Ideas & Missing Muses

So, everypony, this is a quick update/ramble on what’s up in regards to the future. As of right now, Pony Plots is still likely to get put on hiatus for an indefinite amount of time. I have two more chapters ready to go to wrap up Arc II, and it does get pretty weird, most due to me trying to work around my missing muse.
Well, that’s not really 100% accurate. My muse isn’t missing, she simply put on another face, one that I am more familiar with, sadly, than the one of random comedy that spawned Pony Plots to begin with. It is more common for my muse to wear the guise of dark sadness and tragedy, and perhaps an (un)healthy dose of violence, as well.
As such, I am working on a story right now, which will hopefully be ready to take Pony Plots’ place in the weekly slot, once it goes on hiatus. Now, this story won’t be a potentially neverending mash up of randomness. Far from it. This story will be highly structure and deliberate in it’s pacing and storyline.
For those who don’t know, which is potentially most of you, due to it’s low number of views, the first story I ever published on this site, The Duel, was a step off into a potential AU I was working on. Now, I’ve kept saying that I intended to write more stories in that universe, and this story I’m working on is one such.
To fill you in, the AU of The Duel is one set in Equestria’s feudal past, a few centuries after the banishment of Nightmare Moon. Distraught over the loss of her sister, Celestia has become a shut in, rarely seeing any but her most trusted of advisers, and leaving the ruling of the kingdom up to regents. In this environment, Equestria has darkened, the lands growing colder as the fires of friendship that once drove back the Windigoes wane, allowing the malicious spirits to once more close in on the borders of the land.
The universe in an Anthropomorphic one, meaning furries will probably like this one. In spite of I, myself, having been a furry for ten years, I actually chose to make the story Anthro because of one simple reason: Swords. In spite of all the fics that show regular ponies wielding such weaponry, it just never looks right in my head.
Swords are a . . . Well, I would call them a hobby, but in reality it’s more like an obsession, for me. I started off when I was, like, thirteen, studying everything I could get my hands on about Samurai and the Katana, and it’s real world usage, and even started practicing kenjutsu for a while, before I discovered HEMA, Historical European Martial Arts, and the knightly longsword. Since then, I’ve not looked back, and my room is graced by numerous bladed implements, both real and synthetic, for training, or actual cutting.
With The Duel, I was wanting to show a bit of my love for the sword, as well as give a fight scene that was more realistic than what most would imagine. On that note, well. . . . I kinda failed. While it MAY have been more realistic than most of what Hollywood or Video Games show when it comes to sword duels, the fight at the end of that story really only wound up being an homage to classic samurai films, with it’s slow, measured pacing and calm, perhaps a bit TOO slow timing. Not to mention the painfully poetic descriptions, which kind of make me cringe a bit when I reread them.
The Duel was also lacking in a big way when it came how emotionally impacting it was. Simply put, it doesn’t matter how poetic you get, when you’re dealing with a one shot that has less that 4,000 words in it, you really can’t build that much of an emotional connection to the characters involved.
With all of this in mind, I started thinking about how to fix all of that. How to do a story that would allow me to accomplish what I set out to do with The Duel, and what I came up with . . .
Well, you’ll just have to wait and see, about that!
Anyway, I’ve rambled on about boring stuff for long enough! To those who might want to take a peek at the story that started all of this, I’ll tag it to this blog.
May the Elements shine bright upon your paths, that you may not stumble. Harmonia Resurgens!!