New Story: In Our Nature, or: How To Dump A Dead Body And Be So Brave About It · 11:31pm Sep 24th, 2023
My gentle readers, I wrote you some words! There's ponies in them this time! Okay, there's just one.
This was the result after an attempt at two other stories for the Cozy Glow contest that ended up being far, far, bigger in concept than I could have finished by the deadline or under 15,000 words. But because I still wanted to take a shot at the contest itself, and because the fic I was working on originally took place after the finale as a G4/G5 connector I realized I wouldn't have the chance to explore the dynamics Cozy Glow had with the rest of her evil little triumvirate. That's a pity because the dynamics of these three characters were by far the most interesting part of the last season and I had plenty to say about it.
"Okay," I said. "I'll bang out a little one-shot for the contest," I said. "It'll be short and sweet and take like a day," I said. I like to just get on stage and tell lies to myself, because what resulted was a week-long mad dash to write a paper draft, followed by a typed draft and a hell of a lot more words than I'd planned on. The nice part about this, though, is in a rush like that there's no time to second-guess yourself. Write it or don't, baby.
A longer run-down of this will hopefully come later after I've had time to think on it, but for now, I'll say this:
This story reminds me of a sleepover after it's stopped being fun. It's the dead of night and you're not really friends with most people there. You know each other and are on decent enough terms to be invited, but you're not close. Really, you barely know them. When you think about it, you might low-key hate them. But right now, you're awake. They're awake. The tv is off, and the world shrinks down to a handful of sleeping bags on the carpet. By cover of darkness, for whatever reason, you start to talk. You tell them things you've never told anyone before, and because you're not really friends, it feels safe to do so. Tomorrow you'll pretend it never happened, but for those twenty minutes in the dark, you're the closet you'll ever be.
Or something like that. Like certain parties in this story, I really need to get some sleep. Write what you know, I guess!
Here is In Our Nature, or: How To Dump A Body And Be SO Brave About It
this sounds like such a good idea :D
That's one hell of a pitch. Will definitely be reading this.
"Grr--there go, my heart's abhorrence:
Water your damn flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!"
Oooh. That sounds very, very promising indeed!
Do I dare to assume you're going to turn out those looooooong Cozy Glow-related stories someday?
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Maybe! The story I originally was going to enter is still going to happen, absolutely. I've been really excited about it ever since I thought of the concept. It's just uhhhh kind of a Big Concept of a fic that was a matter of not just word count but balancing exposition/worldbuilding with the actual story needed more time and care than the time I had. Or rather, I ended up worrying about wordcount and deadline to the point where I could see the rough draft start to suffer for it. (Especially because I started it after a six-month dry season of not writing much of anything.)
I'm on the same plan as I had in early August: write and publish Twilight Sparkle And The Martyr Of Zephyr Mountain, and if it works out, I'll see about writing a much longer story that expands on the backstory. Or if not that, several smaller stories that do the same thing.