Plans for the Future · 6:31pm May 18th, 2018
Few things I want to shoot out in this blog post.
First, I am officially starting on those rewrites to Order of the Alicorn that a mentioned way back in this blog post. I actually have a few chapters done already, which I'm sure some of you will be happy to hear. It's still a long ways off from being complete but progress is being made.
This brings me to my second announcement, I intend to post updates on my progress at least once every two weeks. My hope is that this will act an added layer of motivation for me to keep working and have something to show. If everything goes as I plan I should be able to finish one chapter within each of those two weeks.
Now a bit more on exactly what these rewrites entail, and also an idea I want to put forth to you the readers, so you can decide if I should try it out. Basically, I've rewritten much of how the world and the Order works and how the Princesses run it in order to make it slightly less, dictatorial. There's a long list of changes I've made, but I'll list the major ones here.
I don't believe any of these would constitute as spoilers, but I'll add the tags just in case.
1.) The existence of demons is no longer a secret/mythical legend to the public. Everyone knows they exist, it's common knowledge, and they all view it as a regular problem in Equestria.
2.) The Order is a little less of a secret in this version. They operate in a similar fashion to how the CIA does in America, in the sense that people know that it exists and have a general understanding of what it does, but they don't know who works for it or have any specifics of how it operates, or at least not until long after such info becomes irrelevant to current day operations.
3.) Octavia plays a much more prominent role in the story.
4.) Luna is less of a cunt.
Also, for those who were concerned that Twilight wouldn't have as big a role in the story, nothing to fear as I'll be keeping her as one of the protagonists. This now brings me to that idea that mentioned earlier, which I wanted you feedback on. You see, as I said before I have actually completed a few chapters of the rewrite, however as I was writing them I started to question more and more if it's a good idea to keep Sweetie Devil and Order as two separate stories. I mentioned this before in a previous blog post, but when I initially started writing Order of the Alicorn, it really was just a means to boot the main six out of the story so Sweetie could have the spotlight to herself. Having Order of the Alicorn be a separate story made sense back then because I had no fucking clue what I wanted to do with it and mainly just fooled around with the characters and world for a bit to varying degrees of success and failure. Now that I actually have a plan for where I want to take Twilight's story, and how to integrate it with Sweetie's, keeping Order of the Alicorn as a separate story is looking less and less necessary, really only serving to make me have to explain plot elements that were already explained in the other story and to force people to read certain parts of the story twice in order to get the full picture.
So this is what I want to propose. If you like how the stories are now, standing alone as two separate entities, I can try to keep doing that. Once the rewrite is finished I'll simply replace the existing chapters with the new ones and continue on in the same fashion. It'll take me a little longer, as I'll have to plan around a few things, but it is doable. Alternatively, if you're all open to this, I can instead make the whole thing one gigantic story. Instead uploading the rewrite chapters to Order, I'll intersperse them throughout Sweetie Devil, and that story will operate by switching back and forth between different character's points of view. This is the option I'm personally leaning towards, but I want to get your opinions on this before I decide to make such a huge change.
Tell me what you think, and don't hold back on the criticism, I can't get off otherwise.
That'll be all for now. Expect the first progress report on June 2nd, and I'll see you then.
When I first read Order of the Alicorn, it seemed disjoin, so any rewrite is fine with me. As for the Sweetie devil story, I haven't read it at all. So I'm impartial to if they're one or two stories. Now, how would you mix the two stories. If I remember, Sweetie devil is long, and it might be hard if you insert another chapter in the middle of it.
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If you've ever read the 'A Game of Thrones' books, it would essentially work something like that.
The P.O.V. would switch between characters each chapter, so one would be told from Sweetie's point of view, the next one Twilight's, then Octavia, and they'd go in the order of whatever I feel would be most narratively appropriate for them to go in. Sweetie Belle will still have the lion's share of the chapters, but I'd also go into events that are happening at the same time with other characters as well.
I think you should definitely combine them into the same story.
Do whatever makes you update more.
Please...
I love what has been woven already, so I'm cautious of the idea of combining them in case it changes things too much, but I also could be just being too narrow-minded... that aside though, from what you've said about the added complications of keeping them separate, I think that combining them might be better
especially if you feel like you can weave a better story by doing so
I'm a little late to the blog, But I like the idea of combining them. Especially if the stories are eventually going to clash together.
I think they should remain separate as they focus on different characters. However, if Sweetie just goes off to help the Order, then that really should be in a combined sequel to both stories.
I really like the change to make things less secret. One of the biggest flaws I saw in the Order of the Alicorn is having a secret organization to deal with a secret problem. Put simply, when you make the organization itself secret, you then have to cover the tracks of the organization using...the organization; you end up with a spiral of secrecy. Additionally, to get non-organization members to follow the organization, you need to give it known authority...but that means it has to constantly reveal that it exists, defeating the secrecy. If it refuses to reveal it exists, people will disobey it on purpose and try to expose it, again defeating the secrecy (and possibly sparking a full-on revolt).
It's also really, really hard to cover up stuff like brutal murders in a setting where murder is virtually unheard of, let alone razing Ponyville. It also strained credibility that Sweetie had to be so secretive when practically nopony would have any idea her behavior was reason to alert some secret society they didn't know existed. With the Order being secret, Sweetie could very easily have just told Rarity and eventually Twilight what was going on and they would fight tooth and nail with impunity to protect her.
Now, the other big problem is just how crazy OP demons and alicorns are, but hey, the story's gotta have fun somehow! Just, maybe consider toning it down a little? You don't need to kill off like ten unnamed ponies in a rapey vore way and have ponies bleeding out everywhere in the rubble to create a sense of death/destruction in a setting where the worst thing that normally happens is a broken wing.
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Yeah, I really didn't plan out the existence of the Order all that well at the start. I'm hoping to make it a little more believable in the rewrite.
Whatever I end up doing though, at least one of these stories is going to be operating by switching between character's points of view, otherwise I'd have to devote a whole separate story to Octaiva's chapters, plus any other characters I might consider giving a chapter to, and it'll all end up being one big convoluted web of interwoven stories.
As for the excessive gore and violence, that's more of me wanting to be true to the demonic portions of the story rather than the pony parts. I've always hated how many stories that deal with demons seem to shy away from the blood shed when demons are supposed to be the literal personification of human evil. In my view, if a demon story doesn't have excessive amounts of sex and violence, then it isn't being true to the idea of demons.
Also, not to use this as a shield for all the differences, but...
i.imgur.com/KHdnXMR.png