Mea Culpa · 6:25am Oct 9th, 2015
...Bleck. I wanted Chapter 19 of Rise and Fall to work, I really did, and I know that y'all seem to have enjoyed it well enough, but in terms of the overall story structure it just...I can't be comfortable with it. It serves no definite purpose, its conclusion doesn't really make much logical sense—Starswirl decides to send her back, but somehow arranges things so that she doesn't disrupt the timeflow? What happens if she explicitly decides to do so? It just doesn't work—and perhaps most of all, it's a poor attempt to salvage the loose ends from an earlier, abandoned story arc*.
...Right, yes. Again, I know that it was enjoyed, but structure-wise it isn't up to my standards, and I really can't stand having it sitting there. I'm very sorry, and if anyone's extremely attached to it I can always send you a copy of the text (I just unpublished it, rather than outright deleting it), but as it is I don't feel right having it part of the whole story, and I'm only sorry I didn't figure that out until after I'd put it up and y'all had spent time reading it and typing up wonderful comments and so on and so forth.
Anyway. Hopefully y'all aren't too disappointed by the change; I'll have the next chapter up as soon as possible, and that, at least, I'm confident I can write as it ought to be written.
*Long story short, as I've mentioned elsewhere, originally the Mule was going to have been killed by the teleportation back to Ponyville from Hippoborea, rather than just wounded. Sassaflash would then have successfully brought him back, despite his recent (that is, not a few hundred years in the past) death supposedly making such a thing impossible, through creative use of alien artifacts, ghoul-assisted surgery, and sheer, white-pasterned determination. Part of this would have involved creating a golem as a new body to host the Mule's preserved brain, and the original plan—the reason I introduced Starswirl's salts in the first place—was to have her revive him and manage to convince him to help her bring the Mule back to life by crafting the golem she needed (with him being swayed to help a necromancer mostly by the selflessness of her desire to bring the Mule back).
It was a nice idea. Alas, it was also excessively dramatic, given that the effect of a delay in the Mule's making it to Canterlot could just as well be served by a lesser injury, and worse it served as little more than an excuse to have the Dark Lord flaunt her necromantic mettle, without actually advancing the plot much or having any long-term effects. When I removed that part of the story, though, it also meant that Starswirl's salts remained as a loose end—one I attempted to tie up in this most recent chapter, ultimately unsuccessfully. So things go.
Why not keep it published as a non-cannon omake? Perhaps not in the main story itself, but in a side collection, with just a link from where it diverges from the cannon?
Alternatively, google for http://www.fimfiction.net/story/93572/19/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-dark-lord-sassaflash/chapter-19 and save cached version while you can.
Damn, I just returned to this story, so don't read a lot of later chapters. Time to catch up.
I can see Sasaflash bringing Starswirls salts back just because. (ed.) It would be somewhat like an athiest finding the Holy Grail and bringing it home just to put it on a shelf and look at it once in a while, thinking "Maybe..."
Fair enough. If you aren't happy with the work, then you shouldn't leave it as is. I look forward to the replacement.
Ah, sorry.
Hm. Did you also change the end of Chapter 18 a bit, though?
That was a little nonsensical.
Here's perhaps a more sensible version: Starswirl sends her back and sacrifices himself to the Hounds of Tindalos because it unsettles the timeflow, but uses his skills to keep them from noticing Sassaflash somehow.
Sets up the same situation you clearly wanted at the end of the chapter and removes Starswirl from hanging around threatening to fix everything later.