Is this thing on?

So! We've got blogs here. I guess that means I should try and use it, huh? Be warned; I can ramble on for quite some time when I've got an open forum and nobody telling me to shut up and get on with it.

Some of you poking around my page might be wondering about this story I've got posted with a chapter that's not visible. I thought I'd explain a few things about it.

First of all, if you'd like to get in on the beta reading, just drop me a line and I'll be happy to send over the password so you can read through it. I need as much help with this as I can get; my last edit turned into re-writing the first half of the first chapter, and completely swapping out one character for another. I'm working on drafting it out with a little more care, but at the same time moving forward with the story proper.

And what is that story, you're probably wondering? Well, that's... complicated.

If you find other stories of mine written throughout the years (look up Karl Wolfemann in the SWAT Kats fandom for a lot of it [warning, very NSFW]), you'll see that I've been writing one flavor of poly character or another since... mmm... the late 90's. For that time, over a decade, I have always, always wanted to write a story that works with polyamory realistically. Tons of necessary communication, jealousy, hurt feelings... but also love, support, compersion, and all those wonderful things about the lifestyle that go with the complications. It's something I haven't seen much, if ever, largely because most people find working through the "minutiae" of an open relationship boring, and just want to get to the big fancy threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes (I'll admit, I have not been innocent of this myself.) I've been looking for a fandom that I could do this in, because I know I'm going to lose 99% of readers if it's original material, and when I started to read fiction in MLP: FiM, I started to think... maybe this is it?

Then I found The Romancing Quest, which confirmed that it was. The ending of that story (not to be spoiled here) was exactly the sort of thing I was kinda hoping would work out ever since the first inklings of Twilight's dilemma started to come up. So now I needed the characters....

And then I decided, in an unrelated note, to write a sequel to Ravengal's "My Darling Yandere." The 'problem' with MDY is that it comes into the story after weeks or months (or, heck, years) of relationship and character development have taken place off-screen. While that's great for the story as written, my muses wanted to back up and see how they got where they were going And then, suddenly... idea!

One of the things that intrigued me the most about MDY was complicated web of relationships. At the start of the story, Applejack is going out with both Rainbow Dash and Rarity, and trying to pick between them. Everypony knows about everypony else; it's simply a matter of Applejack dating multiple ponies, and trying to pick which one she wanted to stick with, without hurting the other's feelings too badly.

But... what if she didn't have to pick? Something that I could work towards a lot more with more room at the 'front' of the story was how the relationship formed up. And that was when it started. My brain started thinking that I could finally work on this story of mine. I was already going to be going back and making more a story inspired by "My Darling Yandere" than a sequel to it (with Ravengal's permission, again - she's been a saint about this sort of thing, really!) And that meant that I could actually go back farther and start things out with the relationships that were a secondary issue in the original material; the Rarity/Applejack/Rainbow Dash triangle. Of course, what I couldn't figure out was how Rarity got into there. I like well-written Rarijack as much as the next brony, but I just can't see Applejack having any trouble deciding between her and Rainbow Dash ("Hmm... Ah spend half mah time wantin' to buck Rarity in the head, while Rainbow's one of mah best friends who Ah get along with on a long-term basis pretty well. Y'know, this ain't half as hard as Ah thought it was when Ah started thinkin' 'bout this.")

So, if I was going to work with this story element, even after writing a few scenes with Rarity in them, I needed to rework that. Hence the current draft, which features Twilight in place of Rarity. That relationship works a lot better, and everything has started to gel pretty well in my head for getting things moving along.

Applejack and Rainbow have been casual fillyfriends for a few years now; each of them dates stallions on the side, with full disclosure to all involved. Currently, Applejack's pretty well "single," since she's not seeing a stallion, and Rainbow Dash is off cavorting with her guy. Soarin made perfect sense for a stallion Rainbow would go out with; there's the Wonderbolts thing, the fact that Soarin doesn't have a huge amount of characterization to overcome, and it's pretty easy to see things going sour there eventually if I wanted them to.

So, when Twilight finally works up the nerve to ask Applejack out, it actually made sense that AJ would be interested. That sets up the fledgling vee that I wanted to work with; I could start it out from the beginning, with two ponies who are comfortable with the idea, and one who's just learning about it, but who'd be open-minded enough to be game.

Soarin and Rainbow Dash going sour quite so early wasn't something I'd been expecting, but it's how the scene went. Still, he'll be back later, and who knows what might end up happening (I work with outlines, but they usually look almost nothing like the finished product when I'm through with it.) At the same time, I think that the first chapter here is some of my best work in the romance genre, even if it can use improvement.

I'm really hopeful for this project, and eager to hear from anybody who'd like to help me with the editing process. I don't really like to put unedited work out there for the public, since that tends to end with me feeling like a complete idiot when they point out my hideous grammatical mistakes and such.

But, we'll see what happens. I just might put this one out "raw," and then edit later on. Depends on what I end up feeling is the right thing to do.

Any thoughts?