Annual Update · 9:42am Jun 18th, 2017
In my mind, this site exists frozen in time. My interest in the MLP community as a whole has waned greatly, and I only find myself wandering back here as a sort of nostalgia.
I haven't read anything here since 2015 (with the exception of whittling away at BlackRoseRaven's epic saga very, very slowly) so the site really does feel frozen; all of the works I once loved either long-finished or abandoned, and all the authors I once followed now stuck in the same creative limbo as I: too invested to leave but too disinterested to create more.
Sad to say, but the real likelihood is that none of my other stories will ever see the light of day. It hurts me to write this, because there are at least two projects that I really want to see completed, but the urge to write is greatly outweighed by the difficulty with which the words come to me. This might yet change in the future, but as it stands I simply cannot put the figurative pen to the paper and make things happen.
The more I dwell on this post and revisit older writings, the stronger the urge to write becomes. Maybe I should strike while the iron is hot.
The first project is called In Pursuit of Magic, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it before. It's a two-piece affair, the first part being a narrative describing Twilight's travels across the world interacting with all the different races to learn about the different forms of magic as harnessed by different cultures.
The second part of IPoM, which I'm more excited about (and have actually written a fair portion of) is an encyclopedic documentation of Twilight's discoveries, starting with a brief summary of the principles of magic in general and pony magic in particular, including sections on crossbreeds, types of spells, and so on, and then zooming out to encompass and explain the systems of magic used by other known races (and a few that I just made up).
I have written a couple chapters worth of this second portion, but I hesitate to publish it because a) it will probably never be completed, and b) it is not, in the traditional sense, a work of fiction. I can't find any other examples of non-fiction styled stories on the site, and it seems like something that would be against the rules (but if anyone reading this can tell me otherwise, please do!). This uncertainty is the reason the narrative portion of the story even exists, but it makes it harder to write because it feels unnatural and... uninspired?
The second project is called Baptized in Fire, and I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it to death as well. It is a sequel/spin-off/alternate ending to A Spark Neglected, starting shortly before the end of ASN and exploring a less fatalistic turn of events. I was about to write some pretentious-ass thing about how the different direction of this spin-off represents the different direction my life has taken since then and how I was in a dark place when I wrote Of Solace in Flames and yadda yadda yadda but who actually cares
[If you haven't seen it yet, here's my ancient analytical blog post about ASN that helps explain the history and context of the story]
The only other projects I think are still worth pursuing are Impurity, a story of loss and mental illness featuring the pink one, and Der Ausländer, a conceptually avant-garde human-in-equestria story that hasn't actually had a single word written yet.
