da magics!"

Only Pinkie Pie can manifest in 3D, while sporting a 2-D mustache!

H.P. Lovecraft was going to write a story about this, but it's too weird even for him.

*Friended* Has your mum seen your artwork? If she has, and not squee'd with delight and pride, then major parenting fail on her part. That, plus the "not saying inspiring things to you" bit. Your avatar and the pics on your profile page are top-tier, in my opinion. Certainly light-years beyond what took quite a bit longer than three days for me to accomplish! Do you do paid commissions on this site? If you have any interest in doing so, you really, really should. You really drew your avatar in three days?! Drew, from a blank slate? And you're still young enough to have homework? I.e., not a student or graduate of some art and design school or university? *picks jaw back up off the floor* Check your flank. I think you must have an art-related cutie mark. Your work is definitely professional quality. Unless you bought it all from some grizzled beret-wearing Frenchman on DeviantArt and you're just having us on. Also, the point of this thread is to post something you suck at and would like to master, not something you've already mastered. Try again. *throws cream pie*

The video at your link isn't working at the moment. Could you do an animation of Nephthys Nightshade? There's a pic with her bio (linked). Thanks!

Vector art! I just managed to produce my first partially vectored OC art--the boat and the sun. The rest is flagrant cheating with Pony Creator and Photoshop. I have a long way to go before I can really get that wily Pen Tool to do what I want it to. If you drew your current avatar in three days, we should all throw cream pies at you until you run screaming from the thread, because you don't suck--in fact, you're freaking awesome. If you're that "bad" at socializing, you'll probably be the next President or Prime Minister of your country.

"And this is...the...uh...erotica section."

Oh, sorry for not @mentioning you. Nothing is actually being debated about you or your position so far. I was pointing out that heterosexuals can debate something like a religious position opposing homosexuality (using your post as an example of such) and treat it as an academic issue because it's not our sexuality on the line. Like two men discussing the question of whether or not women ought to be subservient to men. The "issue" feels completely different if you're LGBT (or a woman, in the second example). I was explaining the concept of heterosexual privilege, rather than addressing you specifically or the link you provided in your post.

Once, IRL. I was in an elementary school costume contest, dressed as King Tutankhamun. I won a prize (don't recall if it was 1st, 2nd, whatever) and was called up as "the little Egyptian girl." What's funny about this is that I was wearing the nemes headdress (the most common and recognized "pharaoh" headgear), carrying the crook and flail (the scepters you see held crossed over the chest)--and most importantly, the false beard, lol. I was wearing a robe, and had some eye makeup and jewelry for authenticity, but still...

Swift Quill is gonna be so sad when he wakes up and finds out this was just a dream.

"Looking at that pony above me with the kickass stripe job, my eyes are green with envy!"

I put my ponies in a box for you, babe Reference

Where did you learn how to do this? After spending several hours of frustration with vector tutorials just trying to draw one of those curved pony outlines with the points at the ends before rage quitting, it absolutely blows. my. mind. that people can actually make art this way. One curved line, that would take me a fraction of a second to do by hand on paper. Did you take a college course?

One of the Pinkie clones got away...and came back for revenge!

I'm a Cat O' One Tail, but I can still whip you.

*facepalm* Sorry! I just blindly followed Sneaky into referring to you as "him" instead of clicking your profile to check first. As someone who identifies as a feminist, I should have known better. Also, the gender of your protagonist lulled me into the assumption--which was not terribly rational of me, seeing as I'm a male and almost always write female protagonists. Anyway, my apologies. Well, Harry Potter is an exemplar of a pretty popular sub-genre: young person who doesn't fit in or is otherwise unhappy in the Real World gets yoinked off to a wondrous magical (or technological) realm where they do belong. Examples include: The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Starfighter, Peter Pan, and The Never-Ending Story. The Transformers movie franchise is pretty much the same thing, except that the mountain comes to Mohammad (the fantasy-world of giant warrior robots comes to the protagonist's world instead of him going to theirs). Fanfic writers didn't invent this idea, by a long shot. So, I don't think it's quite fair to single out writers of HiE fanfics for bashing. I haven't read "The Journey of Graves," so I can't comment on that. I don't think you come off as an attention seeker. The thought never occurred to me. I haven't read many pony fanfics so my knowledge of pitfalls specific to that sub-genre is limited. Here's my idea of some "don'ts" and some things you might want to try: Don't make your character turn out to be the Chosen One, the long-awaited Bearer of the Seventh Element of Harmony, who was foretold in prophecy to come, save Equestria, and marry [Celestia/Luna/Twilight/Rainbow Dash/Pinkie Pie/all five]. Don't make all the good characters adore him and all the bad characters hate him. When writers do this, it makes their protagonist the center of the story's moral universe, which causes eye-rolling and groans in the audience. The other characters in the story should not act as if it's All About Him. Realistically, each one goes through life as if they're the main character of their own life-story. Don't make him irresistibly romantically attractive; that's a sure sign of an authorwank character. I'm looking at you, Bond, James Bond. Don't make him infallibly right. He's going on a classic Campbellian Hero's Journey. He should learn something, grow, change, and become a better person for it. "Dear Princess Celestia..." Don't make things too easy for him. If he turns into a unicorn, he should have to put in a lot of hard work and study before he achieves anything approaching Twilight's level of magical mastery. If he becomes an earth pony, he should have the Devil's own time trying to figure out how to get the apples to land in the buckets. Try to break the pattern. Lots of bronies fantasize about going to Equestria, expecting it to be non-stop awesome. You could find dramatic hooks in all the ways it might not be. Maybe the ponies find the human form hideous (our tiny little eyes, monochrome manes, limbs with joints in the wrong places that bend the wrong way, creepy tendriled forelimbs [hands], the downright unnatural way we totter around on our hind legs, and our excessive use of decidedly non-fabulous clothing, etc.). Maybe he liked Rainbow Dash as a character on the show, but after encountering her in real life, he decides she's an over-competitive prick, and has to work to get along with her (like Rarity and Applejack do when they sleep over at Twilight's). Maybe he has to struggle with feeling even more awkward than he does at school, as the only human in a world built around small equines. Aside: has anyone written an HiE fanfic where the protagonist hates bronies? Try to find interesting and unusual ways to use canon, and your character's responses to it. My favorite candidate for Best Fanfic of All Time is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. In this story, Harry was not raised by the Dursleys. Instead, Petunia married a science professor, and Harry is a brilliant child prodigy raised with an intense enthusiasm for science. So, when he has his first encounter with the Wizarding World, in the form of Professor McGonagall levitating his father and turning into a cat, he freaks right the hell out. He turns out not to be a fan of Quidditch because the Golden Snitch "violates every sensible rule of game design." The scene in which he tries to explain this to Ron, after Ron explains Quidditch to him, is quite funny. Harry-the-scientist is a great foil for the peculiarities of the magical world, and he brings his own full compliment of peculiarities to match. Try to make sure that the obstacles your character faces are at least as souped-up as he is relative to canon. "You can't make Frodo a Jedi, unless you give Sauron the Death Star." If the Diamond Dogs attack Equestria, and your character comes with the knowledge of how to make gunpowder and cyanide gas from his chemistry class, and modern military tactics from being a history and/or wargaming geek, the Diamond Dogs should have some advantages that equal or exceed the protagonist's. Try to find interesting "what if's" you can use for plot purposes. What if your character thought that "Too Many Pinkie Pies" was a funny episode and could overlook the issue of Twilight "killing" the Pinkie clones when it was a kids' cartoon, but feels completely different when he finds himself face to face with Twilight in real life? What if he starts trying to find out why there are so few stallions relative to mares, and discovers that the answer is much more disturbing than he expected? What if he cant' stand clopfics...but finds himself falling in love with a pony? What would Poison Joke do to a human? What if, instead of becoming a pony, he becomes a sheep? What if his attitude as a brony is "Oh, dear baby Jesus, not another Humans in Equestria fanfic!"...then he finds himself living it? Whelp, that's all I can think of for now. If I come up with anything more, I'll post again. OK, this? This was awesome. This, right here, is what a canon-compliant fanfic should be. It reminds me a bit of another one I read about Twilight getting old, and starting to suffer from pony Alzheimer's. Sad.

Just one little nitpick: Otherwise, I think it's pretty well-done so far. Now I'm curious to find out who the menacing-sounding unicorn is, why she left her horn where someone else could sell it, and what her evil (?) plan is.