Spring update: Changeling Beauty Contest, and other stuff. · 9:09am Apr 1st, 2023
Been a while since I did one of these. Story stuff first.
The Ocellus beauty contest thing that's a sort-of sequel to My Fey Lady is being worked on. It's had to go through some re-thinking on concept level, occasional re-writes to go back to early stages, that sort of thing. I even went so far as to scrap three contestants. Main issue is balancing the Slice of Life feelgood message and my usual fare with, well, the comedy aspect that it ought to have. Right now the focus is on the changeling girls reading the rulebook and taking some of the rules a bit too literally. If you've checked out My Fey Lady, you know at least one of the punchlines I'm working towards. Getting enough other jokes to land, now that's a challenge.
Which brings me to point two. If you're just here for story updates, feel free to click away, nothing important follows.
I feel like I've been deteriorating over the past few months. Writing pony has gotten more difficult, and the results have been not up to snuff. Not talking about feedback, of course, since that's been a successful experiment with useful data, but just from my perspective, the quality's gone down. Temple of Enyalius was one of the best things I've written with the DnD inspiration so far. My Fey Lady was more than okay, I think, wouldn't have taken much to fit canon. Power Word: Weak was decent enough, but retreading old ground. The Bastion trilogy was the biggest thing I've done so far, and it turned out fine enough by my standards, warts and all. If Warrior Meet was my take on the Naruto exam arc, then the Bastion thing was a fine take on the Avengers/War of the Spark malarky that dominated our media a while back. I'm still pretty happy about the stories I wrote when I disabled feedback. Most of them.
But then... Scootaloo's diary fic was a wash, and Shining Armour's First Day was just random and meh. I'm running out of ideas that both I like to write and that I know people will enjoy. I could write smut just fine, but the soulcrushing lethargy that follows it isn't worth it. I could crank out preachy message fics no problem, but nobody wants to read those. Episode-style stories are my bread and butter, and I'm finding that the later episodes just plain don't appeal to me, so that limits the options even further.
I'm still going to try, of course. You don't get to be a better writer by only writing the easy stuff. I'm just a little lost on how to make it 1) good, 2) enjoyable for other people, and 3) fit show style or at least fit the style of whatever I'm trying to emulate. Maybe I need to sit down and actually watch some things I enjoy again, it's been a while. Having people around you make diagnoses doesn't help, either. Apparently I've suffered depression and may be trans. Go figure.
Started re-thinking my policy on story deletions, too. A few of the people I liked to talk to back in the day have, well, vanished, not logged in in over a year. Their stories are still up, blogs are still up, profile pics and all, unfinished stories that are orphaned now. I don't think I want that. It feels messy to leave a trace like that. Only thing I do know for sure is: if this account goes, my DeviantArt goes with it, for all it's worth. I mean, basically the first fanfic of one of Finland's biggest franchises counts for something, as it cringey as it did turn out, but still... I can probably just send a message to a group admin to preserve that one, at least. It'd be mean to delete that one. Everything else can go.
Anyway, happy Heathen New Year, everyone. Watch your backs for fish, or whatever you Yanks like to do for fun.
Ramble over. Cracker out.
Happy April Fools Day as well dood, also I love the video you choose for this blog.