An ending · 3:15pm Sep 21st, 2019
Credit due RandomPerson for shouting enough times into the void. Originally my response to just them privately, I feel it saves me writing it twice and captures something nicely to instead post this here, for anyone else who might yet wander by and, of course, for Random.
I've been meaning to reply for a while now but it's been something I've had to keep knocking down the list of priorities. I remember what it was like to have a story I like freeze, to have characters cease, people disappear into ghosts. And you wonder, what happened? Is it something I did? Or did I just not matter enough..?
It's not a good thing. So I've come to make sure that for my part, I don't do the same, here, to you, as happens the world over.
I remember you and a few others from when I was writing here, the comments and enjoyment you guys brought to my stories were a real light for that time in my life. They had value to me, and were good. However long you want to remember this for, do - I think not enough communication in the world gets acknowledged, gets appreciated, as much as it deserves. The things you shared, I appreciated, and still do.
Life has moved on for me, which in the simplest way just means I won't be here, like I've already not been here the past two years. I've drifted away from the fandom. I don't hate it, I don't condescend it, I won't forget it, it just isn't the place where I am. My life has become my striving at university, and at work, in my relationships, and the prospect of parenthood I have ahead of me.
Washed Up was always a precarious thing. I can tell you from experience that Planning Your Story is much, much better than the Make It Up As You Go Along approach that WU was conceived of. While I was writing it, and it found more popularity, I started ad hoc to try to give it more design, more intention, but it was always at heart a fun mess, and while as writer I can say and see that a better laid, better planned piece of writing would have done more, and done it better, and stuck it out to the finish, WU wasn't about that. It was fun scenes and fun sentences to have a bit of a laugh with, which brought me something I needed then.
I'm glad you found the story those years ago. I'm flattered you enjoyed and followed it. I'm sorry it won't be finished. I don't plan to.
Bear in mind what I've said above, but what I had envisioned for it, in the loose and rough sense, was something like this:
Flotsam, in the months following the last posted chapter, would continue to rise in name and infamy. He would gain in confidence, charisma and power, but also impatience, ambivalence and irritability, and his persona would be a divisive figure in local discussion. The damage to his mind wasn't healed, nor was it being healed, and the Flotsam personality was - again - born of a mess, of pieces damaged, missing, in disarray.
Likewise, the figure of Siren was going to gain more prominence, and the local mythology and demigoddess was going to show a real, and active role in the world. And an agenda for the intriguing, troubled, new-from-nowhere stallion in his rise. She wouldn't have been evil, like the sea isn't evil, but... well, enough to say "but." Think faerie folk of the old school. Interlace the grand scale stuff with some commercial and political discourse and tensions, via the ship, the crewmares and the Captain's to-have-been introduced father's-estate-holding sister with a subplot of intrigue, assassination and attempted assassination and you have the general shape of things. The biggest tie-in being of course, how Flotsam came to be in the first place, and how an ocean spirit took interest for it, and the ramifications of both things happening.
As the city started its upheavel, Cadence was going to arrive in a ship or with a fleet of crystal. Looking like the cavalry to save things from their troubles. And yes, they were, but in the personal sense, not without more trouble. It would have been revealed that the reason Flotsam's symptoms keep sidestepping what characters would guess at is, there's more chronic damage than they realize.
Because before the events of this story, and before the whole Chrysalis thing, SA had already been the subject of a mind-altering (and damaging) spell.
And she did it with the best of intentions. SA's and Cad's (admittedly probably salvgeable, albeit through a LOT of work) relationship would have been revealed to have been predicated on her subjecting him to the same manipulation he'd been subject to again and again.
They weren't going to be on the best terms for that, and each with a power base their own. Plus an ocean-centric, Atlantis-style situation to deal with.
Oh and Harpoon would have been carrying Flotsam's first born.
Oh and the whole of it - the WHOLE of it - would have been increasingly made clear to be a world-spanning, eras-long and as yet unbroken cycle of overarching ambitions, fears, loves, jealousies, resentments and conflicts that were puppeteering SA into becoming the next King Sombra, the confronting of which cycle would have set the basis for a sequel story had I ever gotten there.
All of it grounded in a comedic, compassionate bent, because everything should be.
This is the ending I give you.
It's a real shame, I did enjoy this story. But thanks at least for giving some closure.
Thank you for the closure. It was a great read, though with such huge ambitions after 45-odd chapters, I can really understand why things fizzled out. Best wishes.
I... eheheh, never actually started reading that one.
It's really wonderful to hear from you, and know your life is moving in good places. The optimistic perspective you oozed, and the talent you have in expressing in writing was something I adored, and I hope you're still channeling that energy into making the world more beautiful. Good luck at parenthood! (At least, assuming that is how things shake out for you.)
Thanks for giving us an ending, thanks for giving us a farewell, and thanks just for writing the enjoyable story in the first place!
Good luck with university, your job, and that impending parenthood.
Well, that's a shame. I've been quietly following this story since I found it, though I fell away from it for a short time. But thank you for what you did write, I liked all of it, and I too know what it's like for appetite for ideas to exceed what's practical to write. For what it's worth I personally liked the smaller scale hijinks of single Shining on a ship of mares more than world spanning conflicts anyway.
Thank you for the ending; good fortunes for your future.
Might you mark this as canceled plz and ty.
Travel well.
Your story, It Spills Over, is still one of the best stories I've read here or anywhere. Thank you for that, and thank you for the closure. We truly appreciate it, and God bless your further endeavors.
Eh. You said nice things about me once upon a time but
I dont have very nice feelings towards people who ditch out.
Thank you Ambion. Thank you for giving closure. <3 I wish you well in life and what you persue next.
Funny thing... I never had the time to attempt your chapter-spanning stories. I've always known Ambion as the guy who made all those Starcraft stories! (And who had the cool IDW avatar). It was a time in my life where I had just gotten into both those franchises, and I spent hours and hours each week on them. Now it's just the ponies.
But I totally relate to the feelings you're describing over unfinished stories, and you're a really nice guy to come back to lay it all out.
Thank you for the update. May you encounter happiness and peace wherever you go!
It's unfortunately, a curse of this site as well as many others.
Finding great works is always a magical affair. But in admiring their beauty, you sometimes come to realize that the mood became somber. Suddenly, the words stop going before the adventure does. The book closes before you only to find the desk they sit upon is a stone one in a graveyard.
At least here, the author's left flowers and gone home.
This is both the saddest but relieving post about an author's farewell I've ever seen, not only that you explain what would have been added to the story, but a plausible sequel about Shining Armor becoming Sombra that Sequel. I hope life flows like a never-ending river, and for you to reach the beautiful and widespread ocean ahead of you.
I may haven't caught with the story in a while, but it has been one of the best stories I'd loved to reread in my collection.
R.I.P. to this story but happy to his new life. I never knew he left a goodbye message and an ending on the site.