cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!
Jul
3rd
2015
Dark Horse #7 Status · 4:00pm Jul 3rd, 2015
21312 words + 397 words. ~70-80% Done.
I 'lost' about 7 K words slash 19 pages to a take on the chapter's resolution that simply didn't want to work, so a bit less progress this week.
Think the 'final cut' is shaping up decently, though.
Not quite certain yet, but either this is going to be the 'big one' and longest chapter of the story, or I might cut it in two for length. Going to have to see how it all comes together first, and see what the final count is and if I can trim anything without losing the effect I'm going for.
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Lord Of Dorkness · 450 views
· Story: Dark Horse — A Five Score Tale From The Dresden Files
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#Dark Horse
#Status Update
I can never really see the point of bothering with that. The site provides an interface for putting bookmarks in the middle of a chapter already, and it's not like reading two shorter chapters back-to-back is any different from reading one big chapter all at once. I would spare myself the bother, if only so you don't have to find a good breakoff point in the middle of it, or artificially make one.
A huge update then, but glad the muse is still aiming strong here. But thank you for the heads up!
Well it happens. Hopefully it will have stuff you can salvage for other chapters.
If it has a natural breaking point then go for it. If not then go for the big chapter.
Also, thanks for the update! I know you don't like doing them, but this is a story where I just can't stand not knowing where it is.
On an unrelated note. I realized yesterday just how sad it is that unless you write a sequel, or someone writes recursive fanfiction of your recursive fanfiction, Nemo isn't going to show up in any more stories. I've begun thinking of her as a true Dresden companion character, which may be the highest compliment possible.
I can't wait. You have built up a huge problem after all, and I can't see any easy resolutions to it, so I can only imagine the insanity of where it is going.
So much Dresdenness ahead. Coool.
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Well, there is one thing, although that's more on my end than a problem for a reader.
The longer you have a single chapter, the less detailed the feedback on anything specific becomes. 15-25 K seems like a sweet-spot (for me, at least) where I can keep things verbose but still get feedback on individual lines and moments.
Kinda minor, but still. Know there's a few of my readers that prefer reading chapters in one sitting for a natural end-point, so that as well.
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A few lines, at least. Still if nothing else it should be a neat bonus for once everything is done. A few 'What could have been' type blogs, or something.
Don't want you or anybody to feel pressured into anything, but it does help quite a bit when just status updates get a response like this. Makes it feel more worthwhile then just shouting numbers into the void, you know?
Nemo's getting a big part in the next chapter, so you've got that to look forward to at least.
Still, don't quote me on this quite yet, but I think this is going to get at least a sequel down the line. Dresden wrestling with all this fallout from two worlds colliding atop all the other stuff in his/her life is just near begging to be explored much further.
That's going to be further down the line, though. I've got a few tiny ideas already pinging around in the back of my head, but I'm intentionally not doing near anything with them yet because I want to do the original justice first. Not to mention how many other stories I've let lay fallow while concentrating on Dark Horse that deserve some attention afterwards.
Still, I'd be deeply flattered if this thing turns out well enough in the end to spawn re-re-cursive fiction. Don't think I dare hope for that yet, but it would be really, really cool if it happened.
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I'll say this much: nobody has gotten close yet to what I'm actually planning.
I think the final act's going to hold quite a few surprises for people, and hopefully in a good way.
3202969 The bigger chapters work better in a format like this, but i can agree, there are points you can hit or miss with larger, as it weaves that way. But i like them for being far more to get across. Because you can be more verbose.
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On an equally unrelated note, I still gripe about how only I and Dorky (afaik )have even considered doing something different with the 5score universe.
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To be fair, Five Score did earn a real rep for being self-insert fly-paper of the worst sort.
Both that reputation and the soft-ban probably scared off a lot of people that otherwise had some actually fun and interesting ideas. (Like say, how the Optimalverse is still going strong.)
Why write twenty K words before even getting to publish when you can tweak the concept slightly, and turn it into a normal transformation HiE without those problems and Five Score stigma?
Regrettable, but the group sorta made their own bed on that. I'm a big fan, and even then I can't deny that there's tons of dead and/or horrible stories in that verse.
3203496 I only read Five Score because of Dark Horse (I almost didn't read Dark Horse because I checked Five score's summary first but the promise of Dresden lured me in) but when I did read it I was not impressed. Bizarre wish fulfillment combined with the author's strange masturbatory material, it feels like reading the Twilight books, or Fifty Shades of Grey.
That said, Dark Horse is really only connected to Five Score in that both involve involuntary transformations, Discord is responsible, and it happens (mostly,) after 25 years. You could have just said it was 'loosely inspired by the ideas behind Five Score' and no one would have called you on it.
Dark Horse is of both higher writing quality, and a much better premise. Rather than the ponification being wish fulfillment for a loser protagonist, it is a curse and source of conflict on a likable and established protagonist as well as others. This completely changes the nature of the story from 'wow I love not having hands, lets have sex,' to 'no I won't be leaving with you to your magical fairy world...no means no! Fuego!'
You know, I'm reminded of a rationalist Twilight fanfiction I encountered called Luminosity (which I very tentatively recommend) which asked the question of 'what if Bella wasn't a complete waste of a main character?'
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Again, I'm a fan, but I do agree with a lot of the stuff you're saying.
Dash/Anon would have been a fascinating if slightly squicky secondary character. You could have a lot of drama and some seriously hard questions in somebody finding themselves a non-human of the opposite gender and utterly loving it.
Is it a trap? Is it just hormones, and she's going to hate herself once she regains some self-control? Is it outright both in the form of estrus and a foal is going to strain their food reserves in eleven months?
But for the same reasons, Dash is just a horribly one-note main-character. Me, me, me, sex, sex, sex.
Hell, when stuck in a mind-whammy in the last act her worst fear is being committed to her sorta colt-friend.
Again, I think it's a fun ride, especially act one where the whole thing's a big mystery (with the characters actually acting like rational adults I might add), but it all sorta went downhill after that big the curse was lifted not cast reveal.
I think that's why The Last Crusade has resonated so much with people. It actually has the main character (Sweetie Belle) being outright torn between his current life and the one he was outright destined to actually have.
It's actually really, really sad in its own way, but it's one of two other Five Score stories (not counting my own) that actually has major human characters. For many others' those first twenty-five years might as well have been spent in a cursed zip-lock bag.
So yeah, I do find the verse really interesting, but it suffers a lot from people not taking advantage of the central premise's potential. Kinda as if Star Trek had never made it out of the basement due to focusing only on the green women instead of the actually cool sci-fi stuff.
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Hint hint.
Read Dorky's stuff.
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Ok, I'm confused, and I was confused when you said a similar thing in the author's note about Nemo being a very oblique reference to anon but... In Five Score Dash wasn't an Anon, his/her name was Dave. It may not have been a very interesting character, and quite a loser, but it was at least 'a character.' Did it start out as an Anon story and then get changed by the author?
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iirc, it started out as a second person (maybe?) clop fic on 4chan.
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Ohhh...
I had no idea that got retconned, although I guess I should have seen it coming. But yeah 'Dave's' name used to literally be 'Anon.' A left-over how the first few chapters were a green-text transformation story that grew quite a lot in the telling.
I'll go to the author's note about Nemo's name and add a small note about that. Thanks for pointing it out.
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Welp, I can safely say I wouldn't have been able to stomach reading it had it remained about 'Anon,' and I really can't stand second person writing. It's rather scary that I read the 'improved' version of 5s/4... All I can say is that I'm glad Dark Horse takes after the Dresden Files more than its other parent story.
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Dark horse also takes a lot from its parent author. Read them.
--Appletank, self proclaimed #1 fan of Dorky
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I mentioned it already, but I'd actually recommend The Last Crusade as the first stop for anybody curious about Five Score.
It's just a far smoother ride and experience, as well better explore quite a few things that barely got hinted at in the original.
Far less sex-obsessed as well, so a bonus for many, no doubt.
I still stand by that I like the original, but it is a very uneven story and not for everybody; no matter how well done the parts that really work are.