State of the Author Jan. 28th 2020 & SunLight Burnout

Yo everyone, it's a bit late, but Happy New Year!

It's been a hot minute since I blogged on here. It's been even longer since I put out anything on this website. Retrograde progress was, once again, put on a short hold, though I think the reason of "holidays am I right?" should suffice. That, and RQK has been working hard to get Divergence done when he's able, and seeing as how close that is to completion at the time of writing this, I wanted to give him the space to get that done so he can take a load off. Work will continue once he gets a break to work on another thing he wants to finish that isn't related to MLP.

As for me? Well, the Holidays means spending an extremely absurd amount of time looking for gifts for people. Because of that, a lot of time is spent in the store, surrounded by strangers. This is basically my kryptonite, as it drains my batteries faster than a lack of caffeine in my system... and I practically live because of the amount of caffeine I need to function properly. When being around too many people makes you physically and mentally tired, you tend to spend a lot of time being less than productive to get the batteries charged. That said, I have been working on a few things when a bit fatigued, though a lot of it is outline oriented, and less actively writing the prose itself. Still, stuff is happening, both in this particular fan circle and outside of it.

Minerva's Den (which is still a working title) is, barring RQK getting done his work on both Divergence and his non-pony project sooner than expected, is currently my top priority as far as MLP fandom writing is going. It's been fun coming up with how that story will play out, and I'm looking forward to posting that thing when it's done. It's the first time I'll be actively writing Adagio Dazzle, and that has me, at the very least, excited to work on it. I'd say that, if all goes well, you won't have to wait long for it.

With that said, I think I should make a change I'm making to my writing focus clear now, as to not catch all of you off guard: after Retrograde, I'm going to be stepping away from SunLight as a ship for a good while, if ever. The reason for this is fairly simple: I'm burnt out on the ship. Between talking about it with friends (some of which are a little more vocal about their love of the ship), the lack of a lot of solid fanfics of the ship lately, the fact that SciSet is sometimes improperly tagged (leading to me feeling baited into reading a ship I don't care for), and the fact that I've been laser focused on trying to write the ship exclusively (barring some one-shots and what not that have and haven't been posted), I've just run out of creative steam in a sense.

This isn't to say I won't still read it, or am opposed to it. I still love the ship. But honestly? I'm tired of having to sift through the SciSet to find the SunLight I want, and the fact that I am friends with both sides of that coin can make it really frustrating to find enjoyment when people either bicker about it, or overdo the love of the ship. Lately, I've been drawn to more SunDagio, a ship that I only recently really started liking because it let me get away from SunLight, something I didn't know I needed until recently. I'm honestly probably gonna even change my profile picture (as much as I love the one I have) because, at the moment, SunDagio is my OTP for this fandom. I want to explore it, because Adagio's a character I've always really liked, and feel motivated to write about.

I might go a little deeper into this later, since I feel like I could write an entire blogpost by itself to express some annoyance with SunLight and SciSet fans that has been building for a few years now (EDIT: I did in fact write a follow up blogpost, which you can find by clicking here!). With SunDagio, I just feel less pressure, I guess. It's a ship that doesn't have murky waters to navigate due to 2 Adagios or 2 Sunsets, it just has one of each, and both of them are some of my favorite characters. I don't want to deal with SunLight/SciSet right now, because honestly, if I just kept trucking along, this building shipping crap bottled up the whole way, SunLight would end up becoming a "SonAmy" to me: a ship I grow to dislike due to trying to cling to it when I'm not feeling it at a particular time.

Thankfully, my possible-Retrograde follow-up fic (not in terms of like, it being a sequel, but more along the lines of my hypothetical next major, not short project) is a "Sunset's Backstage Pass" fic that was always at least considered to be a possible SunDagio fic. I mentioned in my last post that I had ideas for that fic, and those ideas are still being cultivated, since I want to be sure I don't psyche myself out too much going into it. All of my pony-projects are gonna be, barring the rewrite fic I've also gotta finish, are going to lean in more of the SunDagio direction. Not necessarily full blown romance fics, but like, fics that are just more fun to write due to where my interests currently lie.

So yeah, Minerva's Den is my current priority, and after that I might focus on a few smaller tales, the rewrite thing, and from there we'll see. Sorry if you're here for the SunLight stuff, cause I'm currently not actively a member of that ship's crew. Again, still like it, just want to not think about it beyond the context of Retrograde for a good long while. Also, expect a blog post talking more detail about my shift of OTP, and possibly a post about the show being over. Maybe a few other blog posts, since I don't have to go bonkers writings these.

Obligatory link to The Multiverse Discord Server.

Thanks for reading,
Onyx