What's ahead for Feathered Hearts - C&C · 7:04pm Jan 27th, 2022
With the massive double-length chapter of Eros released and seemingly well-received, and the next Continuation and Chronicles chapter now draft complete and currently scheduled for release on Sunday morning, I just wanted to let folks know what’s upcoming for the Feathered Hearts main story. Some very general spoilers for future content follow, so if you don’t want to see it, don’t read past the jump.
Next chapter of C&C
The next chapter (Part 23) of C&C is draft complete and currently sitting at 8,750 or so words. Typically, I end up adding more content with each additional editing pass, so you can expect it to be up over 9000 words when all is said and done. That’s a good size for a transition chapter, which this more or less is, though as I’ve been advertising repeatedly, it’s time to introduce the Ibex. You will see them for the first time here, and needless to say, neither Gilda nor our human friends will be happy to meet them.
However, their appearance comes at cost. As the latter half of the chapter will be given over to their introduction, you will have to wait another chapter to see the next battle erupt, in the steadholt of Bale. On the bright side, that means you will also get to see the Ibex themselves fight the Cloven when the time comes.
Going forward, I will continue working on C&C for as long as my muse wishes, and it hasn’t gotten tired yet. We’ve still got a lot of story to cover before we exhaust the original content, so I’m going to keep plugging. Now to discuss some specifics regarding the story.
The Ibex
With regards to the Ibex, I had to work out exactly what they were and what they could do; how they live and fight—just why they’re considered such a dangerous foe by the griffies. The first part was easy—given where their nation is, and how they looked, I settled on the Siberian Ibex.
The second part was less so, but it’s their large twin antlers that are key, given size of horn more or less tends to indicate your potential magical power in MLP. So here in this verse, that means they’re much more magic-oriented than the griffons to the point that their auras are used for just about everything they do, including how they fight. You’ll get much more information about that in the chapter.
Requests by readers for use of more human military force from across the portal
Though this was not my original plan, I’ve gotten a slew of eager requests from prereaders and commenters alike for more human military forces to cross the portal to fight the Cloven. I’ve resisted that for various reasons, but chiefly, 1) I really don’t think DEL was planning that, and 2) I pride myself on being realistic in my war stories, and that means you’d have to establish the needed infrastructure to support a modern military from scratch—a little difficult when you’ve got exactly one supply line through the portal. It’s one hell of a chokepoint, needless to say. In the time that takes to stand up that infrastructure and get forces staged, the war would be over.
However... having given it some thought and discussed it with my military veteran prereaders, I do believe it can be pulled off to at least a limited degree. As everyone seems clamoring for it, I will do it, and I’m starting to remap my planned ending to accommodate it.
Suggestive or R-rated content in Main Story
I admit I was very nervous about how the last main story chapter would be received given the R-rated sequence it had. But at the same time, I didn’t want to leave it off, and my prereaders seemed to like it. More to the point, I liked it and it seemed to go over well with the commenters who mentioned it. So expect to see more of them going forward, especially given that being in combat and faced with the constant threat of death tends to heighten passions and strip away societal taboos quickly. So yes, it’s a realistic thing to have happen.
There’s nothing R-rated in the upcoming chapter, but there are some suggestive spots, including a rather interesting discussion between Fortrakt and Gilda. Any chapters with R-rated elements will be flagged in the Author’s notes in bright red text. Expect them to at least generally go as the last one did—nothing explicit, but I reserve the right to occasionally flash a boob or butt as you can in PG-13 movies. Such scenes can be fodder for future chapters of Eros, too.
Well, that’s about all I can think of for now. Bottom line—my writing assault on Feathered Hearts continues around my other works, as just today I started writing the next Harmonic Resonance chapter. But that’ll be touched on in another blog, as will my future plans for Eros. In the meantime, thanks for following the story, and thanks for all the feedback the last few chapters have given me! I’ve loved seeing all the observations and discussion in the comments.
Having just finished prereading your chapter with them in it, I am very happy with the angle you approached them from. And now I really want erotic fanart of them, badly.