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asparisi comments on Friendship is Optimal: A My Little Pony fanfic about an optimization process - Less Wrong Discussion

63 Post author: iceman 08 September 2012 06:16AM

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Comment author: asparisi 08 September 2012 08:27:54PM 2 points [-]

Agreed with FiftyTwo, which is why I had to say "suspect" regarding whether or not people with no interest in MLP would be interested in the story.

Honestly, I don't think it's inaccessible to your average brony. You're pretty explicit, and I found it easy to read. But this isn't a "Singularity in the MLP universe" it is a "Singularity which ends up looking like the MLP universe from the inside." So it falls a little outside of typical My Little Pony fanfic, the same way that a fanfic about a rationalist who reads Harry Potter would be very different than HPMOR.

So anyone who reads it expecting to find the My Little Pony universe implicit in the show (as it is an MLP fanfic) doesn't know what they are in for. IMO, this is fine, since the distinction is cleared up right from the start that this takes place in something set to more closely resemble our world than the MLP universe, but it could still be jarring if they were expecting to find a story occurring in the MLP universe.

But as FiftyTwo points out, I am already familiar with the concepts in the story, so I have some trouble putting myself in the shoes of someone without those concepts who just likes My Little Pony.

Comment author: Ritalin 29 October 2012 11:46:21PM 0 points [-]

I've taken the liberty of taking it to be looked at by non-LW bronies (because of a misunderstanding; I've stopped now). They lose interest during the first chapter. I really have to tell them "IT GETS MUCH BETTER."