Multi-Blog: Vet Visits, Anniversaries, Discord Servers, and "It's Not Canon Until It's In A Story, But..." · 2:58pm Jul 31st, 2023
For the new people, there's been something of an ongoing saga regarding medical and vet bills. Relevant links: Original blog post, 1st Update, 2nd Update (middle section of the multi-blog), 3rd Update
We're on the canine side of this equation, and he has an appointment today. Not the surgery itself, as that's on the 4th, but instead a routine check-over to make sure he's good going into it. As of writing this, it hasn't happened yet, because it's a later-morning appointment. His dog-mom is out to breakfast with her cousin, who will hopefully unwind the tightly-wound spring that is her anxiety.
Between the two of us, I'm the relentlessly positive one. I believe that people are inherently good, but flawed, and that the evil ones are an exception who prey on those flaws. She believes that people are more commonly cruel, selfish, fake, and petty, and so basic kindness paid in her direction continues to confuse her. I'm the reason the GFM exists, because all she expected from asking for help would be that she'd just give everyone an open opportunity to kick her when she's down.
Sometimes it's not even people, just an expectation that the world itself will tell her to go fuck herself at every opportunity. I think she's half-expecting this routine test to result in her being told that he has a month to live, because that fits the kind of story she feels she's the unfortunate protagonist of.
So naturally, while putting on a desperate Pinkie Pie smile, my own way of staving off the darkness is to think about other things. Mostly creative things.
One of my personal rules is that I won't write tragedies. Like I Don't Exist (Anymore) ran right up against the edge of what I'll do, and I didn't use the tag because the story's open-ended. Wallflower could be okay, with it just almost too late. Sunset and the others could have saved her in time. It's just up to the reader to decide if so, and how.
I can admire a well-crafted tragedy, but I don't like to set up a scenario without hope. There's always a chance. Being changed by the experience, like in If You Go Down In The Woods Today, is always on the table. Events leave scars. But if a story starts out in a bad place, like Crystalforged, I like to end it with things having been placed on a path where they'll start to get better. If things started okay and got bad, I like to end on the chance that they'll be okay again.
It's funny. It's not what I was aiming for, but I think the one of the original characters in The Long Eventide I've ended up having the most in common with is Blackbird Song.
Keep the hope alive.
As of July 23rd, I've spent 10 years on Fimfic.
Most of that hasn't been as an author, obviously. The Long Eventide started in 2021, stalled out after two chapters, and then I only really hit my stride mid-2022.
For the majority of my time here, I was a reader. Loyal2Luna's Mass Effect crossover got me reading the site, and even when my interest in the show wavered, fanfics kept me lurking around. I got into Estee's work via a masterful little short story about Rarity jumped over to a on-going story of theirs and was hooked ever since. I became enthralled by Chengar Qordath's take on Sunset Shimmer and if you want someone to partly blame for the fact that I use that character so often, there you go. I even sampled some of the local horror faire, such as Flashgen's tales of light and darkness.
At the same time, there's a lot of the seemingly-fandom-defining works that I've never touched. Never read even the original Fallout: Equestria, for instance, let alone the whole universe it spawned. Conversion Bureau is something I simply raise an eyebrow at the existence of, and I think I have the general gist of Friendship is Optimal via simply reading the short descriptions of stories that crop up on the front page, but still don't quite understand it. I managed to miss entirely that Displaced stories were a thing until people started parodying them. I didn't really touch Equestria at War at all until I started work on The World Shall Rise From Ashes, and even then, it's not taking place in that universe so much as borrowing some setting elements. Sorry, hypothetical reader trying to map it to an exact timeline in the game mod, you're not going to be able to.
In all honesty, I'd lost track of how long I'd been here. I had nothing planned to celebrate, because I'd forgotten that I'd arrived in July at all. My eyes skim over that part of my own profile like a background detail. A kind PM wishing me a happy anniversary and congratulating me on the small following I'd been building reminded me, and put me in a reflective mood.
And speaking of my following...
One of the things I promised myself was, if I got to 100 followers, I'd create a Discord server.
It was meant to be one of those little milestone things, a way to reward myself and tell myself "you're making progress!" Since I went into the month with 88 followers, I figured it was time to work on it some. I plotted out some pony-themed channels, some nonpony channels, considered a few bots to provide games for people who wanted to play them, both ones I'd engaged with before on other servers myself and ones I'd only heard of and so would be largely new to me too.
I hadn't gotten a lot of the fine details set up, especially with one of the bots who primarily provided behind-the-scenes assistance, but I figured I had time.
Then Rich In Dollars, Poor In Sanity sent the number jumping up. When it hit 97, I went into "oh shit" mode and started trying to get everything in place. Fine-tune the bots, finalize the rules, finish setting up roles, grab an actual server image...
Then the influx stopped at 99.
I realized I had two choices. Wait like a good little enby for one more person to follow me, whenever that happened, or open a server that's basically done and ready to go. Anything that's "missing" (like server emotes) is that way intentionally, because I have a suggestions channel and want folks to be able to contribute and make themselves at home.
So you know what? Screw it. The gates are open, and welcome to the Eventide Verse server everyone.
Taking my steps into actually writing on Fimfic when I did puts me in an odd position.
I started after series end. The show was done, the movies and specials had run their course, and the comics had wrapped up. I'm sitting on a treasure trove of canon and have been grabbing what I want and tossing aside what I don't ever since. When I leave something out, or come up with an alternative take on a character or event than the one canon presented, I do so deliberately. I'm not in an arms race with canon, either changing things on the fly or deciding to stay the course when something new shows up to contradict me.
You know who is, right now? The Gen 5 fanfic writers.
For the most part, I haven't been looking at Gen 5. Act Of Chaos, Set Us Free has a Gen 5 tag, and as it continues you'll see some elements from it showing up. It's my take on the idea of a far-flung future where magic is (almost) gone, and I fully admit that part of it is me rebelling against the way that that gen handles Discord by casting him in the role I think he would take with a new generation of heroes.
But that fic is mostly OCs. Actual Gen 5 characters?
Well, there is one who I may have a potential take on. Opaline. But in a reversal of how AOCSUF takes the concept and not the characters, I'd be taking the character and placing her in Gen 4's time period. And for the biggest twist of all? She wouldn't be a villain.
Crystalforged introduced a personal interpretation of alicorns for the Eventide multiverse. They're each a conduit, linked to an anchor. Their powers, and their immortality, depend on that anchor. Lose it, and they're like any other mortal pony, with their only edge being the fact that they have earth pony, pegasus, and unicorn magic all at once.
Celestia has the sun, Luna the moon, Cadence the Crystal Heart, Twilight Sparkle the Tree of Harmony...
But what would I even do with Opaline? What is she the alicorn of?
Then the writers told us. Fire. It feels out of place, compared to the others, and jokes have been made across the fandom about it. And I still wasn't sure what I'd do with that, how it'd fit in.
Then I remembered the tale of Hearth's Warming. The Fire of Friendship.
Opaline Arcana, slayer of the windigoes.
It's a pretty severe rewrite. I'd be reinventing her from the ground up, and I'm sure I'll be accused in minutes of her essentially being an OC in a canon skin for such a 180.
If I do it at all. There'd have to be a story for her, a role for her to step into. Something for her to do. The closest I got was the thought of making her the Queen of Tartarus, going from slaying one kind of monster to safeguarding Equestria from other monsters who'd try to tear it apart, but that's not a story, that's a setting element, and one I'm still not completely sold on.
Oh well. It's an idea on the pile, to bring out when the time is right. Such is the life of a writer.
Here's to ten more years, all, and may I keep the stride I've found and keep on writing through them all.
Happy anniversary!
Here's to future tales to tell!
EDIT: Now You're officially 100 followers! Only 18 hours after The blog~
Chengar did a lot to shape my view of Sunset as well. His take on her talent is just such a brilliant read of her cutie mark.
And that's certainly one way to read Opaline. It even leads to her start of darkness. After all she did, and they still ended up segregating themselves? Clearly the mortals need a firmer hoof...
Happy Fimficversary, and best of luck with your loved ones. Thanks for offering some fascinating stories in the meantime.