The King (and Nyx) are Back! · 2:20pm Aug 3rd, 2023
(image by Evehly)
I've been gone a long time and I did the one thing I hated that other writers whose work I cared about did - leaving and dropping off the face of Equestria without a trace.
For that, I apologize.
The latest great writer to bail out of FIMFiction was the author of a story that, when I first started reading it, was amazing and I was completely hooked. Unfortunately, while it started out merely dark, it began turning very, very grimdark. The last I had read of it was a horrific scene of Starlight Glimmer having her cutie mark literally cut out of her flank and mounted in a Griffin’s victory book of cutie marks from other conquered ponies. I stopped reading it at that time because that act seriously crossed a line of gore and out of characterizations in the world of Equestria and in the MLPverse I knew from the t.v. series and loved.
Still, I held out hope that the story might one day redeem itself somehow. So despite this gruesome treatment of Starlight Glimmer, I checked in on the author once a year, hoping he would turn the story around into something less sickeningly violent. I held out hope because he is seriously such an amazing author. That author is Boomstick Mick and unfortunately, I can't even tell you the name of the story because he took the damn thing completely off the website.
So now, thanks to blue-hart for rekindling my interest in writing King Sombra, I'm back with new fire for writing King Sombra fic and with new ideas for new stories and finishing up old ones. And the reason I left wasn't because I lost interest in our Pony of Shadows. I never will. He's the one thing I love among the characters I always write about in my worlds - the way I write him, he's an evil character that wasn't born evil, but somewhere along the line, he made decisions that were perhaps selfishly motivated, misunderstood or even what he thought were in the best interest for all at the time.
And what made me disappointed enough to leave writing him back in October 2019 was that My Little Pony Gen 4 denied the original intent, purpose and potential in him by making him a safer, work & child-friendly sap that, more than anything, resembled a succubus from another world who was a joke, prancing around like a 1980s, stereotypical gay boy suffering from severe narcissism and an ego problem the size of Equestria.
Now I want to go on record that I DO NOT have a problem with the gay community or any of its various permutations. I have close gay friends and my goddaughter is bixsexual and neurodivergent and I love her like crazy. My problem came in the end because Sombra ended up as a character COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from what they had started out with and became such an awful joke in the fan community. He was, in the end, only fit to make fun of.
He had started out as a terrifying figure full of anger, a strong figure with great power, yet was completely and utterly emasculated in the very last episodes of the series.
I never expected them to validate any of our perceptions or versions of the character of King Sombra, but still, I couldn't stomach what they had done to him. At the time it had left a bad taste in my mouth I couldn’t get out and killed my desire to write for him. To this day, I still believe that they could have found another way to write him that would have kept the element of fear, but not gone so over the top as to make him an unrealistic fit in the MLPverse. I mean, c’mon, after all, they KNEW that the audience for this version of My Little Pony was not the same as previous generations. None of their audience was made up of little babies terrified of scary monsters. So in the end, shame on Hasbro and shame on any pressure they put on the story writers to demean the awesome character that is King Sombra.
So where does that leave me? Why am I back? Because I have come to another critical juncture in my life that brings me back to my overwhelming desire to write, and the universe, which is not only enabling this to happen, is leading me in that direction. I’m of the age where I no longer want to be a caregiver. My last job ended two weeks ago with the death of a very dear friend of 40 years. I found closure in taking care of his physical needs and reconnecting with him, deepening the friendship we had, being there for him in his last days above ground, and that, in my opinion, is the best way to end a career caring for others.
So what do I have in store for my long-time fans? Since this is already a long-ass post and we all have other things to do, I'm going to leave this here for you now. Know that I am back, but I will give you more details in another post quite soon. I hope everyone is well, but you better mind your manners and, as always remember to -
Hail King Sombra!
Sorry to hear about your real life situation but also to hear you are planning to write more of this stories again. I wish you good luck on your
endeavors.
Thanks Mix-Up. It's good to be active again.
Welcome back! I look forward to seeing what you write!
Welcome back, I still lurk here and am still picking at my next story, but work has been busy so been writing slower than usual.
Ah too bad about boomstick. There's one off my RIL list though
But I have good news on that story you can't find
https://fimfetch.net/?q=&a=Boomstick+Mick
Welcome back!
5740613
Hey Ponygrad, thanks for the link. I'd forgotten about Fimfetch!
It doesn't have the story listed I was following, but I remember I'd added the link to it on my blog at hailkingsombra.com, so I went to look it up and the link still works! Weird it isn't listed in the Fimfetch results, but here it is.
Dark Arts and Kind Hearts
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/295671/dark-arts-and-kind-hearts
Heh, I remember this story, and finished reading at the same spot. Too bad, it had potential to be interesting.
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Indeed. Sadly for me, it just got too graphic in the last chapter I read. Still, Boomstick has such an amazing gift for prose, I truly hope we'll see him again in some form in the future.