10 Years · 4:35am Jul 25th, 2023
I am on FIMFiction.net for 10 years now. The anniversary was actually on Wednesday, July 19th, but the release of "The Sky is Gone: Acceptance" on my Patreon account made me stay up long the day before and I had to catch up on sleep, so I could not write this blog entry there. But I want to write about what happened during these 10 years.
Here is a retrospective of 10 Years on FIMFiction.net:
On July 19th, 2013, I registered my account here. I wanted a name that's unique and creative, and classy, and that makes for a good author name. I already knew back then that I will eventually write ponyfics, too.
At this time, I cared a lot for Scootaloo and Fluttershy (and still do). Scootaloo wasn't my favourite pony yet, she became that when I watched "Sleepless in Ponyville" for the first time on August 3rd, 2013, but she already meant a lot to me. And Fluttershy had become my favourite member of the Mane Six. I wanted usernames that represented them both. I had already called myself "CMC_Scootaloo" on Equestria Daily when I had registered an account there only a few days prior, on July 17th, 2013, and so I wanted to call myself after Fluttershy on FIMFiction.net.
I often had to think of this moment at the time, Fluttershy cheering for Rainbow Dash at the Best Young Fliers Competition after she managed a Sonic Rainboom and could save Rarity, and I had seen somewhere that other fans described this moment as "Fluttercheer". A perfect name to represent Fluttershy and one of my favourite moments with her, so I named myself that. And then I had what I wanted, one username for Scootaloo
and one username for Fluttershy
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Registering accounts on these two sites, Equestria Daily and FIMFiction.net, only two days apart, also was my official, formal entry into the fandom.
I did not start to write yet after registering my account and should not do that for a good number of months, almost seven, to be precise. At first, I was only reading ponyfics. And, of course, I found them through Equestria Daily. Back then, I felt so overwhelmed, positively, by all the output the fandom created. That was at a time when Equestria Daily had up to 20 news posts on a single day.
The first three pieces of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanwork featured on EQD that I saw and downloaded where short pony comics; "MLP: Recruit Shining Armor" by CSImadmax and uploaded by tan575, "MLP: About That Wall..." by postcrusade and "MLP Fluttershy comic- The falling" by AquaGalaxy, all featured on July 16th, 2013. I was so blown away by all the content that came out in such a short time, I had never before seen such an activity in a fandom. And I was so amazed by this that I tried to look at and download everything that Equestria Daily featured. Because of this, I didn't even manage to keep reading and finish the ponyfics I had started (and still didn't finish, but I don't want to reach forward, I come to that later).
I read (or started reading) my first ponyfics from FIMFiction.net on July 23rd, 2013:
The Birth of Harmony & Calling You by AugieDog
Starlight Over Detrot: A Noir Tale by Chessie
Hard Reset by Eakin
The Sword Coast by AdrianVesper
The Conquering Of Love by Littlecolt
Sketchy Salad Symphony by Sketchy Sounds
Omega by Goldenwing
Pony Age: Origins by OmegaPony11
They were featured on Equestria Daily on July 16th and July 21st, 2013. Because of all the time that has passed since then, FIMFiction.net didn't even have bookshelves at this time (are you feeling old?), I do not remember much of these stories anymore. But I remember the feeling of marvel over so many ways how the plot of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic was picked up and expanded on, continued or even turned into something completely new. Already when I started checking out MLP: FiM fanwork on EQD, I knew I could not read all these stories, there just wasn't enough time to read them all, but these 10 stories interested me the most, so I picked them from the Story Updates news that were posted from July 16th - July 23rd and started reading. My pattern of reading ponyfics soon became very erratic, because of all the other MLP: FiM fanwork I wanted to look at, so I never picked these stories back up again to continue reading them..... But even though I didn't (SO FAR!), these stories stuck with me. They gave me the first impression of what the fandom is capable of and I still set them as the bar even today. I should go and read some of them after finishing this retrospective, not soon, but right away.
Thinking back at this time 10 years ago, I realize I could be writing so much more..... Like I said, registering an account here on FIMFiction.net was one of the things that marked my formal and official entry into the fandom. When I watched certain episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, their meaning to me, what news on EQD I read when, how I witnessed significant fandom events that happened outside of FIMFiction.net, other pony places I also spent my time at since 2013, my experiences with pony communities on Discord, pony games, pony animations and so much more..... But it would crush and burn the fourth wall of this blog entry. I would have to write a whole series of blog entries to go into all that happened in the last 10 years and release them over a long period of time.
I might do this one day because, even though I am far from having seen everything (which is owed to a mechanism in my mind that I don't understand and a resulting problem with routines, but talking about that would be digression), those were the most marvelous times of my existence in this world and, truly, those 10 years where the first 10 years I ever truly lived since I got born into this world..... But this full story is to be told another day, with more preparation, research and calling back old times into my weak long-term memory brain. One day. But today, I want to focus on my time here on FIMFiction.net in the last 10 years.
So, let's dial the clock a bit forward, to the February of 2014. My first ponyfic.
After watching "Pinkie Pride" during Season 4, Equestria Daily held another round of its Writer's Training Grounds that were so popular and well-frequented back then. And I joined. I wasn't shy with doing that, I had rare writing attempts in a past long gone, a past so different from everything that happened in those 10 years, that I call it another life, and I always had a knack for writing stories. Just, before I started writing pony stories, nothing ever really stuck. Every project I tried was quickly abandoned because my interest in it wasn't enough to keep me writing. That changed when I started writing ponyfics.
Source: "Rainbow Dash..."
"The Best Present She Could Wish For" was the first story I ever wrote that I had actual 
passion for. Something unprecedented at that time. I knew this would be happening eventually, I was definitely interested in writing ponyfics right from the start, but there, everything exploded, burst forth and filled my heart with a creativity and writing desire that I had never felt before. I wanted to tell what happened (or maybe happened) off-screen during the events surrounding Rainbow Dash's Birthiversary that we saw in the episode. And I knew that Scootaloo wants to give Rainbow Dash a present, because she's the most important pony in her life. I remember sitting here, in front of my computer, for at least an hour to think about what present Scootaloo wants to get for Rainbow Dash. Then I knew it's a special Daring Do book. And I already knew that she will team up with Diamond Tiara, because of the prompt EQD gave for the episode, and so it was soon clear that she needs Diamond Tiara's help to get that book. A revolutionary prompt, a pony teaming up with their enemy, I was fascinated. From there, everything just developed, no planning needed. I wrote one scene and saw the next one playing in my head. This was something that should happen countless times after, but with this story, it was that I learned how easy it was for me to write ponyfics.
The process of finding the idea for this story was sharp, quick and precise, no time wasted, not one thought too much. It wasn't always that easy or that quick later on, but with my first ponyfic ever, I didn't need much time at all to go from first inspiration to writing. And even today I am still rather quick at that. But this story was the first time that I made this experience. I was born to write ponyfics. And I will do that until the end of this life.
Not much time did pass until I wrote more.
In the same month, I wrote "Try It With Kindness", practicing myself in unexpected pony pairings and also my first time that I presented a theory for an episode before it aired, in the month after, I started writing Journeys and Destinations: A Friendship for Eternity, a story I had high ambitions for, but that never came far..... To this day, I still can't fully comprehend what happened there. All I know is that, every time I wanted to continue this story, something got in the way of that. Hiatus depression. Loss of Internet connection. Moving stress. My roommate being a dick. Another loss of Internet connection. Moving in with a very wrong and dangerous person. Horrible, almost non-existent Internet connection. Another move. Recovery. A sudden, steep decline of mental health. Yet another move.
More than three years after starting it, all confidence to get this story somewhere had been killed. The timeline of its history reads like a tourist guide for Hell. Fate really hates this story.
But 2014 also saw a big writing achievement. Caused by the dissatisfaction with not having written anything over the Summer, I decided to participate in the National Pony Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) by Equestria Daily.
It was my goal to write at least 60,000 words throughout November, spread out over 30 stories, one per day, each with at least 2,000 words. I wasn't sure if that's possible. But I set myself the challenge. And I completely cracked that challenge. It turned out, my eagerness to write again was so big that I wrote not 60,000 words in that month, but almost twice as much, 107,120 words! Only on the last two days, my thirst for writing had been sated enough that the exhaustion and burnout from writing so much won out over the resolve to reach the goal of writing every single day. But the sheer amount of words written made that an unsignificant side note.
In this month, it was also that I discovered my first OC pony, a ghost filly called Shapy Cloud, who spends her eternal existence in a haunted, abandoned mental asylum near Fillydelphia. Back then, I was making the resolve to write for her and tell her entire story one day. I am not ready to write a more OC-centered pony story yet, but the intent is still there.
Let's dial forward more, by one and a half years, to May 2016. More than two years after starting "Journeys and Destinations: A Friendship for Eternity", the story that should have been a breakthrough story, I wrote my actual, first breakthrough story:
.
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"'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'"
Source: https://www.deviantart.com/basykail/art/Filly-Flurry-602790482
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And not long after, my second breakthrough story:
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These stories did it. The first two stories of mine that left a really big impact, because of the quick response to new episodes that they were, because they skillfully expanded on events that were relevant at the time and had not a small portion of the fandom talk about them and because they were, generally, my best writing up to this point. A magical mix. Both stories made it into the Popular Stories section, too, the first time ever this happened for me. And this was when I began to take writing more seriously, by writing every day and having an actual writing schedule, instead of only writing a story when an inspiration triggered it. I wanted to get somewhere, I wanted to make a name for myself as pony author, I eventually wanted to earn money with my writing and I started pushing for all that. The success with these two stories came just when I needed it. Fortune was with me in this endeavor, at least, it was for almost a full year.
"'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" was a story I wrote because I asked myself "Why did her parents name her 'Flurry Heart'? Why did they give her a name that is a reference to her destruction of the Crystal Heart?" and I thought "This name is going to haunt her in the future.". It was clear to me that naming her after this "occasion" bears the danger that the crystal ponies will find out that Flurry Heart destroyed the Crystal Heart and put their lives at risk once and that she has the power to do that. And how would they react on that? And thus, the story idea was born. I wanted to tell what possible consequences this name Shining Armor and Cadance gave her could have for Flurry Heart in the future. And the consequences were bigger than I thought.
At first, I wanted to write only ten chapters. It was initially planned as a simple story; Flurry Heart is forced to reveal the origins of her name in a school assignment, her classmates distance herself from her out of fear, she gets bullied and picked on by them, then Sunburst comes into play at the end of the story and explains how he sealed Flurry Heart's destructive magic, which calms Flurry's classmates down and life returns back to normal. Every chapter of the story was planned out; a short introduction, showing Flurry Heart and her life in the Crystal Empire and at the school, then a climax in the middle of it when Flurry talks about her name, a few chapters that depict how Flurry Heart gets attacked in school for what she can do and then the end with Sunburst. The climax remained, but it happened in Chapter 10, the chapter that was originally supposed to be the last one. In the end, the story measured up to 27 Chapters + Interlude Chapter, almost three times as much as I had originally planned. The ideas kept flowing, I kept writing and the story grew far beyond what I thought I could envision.
When I look back now, the initial ideas I had for "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" feel naive. I was clearly underestimating what this story could be, but my mind fixed all that. This story was the first multi-chapter story I managed to write from the beginning to end, after a few, previous failed attempts to do that. I was not organized enough to finish a multi-chapter story when I started to write two years earlier, but I became that with "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'". And that's only the beginning of 2016's success story.
A month later, I got bestowed with an opportunity that I would have never expected like that. One of the ponies I loved most, ever since I saw Season 2 for the first time, was Dinky. And I knew, as a background pony, the chance is low that she will get a bigger role in the show that actually lets us learn something significant about her other than that she's Derpy's daughter, so I stuck to fanwork with Dinky and was content with that. But then "Flutter Brutter" aired on June 4th, 2016, an episode that didn't give any expectation or reason to believe that Dinky would even be seen in it. But then this moment happened. And we suddenly got an insight into Dinky's life that no one thought possible. That I didn't think we would ever get. It was a little dream come true. And I knew I had to use this opportunity.
When I saw Dinky with that mare – Millie, as I learned shortly after – and how she covered Dinky's ears because of a word as ridiculous as "peeved", treating that word like a swear, I witnessed a problem that Dinky had, something that she has to put up with in her life. It opened the door a little, that moment. It were only two seconds, but it taught us so much about Dinky's life.
There is that mare, her aunt, who is extremely overprotective to the point of absurdity and Dinky suffers from that, her otherwise free and independent life being restricted by a relative who is constantly scared for her well-being even when there's no reason to. It was such a rare moment. We have seen background ponies doing interesting things before that, and after that, but none of those other background pony appearances in the show allowed us to have such a deep and revealing insight into a background pony's life beyond what short moments an episode showed to us. It was unique. It never happened again. Not for Dinky and not for any other background ponies. And I knew I need to be the one who writes a story for that moment and explains what exactly happened to Dinky there.
Only a day later, on the Sunday after the episode aired, I began working on the story. I took a screenshot of that moment, from a high-quality iTunes rip of the episode, and I began writing. Only two days after the episode, on June 6th, I published the story with its first chapter. I finished more than half of "Aunt Millie" in 2016 and wrote the remaining five chapters in 2017 before Spring was over and before the story was one year old. It was my second big success. The second multi-chapter story I wrote all the way to the end. It had far less chapters than "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" when it was finished, less than half of it, owed to simpler events with much less complicated ramifications, but was even more important to me. And not only Dinky starred in the story, she was the most important pony in it, but I got a chance to write a lot about Sparkler, her big sister, and about Lily Longsocks and Noi, Dinky's two best friends. This story was my first foray into writing exclusively about background ponies. Flurry Heart's story was important, but "Aunt Millie" had a meaning to me that exceeded the previous story's meaning tenfold.
Source: Dinky Hooves!
And writing about Dinky's life wasn't the only motivator for writing "Aunt Millie". That moment resonated with me. Personal experience went into this story. I grew up with a mother person that patronized me and controlled me; she freaked out every time I had gotten myself dirty, even if I did something as simple as touching the ground, she had special rules and procedures for nearly everything, I wasn't even allowed to go outside without her. A lot of the things Millie says in the story could have been from the mouth of that person. I knew that patronization was another form of child abuse, but one that's hardly recognized as such, and I wanted to write about it to raise awareness for this. I knew I had to do that when I saw what Dinky has to endure with that mare. And writing "Aunt Millie" was even easier than writing "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'", I could already tell what kind of horrors Dinky was going through and my own experiences opened the window to see what was happening to her.
While Flurry Heart's story was my first breakthrough, Dinky's story was the more important one to me personally. I loved every moment of writing it in a way that no one else can understand.
The rest of that year went great, as well.
I wrote a story for Crackle Pop, a colt that Season 6 had introduced to us who is related to Derpy and, most likely, her little brother (Season 6 really was a great season for Derpy's family), I wrote my first horror story for Nightmare Night (no, it has nothing to do with "Five Nights at Freddy's", I wasn't aware I should have mentioned this when I released the story and it hurt the views, so I am mentioning it now), I wrote a story to cherish and celebrate a newfound friendship and the best friend a pony can wish for and I wrote my first story for Hearth's Warming Eve, which was also my first ponification of a book.
Source: Filly Friends Forever
Two more stories with a special meaning have happened in this year. One of them is the aforementioned friendship story, "Filly Friends Forever". A story that perfectly conveys what close friends Scootaloo and Dinky are and how much they love each other, inspired by real events. It essentially is a self-insert story that doesn't look like one, as it portrays a moment that happened in a similar way to me and my friend at the end of 2016, an event that marked the beginning of our friendship. This still rings true, we are still close friends today, even though not everything has been easy for us since then, we are still knitted tightly together. My user picture here on FIMFiction.net, and nearly everywhere else, goes back to this day and I haven't changed it since.
The other special story is Clementine's First Colt Crush. The only true OC story I have written to this day, the only story that has exclusively OC ponies as characters. I was not normally one for writing OC-heavy stories (and I'm still not), I only wrote about OC ponies if I really needed some in a story and they usually were side characters in the stories they starred in, at least back then that was the case. But a special story for a special occasion.....
"Clementine's First Colt Crush" was written by me to apply as quest writer for "Legends of Equestria". A talent for writing stories was one of the requirements to make it into the team and proof of such talent was to be provided during the application process, so I sat down and wrote a story. And because it was fitting (and because I thought it would increase my chance), I looked deeper at some NPCs in LoE, did thoughts about who would make for a great story based on their dialogues and I chose Clementine, a filly living in the village in the Heartlands, because one of her lines of dialogue sounded like it provides the best potential for a story:
"I think this colt at school has a crush on me. I don’t know what to do!"
Deep, emotional conflict. And an opportunity for father-daughter bonding. So I wrote it. And that story was a success. It lived up to its purpose and went beyond it. "Clementine's First Colt Crush" impressed enough and it secured me a spot in the writing department of "Legends of Equestria".
And this is all that I will say about this chapter of the last ten years. I wanted to include the beginning of this chapter here, because it's related to a story I wrote, because it has to do with writing, albeit a different kind of creative writing, and because becoming a quest writer for "Legends of Equestria" was a dream I had, a dream that became true..... for a little while. What happened later in this chapter was of a more tragic turn and too complicated to explain to the fullest here and, like I said, I want to focus on FIMFiction.net in this retrospective. Let's continue forward.
2017 came.....
I wrote one more very popular story at the beginning of the year, "Backstage Affair" (who would have thought a shipping story could be an instant success, wild, I know), and I finished "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" and "Aunt Millie" in April. The year was off to a good start, promising to be as successful as 2016 was, if not even more. But fate had other plans. Something from early on in the previous year, before the success story started, was creeping back to the surface of my mind, after it had hidden there, unnoticed by me. I won't say what this event at the very dawn of 2016 was (even though I hinted at it earlier in this retrospective), it has nothing to do with ponies or with the fandom whatsoever, and only a few chosen ones in the fandom even know about it. But something crept back from that, about a year later, and it affected my feelings and my judgement in a crucial moment. I didn't yet know that this moment would be crucial, back then, but it should determine my fate for the next six years. And not just my fate. The fate of my filly friend forever, as well. It affected my writing ability and it also cost me my position as quest writer in the dev team of "Legends of Equestria"..... The last consequence on that list of nightmares didn't happen instantly, it happened only 8 months later, but the path for it was made already.
What I did in that crucial moment, caused by a sudden and entirely unexpected haunting rising in my mind, it brought more mental troubles. They grew gradually worse, I still managed to finish "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" and "Aunt Millie" before the effect took hold of me fully, which is why the quality of these stories did not drop regardless of that event, but what happened put the friendship of me and my friend on strains that nearly broke it, after the early days of April 2017 it affected my writing and in September 2017, it found its preliminary culmination in the loss of my quest writer dream position..... Starting with January 2017, the following two years and nine months were a road paved with nightmares, only occasionally interrupted by a nice dream that wasn't there for long, a road I could travel and leave behind only because I had the most patient friend in all known universes and because she kept believing in me during all that time. As you can tell by now, my retrospective enters a darker chapter of Fluttercheer history here.
It is a little harder to write this retrospective now, because the time from January 2017 - October 2019 was in large parts a foggy journey.
One of the good things that happened in 2017 was writing "The Nightmare's Trigonal Demise". Equestria Daily had just vastly expanded its Pony Celebration Days and it had declared November 20th as Cutie Mark Crusaders Appreciation Day. As their biggest fan, I wanted to contribute something in their honor and I wanted to show how great they are and what they can do. The fandom always underestimated them, so I wanted to show their greatness. I wrote an alternate universe story about them defeating Nightmare Moon instead of their big sisters and their friends. And I made it work.
During this difficult time, I also wrote The Sun Still Shines and Wish for a Mother. The former was my first attempt at writing a story with a tragic twist. The latter was a story requested by my friend, as a reward for managing to do something great and growing above herself.
She wanted a story about Brown Sugar, a background filly she loves a lot, and this is what I came up with. "Wish for a Mother" was in a similar vein as "Aunt Millie", regarding its theme. Neglect is another form of child abuse many don't think about and I found it compelling to write about it. This story made it into the Feature Box, even twice, and it was the first time this happened for me. It even surpassed all the clop in the Feature Box when the mature filter was off.
To this day, I am still not sure if that rousing success happened because I wrote the story so well or just because everyone liked seeing Pinkie Pie being a temporary caretaker of a very young filly so much, but it was an unexpectedly high moment during that era of pain, in May 2018.
Despite the difficulties, I kept writing. And it had become an involuntary habit to promise sequels and side stories to the stories I wrote and not to deliver them. I already talked highly and intensely about sequels before "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" and "Aunt Millie" were complete, when I answered comments under the stories. I spoke about making a series out of "The Nightmare's Trigonal Demise", my own Crusaderverse, telling more stories and showing how Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle defeat other villains without the Elements of Harmony and become Equestria's protectors instead of the Mane Six. And I proclaimed my intentions to write more stories about Brown Sugar and her friends, many side stories for "Wish for a Mother" that are all part of the same continuity. And I did neither of this, I didn't dare to touch any of these projects because my writing skill had fallen into a very deep pit after the early April of 2017 and had become a living corpse compared to what it was when I wrote my two breakthough stories in 2016. Once, I even received a snide, criticizing comment about not delivering what I promise. It didn't help to improve my mental condition, but I could not write either of these stories, especially not the sequels to my two hit stories, while knowing that they wouldn't be at their best and highest quality. I could not allow that event from 2017 to affect these important stories and to smear a stain on my successes from 2016.
I continued to write regardless. I put out story after story and chased my plans. My mental condition and the problems that piled up also affected my writing schedule, there were large periods in 2018 and 2019 when I could not write at all. This was something that was frightening to me, never before did I have problems to sit down and write. It increased my depression.
Source: Cozy Glow
2019 was the year when I finally caught up with my writing plans, I wrote "Letters to Cozy Glow" as a late contribution to Season 8 and when I began writing "Dreamwalker Dash", it was the first time that I finally could write a story for a new season again while the season was still running, when the story would feel relevant to the audiences here.
Source: RD and Luna fusion painting
I couldn't do this for Season 7 and Season 8 and I was happy that it finally worked again, but it bothered me that it would be the last time, knowing that Season 9 was the final season. And I still dropped out of these two stories soon, into another prolonged and undesired writing break over the Summer.
It was in October of 2019 that life finally picked up for me again.
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My friend and I grew closer together again, after months of silence because the misery had gotten too much for the both of us, I wrote another passion story and shortly after, in December, after recuperating some more with my friend, I returned to regular writing.
Starting in 2020, I slowly built my writing skill back up again. It was hard to return to writing proper. Habits are my biggest strength and my biggest weakness. And I long since had made it a habit to write a little bit, then not write for several months, before I would pick up the keyboard again. I had lost a lot of belief in my writing ability and I was distracted from writing easily. Getting back to a writing schedule in 2020 was rough, then Covid-19 came in the midst of that task. It being a dangerous virus, I focused a lot on it and kept myself updated on all the relevant news, seeing where that virus was heading. And I focused too much on it. It distracted me and my first attempt to gain back my writing skill and my writing discipline failed. I had even gotten my first patron early in this year, but living up to the responsibility of providing monthly, paid updates, a chance I could not let slip regardless, proved almost impossible. A failure to write my own version of a sequel to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic written in the style of a TV show was the icing on the cake. Months of depression followed, with almost no writing happening. "Dreamwalker Dash" got plunged into another hiatus and updates of "Letters to Cozy Glow" became sporadic.
Another October came and I wrote more again. I desperately wrote more one-shot stories and started one new multi-chapter story until the end of the year. I had more output again, but it was nagging at my mind that the year felt wasted writing-wise.
The attempt finally worked in 2021. I regularly and nearly weekly updated "Dreamwalker Dash" and "Letters to Cozy Glow" for three and a half months. I felt exhausted after climbing that mountain and I needed another long break from writing, but I had my writing skill and my writing discipline back. I could finally meet deadlines and set goals again.
Closer to the end of 2021, my writing picked up pace. I had just finished reading the official My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (G4) comics.
It was while reading the Season 10 comics that I got inspired to a major story when I saw how Zecora left Equestria and stayed in her homeland Farasi. This moved me so much that it made me shed some tears and that it got me to think about the end of Generation 4, how we might never see the ponies we've come to love again because Generation 5 shows Equestria's very distant future. I was thinking what might remain of Equestria in the future and suddenly, I had that vision of Twilight burying a time capsule for future generations of ponies to find, so they can learn about Equestria and all the friendships that were forged in it. This was the strongest inspiration I had for a story since "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" and "Aunt Millie" in 2016. I heard Twilight talking and I heard Applejack talking and Rainbow Dash and Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, and sentence after sentence got played in my head. For the first time in years, it was easy again to get inspired to a story. This story became a hit. Hitting it did, released only five days after Generation 5 had started, it hit a nerve of many and tugged at their heartstrings. A one-shot with more than 20,000 words and yet it reached 500 views, 30 likes and 26 favourites in only two weeks and five days. It was my first, big success in four and a half years and measured up to "'Princess Flurry Heart, Destroyer of Worlds!'" and "Aunt Millie" in every conceivable way, just like these two stories, I wrote it in an amazing quality, the story was about something everyone was thinking of at that time and it was very relevant as the Generation 5 Movie had just been released. It is also my most emotional story to date. And the first story of mine where the way I strung the plot together and connected the scenes felt perfect, with that special something that makes a story truly epic. Writing it felt like I caught lightning in a bottle. The power of emotions.
Only about a month later, I started "The Sky is Gone". A writing experiment and a story based on a very recent inspiration I had gotten only in Summer of the same year. And only my second horror story that felt good. I had chills while reading the prologue I wrote for it and just as many chills when reading some of Silverstream's messages. Finally, a horror story I wrote felt right again. And it was only the second time time since the end of 2019 that I had time to write a new story I was just recently inspired to, thanks to the fact that my writing was in balance again. "The Sky is Gone" was, as I predicted, met with low views because of its unusual, experimental style and approach to storytelling, but also with higher views than I reckoned with. It was a surprise success.
The Autumn of 2021 when I wrote "A Letter to the Ponies of the Future and Equestria's New Generations" and "The Sky is Gone" was my comeback as a successful pony author.
2022 was a quieter year then. It began with a visit of my friend all the way over in the United States, something that I could only afford by scraping together and using a large amount of my savings, but was worth it, as it was our first, physical meeting and the most wonderful two weeks I ever had.
And shortly after I had returned to Europe, the Ukraine war started and Putin's nuke threats against Europe and the US because of the sanctions they imposed on Russia distracted me from writing for the better part of the year. Suddenly, there was a real threat of a third world war and I was alarmed, what if that happens and that third world war really begins, a war that would most definitely be of the nuclear variant? I live in the capital of a european country and one of the scariest things I can imagine is getting blown to molecules together with my pony collection here. I worried more for all the ponies I had amassed here than myself and I just wanted them to be safe. Devising an escape plan; researching the radius of Russia's most advanced nuclear weapon, which cities are the most likely to get bombed in my country and in the surrounding countries, a remote village that is far away enough from any likely nuclear targets that I'm safe from radiation burns and cancer risks there, the train and bus routes to get there, the accomodation options and the existing grocery stores there, then bookmarking all of that information and putting it on my phone too, took a whole month. A whole month of hectic and partially panicked searching, cause if the worst would indeed happen, I could not surely know how soon that escalation would come.
Afterwards, I was so exhausted that, one more time, I felt not quite able to write. I also had to take care of a few other things that this month of research delayed and, before I knew, it was October again. But 2022 also saw the release of "The Sky is Gone"'s second part, "The Sky is Gone: Epiphany". The product of a huge vision, that made me realize there is much more story to be told here than I initially thought. The last big deed of the year was redesigning and optimizing my Patreon and my Ko-fi account, writing better and more compelling descriptions on both and introducing new reward tiers on the former. Doing that was a long time coming and, with my writing having recovered, this opened the door to a new era for me late last year.
And now, we are in 2023. I keep pursuing my writing plans and I feel more inspired than ever lately and more capable of writing down such spontaneous inspirations. The year still feels young and the confidence in my writing abilities has been restored to the fullest.
It's been an amazing and marvelous ten years. And the last six years of those have been a very exhausting, difficult and sometimes confusing time. But I finally feel calm and confidence and have an optimistic outlook on the future again. Whatever happens next, I have grown enough to take it without letting it take me down. It will only get better from here.
Stay easy as a filly!
~ Fluttercheer
Happy anniversiry! I still remember enjoying the aunt Story and pity dinky and lily's suffering, plus the interesting take on noi. And how it helped me.
Congratulations to you and your efforts; I hope all goes well for your future endeavors.
I usually don't read people's autobiographies―or whatever you'd call this―but I felt compelled after investigating my own account to find that I'm almost at nine years myself.
It was a fairly interesting read. It gives me some sort of nostalgia by proxy reading about someone else's journey in a fandom I was a part of.
Thank you for taking the time to write this.
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And I remember your comments on the story. You left many fervent comments under "Aunt Millie" and I could see how invested you were in it. Later, after the story finished, you never left such passionate and enthusiastic comments on a story of mine again. I remember your comments on "Aunt Millie" a lot because of that.
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How did "Aunt Millie" help you? You loved the story, but you never seem to have said anything about it helping you, I went through the comments under it and couldn't find anything like that.
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It's not quite an autobiography.
That's a little exaggerated to say. Although you can indeed say that I am writing about my entire life here, because it only really started ten years ago, there is so much that hasn't been said here. If I would write down everything that happened in these ten years since I joined the fandom and describe every single event in detail, including all my thoughts and how the events affected me and what I learned from them, maybe then it could truly be called an "autobiography".
I might write that one day. It's a daunting task, so much has happened in these ten years that it feels like I could fill an entire, thick hardcover book with that and there would be so many things to detail, even to unravel and research in my records for the things that I don't remember as well myself anymore, and I can't even tell if I have the time to do that with all the projects and pony writing and pony art I have planned for the future, so I'm not making guarantees this will happen. But I might. Interest to do that is there.
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That makes me nostalgic, as well. And I hope everyone who reads my retrospective will take a piece from its beginning, rekindle with the early fandom days and bring back the spirit of the early fandom a little. A lot of that has returned with the start of Generation 5, of course, but some things are still very different today compared to 2013, so I hope my retrospective will inspire its readers to realize that the early fandom is today, if they just want it to be.
I was wondering how you came across my retrospective, since I didn't remember you as one of my followers. Then I checked. And I noticed that you are following me since either 2017 or 2018 already, so for five or six years. I cannot remember any comments by you under one of my stories or any favourites you gave, right now, but since you follow me for that long, I imagine you must have read a few of them. And since I just wrote a retrospective, I am getting curious. Which of my stories did you read? And what are your thoughts on them? What could you take with you from reading them?
Edit: A look on your userpage just showed me that you read "Wish for a Mother" in 2018 and favourited the story. As well as that you followed me because of this story. Which led me to read your comment for it. It was insightful and I can tell by it that the story brightened your day and that you care about Brown Sugar and are interested in her future.
As my retrospective here shows, there have been unfair hurdles that got thrown into my way, hurdles too big to dodge, which made writing the promised Brown Sugar Anthology impossible. At least so far. It's still on the horizon, I have not given up writing it. The pondering will eventually end and give way to knowing.
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well, similar to what you did, i made it in 2 stories that Lily is a friend of Dinky
And well, apart from Dinky being my favorite foal, you really put in a lot of detail and care i rarly saw on fim back then
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I remember this again now. It was something you said, but since I didn't find it in a comment under the story, it's probably in a private message. I have yet to read these stories, still, the problems from 2017 - late 2019 and the focus on recovering from them in the last 3 1/2+ years haven't made my problems with reading and my routine problems easier. I hope to finally read them soon now, like many other stories.
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I did and I finally have that skill back since 2021. I only need to put it to much more use again now, then everything will have come together again. It will finally happen this year.
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and i that you can enjoy them. Altough. the second story with lily suffered some...audio troubles.
well, then all the best!
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I do apologize for having not read much of your work past what was apparently just one story. I usually discover stories through just scrolling through the new stories section.
And I was probably more active back then. I've slowly slipped out of the fandom as time went on, just randomly popping in to check if there's something that immediately jumps out to me. After Gen 4 ended is when I was really cemented in that habit.
I haven't watched any of Gen 5, if you can believe that. Perhaps that is something I should do, but I have been content to leave on the melancholy of Gen 4's finale.
I will make an effort to check some more of your works.
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No need to apologize. I was just wondering how many stories of mine you've read. Not everyone writes comments, there are many readers who are just silently favouriting or bookshelving. And my retrospective was a good opportunity to find out some unsaid things about my stories.
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This sounds familiar. You said something very similar about "Wish for a Mother", that reading a sequel may ruin the feeling of a satisfying ending.
For Generation 5, it is a sequel to My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but at the same time, it doesn't directly follow up on the events seen in the last episode(s) of Generation 4. There might be more ties to Generation 4's era of Equestria being shown in upcoming episodes/specials/movies, but so far, not many of such ties have been seen in Generation 5.
There is one popular complaint about Generation 5, but that's a matter that is easily resolved by doing some thinking about it.
Other than that, I don't see anything in Generation 5 that could ruin the finale of Generation 4 for anyone. But I see a lot of potential for bittersweet, historic exploration of the era that is the past for the ponies who are starring in Generation 5, which might teach us a lot about the events that happened after Generation 4 ended. Before I began watching Generation 5, I wrote a story that addresses some of that potential, which I only link here to illustrate the aforementioned potential to you.
Making the decision whether to watch Generation 5 or not is up to you, of course. But I have no reason not to recommend it.