An RFD Retrospective

So, it's been ten years since I finished The Rock Farmer's Daughters. It had been started in late March of 2014 on FanFiction, and I joined this site about a week later so that it could reach some pony fans. I was expecting a few people to get interested, but the way my life works--finding myself interested in some random thing no one else cares about, thus I end up getting ignored a lot--I wasn't expecting much.

While it's no fandom-spanning giant, my little fic still got quite the number of readers.

Even though I've haven't been active in this fandom for a few years, I still get a sense of glee every time someone finds the fic (whether here, on FanFiction, or AO3), has their running commentary in the comments section, and ultimately having a good time. To think that something I just wrote because it was a story I wanted to read is still managing to find new readers. ^^

I still remember when I'd stumble upon people talking about it in a thread somewhere. I remember I woke up one morning to find that someone had drawn fanart of it. I remember when someone had recommended it to a big group (at the time) and it got featured. Suddenly, this one fic of mine is getting attention, and I found myself getting really nervous every time that I posted a chapter--what if I messed it up? What if people hated the direction I was going? Am I being too predictable?

Sometimes I go back and reread it. There are some moments where I was like, "Oh, yeah, I was really cooking here!" And there are also moments where I scratch my head and wonder, "What was I thinking?"

Sometimes I sigh over the fact that a love triangle is a big plot thread in the story. Sometimes I wonder if my portrayal of the townspeople and Cortland was too much. Sometimes I feel like the letter plot point was really weak, and I wonder how I could have made that better. Sometimes I wonder if I should have done the whole Cheese being bitter about his childhood (especially in regards to his brother) differently. Sometimes I think I should have foreshadowed Seddie coming into the story, or that there was going to be a fire in the climax. Sometimes I wonder if I built up Cheese and Pinkie's romance properly. Bluejinx's introduction was kind of weird. I cringe at some of the word choices I made, find some telling where I should have been showing, find that I contrived some situations, wonder if I should have taken more time to work out the kinks in each chapter... just a lot of things that I'm seeing ten years removed from writing the story.

But, what's done is done, and changing things now (beyond correcting typos) would just be weird.

Still, there are some things that I'm still proud of. I still laugh at the mouse infestation (especially the waterfall of mice that pours onto Marble's head) and the Diamond Dog fight (mostly). I'm happy with how I portrayed the Pies--who despite their stony exterior were a loving family with distinct individuals--and especially how I wrote Igneous Rock. Still fond of how the scenes of Cheese's storytelling to the Pie sisters went, the first time that Pinkamena smiled, when she sang, when she curled her hair... a lot of things relating to how she warmed up. Still amused that Tomato Sandwich wormed his way into the story. Still proud of how I managed to shove an Applejack cameo in there. And I'm still satisfied with the climax of the story, because that housefire was something that I really wanted to get right with how intense being in the thick of it was for Cheese, Pinkie, and Igneous. And there are a lot of other things that I think I got right, even ten years later.

I will say that in the years I was active in the fandom, I did bounce around some ideas for a sequel, but most of them didn't really click with me as something that'd make sense as a follow-up (any story about the RFD AU Cheese and Pinkie meeting their canon counterparts would really not fit the down-to-earth tone of the original fic).

The one that does make the most sense was the idea of focusing on the Maud and Mudbriar relationship and how it'd happen in the RFD universe (I've mellowed out over Maud... though I still think she's overrated and don't like most of her episodes). The basic idea for that one is that it was set in winter (as opposed to RFD being set in the summer), where Maud finds herself snowed in when on a delivery trip to a town up north and has to stay with a local family until spring. Said family has three sons, the youngest of whom is Mudbriar. Would've called it "The Carpenter's Sons" if I ever got around to writing it.

But, alas, I haven't had much time or motivation to write fanfic these days. I have a few drabbles in various fandoms that are stored on Google Docs, but I've been wanting more and more to focus on my more original ideas, like the Super Rodent Squad--and a couple others; one involving two girls who regularly isekai themselves into a city full of cartoons, and the other being a twist on the Phoenix legend set in a world of birds. I oughta post something from one of the latter two on DeviantArt or Tumblr at some point, though they're not as developed as SRS.

Anyway, while I don't expect to do any Pony things anytime soon (unless I make a couple for the cartoon city, heheh), I still pop in to see what's going on. Maybe I'll drop a blog every once in a while, because I still like you people.

I'm at least glad that my mark on this fandom was something positive; a nice, down-to-earth fic about an alternate version of one of my favorite ships. If there's anyone that read it as the chapters came out back in 2014 still here...

Thank you for your support that year.