Decisions and Dawn - New Story and NatNoWriMo · 6:53pm Oct 12th, 2018
Got a new short story about Celestia's romantic life ready to put up, just trying to figure out when. Now or tomorrow morning?
That being said, I'm also faced with November's NaNoWriMo and working on Sweetie Belle - Hogwarts Exchange Student (Last years project, snippet attached after the break) which I've got six good/edited chapters on. Should I go ahead and release them now, or wait until however many years worth of NaNoWriMo it takes for me to finish them? Oh, and Equestria - 1940 (19-20 chapters) is getting *very* close to being done. Maybe by November, if things go well. No snippets for it, because massive spoilers (No, the Nazis don't win.)
Snippet from Sweetie Belle - Hogwarts Exchange Student
Shopping was awesome! Rarity had taken her little sister all over Equestria to some of the biggest cities there were, or at least that was what Sweetie Belle had believed until now.
London made them all look tiny by comparison.
It had malls bigger than her hometown of Ponyville. And people wore all kinds of clothes everywhere and for every occasion. Admittedly, the malls did not have the kinds of clothes that Miss Selkirk said were worn as school uniforms in Hogwarts, but by the time the three of them had finished with shopping for the rest of the casual clothing they were going to need for school, Sweetie Belle had found a friend.
She just wasn’t too sure Sparrow Lilley had found her as a friend in return. The human girl was full of energy, but it went everywhere. They bounced together from outfitter to outfitter to get matching backpacks (despite Sweetie Belle still having the one Professor McGonagall Transformed for her and the mottled brown and tan one that Sparrow had brought with her), to visiting a video game gallery filled with a cacophony of sound and overwhelming flashes, to sampling snacks at the food court, to begging Miss Selkirk to let them visit the stables in London in order to see the horses.
The trip was a side-effect of telling the hyperactive girl about Sweetie Belle’s unicorn-ness, because the questions came fast and furious afterwards. She wanted to know everything about Equestria and Ponyville and Sweetie’s friends there, and the horsey surroundings of the stable was supposed to be the perfect place to do it.
Sweetie Belle was a lot more distracted by the Earth horses. They were huge, larger than Princess Celestia even, although dumber than any Equestrian animal, and not for eating, as Miss Selkirk was very specific about pointing out. The horses did seem to recognize Sweetie’s base equine nature, and were more than willing to share a warm slobbery nuzzle, as well as remain placid and calm while the two girls took a short ride. It was an experience even stranger than standing in front of the Wizengamot, and a lot more fun. And although she wanted to shift into her unicorn form after the brief ride and repeat the course, just to tell the differences in how it felt, Sweetie restrained herself.
Restraint was not a word that Sparrow Lilley knew very well, but she could certainly talk her way into or out of things with ease. After their trip to the human stable and horseback ride, she managed to talk Miss Selkirk into going to another mall where they saw a human movie instead of just going back to the boarding house. Patience was another thing Sparrow lacked. She even got up three times during the movie to use the bathroom or get more popcorn, missing the place where the monster went racing through the town, eating cars and helicopters. It bothered Sweetie more than the violence of the movie, although that bothered her too. Even the games the humans played were full of violence, like the small collection of video games in the lobby where humans shot electronic aliens, zombies, and weird things she could not describe in her quick notes to her friends in Equestria.
Even after they returned to the boarding house for sandwiches before bed — tomato and cheese for Sweetie Belle and cold cuts for Sparrow Lilley — she could not put most of the events of the day into words for the magic book.
“Hey, Ponygirl!” Sparrow bounced into the bedroom and dropped onto the bottom bunk of the bed, rump-first. “What’cha up to?”
“Writing back to my friends in Ponyville. What?” added Sweetie. “Why are you giggling?”
“It’s just… Ponyville? That’s like having a town called Humanville. Anyway, I don’t have a plug in my room. Is there one in here?
“Plug?”
“For my laptop computer.” The human girl opened up the flat black bag and produced the strange device. “The batteries are almost dead, and there’s no phone in my room, so I can’t get online. It’s like living in the stone age.”
“Oh, neat!” Sweetie Belle ran her fingers over the device while listening to Sparrow describe what each part did and how cool it was. Afterwards, she rested her fingers on the keys and pretended to ‘type’ out what she had been writing to her own friends. “So how many friends do you talk to on this computer thingie?”
“Dozens. We’ve got this guild on Ultima Online and all kinds of crafters, but most of them are old and just sit around and talk all day instead of going out and slaying dragons or exploring dungeons because of the lag and bugs.” Sparrow held up an odd piece of metal on the end of a cable. “I’ve even got an adaptor for the weird British power, but no phone. I wonder if they have phones in Hogwarts.”
Yeah, somebody's going to have some culture shock about going to Hogwarts. Americans. Silly people.
4952230
yes they are
I couldn't help but read "the human stable" as the place where Houyhnhnms kept their pet Yahoos. In any case, looking forward to pretty mich everything coming down your pipeline. I saw out it out whenever you're comfortable with doing so... which is hopefully sooner rather than later.
4952234 (by the way, love the new avatar. Kirin Derpy FTW)
I would love to see more Georg words. If you're not comfortable releasing unfinished work, though, I understand. I'll still be here whenever the eventual release is.
I’m always happy to have a bit of new bedtime reading, if you’re taking votes on the Celestia story...
The Sweetie Belle thing is intriguing, and that’s from someone who only watched the Potter films on cable.
Now. Er, I mean, whenever you are ready. Which hopefully is now.