Wow, for once I have a lot of things to say

Hey, what's up every(p)one! So yeah, I actually have a bunch of stuff to say including progress updates, times when I'm going to be away a lot, and stuff about my recent updates. Yeah, I'll be doing the stupid things with pictures and music again, but I find it fun to do so just humour me! Also it's 3 a.m. so this might not be the usual riveting, artfully constructed blog post that I know you all have come to expect from me.

If you are not watching me but are wondering why you are seeing this, I've tagged in everyone who favourited Fluttershy's TBD as I have a full explanation of what's going on at the bottom of the blog post. Read the section in bold if you want the tl;dr version.

So, first the attributions for the art and music; the vectors are all from the MLP Vector Club and today I thought I'd got with some non-pony music, just cos. There's an ambient electronica artist I quite like called The Flashbulb. so that's what you'll be gettin'.

So, let's welcome Lyra, our reader strawman for the day since I've been writing a lot of her recently.

Hey. I'm like a bargain Twilight Sparkle!

General News
First is a quick thing. I know I said I would do weekly blog updates, but I found a better solution for short term updates. In case you haven't noticed, I have little progress meters on my profile page which will let you know what's going on.

The next thing is that I have a holiday and a summerschool coming up which mean that I will be gone from August 22nd up to around September 14th.

Well ... have fun with that, but are you going to be able to get anything done during that time?

I will not have internet for at least three of those weeks, so don't expect much activity. Don't worry, I'll come back, but I wont get much done during that month or so. This will mainly impact Starworks as, what with the re-editing of old chapters, I probably won't be able to get a new Starworks out for August. On which note...

Starworks Rewriting
As I mentioned already, I'm trying to get Starworks on EqD and that will require a little tweaking to the previous chapters. Basically, I probably will not be able to get a new chapter out but I probably will be able to complete the re-edits. So, while you won't get your August fix, you will get improvements on all the previous chapters. I hope that won't put you off following the story as your support does mean a lot to me.

Starworks 3
I got so lucky, you know. I was so happy how this chapter worked out. I had three viewpoints that I needed to show, and it turns out that all of them are very very different and I'm not just repeating the same event three identical times. It's really awesome and I couldn't have hoped for things to better.

Wait, what? You mean you don't plan that kind of thing?

No, not really. I plan the arcs out but I leave details up to what seems best and most logical at the time. So yeah. Wooo!

I also think I finally managed to write a more engaging scene with the mane 6. Now I'm not trying to follow canon and am just letting then evolve as their characters dictate I think it reads easier and it certainly felt more natural to write. I still find it much easier to write smaller, more focused groups of characters where I have to stick less to established canon. For example, I really like how the scene between Lyra and Colgate came out. I really enjoyed writing that and I didn't have to do that much editing.

Yeah, well .. not all of us liked that section...

Heh, well ... yeah.

Things are starting to heat up a little too. It's a long story but I think we are starting to get some decent momentum going. I hope I'm keeping people interested and that people would tell me if I was going too slow. I can say that the next chapter is going to be seriously fun, though!

Just out of curiosity, how long is this thing?

Pretty long. I cant give you an exact word count, but we're maybe a fifth of the way through? I wanted to try writing a proper novel length story to see if I could manage it, so if you want something that will keep you going for a pretty long time, then you;ve come to the right story.

I'm thankful yet again to my editors for spotting something rather important; I kind of forgot to give the mane 6 any kind of motivation towards the end of the chapter, so that was rather dumb of me.

As a general thing, I hope people will let me know if I'm not making things clear. It's a rather complex story in an unfamiliar setting so I hope things like the River and the mantras are making sense. If not then I hope you'll let me know!

All The Mares 2

Oh yeah, that other story you're ignoring. You're basically ignoring me, you know. I'm taking it personally.

Okay, that's fair. Basically, two things went wrong here. I prioritised it lower than the Fluttershy one-shot and didn't think people would mind. Secondly, I've been a bit under the weather recently and just haven't felt funny. It's almost done, just be patient and I promise I'll get chapter 3 out sooner.

As far as it goes, there won't be anything to match the drunken section of chapter 1 which I was very proud of. But still, it's a quirky little fic and I hope that by keeping it short and focused I won't outstay my welcome on any sections that aren't funny for you.

Aw man, I cant wait to see what makes Tavi crack!

Heh. I think you'll love it.

But yeah, I'm working on it and I'm enjoying writing it, so look forward to chapter 2 in the not too distant future.

BPA

Ooo, what is this mysterious fic?

Good question, I'm glad you asked. It's my new one shot-

Another one? Seriously? Geeez.

Yeah, well, I just keep having these ideas...

Anyway, BPA is Background Ponies Anonymous, a rather bleak comedy about a support group for background ponies. It will feature Seafoam and will be ... a little weird. It's meta, by definition, but don't let that put you off; I won't let it overpower the story. Anyway, keep an eye out for that!

Hang on, am I in it?

Yeah. Seems I can't stop writing you into things recently.

Yeah, I should get paid on commission...

Fluttershy's Terribly Busy Day

Ah yes. The fic where you tried to write a dark story with no explicit dark and then very few people got it. Surprise, surprise.

Heh, yeah. I'm still on the fence about the story. I think it sort of worked, but just not as much as I would have liked. I've certainly learned a lot from it, though, and ultimately that was always the point.

Yeah, yeah, what the hay was the story about?

I'll get to that. I was considering writing a very short follow up fic - Twilight Sparkle's Terribly Busy Day or something like that - to explain it, but it's only a little one-shot and I dont think the demand is high enough for it to be worth it.

So, you'd do it if people asked you to?

Sure, it would be extremely short but it would be a better way to read the plot out.

Basically, the plot is just laid out blandly below this notice so MASSIVE SPOILERS. If you dont want a synopsis but would rather read it as a little one-shot, leave me a comment. If even one person requests it I'll happily do it, but I don't anticipate anyone caring enough to do it before then. I also left enough whitespace at the bottom so you can scroll down to the comments without having to have the tail end of the spoilers on screen.

So yeah, if you want to stop reading now and/or leave a comment, thanks for reading, I look forward to your feedback!

So folks, the only thing left in this blog is massive spoilers so if you don't want em, stop readin'

While a lot of the reasons and deatils are missing, the major plot points are all implied during the story and I can point out where it comes from it people want me to. Otherwise, just go back and re-read it if you want.

Fluttershy Synopsis
The one-shot had a theme song, by the way.

Sweetie Belle started a kitchen fire at the Boutique three days before the story begins. Ponyville was shrivelling under a bakingly hot summer and the town is largely made of wood. The Boutique set ablaze and the pegasi fire teams lacked enough water in the air to form clouds to start putting it out.

Rarity came back to see the Boutique in flames and dived in to save Sweetie as the rest of Ponyville started to notice what was happening. The blaze spread to the rest of the town as the flames jumped from building to building. Dashie burst in to try and drag Rarity and Sweetie out, but couldnt get through the flames. Suffering severe burns, she only just dragged herself out.

Twilight used all her magic blocking the fire from jumping buildings. She was forced to not teleport Rarity out as she had to protect houses that had not yet been evacuated.

AJ ran into town, passing Flutters who was standing, transifxed, at the edge of town. AJ yelled at Shy to get bucket of water but Shy just froze up. She gave up, shouting at Shy, who ran home and hid under her bed.

AJ did her best to rescue Pinkie Pie. PP had run into sugarcube becuase she didnt know that the Cake's foals were out safely. Both AJ and PP died of smoke inhalation.

RD managed to pull herself to the river to try and lift water into the air to drench the town. Her burns were too severe and she died, alone, on the river bank.

Twilight had managed to save around 100 ponies; one fifteenth of the town's populace. The fire had ringed round the outskirts of town, thanks to the wind, and had formed barricades of burning streets that had trapped many.

Injured herself and exhausted she checks Fluttershy's cottage, beyond furious that she hadn't helped. She is utterly broken, takes it out on Fluttershy, and leaves to walk the refugees to Trottingham. Fluttershy, snaps under the pressure and desperately tries to pretend that nothing went wrong, even as the town burns itself to the ground in front of her.

All these events are tagged as happening 'this morning' despite Fluttershy blatantly not doing those things that actual morning. It's subtle, arugably too subtle, but that was what lead up to Fluttershy's current state of pain and denial. So there you go.

The following whitespace is just so that people who didn't want spoilers can type comments without having spoilers at the top of the screen.

Comments

[Affluenza]

ERHMAHGERD, MER PERST HAS SPORLERS

I figured a warning is the least I could do after Sanctae's noble efforts to protect those who haven't read F'sTBD.

So my nights of writhing in agony trying to determine what F'sTBD was about were not in vain! I had figured it had been something along the lines of a mental breakdown after the deaths of her friends, but the one qualm I had was that it sort of failed to capture the total destruction of Ponyville, and apart from the water and the burnt feather, it wasn't really clear what had caused it or how it started.

Anyways, you got me to think, which is not something I get around to doing much, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I'd like to see the sequel, if my humble opinion carries any weight in the pony fanfic-y part of the Internet.

[RTStephens]

Lyra's so silly. The one of her crying is one of the saddest vectors I've seen.

Sorry, didn't read your Fluttershy story. I'm not really big on the sad or tragic tags.

Starworks is shaping up to be pretty epic! I'm hoping it gets the recognition it deserves. There are a few points within it that had me rereading passages but for the most part, I've been able to follow along pretty well.

If you ever wanted to write Lyra being badass and extra silly, try writing an episode of Harpflank and Sweets. That'll get your Lyra fix!

Nice going!

[Sanctae]

260714 Heh, yeah, I'm a little OCD about spoilers, it's something of a pet peeve when people don't flag 'em so I went a little over the top. Still, rather too many warnings than not enough, personally.

>So my nights of writhing in agony trying to determine what F'sTBD was about were not in vain!
Ah, yes. It truly is such an engaging story that without closure it should probably be banned for causing emotional trauma! Still, I'm glad you enjoyed it and I'm happy you didn't feel I'd just wasted your time.

Yeah, I agree I didn't quite capture the reality of what was happening. I made the very awkward choice of having both an unreliable narrator and trying not to write anything that was directly dark and I'm just not a good enough writer to make it work properly. Everything was meant to be implication, for example I was hoping the reader would realise that there had been a huge fire from the wind, the embers in the air and the smoke in the air, and would then read the bit about Sweetie's cooking. They would then form their own conclusion about what happened which would perhaps be more effective than being explicitly told what happened; let the reader come up with all the bad imagery without me having to write it out.

Since you asked so nicely, I'll put together a little sequel which I'll release as it's own story, if I feel it can stand alone, or as a second chapter to FTBD if I think it can't.

260828 I know. Sad Lyra is most heartbreaking pone

That's perfectly fine. Since I'm trying to cover every tag with it's own story there's always gonna be ones people like and ones people don't.

Thanks Well, we'll see I guess. I always knew it was going to be a really niche project when I started so I don't need massive amounts of readers to keep motivated for it. I'm just loving writing it and the small core of people who are reading and posting along with me is all the recognition I need. Still going for EqD though

Well, yeah, that pretty much is the pinnacle of Lyra-ness! I don't think I could manage H&S. I'm not sure I can get that kind of Saturday morning cartoon energy like you and Arcainum can.