A King’s Brood Status Report

Spoiler alert: Despite my joking, it hasn’t actually been abandoned.

While I haven’t written for MLP since September (it’s not that long, really, but I feels so), I still log on here now and then to check notifications “and stuff”.

So someone recently added the ”Pharynx Duology” to their favourites, so I decided to quickly reread over Debris because I, for the life of me, cannot remember writing any of it beyond maybe the Feelings Forum scene?

…Yeah, my memory’s trash.

That being said, while I’ve been besotted with the Kuroshitsuji fandom since something like July/August, and ravelled up in actually writing for it since September (on my AO3, three_sixtynine_fructose), with a “big boi work” currently in the making.

I hope it doesn’t get abandoned like A King’s Brood.

Oh yeah, that’s the subject of this post, by the way.

Re-reading Debris got me thinking about all the ideas I had for A King’s Brood, mostly Pharynx’s character arc.

Essentially, A King’s Brood is a work taking place mid-season nine, focussing on Thorax, and him growing into the role of leader whilst battling his inner-demons (anxieties of confrontation, rejection, and—more subtly—isolation, this triad being correlated with his fears and past abuse/experiences under Chrysalis, who has an emotional presence throughout the piece but never a physical one).

Meanwhile, he and Pharynx try fixing the hive’s “population problem”, as Chrysalis—ever the information hoarder—never entrusted any information whatsoever with a potential heir, hence their lack of knowledge. (Think of Chrysalis as this stuffy old hermit who chugs his booze and lives in a lighthouse with one eye permanently scrunched closed.)

While I often stray away from OCs nowadays, especially MLP ones (self inserts or otherwise), A King’s Brood includes roughly six OCs (one being a last-minute addition that appeared in the most “recent” chapter of the work): two kings, and four queens. (NO, TikTok! Get BACK!)

So from that, I suppose you can see what the main arc/story is going to be about, matched with the portrayal of Pharynx and Thorax’s relationship/story essentially being rounded up as “Pharynx knows Thorax better than Thorax knows himself” and vise-versa.

The most recent chapter on the work was published back in April, when I was ill (not that that… makes any difference, but still), and that was—oh god—close to 8 months ago, now. Maybe a bit over.

Maybe the next chapter will be out an exact year after its predecessor’s publication, like Debris was to This Is What It’s Like (yes, I did that, and I’d waited until, like, the last day to write it. Hence why it… isn’t all that great.)

I still have the Docs and the notes for A King’s Brood—so I still intend on writing it. (I’d be a fool not to, after promising I’d write it all through 2022 and then just… not.) Therefore:

Consider it a little project I return to now and then. Unless I actively put the status as “Cancelled” and/or state that I’m abandoning this fic, consider it still going on. I have a lot of good shit planned for it. 👍

Fuck, I’m terrible at pacing these things, what the hell.