Self Indulgent 2023 Writing Retrospective

NOTICE: all the images are broken. i cant be bothered to fix them. trust me, this post looked baller when i first published it.

I know we're like half a month into 2024, but it shouldn’t be too late to do one of these, right?

2023 was the year I finally got into writing fics, after years of trying and failing to do it over and over. There were some other stories on my Fimfic page which I have delisted and put into publicly accessible google doc because I felt they were far too out of place for the kinds of things I aimed to write. Especially when they’re a really poor representation of my skills. Basic errors like not being able to keep it consistently in the past tense or present tense. This even cropped into the writing I did off this site, such as that big chunky lore document of mine.

Overall, I published 9 stories totalling 142,471 words in 2023. A considerable improvement over the 0 stories totalling 0 words I published from 2018 to 2022. The year as a whole has been a lot for me, though I’m going to try and exclusively focus on writing for this post. I’ll mention life events when they have an important influence on what came of my writing.

Each section will be written under the assumption that you’ve read the story it’s about, and as such will be spoiler heavy. Maybe skip a section if you haven’t gotten around to that story yet.

Also, just to make the title even less appropriate, I’m really going to start the story in December 2022. With something that has absolutely nothing to do with ponies.

Spartacist Germany Video

This is where I really got my writing gears turning. A lot of you may have never heard of this, which is funny considering it's probably the most viewed piece of original content I’ve ever made. After years of doing pony stuff, the thing I make that kinda blows up is something completely unrelated I made on a whim.

I won’t go into detail about the scenario presented in the video, you can watch it here if it sounds interesting to you: https://youtu.be/P1aq99NnftM But in short, it’s an alternate history video exploring what Europe/the world might’ve looked like if there had been a successful communist takeover of Germany at the end of World War I.

For the month of November 2022 I was practically possessed by a creative spirit forcing me to make this video. Whenever I had free time I was researching, consulting with friends who knew the topic, writing, drawing, animating, the whole shabang. I’ve had a general idea of the scenario in my head for a long time, as the interwar period is my favourite time in history to read and learn about, and here is where I finally got round to making something out of it. I’ve always been interested in alternate history as a genre of fiction, stemming from my love of history in general. No wonder I went and made a big AU with tons of history for the thing I’m most obsessed with, eh?

I quickly decided to draw countryballs for the video’s visuals because that shit’s so fucking popular online like have you seen how big those videos gets? Some hack loser slaps a bunch of countryballs over their terrible political thesis and it gets five mcgillion views. Okay the actual reason is that countryballs, owing to their origins as a crude mouse-drawn MSpaint webcomic, are super easy to draw a lot of quickly. You don’t need to put in a lot of work to make them look expressive, and they do a good job of representing abstract concepts like nations, political movements, demographics, etc. Even though I have some personal reservations about countryballs/polandball in general (don’t get me started), it’s simply too useful of a style to pass up on using.

I do regret not citing sources in the video, as it means that the factual claims made in the video are effectively unsubstantiated. But it's a choice I made consciously at the time as I didn’t want to give a fictional work an aura of factual credibility. Which, for the record, is what this is: Fiction. Not a credible statement on what definitely would have happened, because nobody can know that, people only make educated guesses. I personally get the feeling that a lot of the “established” alternate history channels on YouTube forget that they’re writing total fiction regardless of how well substantiated they think their fictions are.

Quite prophetically I said in the video that it was either going to pop off super hard or that nobody would watch it. Fortunately, the former was true. It’s sitting at 54k views as I write this, with a largely positive response (over 3000 likes to under 100 dislikes). Even over a year later I get comments like “great job! this is the good timeline!” and a few more critical folks who say “this is just a communist fantasy but good visuals”. Honestly, I appreciate all fair and warranted compliments and criticisms. The funniest compliments I got were people calling it “unbiased” which like, bro did you watch the video. I think they got that impression because I described communism as “authoritarian”, which most people just take as a synonym for “mean and bad” (as far as I think, all political systems are authoritarian and the difference depends on who is wielding authority and for what purpose). As with any alt history video about Germany in the 20th century there were a bunch of nazi sympathising wankers in the comments, but it’s easy to just delete their comments and move on.

Now, with that kind of success, why didn’t I make another video like this?

Simply put, I didn’t feel like it. I never intended to make a career out of it or for it to make money (the video’s got like a dozen swastikas in the first thirty seconds that's insta demonetised lmao), I just made it for the sake of it. I have a half finished script for a video on Argentina winning the Falklands/Malvinas war sitting in my gdocs that I never turned into anything because I didn’t have the same drive. Really, the impact of this video is that it gave me the confidence I needed to know I could write things that people would like to read or watch.

This gets us to the part you probably care about.

Culture Shock

With writing confidence gained, I set out to write a fic introducing the world of the New Lunar Millennium. I had a lot of ideas for where to start with all this, some I later developed into full stories, some I scrapped entirely, and others that may eventually see the light of the moon. The main issue with these stories is that they tended to be a little too ambitious for a first fic. Think multi-chapter adventures exploring multiple locations with a large cast of characters.

My solution was to start small. Figure out how to write decent prose, believable dialogue, cohesive story structure, and then I could move onto larger projects with more moving parts. I had a few ideas, one about Tempest Shadow in NLM (which I have already touched on in my drawings), one about Selenite arriving in the EaW nation of Chiropterra for the first time, and another which eventually became Red Scare. I didn’t do either the Tempest one or Red Scare (yet!) because they felt a little too far along in the timeline for the first fic in the series.

The Chiropterra story idea suited my needs just fine. Along with being relatively easy to write, as it was mostly just ponies in rooms talking, it served to introduce many of the main elements of the setting. Show Nightmare Moon, show how she related to her followers, show the competing philosophies amongst her followers, show the reach of her rule, draw people in with the clear Equestria at War connection, and introduce readers to Selenite.

For the cover art I got lazy and just used a picture I’d already done of the three main characters and edited it into a book cover image. This started the trend of me wanting all my NLM stories to have covers that could actually work as a book cover to give them the feeling of novels/novellas. Aesthetically it's very pleasing to have that sort of consistency in my library, whilst making breaks from this consistent theme appropriately stark. This will come up later.

It also began the tradition of starting every scene like this:

22:27 - 18/02/1001 - Grand Imperial Palace, New Ayacachtli

Why do I do this? I could tell you that it’s to help orient the viewer when there’s a lot of different things happening at the same time whilst firmly attaching it to a solid chronology. But the real reason is that this is how scenes are introduced in Hotline Miami. Time, date, location. That’s literally the reason, I really like Hotline Miami. 

Another tradition it started is that I have to include at least one reference to Breaking Bad and/or Better Call Saul in every story. Some are more subtle than others and I honestly don’t even remember all of them, but they’re there! In this one there’s two, one where Auburn uses the disobedient dog metaphor that Gus used in BCS, and the other is when Lucent goes “YES! HELL YEAH!” like Jesse in that bit in Four Days Out. You know the one, right? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYnAX0iMCqs)

I sought the help of Wooliewarrior, the (now former) Equestria at War contributor who created the characters of Auburn Leaf and Lucent Eclipse just so I’d know I was getting them right. For their part, they were very helpful and I’m grateful that they dedicated some of their time to my dumb ass. I presented the first draft to them and they provided useful feedback on their characterisation and on the niches of Chiropterran politics in EaW.

After that… Well, there was nothing for a bit. It needed to be proofread and edited, and seeing as I wrote it it wouldn’t be very effective if I did it myself. I’d be heavily biased in favour of my own decisions and I’d miss my own mistakes. Maybe for about two weeks it sort of just sat there. I was asking friends if they’d like to take a look at the story to proofread or edit and everyone I asked was otherwise occupied. It was kind of frustrating as I had a story so close to publication RIGHT THERE but you know, nobody owes me their time and labour. I could’ve published it unedited but, egh, that’s how you embarrass yourself and get stuck with subpar work attached to your name. My aim was to publish it before I left for Harmonycon 2023 in Texas (I live in England, so it's a long trip with not a lot to do on the way there), and as the date drew closer it seemed more and more unlikely.

FORTUNATELY, and I am EXTREMELY grateful for this, my friend who goes by Izzy Incraft gave it a full proofread and a detailed edit. A surprising number of edits were just minor spelling mistakes, but seriously, going onto the doc and seeing that Izzy had made over 100 edits here and there and left valuable feedback for the story generally made my morning that day. Izzy has been my editor for pretty much every single story since, and for that I’m forever grateful.

Finally, on February 15th, I had the story published. This was the day before I flew out to Harmonycon, so I was in something of a rush at that time. I thought that the story might do kinda well but that wasn’t at the top of my mind, I was just glad it was published as I was preparing for my flight. But oh boy, did it surpass my expectations! While I was in the airports waiting for flights I was watching the story pop off like mad and get to the top of the site’s featured box. Needless to say, massively encouraging and I’m thankful to everyone who read it and left feedback.

I was also happy to see that the fic spawned something of a lively debate in its comments over the competing philosophies of Selenite, Lucent, and Auburn, and that basically nobody was agreeing with Auburn’s completely evil worldview. It was a nice change of pace after having to read comments from straight up nazis on the Germany video. Instead the conversation was more about the effectiveness of their respective proposals for Nightmare’s imperialist project, with others more sceptical of her supposed anti-slavery position.

Looking back on it now, there are probably a few things I would have tried to do differently, especially in regards to how certain characters act and with the specifics of dialogue. After all I was just finding my footing (hoofing?). Of course, FimFic allows you to easily edit published stories, but that’s a rabbit hole I want to stay well away from. Once you go in to change one plot point or one line of dialogue, you open the flood gates to change everything, and before you know it you’re forever editing this one story instead of moving on to something new. Aside from spelling/grammar fixes, once a story is published, it’s done. No more work needs to be done. Anything more should simply be taken as a learning experience for future endeavours.

Shifting Sides

I started writing Shifting Sides whilst an unfinished draft of Culture Shock was waiting to be edited. Seeing as Culture Shock was just ponies in rooms talking about politics, for this story I wanted something a little more kinetic. More than anything to prove to myself that I was capable of writing engaging, fast paced, and well choreographed action.

To me, Grim Fate was obviously the right character for this. She’s a powerful mage with basically no moral boundaries, so it gave me the chance I needed to let loose with the action. And by setting it at the tail end of the war between the Lunar Empire and King Sombra, it meant I could show a lot about the setting too. For one, it gave me a chance to show the callous amorality of the Lunar Empire with them spending so much time positioning themselves as the heroes only to offer an easy get out to Grim in exchange for her talents. The historical parallels to Operation Paperclip and Operation Osoaviakhim are very much intentional.

Part of the story was written whilst I was travelling to Texas for Harmonycon 2023. I may have intended to do some more writing whilst I was at the con but I’m fairly sure I didn’t. I was dedicated to having fun that weekend, including a moment where my life PEAKED (https://youtu.be/sPHtTAZCOnE&t=11833). This sort of thing will happen again.

For a while ‘unnamed grim story’ was the only title I had in mind. My friend Ebonyglow suggested ‘Shifting Sides’, as people like alliteration. Ebonyglow also helped out in editing the first half or so of the story, with the remainder being edited by Izzy again. Can’t thank them enough, really.

I also decided to commission a piece of art for the cover rather than draw it myself. I’d tried to draw it myself, but nothing I sketched out really felt like it was hitting the mark. I chose a friend of mine, ModularPon, to draw it as they have a good track record of taking my prompts and turning them into something truly vivid and dynamic. For a while though, the story sat in a finished state waiting to be published as I waited for the cover art to be completed. I think I even paid Mod extra to have it done on an accelerated timetable.

I can’t complain really, the cover looks great. And for all I know, it might be the reason the story performed as well as it did given all the positive comments that the cover got. It wasn’t read as much as Culture Shock (none of my stories were), but everyone who did read it seemed to like it.

One of the comments on the story mentions how it presents a theme of gradual disempowerment. At first Grim is fighting unknown numbers of soldiers, then powerful mages, then a small squad of other soldiers, and at the end she's put in her place by a bureaucrat. Thing is, I didn't intend for this at all. It sort of just happened. If I was trying to puff myself up I'd call this “themes emerging organically” but in all honesty it's just a happy accident.

And then, to my surprise, the story got reviewed by two different reviewers on the site! One just a couple months after by Stinium_Ruide of the Advisor’s Cove (https://www.fimfiction.net/group/216784/advisors-cove/thread/516790/recommendation-of-shifting-sides-by-moonatik) and one way later in September by PaulAsaran who posted it to their own blog (https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1022000/pauls-thursday-reviews-cccxxxix).

Both reviews were pretty light in criticism. Hell, Stinium_Ruide didn’t even call their review a review, they called it a recommendation. Got to say it's a nice feeling to have when someone straight up says “this is good and you should read it” about something I’ve made. I do like having fair and constructive criticism, for the record, but who’s going to turn down glowing yet justified praise? PaulAsaran concluded their review by saying that it wasn’t really for them and that they didn’t think it was anything amazing, but still put it on their “Worth It” bookshelf. That’s a W in my eyes.

I mentioned in the comments of PaulAsaran’s review that I was surprised that of all the stories on the page, this is the one that got the most attention from reviewers and the like because I agreed with Paul that it wasn’t particularly special. Paul mentioned in their reply that the story had an engaging premise, and “It's almost a shame how significant a difference good cover art can make”. Soo, thanks again to Modular!

Marks of the Moon

I had the various cutie mark origin stories for my OCs clearly laid out in my head for a long time but I wasn’t sure how best to present them. They’re described fairly dryly in my lore doc, but that’s pretty boring to anyone who isn’t a lore fiend like me. Actually, it’s pretty boring to me as well.

I figured instead of having to write out all their stories with all their context and detail, I could make it a simple anthology of all the most important moments linked together with a framing device. You know, like the actual Cutie Mark Chronicles episode. You didn’t need a full 22-minute episode to see how Rarity got her cutie mark when a one and a half minute sequence is far more effective and efficient. Something about brevity and wit.

Doing it this way also ensured that for all of my main OCs there is at least some written content featuring them centre stage. Plenty of unique chances to show off a varying set of perspectives.

Originally I didn’t have the characters telling their stories in the first person, but whilst I was writing Sol Nightshade’s chapter I came across a bit of a snag in the FOKIN’ PRONOWNS department. Sol is transgender, and his cutie mark story is set before he transitioned. At that point in his life he and everyone around him would have used she/her pronouns, but would he refer to himself with those pronouns in the present? There’s also the matter of it potentially being confusing to a reader to see Sol use he/him in the present and she/her in the past. A dilemma to be sure. I asked a friend of mine, who goes by Danielle666 on fimfic, what she thought and she suggested doing it with the first person presentation. Honestly it made it so much easier all around and it never would’ve come up if I hadn’t included a trans character.

At first the framing device of the CMC showing up and asking for stories was meant to be nothing more than that, a framing device. But as I kept going I realised there was potential for it to be much more interesting if I set some focus aside for their unique perspectives on the setting. Seeing as many of my OCs are pretty high-up (Selenite commands NMM’s armies, Carte is an elite secret agent, Grim is a powerful necromancer) the perspectives of normal people, the “silent majority” so to speak, get missed. The CMC were great for this, as they were raised in this turbulent time of transition where most of their fundamental beliefs on the world would’ve been formed, and at this point in the timeline they’re in the midst of adolescence. It becomes a good source of intrigue for the setting, and becomes a good source of conflict when those opinions diverge. Meant I had more work to do in the end, but it was worth it in my opinion.

Generally I’m pretty satisfied with each of their stories showing an important side of their characters and key stages of their development. The exception is with Grim, sort of. Her story features ponies from a family I’ve never mentioned outside my lore document before and shows her actually caring for another person. Not completely out of character for her as far as I know, she’s still the same pony just in a different stage in her life.

While I was writing this one I set up a little DM group of some of my fellow writing friends to help provide input from a wide range of perspectives. They came in handy pretty quick.

There’s a deleted passage towards the ending where Carte goes into excessive detail describing sadistic torture. But after reading it over I realised that it might be too much for a story like this. I consulted that group of writing friends about it and they all agreed that it was way too much. I may have gone too far in a few places.

Sol’s story was the exception to the earlier mentioned rule of me having ideas in mind for them all, it was more or less made up on the spot. I also know next to nothing about football or how to play it so I hope the scene where he’s playing made a lick of sense.

When I wrote Pocarona’s story I asked my editor Izzy to not proofread or edit the part where he’s narrating. It’s meant to be full of non sequiturs and errors, but as a consequence it's full of parts that I just forgot to write something. It’s in character for Poca though, so it’s fine!

There’s a moment where the narration explains the CMC’s individual perspectives, but in the original cut it was waaay too long and I had to slash it down a lot. Nearly 600 words cut down to around 250. I still have the original lying around somewhere, but I’m not sure if there’s much use for it beyond reference material.

I was also pretty surprised at how long Selenite’s chapters ended up being. Of course, she has multiple scenes across her story taking place over several nights so that’s to be expected . I’m sure that’s fine seeing as she’s the closest thing to a “main character” in this setting

Some of you might have noticed that I changed the cover image when I was finished, then later changed it back. I made the new cover image as I thought it’d get more interest, but after a while I realised the original image just looked better.

Overall though, I’m pretty satisfied with how this one turned out. I still sometimes go back and read it for my own enjoyment. I like my OCs, alright?

Private Pinkie

I already went off a little about this one in the blog post that announced it. Read that if you want more info. (https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1016545/new-story-announcement-private-pinkie-plus-rambling)

Weirdly enough the Pie sisters are the one set of characters I’ve had decent NLM ideas with for the longest time. They’re such an eclectic bunch and a ton of fun to write, especially Pinkie. Probably how I was able to have this one written in less than two weeks. Though even for something developed on such an accelerated timetable, it changed a fair amount over that time.

I developed a technique for writing at work covertly during this time, where instead of hiding away and writing on my phone, I’d scribble notes/lines onto loose bits of cardboard or into a notebook. This makes a huge difference, and I need more people to know this. If you work a dull job, get a notebook. Managers and supervisors HATE seeing phones on when you’re “not supposed to be on your phone”, but writing in a notebook? Look, as long as you’re not pushing it too far, a manager or supervisor sees you with a notebook out and they think nothing of it. With a notebook in your hands you look like you’re doing something important and you look smart. I’m writing MLP fanfiction on the clock and they’re none the wiser, I honestly feel like I’ve unlocked a perk or discovered a cheat code with this, please use this. Unless you are a manager or supervisor then uhh pretend you didn’t read any of that.

Oh, right, the story.

Here’s one of those loose bits of cardboard, developing certain scenes in this story:

You know that bit in The Boys where Homelander is talking to himself in the mirror? That formed the basis of inspiration for the mirror scene here, hence why it says “Homelander esque mirror scene” in the notes. But I absolutely wanted to avoid it becoming a straight up carbon copy of that scene as, well, Pinkie is not fucking Homelander. In an earlier draft it was pretty similar, with the mirror character giving the “real” character a psychotic pep talk. Instead I tried to play on an idea of Pinkie and Pinkamena being two minds inhabiting the same head and existing in a symbiotic relationship where the judgement of one regulates the instincts of the other. 

I’m sure this concept of a Pinkie/Pinkamena two-minds-one-brain thing has been done before. Someone even said it reminded them of how Pinkie was presented in Project Horizons, though this wasn’t what influenced me. I’ve never read PH, the only FoE stories I’ve ever read are CaptainHoers’s duology (which are really good and get my wholehearted endorsement). I was actually more so inspired by, WAIT FOR IT, how Luke Skywalker was presented in a completely non controversial and universally liked movie called The Last Jedi. Neither Pinkie in this or Luke in that isolated themselves into a jaded slump because of fear or cowardice, but because they thought they were doing something positive. In TLJ this was in subtext so a lot of people missed it (INCLUDING THE WRITERS OF THE NEXT MOVIE IN THE SERIES HOW DID THEY FUCK UP STAR WARS THAT BAD) but I made it a little more explicit in this story. Pinkie’s a good natured pony, on the whole, so I felt this was appropriate.

It just dawned on me how “yeah so this character was inspired partly by Homelander and partly by Luke Skywalker” sounds insane. I swear I have good media literacy. I understand what these characters are meant to represent in their respective works.

Part of the fun of writing Pinkie is that because she’s the most cartoonish cartoon character in this cartoon world you can have her get away with basically anything and do things that are physically impossible. That’s fun, but what’s even more fun is when she does something both wacky and realistic. A friend in the DM group offered the idea of Pinkie using ANFO as her main explosive for the bomb plot, because using a coffee grinder to grind up the ammonium nitrate in fertiliser to mix with fuel oil is a really silly sounding thing but something used in actual bomb plots like those of the IRA.

I included OC cameos from two friends, PapaFlame and Lameness, as (I mean this with nothing but love) I felt their personas would be exactly what I'd need to traumatise Pinkie Pie. If you pay attention to other art about an Empress Nightmare Moon you've probably seen Lameness's OC, Blaze. "oc:blaze (shadowbolt)" on Derpibooru. His entire thing is being a powerful sadistic supervillain, so it's an easy match. Flame's OC was designed by me especially for things like this, as he had a pony OC but hadn't used it or updated its design since like 2014. Flame was especially appropriate as he and I have made YouTube videos together in the past, hence why his OC created the video detailed in the fic. 

But if I have one main regret about this fic, it's that I didn't do enough to really show a specific aspect of the Lunar Military. Flame and Blaze, murderous psychopaths and pyromaniacs, are supposed to be the norm. By having those two show Pinkie the tape alone, it implies they're off doing their own thing while the rest of the army are varying levels of fine and dandy. If I rewrote it, I'd have a full audience show Pinkie the tape with them all laughing along with Flame and Blaze. But again, that's the rabbit hole of constant reediting I do not want to go down. I'll take it as something I oughta show in future stories, which I already have some ideas for.

Even now I’m kinda surprised at how quickly I wrote it. On a 1000 words a day target this sort of thing is nothing, but I barely reach that 1000 words a day target! If only I could keep this sort of effort up consistently.

I also ended up changing a small aspect of the cover image late in development, as a friend suggested I should add a to-do list with the ingredients of Pinkie’s bomb plot. A cropped version of the cover without the to-do list still exists on the blog post announcing it, linked above.

Currently it’s the least viewed story on my page. I was a little surprised at this because I thought more people would be curious about Pinkie in a Nightmare Moon ruled Equestria. Guess not! I had fun writing it though, which is all that really matters in the end.

Remember that DM group I mentioned earlier?

Only the most serious and productive conversations are held there.

Also Sel and Sol shoulda gotten out of bed way quicker what was I thinking lol

Sic Semper Tyrannis

I’ve gone on record before as saying I have basically no interest in G5. I saw the 2021 movie, enjoyed it well enough, and then went about ignoring everything new. As new stuff came out my disinterest was increasingly validated.

Then I saw that they had a flashback or a teaser or something with these uncanny as fuck young Celestia and Luna models with a young Opaline. I don’t know why, but this just really pissed me off. Like, irrationally so. Enough to motivate me to spit out this 13k word fic as a way of saying “oh fuck that I can do better”.

While I was writing this one I was plunged into unemployment and had to do commissions full time to make money. You’d think, if I were a functioning adult, having more time at home would mean that I’d have more time to dedicate to writing and thus I’d be a more efficient writer. But somehow, no! I’m really stupid! My writing efficiency lagged like hell after this!

Fortunately I was able to keep to some decent standard of consistently writing for this one, prolly solely motivated by spite towards G5.

I’ve already gone over a lot of the process behind this story in the author’s notes at the end of the second chapter, so I won’t repeat myself here. You can go read it there if you’d like.

What I’ve just realised now is that even though the whole point of my setting is that Nightmare Moon is in charge, this is the first story where she’s a POV character. I do this very much intentionally and some commenters have picked up on this. The horror and evil of the Lunar Empire goes well beyond Nightmare herself. Even in this story, she’s not even doing the most horrible things by her own hoof, her minions are. No evil regime existing in the past or the present has ever been the sole work of a single ruler or politician, they’re whole systems encouraging the most vicious behavior of terrible people and co-opting the good nature of well intentioned people. Hell, sometimes those well intentioned people who have their nature co-opted are the leaders.

During editing I think it was suggested by one of my mates that the bit with Cadance felt a little out of place, but this is a decision I feel I can defend. I needed there to be something that showed that Nightmare’s rule was tyrannical rather than just saying it was so. Sure, if I said it people would believe it without much trouble, but show don't tell is a principle of storytelling for a good reason. It also helped juxtapose Luna and Nightmare, demonstrating what they did after achieving victory. Luna is with Celestia delivering aid to the freed ponies, whilst Nightmare is threatening her foes with torture and demanding their surrender.

At some point I planned on writing a whole surrender speech for Cadance to deliver but realised that it was unnecessary. I struggled to get it written at all, so it felt more and more like a pointless effort. Personally I think this was the right call, I couldn’t really imagine having to read a whole speech in the middle of the story which would likely break the flow.

One regret I have is making the final internal monologue (or dialogue, depending on how you interpret it) that Nightmare Moon has with some undescribed inner conscience a little too on the nose. I feel now that having the whole thing about Nightmare Moon/Luna realising she might have become what she hated be written out in unambiguous plain text was a misstep, and it would've been more effective if I had it in subtext.

And on G5, from what I can see they’re still using FiM as a crutch for attention and concepts in ways that just feel really disrespectful to the source material. I won’t go off too much here because I haven’t actually watched any of it lol. Some people really like G5, and that’s fine. But I can tell that it isn’t for me.

Though, hang on. Does it make me a hypocrite for accusing G5 of looting bits and pieces from FiM for its own shit whilst I am looting bits and pieces of G5 for my own shit? Uhh, I’ll leave that to you.

Midnight Starlight

There was… a process to getting this story into a finished state. I already talked about this in a previous blog entry, read it here if you want: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/1018821/new-story-announcement-midnight-starlight

Because I feel it’s worth mentioning here, in the original draft of this story Saitasuna was the protagonist, but I pushed her out of the central spotlight for the end because she’s kind of boring to centre a whole story around. She’s kinda like M in the James Bond series, has some interesting traits here and there but they have a straightforward role in the plot that doesn't need to be deviated from. It’s the Bond series and not the M series for a reason. Then again they did make Judi Dench’s M a great character in her own right, so perhaps there’s potential for Saitasuna.

That original plot went more or less as follows: Saitasuna discovers Our Town, meets Starlight, Saitasuna leaves. Nightmare Moon takes an interest in Our Town, assigns Saitasuna to investigate closer with help from an oneiromancer, she goes back. Saitasuna is caught in Our Town and equalised, Starlight fails to brainwash her, Nightmare Moon comes and personally arrests Starlight and exposes her fraud. Starlight is convicted for her crimes, Saitasuna offers a lesser sentence in exchange for her magic knowledge, Starlight accepts. Saitasuna gets promoted or something idk, Starlight meets Applejack in prison, Sunburst revealed to be doing Starlight’s magic under Saitasuna’s supervision.

Maybe this outline sounds interesting to you. To me, it doesn’t. After having written a first draft of it that came to about 20k words, I can tell you that it wasn’t that interesting. That’s what first drafts are for, of course, to know whether ideas work or not. I showed this earlier draft to a prospective editor and they COOKED it. Justifiably so, in my opinion. Gave me the kick in the pants I needed to say “ok this plot doesn’t work I need to go back to the drawing board”.

For some time before publishing I had little bits and pieces of that early draft sitting around that I managed to patch onto the version I actually ended up publishing. But this one went under a lot of change as I was in the midst of writing. Scenes were added and removed, story sequences were lengthened and shortened, whole characters were added and dropped.

Also, you know how Izzy has been the editor for basically all my stories? Whilst I was writing this one, they visited the UK and I offered to let them crash at my place for a bit. While they were here, they edited one of the chapters and we had a lively discussion in person over it. That was nice, I should have more friends around for stuff like that. Too bad nearly all my mates live across the pond.

It became kind of a slog to write towards the end where I was only really writing it because I knew some people were reading and enjoying it. Gotta finish what you start, right? Ultimately, I am pleased with how this one turned out. I think I did a decent enough job.

I managed to get this one written at a decent pace because I wanted to keep myself to something of a consistent posting schedule. But I couldn’t really keep it up, as I thought about starting another project.

The Millennium Archives

In the middle of writing Midnight Starlight I felt like I needed a break from my singular focus on that story. I had a few other ideas for stories, but a lot of them ended up being either non-starters or just something I lost interest in after giving them a try. But if there’s something I’ve always had a knack for? Big chunky lore documents, baby!

My main lore document was written years ago in a bit of a rush. I pumped out a first draft based on what I thought sounded cool at the moment and didn’t really do any other drafts. I’ve made edits and additions since that were generally of higher quality, but even now some of the stuff in my big public lore doc is really showing its age. Beyond just not living up to current standards, there were certain fundamental errors like a lot of it being in an inconsistent tense, flipping between present and past tense willy nilly.

Everything in that older doc was also presented fairly objectively. There were small moments here and there where I presented certain topics as if there was debate around them, but they were the exception rather than the rule. What I believed would be much more interesting was instead to have a bunch of different perspectives on the various bits of lore scattered throughout, leaving it up to the viewer to decide what actually happened. Including some straight up lies! There are passages in this that contradict other passages, and even some passages in this that contradict moments from other stories. I’ll leave it to the eagle eyed readers to find what those are.

I think I started on the “Moonatik pone shows you the documents” concept back in April. I expected it to be really easy to do it that way because that would just be me writing my own personality, and I find myself often hyper aware of my own mannerisms and such. Like I’d say something IRL and my next thought would be “damn did i really say it like that”. It ended up being a little harder than that because I still need to be coherent, don’t I lol.

You might have noticed that this one breaks away from the “book cover format” of other New Lunar Millennium stories. This was intentional, it made it stand out from the rest and gave it a specific vibe. The other stories are like novellas, stories you read as stories, and are presented as such. In this one, you’re with Moonatik pone in the archives and he’s showing you all these documents.

Not sure if anybody’s commented on this yet, but I chose to have the story be presented in the present tense so it gives the impression of everything happening with you in the moment rather than everything being something that already happened. It’s a little tricky to get out of the “keep everything in past tense” standard of prose writing, which is kind of ironic considering what I said at the start.

By its very nature, this is a story that’s going to be in a perpetually incomplete state. There’s no broader plot that this is building up to, or an ending of any sorts in mind, and I doubt it’ll make much sense for me to take a hard turn away from the current concept. If I want to write a story featuring Moonatik pone, I’ll write a story featuring Moonatik pone. Whenever I get round to writing more for it, I’ll likely have a section for this story repeated in future retrospectives. If I do future retrospectives. We’ll see.

Red Scare

At the end of September I set off for Mare Fair 2023 in Orlando. I was planning on using some of the time spent waiting in airports or waiting on planes to write. Then I didn’t, I was tired. Then once I was in Orlando I hoped to use the downtime between con events to write. Then I didn’t, I was too busy having fun at the con and with my mate for the rest of the week that I didn’t bother writing anything. Mare Fair was great, by the way, if you were there you may remember me as the hot tub twink or as the annoying engineer who kept interrupting a certain other writer's panel.

Either way, October ended up being a pretty quiet month because of this. At least as far as writing is concerned. Then I was wacked in the face with inspiration.

See, I’m in a little server with some artist friends where we do a weekly prompt rotation thing. Each participant is randomly assigned to another participant, and both in that pair give the other a prompt of something to draw. Mid October was the buildup to Halloween so prompts were taking on a spooky/gloomy tone, and I was given “Lunarist Alesia Snezhnaya” as a prompt. I drew that, and hey, look, now I have a cover for that Alesia story I started months ago!

That honestly kicked me into writing gear. It helped that I already had a draft for early parts of the story written out and a plot outline ready to go. That outline was used pretty much unchanged as I had little I wanted to change about it.

One of the fun things about writing this one is that pretty much all the action took place in the dark, so the POV character, Alesia, couldn’t see what was going on. It meant I had to write fight scenes with non visual senses at the forefront. A challenge to be sure, but a fun one.

I played with Alesia’s perspective a lot during this one. For instance, before the people who kidnapped her directly threaten her brother, the prose refers to them as “ponynappers”. It’s a fairly neutral description of them in relation to their actions. But after they threaten Maksim, the prose refers to them as “terrorists”. There’s now a highly charged term in the text, demonstrating how Alesia’s perspective has shifted. I was proud of that, not going to lie.

There’s a deleted passage towards the ending where Carte goes into excessive detail describing sadistic torture. But after reading it over I realised that it might be too much for a story like this. Hey, wait, didn’t I say that earlier? I have a problem with Going Too Far In A Few Places.

Seeing as this focuses on another EaW character I went and asked the bloke who wrote Alesia, DraconianHorizons, for their input. Much like Woolie with Culture Shock, they were very helpful. Provided some useful insight on certain parts of Alesia’s character that I missed or overstated.

With it all ready, I published, relieved that I got a story out. The first comment was someone praising the Waffen-SS for “fighting the right enemy”. I swear, something about the internet has gotten certain sorts of people way too comfortable saying the most horrific shit that would get them decked in the face if they said it in meatspace.

It had a mostly positive reception, but as of now it’s the most downvoted story on my page. I’m not that surprised as it’s openly concerned with political ideas that have heavy real-world connotations. Plus there’s a uhhh lively conversation in the comments. I didn’t want to get too involved as it’s not a great look to be arguing about irl politics on the comments of my own stuff. I could only hold my tongue so much though, haha. Some people really think they’re breaking the mould when they say the most boring shit you’ve ever heard in your entire life.

Chrys Cringle

And amongst all the preceding stories, an anomaly. No heavy lore. No sprawling AU. No dystopian drama. A light slice of life comedy for the holiday season.

This was for the site’s annual Secret Santa event, Jinglemas. During my continuing writing slump I thought that joining an event where I had a specific goal with a firm deadline would help motivate me, which luckily it did.

My prompt was from a site user who goes by Mindscape, who wanted something with Chrysalis. No restrictions, so I could do whatever I liked. I figured something festive would fit the event’s theme and I quickly settled on the idea of Chrysalis as a Mall Santa. It seemed very appropriately funny for Chrysalis, but I had no idea how to take it anywhere beyond that basic idea.

Fortunately I had a little help from my friends. Izzy came up with a general outline for the plot and others in the group suggested little bits and pieces that added up to larger jokes and scenes. The name “Neighbells” came from my mother. I asked her something to the effect of “You know how if you had a horse harry potter you’d call them harry trotter, what would you call a horse father christmas?” and she came up with Neighbells like instantly. I’m amazed she perfectly understood the question but I guess she’s used to my shit after having to raise me lmao.

This is also the only story on my page, currently, to not be in the New Lunar Millennium canon. I also don’t have a lot to say about this one lol.

I don’t know if I’ll do Jinglemas next year, but this was a nice change of pace. Generally enjoyable to write, and people liked it. We’ll see at the time.

If you’re wondering, this is what I got out of the event: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/546521/jingle-bells-this-song-smells I wanted something about Starlight and Trixie wanting to put an end to an annoying Christmas song, and Frazzle2Dazzle brought that idea to life. It’s a pretty fun story, I suggest you check it out.

Future

There’s a trap I often find myself falling into. When I publicly signal an intention to make something my drive to finish it falls off a cliff.

That said, I do have plenty more fics in the works. I have one fic that’s basically finished, and I’ll have posted sometime after I post this. There’s a few more WIPs that I wanna keep details about close. I’ve had ideas for several New Lunar Millennium stories, and a handful of non-NLM one-shots I might want to try now that I’ve done it.

For longer than a year now I’ve been developing a collaborative story with a certain other writer. We already have a couple chapters ready to publish as soon as I finish up some promotional art pieces and commission a cover. If you’ve been paying close attention to my stories and this post you might be able to guess who that certain other writer is.

As for that story that’s ready to go? Here’s a peek at the cover:

Seeya, ponies.