Postmortem: Falls and Follies of a Princess · 5:11pm Jan 12th, 2015
This is the first of ten look backs at past works to celebrate how close me reaching 300 followers and 30 stories. The first up to bat, my first story: Falls and Follies of a Princess.
So I will mainly be doing this one as kind of where I think I succeeded and failed as this was my first story. This mainly means where I think (personally) my lack of experience shined and where it was well swept under the rug. So, let's begin.
The idea Of Falls and Follies came during a time when my brother was still a content producer. This meant he made Youtube analysis videos, had created a fimfic and published several stories, and even started a clop account. All three of those things lay dead now because my brother is... odd. However, all of this left me with time by myself and a bit of sadness as I wanted to contribute. Another big factor, especially to Falls and Follies downfall was my interest in one certain song.
For all of you who read it, you might be able to pick up on my small signs for how this would be integrated, but perhaps not. This one aspect led to a lot of self doubt when a somewhat meta fic about Black and Red Alicorns became featured. While my Jackyll character wasn't quite one, I knew it could be in the same category. Of course, anyone who has gone back and read it might be scratching their head. So, without further ado, let's get into the worst/best part of Falls and Follies
The Plot.
The plot to Falls and Follies was two sided. One side, Twilight's side, was absolute shit and me trying too hard. It was a story meant to break up the past story and add tension and suspense. While I do think this could have worked, it was to be too big and should have been its own story.
As for the past side, you had a revolution going on. I do like the idea for this revolution and it is one of the main things that made me fall in love with this story, especially since I was attempting to set it up where you understood Celestia and Luna's fears while also understanding the ponies want for expansion and exploration. However, then comes the weakness. I wanted the Revolution to be likable so I didn't want them causing riots and such to increase the tension of the fic so I took Jackyll and Hyde and put it on my main character, simply named Jack because of a lack of a cutie mark and no memory of his past.
So what was Jack's Jackyll? Well, it was to be a pure black pony with one pony wing, one black wing, three small spire that met as its horn, and the embodiment of the weakest part of chaos within Discord, Rage. And that was his name too, Rage. He was supposed to work as Jack's subconscious desire to cause and create change in the world. Because of this, four times throughout the planned story, Rage went out and killed someone. Rather gruesomely at that sometimes. He wouldn't be entirely invincible as he would lose a wing and almost be killed by Starswirl the Bearded by the end of it all. However, I cannot deny that he was overpowered and what a lot of people immediately hate so fear welled inside me and the Twilight's Library skype group beat the shit out of me emotionally and creatively when I asked them if it was okay.
As a quick note before I continue to what this story has done for me and where it rests in my mind, I would like to say it was poorly edited and that is because I didn't like editing back then. While I still don't really like editing, I've grown to be able to accept it.
Reboot?
Yes, that is right. See, the thing I really fell in love with was the main plot in the past and the characters within it. I liked them and I like the world I had slightly created. It was fun and making a revolution happen was fun. I still don't have many gripes with the actual plot as long as I tore away Twilight's side and replaced Rage with something else. In fact, before I cancelled it, I had. A three pony team that was inspired from "Of Mice and Men" for two of them that was also a lot of fun to write. However, it felt shallow when I wanted to write it and my interest had been destroyed.
Not permanently though. If I ever think about changing something or rewriting one of my other stories, this one always pops into my head. I knew pretty much all of what I would do for the story and could easily recreate it. I probably never will, but it is one I always think about and if anyone wants to hear more or adopt it, I would love to talk about it even though it has been so long.
Anyways, until next time guys and I promise I'll try to be better about detailing what the story was about, but this one was a bit of a trainwreck and has to be rewritten so... yeah, I couldn't do a great job to explain every part. Sorry.
