Rider on the Storm: Postmortem And Bonus Content

At last, after 1(0,000) years, I’m free!
Righteousness and superior horseword output have triumphed, and Rider on the Storm lies complete at my digital feet!
And like the titular character, I had a fantastic time writing it.
Now I’d like to take a minute, so just sit right there,
And I’ll tell you a few little behind-the-scenes diddies about how this story was made.
Oh, and this should probably go without saying, but I’m going to spoil the everloving shit out of Rider on the Storm, so you’d better have read it first.

LIMPER THAN BIZKIT

So funny story, I started writing the story in August of 2020, if my file timestamps are to be believed. And the first chapter went pretty well!
And then I rewrote it. And rewrote it again. And again. And again. I managed to reach chapter 2 once, but that burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp of rewriting as well. Which got rewritten again after!
Oh, and there was a bunch of unnecessary garbage I did as well that ate up entirely too much of my time and effort, so there’s that!
Yeah, this story had a rough start, and repeatedly failed to launch for me until one fateful May 19th of 2022. So, in the interest of showing you young’un writers what not to do, here’s an itemized, approximately in-order list of all the major screwups I made that led me to this point:

• Start simple enough: wanting to do something a little different than my usual greentexts.
• Figure I’d give prose a try, since hey, what else am I gonna use my Fimfic account for besides tracking porno fics?
• Start obsessing over the small details right out of the gate, instead of looking at the big picture.
• Being a sweaty tryhard and deciding that I needed to change to third person prose, because “I’m better than that”.
• Being a sweaty tryhard and deciding that I needed a “proper outline” and “structure” instead of writing seat-of-the-pants like some commoner.
• Being a sweaty tryhard and deciding that I needed to expand on the above and create an entire Zim wiki - used to great effect in my longer in-progress stories - for this short action-comedy story.
• Being surprised when I lose interest in writing anymore because of all that.
• Come back after months and figure out that aggressive tryharding kept me spinning my wheels in chapter 1.
• Overcorrect and revert to writing greentext.
• Get surprised when I lose interest again.
• Come back after more months.
• Finally just say ‘fuck it’, and knuckle down one day, writing in my usual style: off the cuff, impulsive, seat-of-the-pants, and with zero notes and forward planning.
• Almost flub it again by re-reading my old attempts for inspiration, and nearly fall prey to the siren song of perfectionism.
• Actually manage to publish something ~2 years later.

If any of you want a story to fail and splutter out, then following the above list is a great way to do it! And this wasn’t even the only story that suffered from this problem!
Fortunately, the strong positive reception the first chapter received gave me a sugar-sweet shot of oxytocin that not only spanked all that ridiculous and infantile second-guessing and imposter syndrome out of my system, but was also super kino and heartwarming and made for fantastic motivational fuel to keep trucking on.
Big ups especially to the commenters, you guys are cool. Even if I’m not known for replying that often; I’m working on it, I swear!

THIS IS THE NEW SHIT

Whenever I write something, I have this thing where I always set out to write something that’s at least one of the following:

• Something that’s new and interesting.
• Something that’s a fresh spin on something older.
• Something that’s weird and experimental.
• Something that’s just plain old fun.
• Something that’s done just because I can.

You’d think Rider on the Storm would be #4 on that list, but no: it’s actually #2! And I’m not talking about how it’s an AiE story, either.
See, Rider on the Storm began life way back in April of 2018 as “A Stormy Ride”, a two-part smut greentext I originally wrote for the long-running porn threads of /mlpol/, back when I was both crystallizing my style of writing and having a ton of fun trying out writing lewds in general, as it was the second piece I’d ever done at that point. Hell, my one-offs to this day are still typically smut, as evidenced by my latest one-off over on PonePaste for Aftercase’s PasteJam event. Sadly, I can’t link any of these due to the NSFW links policy on Fimfic, which is kind of a shame. On an unrelated note, I do have a complete catalogue of my works over here.
But the whole “villain Anon” thing stuck with me long past that point, and when my muse’s itch called, it needed to scratch that particular spot.
Villain protag stories aren’t a new thing for me: I’ve been drawn to them long before I even got into MLP, back when RP :3 was a thing I still engaged in during the mid-aughts. But getting my feet wet with writing Thaumaturgy With Anon really took my evil villainy writing to the next level, for reasons that are pretty obvious if you’re read it before, but I won’t spoil if you haven’t. I learned a lot there, including a few lessons on when I take it too far and stain the experience. It’s a tough balancing act between being believably evil and cartoonishly edgy, you know!
For Rider on the Storm, I opted to merge the concept of it’s progenitor story “A Stormy Ride” with both the lessons I’d learned writing evil bastards and my IRL experiences with crazy fuckers that are an absolute blast to hang around with. Along with my own store brand of general madness and bizarre word and phrasing choices, because hey, all art’s an expression of the author’s own insanity, isn’t it?
Plus, I just didn’t feel like writing smut this time around. Won’t rule it out for future stories though, so adjust your follow expectations accordingly!
And my God, did it all pay off in the end! I know it’s a common platitude to express how “I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it”, but this was literally true for me: there were many times during writing, revising, editing, and even publishing that I couldn’t stop laughing at the shit I wound up writing. So for me, it absolutely isn’t a platitude, but a genuine expression!

SWEET CHILD O’ MINE

But all good things have to end eventually, even if only to lead to a new beginning!
Listen, I’m no stranger to cliffhangers: ask anyone who kept up-to-date with the Magicless Anon threads back when I actively updated Thaumaturgy With Anon. But this time around, the cliffhanging wasn’t so much to blueball you fuckers okay, it absolutely was, but only as a secondary reason this time, I swear! as much as it was because the shit I’d dreamt up and started planning out for its future would have put a serious drag onto the fairly tight experience I’d accidentally stumbled into and was working hard to maintain.
Put simply, there just wasn’t a good way I could make The A-Non© getting defeated and eventually returned to life flow well within an uninterrupted single story, especially not one I’d already committed to making fairly short already. That made it necessary to make a sequel story instead, where I could not only put those ideas to the test, but make it a much longer experience as well from the outset!
With limits, of course: I’m already nursing the framework of another story that I fully expect to cross the 500K word mark in due time, I don’t need another soaking up my writefag child support!
More on that framework later.
Fury of the Storm, without spoiling too too much, will by necessity sport a couple of OC toons as accessories to The A-Non©’s reign of destruction, doom, and more doom. I wanted to use comic characters more, I really did, but they fucking suck dick and not even Andy Price’s artwork can save the abortion that is the Godforsaken “Season 10” comics, which I suffered through to try and see if there was anything salvageable there. Silly me, thinking IDW’s writing would be less shit than Haber, Vogel, and Dubuc’s writing.
That said, I do plan to pull in a few characters from the comics that don’t suck gorilla dongs, as well as jump forward to a certain season of the show to use their characters as well. And of course, we’ll have some returning cast members. After all, Tempest is far from done with The A-Non©…
Oh, and it also won’t be smut either, though there’ll be plenty of innuendo and allusion to go around instead!
But don’t expect the new story anytime soon. My free time is both limited and split between fondling grass, not to mention my other hobbies.

YO IS THAT A-

I honestly can’t keep track of the references I make, since they just come unbidden during writing and I think nothing more of them after that. So because of that, coupled with the fact that I’m a really lazy son of a bitch, I’m not gonna bother picking through the 100K-ish words I’ve written like I’m trying to cite a research paper, and instead just cover some of the general things I’ve made reference to, in no particular order:

• JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
• Elden Ring
• 4chan
• Final Fantasy
• The Bastard Operator From Hell
• Ethan Ralph
• The Chronicles Of Riddick
• Metal Gear
• Marilyn Manson
• Morrowind
• Mister Metokur
• Things XCOM Operatives Are No Longer Allowed To Do
• Dark Souls
• Futurama
• Spongebob Squarepants
• California’s police codes
• Starship Troopers
• Megamind
• The DOOM Comic

And I am absolutely positive I’ve missed a multitude of other things, and probably hallucinated one or two in. What can ’ya do?

I’ve also made a concerted effort after the first chapter to make the titles of each chapter reference something as well. At first, I just referenced whatever came to mind that fit the most, but after the fourth chapter I decided to go full JoJo Stando Powah and make them explicit references to music, something I plan to fully commit to when Fury of the Storm gets written.
Each chapter’s reference, in order, goes like so:

• 1 - Just Like Old Times

  • No reference, just an appropriate quip.

• 2 - V Has Come To

  • References the game Metal Gear Solid V.

• 3 - Stone Temple Pilots

  • References the band of the same name.

• 4 - Super Smash Bros

  • References the game series of the same name.

• 5 - Vulgar Display Of Power

  • References the Pantera album of the same name.

• 6 - Klendathu Drop

  • References the 1997 Starship Troopers movie song of the same name.

• 7 - Use Your Fist And Not Your Mouth

  • References the Marilyn Manson song of the same name, from the album “The Golden Age Of Grotesque”.

• 8 - Significant Other

  • References the Limp Bizkit album of the same name.

• 9 - Avalon

  • References the song of the same name from the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime OST for Battle Tendency.

• 10 - Mean Green Mother From Outer Space

  • References the song of the same name from Little Shop Of Horrors: the 1986 film adaptation in particular.

• 11 - Sudden Death

  • References the song of the same name by Megadeth that initially debuted in Guitar Hero VI: Warriors Of Rock before being included in their album “TH1RT3EN”.

• 12 - Beast And The Harlot

  • References the Avenged Sevenfold song of the same name, from the album “City of Evil”.

And naturally, the title of the story references the song “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors, from their album “L.A. Woman”. Similarly, the sequel’s title references the song “Fury of the Storm” by DragonForce, from their album “Sonic Firestorm”.

PROCESSING WINDOWS UPDATES

Remember how I said I’d get back to the framework? Well here we go!
My processes for writing have improved significantly since I’ve started publishing Rider on the Storm. Remember that list from before where I did nothing but tryhard around with proper outline and structure? Well, my methods for that have actually crystallized into something useful, as opposed to a waste of time and effort, and I’ve already been putting them to good use in both the sequel, and that aforementioned planned 500k+ story!
One of those methods is using a spreadsheet to chart out each individual scene and stitch them together into chapters, and then stitch those together into entire acts. It sounds weird using a spreadsheet to write with, but it’s actually been one of the most useful things I’ve implemented to make solid progress without actually needing to write notes in Zim or punch out words proper.
Which is another thing I do as well: making full use of the wonderful Zim personal Wiki software. Yes, that’s right: a personal Wiki, complete with links, image embeds, flowcharts, HTML export, built-in HTTP server for said exports, and all kinds of plugin functions I never actually use but are available nonetheless! I actually use this very extensively outside of writefagging: my technical notes and howtos for my work and other hobbies are all maintained in a massive Zim notebook, and it’s pretty easy to create separate Zim notebooks to encompass all the notes and planning that can’t fit into a spreadsheet: character details, powers, worldbuilding stuff, even quick jot-notes!
I should warn you right now, however: it is very easy to be seduced by the note-taking process, and spend more time writing lovely full-prose notes than writing lovely full-prose horse words! Ask me how I know that. If you want to restrict that kind of ADHD rabbit holing, make a rule of doing bullet-point notes only. Trust me, it will wrangle that authorial ‘tism very effectively.
But I repeat myself.
Another major difference in my methodology I developed during the writing of Rider on the Storm is that I actually save the things I normally delete wholesale during my rewriting and editing passes. Now, I actually didn’t do this because I wanted to preserve my off-cuts: I did it because deleting big chunks of text from my documents fucked up the word tracking in FocusWriter, and my daily wordcount tracker kept routinely pushing into negative percentages during editing! Cut-and-pasting them into a separate document alongside the main one kept my progress intact. However, the off-cut file would later prove to be extremely helpful during the multiple times I’ve had to rewrite sections and even entire chapters, since I could now directly reference things and reimplement them instead of outright memory-holing them, which helped a lot for saving good jokes and the odd plot detail.
Which leads us nicely into the next part.

FOREFATHERS ONE AND ALL, BEAR WITNESS

And finally, we come to the part that’s guaranteed to make archivists and fanboys cream their short-shorts.
You know all of those fuckups, multiple revisions, and off-cuts I’ve been mentioning? Well, I’m taking a page out of the imitable htpot’s book, and I’m gonna let you see them all for yourself!
I’ve always been a very free-culture, open-source, and laissez-faire kinda guy when it comes to my works, and I’d always planned for Rider on the Storm to be the debut of a little tradition going forward: postmortem behind-the-scenes blogposts like this, and a complete copy of the story’s source documents!

https://files.catbox.moe/wbxx5r.7z
size: 1,066,473 bytes
md5sum: 1a22d0fef793ab08043300385fe11e9a
sha1sum: 34370f8a744926d68edf90996047516beed272db
sha256sum: 254ac503dd45e6750cc1389a9291697c11f7d80c69bd1924fb1998b76db42875

Think of it as the collector’s edition DVD box set with a bonus disc or two, all there in a nice 7-Zip archive and released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence 4.0. (Except for any (future) source code: that’s under 3-Clause BSD instead)
Of course, if you don’t trust random 7-Zip files from strange assassination droids on the Internet, I understand completely. A shame, though: you’d be missing out on ~60K words worth of cut snippets, rewritten chapters and all those old revisions, plus detailed breakdowns on the programs I use, and even a few details on one of the OC’s I intended to use at first that I eventually cut, but will make a return in Fury of the Storm! Oh, and there may or may not be a little preview of what I’ve got coming down the pipe next. Assuming my free time will allow me to push it down the pipe, anyways.
Should you decide to grab the archive, I’d suggest sorting the files by date and time, so you can see the chronology behind all the old attempts.

THAT’S ALL, FOLKS

Now get the fuck off my lawn before I call the ponice.

Comments

[Otio]

Glad to hear you've developed a framework that works out for you, I'll definitely be looking forward to your future works using it if they're as fun as Rider was!

[HK-FortySeven]

Quick errata notice: the archive I posted originally didn't have the raw BBCode version of the last two chapters included. Blog's been updated with a new archive and checksums to correct it.
The old archive and checksums are here for reference:
https://files.catbox.moe/2a6z28.7z
size: 1,025,658 bytes
md5sum: 4452bad1d6c647661b3b94d142ff7b50
sha1sum: a9eed910dcb7396b51fef32eac079a8c2763df93
sha256sum: 2f9e51a9c24016b0b96a9e53e25dffdf4db9db549fd391f157543a4c7de59669

[CassetteCobra]

To start, Nicely done with the story overall dude! Reading this and how many times you've stopped and re-written everything after overthinking the drafts would definitely be me if I was serious on making a story. I can't imagine how many hours, days, and months you spent drafting and finalizing the plot. Reading the "Doomp" document, I can see how much has changed compared to the final version. The biggest shocker is that Pinkie was gonna be an ALOT more important character initially, but I think I can agree it would've been too weird to go down that path. Honestly I can say alot about the documents, but that will reach essay territory and I encountered people who get mad when I make long comments on their stuff.

Now onto the tidbit on what the sequel is going to be like, going by the "Jumping to a certain season" part I'm assuming it's going to be season 9. The final season, not the school season 8. Which is pretty fair since alot more happens in the former than the latter. At least there are some school episodes for Anon-kun to jump in and terrify everyone in season 9 though! Besides that, with Tempest returning I have a gut feeling that's she's gonna sing a musical number for Anon about how much she loves him and is frustrated with their beliefs conflicting with her alignment.

I know it's selfish of me to want you to write the sequel right after completing Riders of the Storm, but I understand HOW time consuming the process writing the story was. So you deserve a break, especially when you plan on writing a story that's MUCH longer than the first.

Edit: How long will the sequel be you estimate? I misread the blog initially that it was gonna be 500k until I read closer and it was for an entirely different story so I'd have to ask.

[HK-FortySeven]

5737583

Honestly I can say alot about the documents, but that will reach essay territory and I encountered people who get mad when I make long comments on their stuff.

lol, lmao
You don't have to worry about that with me, I quite enjoy long-form comments like yours. So by all means, ask away!

Besides that, with Tempest returning I have a gut feeling that's she's gonna sing a musical number for Anon about how much she loves him and is frustrated with their beliefs conflicting with their alignment.

♪ Suddenly, Seymour ♪

How long will the sequel be you estimate?

Gut feeling tells me it'll probably reach into the 150-250k territory, but since I'm very much a seat-of-the-pants writer, my predictions don't really mean a whole lot.

[CassetteCobra]

5737624

You don't have to worry about that with me, I quite enjoy long-form comments like yours. So by all means, ask away!

Jolly good! These are the questions I can think of right currently before I go back to earlier chapters. Now you shall feel my wraith of words!

-Less of a question and more of an observation, I feel as though there's a "missing" segment in-between the time the Mane Six escape from the Deadly Duo^TM and when Twilight gets captured by The A-Non. This thought came from primarily from Skystar, who both somehow knew that the Mane Six were in trouble despite never meeting them before and fled through the water away from the Deadly Duo^TM and that she knew they couldn't defeat him in battle.

This "Missing Segment" I'm thinking of would be that of the Mane Six and Skystar reminiscing of the current events, with Skystar explaining what she knows. After that, Anon on his ship would've noticed the Mane Six on the beach and goes in after Twilight.

-Whatever happened to Grubber during the events of MGMFOS and Sudden Death? He completely vanished with no explanation and the last scene he was in didn't give him a send off or anything. Similarly, the side characters + Spike that came along with the Mane Six vanished in Sudden Death with no indication that they were captured until the epilogue. Both of these instances could've been cleared up with a sentence or two. Although I guess you can get the implication from the Rainbow Power being an indicator that the Anons Elite Mooks overpowered them easily unlike the movie lol. That's what happens when you upgrade mooks to elite mooks!

-Did you come up with the name "Obsidian Spheres" for the objects that petrify the princesses in the movie or did you find the name yourself online? From the scant info I found they are called Obsidian Orbs. Spheres, orbs, same thing to describe a circular object.....although orbs sound cooler lmao.

-I mentioned this in one of my comments, but do all Cyphers share the same color for their abilities or is it unique per individual?

-Did you change the new Storm Army emblem Anon-Kun had from the documents because you feared you would be sued by the Riddler?

♪ Suddenly, Seymour ♪

♪ What is Love? ♪

It is very unfortunate that Anon and Tempests power of love cannot break the teenage rating, because otherwise they would otherwise go down in front of the princesses.

Gut feeling tells me it'll probably reach into the 150-250k territory, but since I'm very much a seat-of-the-pants writer, my predictions don't really mean a whole lot.

I can totally get that with this blog detailing your writing process XD! It's likely gonna end up longer than that estimate, this is my bet for how it will TOTALLY go!

Part 1: Introduction to the plot with Anon-Kun being freed and planning revenge with his Storm Minions and the Legion of Doom. (50k words)

Part 2: Anon and gang travels to an AU, with the G4 heroes in pursuit, where they meet a morally ambiguous Parasprite who actuality is a human reincarnated as one with special powers taken from other media (Totally not a SI OC that was born in my imagination) who joins up with him and with their own group. (50k words)

Part 3: Gang travels to the Gen 1 MLP-verse and terrorize it while recruiting more villains (100k words). TalB will throw a temper tantrum during this arc in the comment section.

Part 4: Tournament Arc (50k words)

Part 5: A great magical journey to the Gen 3 MLP-verse...that promptly gets griefed by the mega Legion of Doom while the scant villains join up (200k words)

Part 6: A meetup between the heroes where they discuss the actions of the villains with input of those from the universes the Legion of Doom rekt. (50k words)

Part 7: More actual plot. (100k words).

Part 8: Imaginationland Final battle with a Total Drama Island-esque ending choice. Anon and Parasprite OC activate their final forms and clash with the heroes, all seems lost for the villains until Perfect Smooze, the most powerful MLP villain, appears. (50k words).

Part 9: Bonus chapter where Anon ruins Heart's Warming Eve! (20k words).

Total: 670k long fic.

Meanwhile, Tempest will just be running around trying to reach Anon to talk to him but keeps getting denied meeting him for various reasons. Eventually they do meet, but Tempest became an muscular Alicorn from all that Olympic marathons she's been doing.

[HK-FortySeven]

5738072

I feel as though there's a "missing" segment in-between the time the Mane Six escape from the Deadly Duo^TM and when Twilight gets captured by The A-Non.

Similarly, the side characters + Spike that came along with the Mane Six vanished in Sudden Death with no indication that they were captured until the epilogue.

These two have the same answer; maintaining the flow of the action and keeping to Anon's perspective. While you're right that it would be nice for the sake of completeness to include that all, my primary focus was on maintaining the flow, and popping in an explainer would have interrupted it. So I opted to leave it as an exercise for the imagination and sally forth with his narrative instead.
With regards to the perspective - and this is a thing I primarily picked up from writing greentexts - I stuck to writing from the perspective of critically important characters as much as I possibly could, and from as few perspectives as I could get away with; Twilight didn't get perspective rights until the end, when it was absolutely necessary. As a consequence of that whole design, Anon's going to end up missing details, since he's not omniscient. Even though he'd really like to be.

Whatever happened to Grubber during the events of MGMFOS and Sudden Death? He completely vanished with no explanation and the last scene he was in didn't give him a send off or anything.

Okay, that was an actual oversight, perspective fuckery aside. In retrospect, there was no reason Cid couldn't have noted him down in a sentence or two, like you said.
So I guess you'll have to see what wound up happening with him in the follow-up!

Did you come up with the name "Obsidian Spheres" for the objects that petrify the princesses in the movie or did you find the name yourself online?

IIRC, there was no canon name for them, so I had to come up with one myself.

I mentioned this in one of my comments, but do all Cyphers share the same color for their abilities or is it unique per individual?

You'll see.

Did you change the new Storm Army emblem Anon-Kun had from the documents because you feared you would be sued by the Riddler?

lol

It is very unfortunate that Anon and Tempests power of love cannot break the teenage rating, because otherwise they would otherwise go down in front of the princesses.

♪ You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals ♪
♪ So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel ♪
On a more serious note, I've entertained the possibility of an M-rated side story chronicling all of the cutaways between the two. I may end up going for it just for a change of pace from writing and planning my other big story, but nothing's set in stone quite yet.

[CassetteCobra]

5738082

These two have the same answer; maintaining the flow of the action and keeping to Anon's perspective. While you're right that it would be nice for the sake of completeness to include that all, my primary focus was on maintaining the flow, and popping in an explainer would have interrupted it. So I opted to leave it as an exercise for the imagination and sally forth with his narrative instead.

I can't really argue against that, because both ways of thinking during that scene is correct. My gamer completionist tendencies rattles my brain on how Skystar knew the Mane Six was under attack. Skystar will still not get AWAY with this though! Anon MUST capture her in the sequel to get her to confess how she had spider-sense! >:[

With regards to the perspective - and this is a thing I primarily picked up from writing greentexts - I stuck to writing from the perspective of critically important characters as much as I possibly could, and from as few perspectives as I could get away with; Twilight didn't get perspective rights until the end, when it was absolutely necessary.

Again, can't argue much here because it's logical. I took a glimpse at this greentext format and I can see why writing stories on it would lead to you only focusing on one character at a time. Looks impossible to do more than one character too.

As a consequence of that whole design, Anon's going to end up missing details, since he's not omniscient. Even though he'd really like to be.

Lmao, I noticed that he felt omniscient in certain sections when I was reading the beta. Particularly when Pinkie Pie was going to be the main antagonist to Anon-Kun. It's hard to make it look like he's doing a work of deduction and not like he knows where their going because of meta knowledge because he was isekaied from a world where MLP is a fictional cartoon series!

Okay, that was an actual oversight, perspective fuckery aside. In retrospect, there was no reason Cid couldn't have noted him down in a sentence or two, like you said.

Hahaha, I can get an inkling for why you forgot about him after reading the documents of the revised chapters! Grubber isn't the most memorable or developed character of the movie given how one-tracked his entire personality is. But then again that can be said for most of the new characters in it besides Tempest. I do find it weird that the movie only had Celaeno's crew consist of herself and only 4 crew members, how is that an effective crew and what happened to the others from the comics?? I commend you for giving these characters more of a spot light lol.

So I guess you'll have to see what wound up happening with him in the follow-up!

He becomes a Hutt after binge eating in depression during the month timeskip because Anon-Kun is gone? And that he receives character development because the movie never focused on him? :o

You'll see.

...This would be the type of series that have differences between Cypher colors with different sub-abilities! Given the love for the Rainbow! Knowing my cartoons, the rainbow Cypher colors will have a rock-paper-scissors formula. Red beats Yellow or something along those lines.

♪ You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals ♪
♪ So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel ♪

♪I want a little sugar in my bowl
I want a little sweetness down in my soul
I could stand some lovin', oh so bad♪

Woohoo! We're really going there now!

On a more serious note, I've entertained the possibility of an M-rated side story chronicling all of the cutaways between the two. I may end up going for it just for a change of pace from writing and planning my other big story, but nothing's set in stone quite yet.

I can't imagine the side story would be that long, 30k at max? Depends on how long the sequel will be at least. Tempest is a great choice, she ties with Princess Luna (Best Princess) as the sexiest ponies around! Also if you're gonna need that smut practice for a 500k long fic....oh my goodness how much smut are you planning to write there?! xD

But a question remains....who can handle the raspberry assaults the longest from a human? Lyra was clearly not the one with the biggest will!

[HK-FortySeven]

5738293

I can't imagine the side story would be that long, 30k at max?

I think that's a pretty fair estimate. If anything, it will probably undercut that by a considerable margin.
That's assuming, of course, that I do end up doing it at all; I'm still very much undecided on top of being time-limited as of late.

Also if you're gonna need that smut practice for a 500k long fic....oh my goodness how much smut are you planning to write there?!

Very little. I usually only write smut in short one-off stories, and even then it's a spur-of-the-moment thing. I've never really woven it into longer stories, primarily because I don't really have a good way of making it fit into them. And since I'm much more of an action and world-buildy writer and not a romance writer, there's even less opportunity there.
Plus, it jars the hell outta me when I'm in the middle of a neat fic, and suddenly the author's fetish gets flopped out onto my screen outta nowhere. Kinda takes me out of the experience, not gonna lie.

[CassetteCobra]

5738706

I think that's a pretty fair estimate. If anything, it will probably undercut that by a considerable margin.
That's assuming, of course, that I do end up doing it at all; I'm still very much undecided on top of being time-limited as of late.

You do what you think is best friend! I think this site has enough Smut fics as is, but a lot lack the "Quality" department that would be really nice to have. Still, nothing too much would be lost if this side story plan was dropped.

Very little. I usually only write smut in short one-off stories, and even then it's a spur-of-the-moment thing. I've never really woven it into longer stories, primarily because I don't really have a good way of making it fit into them. And since I'm much more of an action and world-buildy writer and not a romance writer, there's even less opportunity there.

Trying to make it fit into the story would be difficult because you could fall into the common problem of romantic plot tumors. THAT has ruined many-a-story. The current way of romance you did in the last fic, Erotic bedplay, raspberry assaults, and kissing marathons, were good enough lol.

Plus, it jars the hell outta me when I'm in the middle of a neat fic, and suddenly the author's fetish gets flopped out onto my screen outta nowhere. Kinda takes me out of the experience, not gonna lie.

I know exactly what you mean by coming across many stories on this site with the fetishes being very blatant.