1 Year writing anniversary. Reminiscing the past and hoping for the future.

Hello everybody!

Today marks one year since I published my first story in here in FIMfiction, and my first fiction ever!

I wanted to take the time to say thank you for all the people that supported me in this journey, be with a kind comment or by simply reading my stories. I would also like to take the time to share my experiences of the past and talk about my hopes for the future.

Being born in a gypsy family, art always ran in the family. My grandma is an excellent painter, my mother and big sister are great at drawing, my little sister plays the piano like a boss and I... can't draw for shit At least I'm good with rhythming albeit I never really tried to learn any instrument ... maybe someday... Still, I've always had my creativity running in overdrive, while my big sister was drawing her next masterpiece, I had an entire kingdom of stick figures with its own social structure, culture, and characters.

One beautiful day, at the age of 5, I was introduced to a weird tabletop game called Dungeons & Dragons by a friend of mine, we would spend our entire afternoon with a group of friends exploring every single inch of lore that book would provide us, until we finally reached its end. These kind of books are really expensive here in Brazil, so it would take months of saving lunch money to be able to by the next edition, so I offered to create a story for us to continue playing. After playing for almost 3 months in the little campaign I improvised, we completely forgot about buying the next edition and began developing our own rules and mechanics to enhance our game even more.

I would continue to improvise endless campaigns and develop RPG systems until I was faced with a unique show called My Little Pony. Like all the boys at my age, I immediately paid no mind for that girly show, well, that was until I saw the hydra in episode 15 of Season 1. My little sister and I went back to episode 1 and watched the whole season, with all the magic, monsters, and surprisingly deep worldbuilding the show had I simply concluded: This show is epic as fuck!

Of course, I wasn't able to convince my friends to try and play an MLP RPG, but that didn't keep me from thinking what cool stuff we could do within the world of MLP FIM. But then I discovered a concept that I never knew existed, a concept that changed my life forever, the Fandom.

Seeing such a large group of fans on the internet creating such amazing fanarts like music, drawings and fiction was completely unexpected and wonderful to me. Within the fandom, I found the central pillar the would unite me and my future friends during all my high school and still unites me with my new friends in my university, and within the fandom, I also found what would be the next step in my Dungeon Master career and eventually would open the door to my new hobby and passion: Fallout: Equestria.

With the incredible world of Fallout: Equestria, created by the talented Kkat, we developed months of intense joy and unison. In the Equestrian Wasteland, me and my friends were able to express our creativity and further develop our friendship, because only with virtue and friendship one is able to survive the wastes.

One day, one of my friends asked me why I never tried writing a book, to wich I didn't know what to repply, I had never crossed my mind back then. He asked me to help him plan and develop his fanfic he would be publishing and offered me his account if I ever wanted to publish something of my own. And then, my journey began.

Under the name of Randon Encounter, I and my friend began developing our own tribute to Kkat's awesome wasteland. During my development, I went in search of someone willing to make a cover art for my story. (unfortunately, neither my mom nor my big sis knew or had the equipment to digitally draw, so I had to find my own way.)

To be honest, I didn't had much hopes that someone would be willing to do a cover art for me for free, and since there's no way (at least to my knowledge) to pay an artist with my country's coin via PayPal, I would have to do it without a cover art. But I was proved wrong a few days later when the extremely generous and talented EverfreePony offered her help. With the cover art done, the only thing that I was missing was someone to help me with my spelling. (and god how I need(ed) help: rainbowlaugh:) To my surprise, Everfreepony did editing too! Ever since then she has been editing all my stories, never charging anything in return. (A big shout out to her! She deserves more the praise that I get than me! )

Now that I had everything I needed, on March 20th, 2017, I published my first work of fiction (outside of RPG campaigns) Fallout: Equestria - Stars.

The development of that story was an interesting one, since the beginning I knew I wanted to explore Zebrica, since it was the least explored setting on Kkat's book (I later learned that she managed an RPG campaign that took place in Zebrica ), but I had a hard time creating the main character. I wanted a zebra, an alchemist, but what else? There wasn't much room to explore the zebra culture that hasn't already been explored by another author.

But then I remembered once specific session I managed where the players met a shaman zebra that would reveal to them the spirits of the past that haunted their dreams. From that point forward, everything seemed to click. The protagonist would be a zebra stallion, who made a pact with a spirit of chaos that served as his pipboy bout would occasionally mess with everything around him, like he carried bad luck wherever he went.

The story didn't receive all that attention, even today, but I've got a good amount of comments praising the protagonist and how unique he felt in comparison to other protagonists in other stories, those words really brought me joy, and that joy made me ask why I've never tried writing before. Unfortunately, the story deviated a bit from my originals plans, and I've improved since I first wrote it, so I've put the story into hiatus while I figure out how to fix it, even possibly rewriting it if nessessary.

One month later, my friend posted his own story, Fallout: Equestria - Until Death Do Us Part. He wanted to write a parody of Romeo and Juliet but had a really hard time adapting the story into the FoE universe, after I helped him with most of these problems, he managed to publish his story.

But after a few months in, things got a little complicated for my friend, he had some complications at school and work that took the time he had to write, so he passed his story to me (I've already written about 70% of the story with him, but now he officially gave me the story.)

As my friend's destiny became more and more unclear, he began talking about transferring the stories to my original FIMFiction account (this one). Due to some miscommunication and general indecision, it turned into quite a mess, but in the end, everything went to where it should be. (Huge shout out to Eldorado for being patient and helping us with our shit )

From there on, I began writing other kinds of stories, The Queen of the Royal Guard was my first story to really get some attention, reaching 544 readers today and spawning a one-shot spin-off inspired by a reader's comment. I participated in my first contest, writing I Will Make Them Remembern which I won second place! (And still have been paid my price of US$15...)

As my enthusiasm with writing grew, two more friends from my FoE RPG group tryed to write their own stories, I helped them like I help my other friend, but lost interest pretty quickly after realising that writing wasn't all that easy. Giving trouble to Eldorano once again, their stories, FoE: Safe Heaven, FoE: Rails of Hope and FoE: Trick or Threat, were transferred to me.

I tried participating in another contest, writing Hearth's Warming Surprise, I only got an honorable mention, but the story got enough attention that a guy by the name of Skijarama did a reading of it on youtube!

By then I've begun developing a Cyberpunk, post-apoc alt. universe, Event Horizon, was still under development, but I was going in a short hiatus so I decided to post it's prologue just to keep some fresh content going while I was out... bad mistake... . The story didn't get much attention an earned the comment from a really toxic person by the name of Hamster_Master, his comment itself was actually kinda tame compared to other stuff I found on his user page, but his vague criticism didn't really help me to improve on the points he mentioned so...

At the end of 2017, I started taking on some requests, writing three stories so far, one of them still being written, and two more to go.

But finally, we arrived at The Nameless Queen...

Since I began working on The Queen of the Royal Guard, I thought how fun it would be to play a game where you control a changeling hive like a 4x game. This idea grew and grew, but I was afraid that its weird format wouldn't gather enough readers to play. It was never my goal to gather the highest amount of views or any other statistic when I began writing, but this story in particular needed players to work. Taking a shot in the dark, I wrote it and published it, now it has gathered 1.3k views, 118 likes, 380 comments and an amazing community of players that are eager to learn the game and share their strategies with others to make sure the Young Queen survives her journey against other 11 different hives of different broods of ponies!

I never expected a story of mine to gather such attention and care, and I'll always be grateful for that. Chapter 4.5 is in development and this chapter will be my thank you to the all the players that took their time to create a changeling for the hive and for those who didn't get the chance, I really hope you like it!

I already have about 20 quest lines planned for the story, and two possible sequels depending on the players final choice! (yeah you heard me right, your choices will dictate the entirety of the sequel )

Now as we move toward the future, I'm thinking about going back to the very beginning. The thing I liked the most about The Nameless Queen is that it brought me and the readers closer as we discuss the story, the same closeness that I love about tabletop RPGs.

With that in mind, I had an idea for what could be a really interesting story for an RPG campaign that I wanted to play with you! It's still in development but the story would be about a crew or Airship Pirates in a Steampunk Equestria, where the players would find themselves involved in a treacherous plan to overtake the throne. The players would be able to choose which side to take while they have to manage their Airship, develop new technologies, increase their skills and sail through the dangerous sea of clouds.

This story format could be played like The Nameless Queen, but due to the limited number of crew members (6) and their respective roles and ranks in the ship, I think it would benefit more as an RPG, and at the end of each session I would gather all the gameplay, process it and write it as a story for everybody to see!

Besides that, I have 2 Starcraft fanfics and Dark Souls Trilogy planned to be released within the year, planning to publish them at the Fanfiction.net website. Also, I'll be releasing my own original story at Wattpad by the next months! (hopefully) It will be a high fantasy story where a human tyrant have invaded a new continent populated by magic creatures and protected by Dragons. The story will follow a young dragon who befriends a human slave and together they plan to escape from the tyrant's chains, free the other slaves and drive the tyrant armies off.

Either way, Thank you so much for one whole year of support, I hope I managed to entertain you, even if just a little bit, and I hope I'll be able to continue to entertain you, be it here at FIMfiction or any other platform I may publish in the future

Damn that's a wall of text. If you've managed to reach this far, Congratulations! If you're interested in that MLP RPG campaign I mentioned, please leave a comment telling me about it, I would love to be able to play with you!

-The Might Worldbuilder Draconequus, AniMun.

Comments

[G3AR B0X]

First of all, congrats on making 1k . The entire passage you wrote shows how much you really care to your followers and actually entrusted us your story in life which I feel honoured. Having English as my second language, (Even though I speak it frequently ) I always wanted to create my own story. From what I have seen you have created something so rarely seen in fimfiction which attracted quite a crowd, I myself included. Being a fan of rpg type games (Although I do not play D&D but i really want to...) I decided to hop on for the ride; it was well worth my time. Once more congratulations on this momentous occasion, cheers!

[AniMun]

Thanks, I really appreciate yah

Hey, if we manage to form a party you can play with us! I'm developing a roll system for the game, trying to simplify it so we can focus more on the story, so anyone can play without too much trouble (and of course I'll teach the rules before the game)

I'll probably post another blog about the game when it's more developed. So think about it?

[Fireheart 1945]

Congrats, man

[AniMun]

4821539
Thanks