So, I recently wrote a blog post in which I expressed the opinion that all the recent Equestria Girls controversy should most appropriately be met with sinister, maniacal laughter - a conclusion that I came to because of all the panic, rage, and... well, discord about a movie that hadn't even been released yet. It seemed to me that certain members of the fandom were getting worked up over something that wasn't a big deal, and that this would all blow over anyway, so the best thing to do would be to batten down the hatches, pull out the popcorn, and watch the resulting fireworks.

Of course, that conclusion had been drawn before I discovered that death threats had been made to members of DHX Media. With that new knowledge, of course, my previous suggestion in favor of gleeful inaction suddenly makes me feel like a first-degree asshat. As such, I think I'd better get serious and lay out what seems like the best thing to do regarding this whole regrettable fiasco.

To those of you who are getting all bent out of shape over Equestria Girls: please, just... wait and see what happens. Like what's been said about Twilight's ascension to princesshood, the Canterlot Wedding, and even the whole show itself, we can't really make any informed judgement on the movie until we actually see it. Yes, there probably were better directions that the first MLP: FiM movie could have taken. Yes, this could be a recipe for disaster. But we don't know anything for sure, yet. Sure, what little we saw in the trailer appeared to be pretty much a cookie-cutter high school plot with ponies shoehorned into it, but then again, trailers have occasionally been known to stretch the truth, and it wouldn't be the first time that this fandom's had a bait-and-switch pulled on it. Yes, Equestria Girls may turn out to be a cliched high school story. Or it could turn out to be a brilliantly clever satire of such tales. (I'm fervently hoping for the latter, myself).

This isn't to say that you should avoid expressing trepidation or withhold all criticism, of course. Just try not to do anything too rash. If you're willing to give the movie a chance, then more power to you. If you can already tell that Equestria Girls is a "vile abomination that should never have seen the light of day" without even watching five minutes of it first, then simply don't go and see it - as we probably all know by now, the events of the movie won't have much impact on the cartoon itself, so it'll be quite easy to ignore. But whatever you do, don't threaten to murder the people who have labored for three long years to bring us the best stories that they possibly can (especially considering that, what with the Hasbro marketing department's sovereignty and the prevailing societal norms surrounding shows for little girls, they've been fighting an uphill battle). Even if you don't mean such threats, then you're still missing the entire point of the show that you claim to enjoy. And even if you don't take the creators' feelings into account (and if you don't, then go sit in a corner and rethink your life), then at least hold back for your own sake: scaring away the people with passion and integrity will only let the greedy and the callous fill the resulting void. If that happens, then the universe created by DHX Media, the universe that we've come to know and love, will be driven into the ground without any regard for quality or integrity. And guess what: if things do pan out that way, then it'll no longer be the exclusively the fault of Hasbro, or their marketing department, or capitalism in general. The blame will also fall on our shoulders.

Sure, it's far too much to ask that we all join hands and praise those responsible for dreaming up Equestria Girls. The old motto of "Love and Tolerate" has become trite and stale, anyway. I'm not asking you to love - indeed, E. M. Forster (whose essay on tolerance is in my opinion a must-read for anyone who labels themselves as a "brony") realized that wouldn't work 70 years before the creation of this fandom. Just... try to tolerate, to be civil, to put up with this and future controversies in a reasonable and rational manner. And every once in a while, even if things have been rocky of late, do let the appropriate parties know that you appreciate their labor of love, this gift that they've given all of us who have been open-minded enough to accept it in the first place. After all, considering everything they've done for us, it's the least we can do in return.

Oh, and for those of you who have been acting reasonable and rational all along? Good on ya. Keep up the good work. Let's not let the vocal minority ruin this for the rest of us, okay?

So, in case anyone hasn't heard the news yet, Equestria Girls has a trailer now. Now, I've been following this chain of events for a while now, and after seeing the material that's been released so far, the Hasbro marketing department's rationale behind it, and the reactions of the fanbase in general, I can't help but feel that, at least at this point, the most appropriate response to all of this is as follows:

I mean, that's probably what Bad Horse is doing right now. After all, he was responsible for making Twilight a princess, so he's probably behind this as well, right?

[Ha ha, I'm having fun and you can't stop me]

Now, I know that today's usually an occasion for jests, japes, and all manner of buffoonery, but I'm going to ignore that for the moment because there's something that I should have taken care of much earlier. After the subject of my last blog post - and the noticeable lack of story-related activity on my account since then - I'm sure that some of you may have been on the edge of your seats vaguely curious about what's been going on "behind closed doors", as it were. "What's Charcoal doing?" you may have asked yourself. "Is he working on some super-secret project? Or has he become distracted from writing? Maybe he's completely forgotten about his stories... or how to write at all... or even what a computer is! Oh, the horror!" you've no doubt been saying. "The horror!"

Well, don't worry. I'm here to allay whatever irreconcilable terror mild discomfort you may have been feeling. The fact that I haven't been noticeably active on my page is simply that I've been busy writing. In fact, over the past couple of months, I've been hard at work writing what I'm sure most of you have been waiting for. Yes, I'm working on the long-awaited sequel to...

Lunacy to the Core

Chaos and Laughter

Yep, after considering all the gracious and understanding feedback I'd received (speaking of which, my sincerest thanks to all who gave said feedback), I've decided to try and power through writing the story, perhaps with the occasional detour along the way for a one-shot or two. It's slow going when one looks at the big picture (as of the time of this writing, I've already finished the first draft of Part 1 and am about halfway through Part 2... of 9), but I'm confident enough that once the story is finally finished, it will be worth the time and effort on my part.

That said, remember the "occasional detour" I mentioned above? I do have a little side project that I'd like to do by the end of Cloud Kicker Month, so that's going to monopolize my writing time for a little while. But rest assured that I haven't forgotten about that promised sequel, and I fully intend to finish it in a timely fashion.

In fact... why don't I make a deadline for myself? That way, you guys can hold me accountable, and I'll have something to motivate my lazy bum (not to be confused with Pan-Handle Steve, my sluggish homeless friend) to actually get stuff done at a reasonable pace.

But when...? Oh. I know. I mean, it won't even start until winter, so that'll give me plenty of time...

Okay... I'm gonna do it. This may be stupid and suicidal, and I can feel Future Charcoal glaring daggers at me right now, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

I can say with 100%, completely honest-to-goodness, truthiful certainty that the first chapter of the sequel to Chaos and Laughter will be posted by...

...the end of Season 4.

And even if by some inconceivable circumstance I'm wrong, at least I can still say, "Hey - April Fools!"

P.S. Oh, and before I forget: I've already discarded enough material from Chapter 1 for an entire deleted scene. Since it's not too spoilery, I intend to post it in my blog section as a "Scene Scrap" sometime in the near future.

[Warning! The following blog post is long, and there isn't a TL;DR version. To anyone who doesn't care about Chaos and Laughter or reading huge amounts of non-story text, I suggest that you ignore this message. To anyone who does care about Chaos and Laughter, but not about why it's taken so dang long for me to write/publish anything regarding its sequel, I suggest you scroll down past "Despairity" and start reading this post from there.]

With the airing of this latest episode - and, of course, the return of Discord - I have felt it to be appropriate to address something that's been on my mind for a while...

Several months ago, back in the summer of 2012, I posted Chaos and Laughter on FiMFiction, and it was, (up until Nosflutteratu) the most popular story that I'd published. After its conclusion, there was much clamor for a sequel, and - damned fool that I was - I'd promised to write one, although I knew myself well enough to not promise any particular date. 23 weeks and 6 days later, and the prospect of a complete, finished sequel being published is looking decidedly less likely. What happened? Well, let's see:

1) School happened. With the start of my Junior year of high school (which I'm told is the hardest year even if you aren't taking four AP classes at once), not to mention the sudden necessity of switching to an alternate means of transportation to get there (long story), I found myself getting home later, more exhausted, and with more homework than ever before. This means that I've ended up with significantly less leisure time, both for thinking up ideas for stories and for actually writing the stories down.

2) Planning happened. Most of the time, when I write a story, I don't write down a solid, tangible plot outline. Instead, I simply let plot elements and other ideas walk into my brain and wander around freely; I invariably end up forgetting some stuff, but the best material usually sticks with me. For the promised sequel (which I've tentatively been calling Changes and Screws), however, I'd resolved to write down a plot outline and stick to it in order to avoid the sort of pacing and plotline errors that showed up in Chaos and Laughter.

This was a grave mistake.

As it turns out, ideas stuck in my head clamor to be written, but once they're out, they rarely bother me any more. (This is part of why the editing process takes so long for me.) When I wrote down the bare-bones plotline for the sequel, a great deal of the motivation to flesh it out and make it into an actual story dwindled away.

3) Canon happened. Don't get me wrong, Season Three is great and I look forward to reading the comics at the earliest opportunity, but between "Magic Duel", Chrysalis's reappearance (in the comics), and "Keep Calm and Flutter On", the vast majority of the already- and yet-to-be written events of the Chaos & Laughter/Changes & Screws timeline have been completely invalidated. Of course, I could always convert it into an Alternate Universe tale running parallel to Season Three, and I do have a few ideas on how to make it work, but it still makes the sequel that much harder to write, albeit more from morale than from a technical standpoint.

4) Mathematics happened. Remember the aforementioned plot outline? Well, after writing it out and dividing it into "parts", there turned out to be enough material for nine chapters, each about as long as the chapters found in Chaos & Laughter, if not longer. Now, that story was a five-parter with a total of almost fifty thousand words total. After some quick (and simple) calculations, I came to the realization that I'd need to write approximately ninety thousand words.

Ninety thousand.

The first fifty thousand had been daunting enough... I might have published a chapter every two days or so, but that was after the nine months it took to write in the first place!

Now, all of this has contributed to a steady loss of morale regarding writing the sequel. Even so, I do realize that I have dozens of loyal fans; baker's dozens (they come in thirteens) who are probably still waiting for a continuation of Chaos and Laughter. Several options come to mind regarding what I could do, but I don't feel right choosing one without considering the input of those who had so much interest in my story in the first place.

With that in mind, I can think of three actions I can take regarding the sequel...

A) Despite all my misgivings, I buckle up and slog through writing it anyway. I've already finished writing a good chunk of Part 1, so to not continue would be anticlimactic. However, even if I drop everything else creative-wise, it'll probably take over twelve months to complete, and that will also mean over twelve months of complete inactivity from my account. I don't like the look of this option, but I'll dutifully go through with it if that's what the public wants.

B) I hand the reins over to somebody else. Sure, I'd have to find an author that not only would be willing to write the story, but that I could also trust with what I've written so far. Even then, they'll probably take the story in a radically different direction than I'd originally intended, but so long as they weren't butchering the tale, then I'd be more than happy with it.

C) I focus my attention on other stories. As of now, I don't seem to have the stamina for writing longer pieces of fiction; I'll probably be most happy and productive writing various one-shots. What this means for Changes and Screws, of course, is that I'd either put it on the backburner for until I regain interest and build up the mental stamina to write significantly long multi-part stories (which might never happen) or that I'd abandon it entirely.

If I do abandon it, then as consolation, I'll write up a summary of the plot that Changes and Screws would have had, and I'll also publish a couple of gems from Part 1 that I've already written; both of these would go in the blog section of my account. However, such an action would ultimately be the final nail in the coffin for an official sequel to Chaos and Laughter.

So, what do you say? Should I toil through it, hand it over to someone else, postpone it indefinitely, or abandon it completely? Post your opinion in the comments. The fate of a fic hangs in the balance.

Rarity has a secret she's been hiding: she's a killer. A serial killer, to be precise. But that's okay, because she only kills other murderers.

What to name the story? Dexterity.

Charlie the Unicorn somehow finds his way to Equestria, and Princess Celestia finds herself inexplicably attracted to him. This attraction only grows stronger when the Princess discovers that Charlie carries the title of the Banana King...

Yet another HiE romance/clop, but with a twist. While the less-than-flattering legends surrounding her were based mainly in myth, things nevertheless turn rather steamy when Equestria is visited by none other than Catherine the Great.

In this parody of The Fly, Lyra Heartstrings builds a working teleportation machine and decides to test it on herself, but the sudden, last-minute appearance of a thought-to-be-mythical creature contaminates the experiment. Soon, Lyra finds herself becoming increasingly less like a pony... and increasingly more human.

Sometimes I wonder where the heck I get ideas like these...

After reading KitsuneRisu's blog post about a website that analyzes one's writing and compares it to that of famous authors, I decided to give it a whirl. So I took the opening scene from Nosflutteratu, plugged it into their little text-box-thing, and hit "analyze".

The result?

Sometimes I have an idea for a story and begin to write something out, but then find myself with no idea how to continue and little motivation to find out. This tends to leave me with a single, isolated scene that I like, yet have no intention of actually using in any story.

So then I thought, "Hey, why not upload some of these scenes in my blog posts from time to time? Just because I have no idea what to do with the scene doesn't mean that other people wouldn't enjoy seeing it."

And so, without further ado, I present Story Fragment #1, originally written on a whim for a one-shot comedy shipfic that never actually made it out of the harbor. Make of it what you will.

---

Rainbow Dash awoke with a groan, but she did not open her eyes – the searing light of the Sun through a nearby window was already penetrating her eyelids and making her morning less than satisfactory. Judging by both the throbbing in her head and the feeling that something furry had crawled into her mouth and then promptly died, she concluded that she’d had a rather wild night.

As she pulled a pillow over her head to block out the light, noting how she felt a little sore, Rainbow tried to remember what exactly had happened last night. Most of her memory of the events was a huge blank, but she foggily began to produce a few images.

There was… alcohol. Well, that much is obvious. And something about apples, maybe? And… white. Lots of white. Dash tried to make sense of this, but her headache wasn’t really helping matters.

Presently, another detail slipped into focus. Rainbow immediately blushed. She couldn’t recall whose breathless, feminine voice had been moaning her name last night, but the fact that she remembered it at all was distressing, to say the least.

I just hope I didn’t do anything too stupid last night, Dash thought. Well, let’s see the damage. Reluctantly, she pulled her head out from under the pillow and turned over to see–

“Good morning,” said Princess Celestia.

Rainbow leapt backwards and fell out of bed. “What the–”