Just Repeat to Yourself, "It's Just a Fic." · 2:08pm Jun 18th, 2012
So in my messages last night, among the proofreading requests I'm going to have to get to today, I came across this request from one Trotting Madness:
"Hello, well this is a bit odd but I have a question for you. Could I get some sort of answer from you that things will turn out well. I somethings run things over and over in my head and your last story also had issuses for me, until it ended and I had trouble sleeping a little. So just a little note from you that things will turn out ok would be nice. You don't have to, or tell me anything else about your plans or plot of the story but it would make me happy if I got that.
Thank You for your time."
Well, while I was answering hir*, the thought occurred to me that ze might not be the only one literally losing sleep over my writing. So, after getting Madness's permission to reprint the above message, I thought I'd tell of you what I told hir. To whit:
1. The Elements of Discord are not to be discounted. By their very nature, they are the equals of the Elements of Harmony. That includes the Magic Beam of Make Everything Better™. For a given definition of "Better."
Plus, you know, chaos. Not even I know precisely how the things are going to impact the storyline.
2. The glistening oil and Harmony are interacting very strangely. In order to get through to the Bearers, the oil had to drastically alter itself. While Kindness rejected it entirely, even in the other cases, it's still become something barely recognizable as Phyrexian. What this means is that even post-phyresis, the Mane Six are still largely going to be themselves, as will anypony they infect.
3. Canterlot has massive overt and covert ops forces at its command. Even if the Princesses were to be taken out of the picture, the ponies are far from helpless. Shining Armor and the Royal Guard, Ditzy Doo and the ETSAB, and organizations I've barely even hinted at can and will stand and fight.
4. That being said, I've been widening the narrative scope to more than just ponies for a reason. At the moment, both sides in this battle lack a unity of purpose. The victorious plane will be the one that can bridge the differences of its disparate societies and bring them together into a devastating whole.
5. If all else fails, remember the introduction. None of this is actually happening, and it might not ever happen. This work is one big "what if?" even in the context of the story itself. In fact, by giving Ditzy advanced warning, Tezzeret has pretty much guaranteed the events of Phthisis is Magic will never actually happen. Or, at least, they won't happen in a timeline that the ponies will actually experience. Clockworking is weird.
So yeah. Let this be a glass of warm milk for anyone who might have been worried to the point of insomnia. I should be the only one who suffers for or from my work, and I'm enjoying it immensely.
*Oh, genderless pronouns, how convenient you are for the Internet.
Oh, goody. Thanks to Tezzeret, Twilight and the others are going to mutter about the mind-blowing weirdness that planeswalkers worry about and that'll be about it. Sure, they're glad that she short-circuited Chrysalis but this time around, Ditzy has saved/is saving/will save them from something that only Pinkie Pie knows about.