'Fuel Run' Retrospect · 5:09am Apr 5th, 2023
Hello hello to the 5 or so people that follow this account...and hopefully a few more coming from the story I've tagged this post with. I may be small time, but even as i was in the process of writing 'Fuel Run' I got the idea in my head to write a rambling follow-up blog post going over some thoughts and self-criticisms because...why not? This is the first proper MLP story I've written in a good 8 years (do us both a favor, don't look up that first one...seriously I was like 14 when I wrote it). I've done some writing on the side here and there, mostly for myself, no I will not elaborate, but after getting all that experience over the years I figured I'd finally sit down and write something worth sharing. So, let's get into it.
First, influences. I have quite a few that I tried to integrate into the story in one way or another. Here are all the ones I can think of plus a few thoughts on each:
1. Kerbal Space Program. Love this game, especially after I got really good at it. I like my scifi grounded in reality (I believe the term is 'hard scifi') and if it weren't for this game to teach me orbital mechanics, I would probably have no idea what I was writing. That, and the community loves to meme about missions or launches going horribly wrong or exploding violently...something that kinda sorta happened in the story.
2. Hardspace Shipbreaker. Haven't played this nearly as much, but I ADORE the blue collar space worker aesthetic, and the soundtrack is perhaps my favorite out of any video game; it provided an excellent backing track during writing. As a final tidbit, the Canter-class station hopper described in the story is lifted as much as possible from one of the ships in this game. Go back and read it and perhaps you'll see.
3. The Expanse (the tv show, not the books, I've never read them). Can't say I tried to work in anything specifically from this series, but i enjoyed it all the same. Does a great job of portraying a far future colonized solar system, even if I wish they showed it more at times. Avasarala best character, I will fight people on this.
4. Filk. Very odd, nerdy genre of folk music, deals with a wide range of topics, but the most relevant here are the ones about past or future space missions. I am primarily a musician, though I couldn't write a song to save my life, so I felt a bit out of my element making up some ditties for the story, but I'm glad I did in the interest of making the world feel more alive. Going so far as to parody one of my favorite filk songs in chapter 3, the author's note details it more.
Now, for the story itself. I can't imagine there's an author out there who is truly satisfied with a work once they complete it, and I'm no exception. Not that it's bad, but if I spent my days going over and over the fic, I'd still keep finding things to rework; eventually you have to settle for 'good enough'. I think the part of the story I'm still somewhat iffy on is the characterization. Starry's companions feel kinda like accessories. I wanted to do something more with them, but I'm still not sure what I could've done instead. I did try to flesh them out a bit more in chapter 4, but then didn't do much more with them. Perhaps it's a nonissue; after all it's Starry's story first and foremost, and no one else (commenter or prereader) really pointed it out, but I can't shake the nagging feeling.
Something else I'm not really that sure about is the story structure itself in a way. When I first conceived the idea, I could picture in my head 4 clear and concise chapters. That quickly became 5 with no real issue, but at one point I was debating a 6th. The main reason is that I felt I was dragging my feet for the first three chapters, yeah I enjoyed what I was writing, but I wasn't really getting to any action. The malfunctioning docking clamp was the closest I had, but there were hardly any consequences from it.
The 6th chapter I talked about would be inserted somewhere between the 4th and final ones, or at least I would extend 4 by a wide margin. The general idea is that Starry and the crew would wake up to find the Draconequus's power is out, and they're living on a few hours of air (then Wind's plants would come in handy to provide more than just an aside), and Starry would have to go on another spacewalk (spacetrot?) with higher stakes. If I had the time and energy perhaps I would've done it, but I was starting to feel mildly exhausted and still hadn't gotten to the final chapter. In the end I think it worked out, after all, you all liked it, but if I could go back and write a little more this would probably be it.
Whew, that's a lot of negativity. It's true what they say about being your own worst critic. How about some positivity? As far as things I nailed, I think the descriptions are the biggest thing. One of my prereaders gushed about how much he loved the descriptions, and a few commenters did too. I have no reason to doubt them, even if I was just writing as I normally would and getting into the flow. I had a pretty good idea in my head of what some of the settings looked like, so I made sure to paint a vivid picture. Sure looks like it worked!
One thing I'm kinda shocked absolutely NOBODY mentioned is the day-night cycle. I went back on forth on how to solve this problem in a world where the sun and moon are manually raised by goddesses. My original idea was that Equestria is tidally locked (for the clueless, this means a planet spins such that one side is always facing its star), and that Celestia would rotate Equestria to ensure it isn't getting constantly baked and frozen on opposite sides, but this would mean Celestia doesn't actually raise the sun...which is heretical. The one I settled on is almost kind of outlandish, a geocentric model with the sun being basically another planet, which is kind of impossible, hell I even lampshaded the fact that no other star system in this universe is like it. I suppose horse magic really is that strong, huh?
I could easily write more, but then we'd be delving into serious self-nitpicking, and these are the big points I wanted to cover. All in all, it is indeed a story, one I'm happy with, and one I hope keeps getting more recognition. For those wondering, yes I do plan to write more horse words at some point, but hold your breath. I've already started on another, but haven't touched it in a while as of writing this. You'll know it's ready when/if I actually post it. I'd simply feel too awful to put something up and let it sit unfinished for mores or years before I either cancel it or scrap together the willpower to finish it.
Anyway, big thanks to everyone that preread, liked the story, favorited, and/or commented on it. See you in another 8 years!
Equestria's sun is pretty wacky to try to reconcile with a wider, physics-obeying universe, yeah.
If you haven't already seen it, you might enjoy the anime Planetes, as a nice collision of "blue collar workers in space" AND "hard sci-fi".