Authors Notes: Isaac's Storm, Chapter 7 - Of Portals and People

I have a lot of notes to make about this chapter - as it's quite possibly the most important chapter in the back-story section of Isaac's Storm - so I'm making a blog entry rather than trying to cram everything in the authors' notes section.

This is my headcanon for the history of Equestria in the 'story world' of Isaac's Storm. This is the story I've had in mind for a long time to explain the human tie-in in the world of Isaac's Storm. I know some elements of this history (and the story so far in general) are cliche, after more research into what makes these stories cliche. Among these:

1. Humans banished from Equestria due to violence.
I tried to avoid this cliche by making it clear that it was well-understood and accepted in early pre-Equestria that humans were warlike by nature, but the straw that broke the camel's back was when the warlike nature became more of a threat than a benefit - and in fact human tactics were a benefit to early warfare in the land. It was just decided that trade interactions weren't as necessary as they once were, and the violence just added to the decision.

2. Ancient prophecies.
Well, it's the basic backbone of the story. Haven't gotten to this one yet, but it's an important part of the tale. I promise I'll make it actually interesting, and we're gonna go really in-depth, with an adventure just to FIND the details of the prophecy.

3. Human is fan of the show before being thrown into Equestria.
His love of the show activated the portal, thus being the only way he could've gotten in. Supposedly.

4. Twilight is the human's first and main contact.
With Twi's connection to Celestia, and the relative privacy of the library, I think it made the best sense at the time.

Despite these flaws, I hope the story proves worth reading; however, don't hold back if you think certain elements need to be improved, changed, or outright bulldozed entirely. It's a first time story (I've only written poetry and lyrics in the past, never a story, CERTAINLY never a story with 20k+ words!) so I'm well aware that my writing needs... some work.

AHEM.

I tried to use Twilight's questions as a means to answer any questions the reader may have about the backstory, in an attempt to make my convoluted tale easier to understand.

Many of the elements in the Prequestria (haha, that just randomly came to me just now. I like it.) story contained in this chapter will play a role in later chapters - there is a lot of foreshadowing here. Sort of.

Let me let you in on a secret. Wanna know why there's so much focus in this story on trade, war, cultural development, and geography? At the time I was inventing this fic, back in 2011, I was hooked on Civilization 3. Not that I'm any less hooked now - that's an awesome game that stands the test of time very well.

For the layout of Canterlot Castle, I initially opted to try to go with the flow of the show, and looked at dozens of screenshots from myriad episodes to get an idea... but ultimately decided to be generic and just mention hallways and stairways, as the exact layout of the castle has yet to be officially made clear as far as I recall.

More fun facts! I didn't even have a last name picked out for Isaac until I was writing the description for the story when I first posted it to Fimfiction a few days ago. So, I just picked the last name of a good friend of mine from work and threw it on there for the story description. I think Isaac Watts sounds pretty neat. Relatively speaking, of course.

Well in any case, I'll return to this entry to sort out any other notes I have about this chapter, if I can remember what else it was I wanted to say. Ah well.

Don't hold back with any critique or comments! I'd love to hear from you wonderful people whether it be positive or negative. I can take criticism! The story in my head is rather epic, and I'm just afraid that I'm not going to be able to translate that into an awesome story due to my limited knowledge and experience in writing longer stories. Help me to make Isaac's Storm just as amazing as it is in this maelstrom of mayhem that makes up my mind. Yay alliteration!