A Milestone! And An Apology... · 2:55am Jun 6th, 2016
It's been almost three years since I posted Filly Fluttershy: Uprising to Fimfiction. And after all this time, it has finally broken (what I consider to be, at this point) an significant milestone. On Friday, Filly Fluttershy got 10,000 total views, across all of its chapters. It doesn't sound like much, all things considered. It certainly took a long time to happen, and I think it would've gotten to 10,000 views a lot sooner if I had updated the story more often.
And that's where the apology comes in.
For those of you who've been following this story since it was published (or at least, those of you who are still around), you'll know that there was a time when I updated the story on a near-weekly basis. That pace took a sharp nosedive (around this time two years ago, no less. Go figure) when I got around to this sub-arc in the story, The World Plunged in Chaos, for those of you who read that far into the long description. The Ring of Chaos took a whole month to write, The Lightning Chariot (which was broken up into a two-parter because of its length. And to think how much shit I give movies like The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Hobbit trilogy, and the eventual Avengers 3 for doing the exact same thing. Oh well, I never said I wasn't a hypocrite.) took a whole year to write, and Celestia's Temple took another six months. The worst part? It's been a year and a half since Celestia's Temple.
Now some of this is owed to me having a lot less time to write after graduating from college. Much of my time was spent trying to find a job after college, and later on working that job. And some of that is partly my fault, since I've also been pouring a lot of time into RPGs. Seriously, there's been the two 3DS Mario & Luigi games (Luigi develops narcolepsy and the Mushroom Kingdom explodes in confetti and cardboard), Pokemon XY and ORAS, and Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. The Pokemon games and MH4U are especially egregious, since I've probably pouring an average of 200+ hours into each Pokemon game and more than 400 hours into MH4U (which I doubt I'll be returning to, much less getting Monster Hunter Generations when that comes out. After logging 400+ hrs into the last game, getting a G2 license and building a ridiculous armory of SnS's, Dual Blades, Charge Blades, and Lances, I think I'm done with the franchise for at least a few years.). Now I'm probably still going to get Pokemon Sun and Moon (even though I'm not a big fan of the new Pokemon. Also still upset that Z version isn't going to be a thing.) But that doesn't change the fact that a new chapter (several new chapters) are long overdue.
With that in mind, I have a new, somewhat ambitious yet technically realistic goal in mind for Filly Fluttershy. I want to have the next two chapters, The Chaos Vortex and Scorched Feathers, written, proofread and published within the next six months. I might have them out sooner, which would be great and would help me figure out how to approach this story for the last few chapters. But I will do everything I can to make sure chapters 21 and 22 are out before year's end.
The Invasion of Skyworld
With all that said, I'd actually like to do a recap of the last chapter, Celestia's Temple. It's considerably late to be doing that (year and a half), but it's something I should've done in the first place, and it's a good jumping off point for getting into what I want to do with the next chapter. I was actually a little surprised that no one commented or anything on the most recent chapter. It might have partly to do with how long it's been since the last update, and that a lot of the story's older fans may have left the site by now. To be fair, this may have been one of my weakest chapters thus far, and it's one that I wasn't particularly proud of both while writing and as I posted it, and it's kind of a shame considering how much I was looking forward to writing it at first.
Fluttershy's Darkest Hour
This was sort of the driving idea I had in mind when I was writing out Celestia's Temple. It was sort of touched upon in the game's version of this chapter with Pit, and I wanted to expand upon it based on the themes that I was incorporating into the pony version. To start, Fluttershy spends over half of the chapter trying to reduce the casualties of her attack on Skyworld and feeling guilty over the lives her actions cost. This is something I've been trying to subtly build up to ever since the beginning of the story.
Back in chapter 6, when Celestia remarks that there's something strange about the souls of the Underworld monsters, Fluttershy initially thinks the monsters don't seem very different from the enemies she's gunned down over the last five chapters. The narration was supposed to refer to them as cannon fodder, something I was hoping to fix in the edited version mostly so that the use of the term in chapter 20 would be an ironic echo. After all, we're dealing with a pony who cares for dozens, possibly hundreds of animals and knows each of them by name, even though many of them are the same species and are aesthetically near-indistinguishable. For Fluttershy to look at the Underworld monsters and think to herself 'they all look alike to me,' even if it's because she's battled literally hundreds of them in the last 5-6 missions should be a red flag.
This isn't the only barrier Fluttershy has broken over the course of the story when it comes to killing. Fluttershy is reluctant to kill Cerberus (Twinbellows) after she's pacified him at the end of chapter 1, even after Celestia insists that the Underworld hound needs to be put down. A few chapters later, she's seen slaying Hewdraw, Chrysalis, and Thanatos with little to no remorse. She also feels guilty when she thinks she killed the earth pony Pinkie Pie (the Dark Lord Pinkamena) at the end of Chapter 2, and she's reluctant to kill Rainbow Dash (Dark Pit) at the end of Chapter 6 even after all the shit Rainbow's put her through (something I also wanted to expand upon in the edit). That reluctance is fractured after she decides to hunt down Luna (Viridi, the Goddess of Nature) and anyone who still serves her. She asks Fancypants (Arlon the Serene) to reconsider or at least justify his allegiance to Luna, and ultimately kills him when his answer doesn't satisfy her. She barely gives Rarity (Phosphora) that opportunity in the next chapter (yes, Fluttershy had every intention of killing Rarity at the end of that chapter, and would have if Rarity hadn't escaped).
What we're seeing is a Fluttershy who's becoming disturbingly comfortable with killing her foes. With every mission she undertakes, those moral barriers are being chipped away and she loses a piece of her conscience without even realizing it. She doesn't begin to realize it until chapter 20, when she finds herself having to kill Centurion ponies along the way to saving Celestia. Recall that she refused to kill them at all back in chapter 18 when she's taken over Applejack's (Magnus) body (a plot point that wasn't possible in the original game, because Pit says that Palutena can resurrect the Centurions at will. In this story, the Centurions are replaced by Equestria's Royal Guard, so their deaths can't be undone), and her guilt over them is exacerbated after having killed Spike (the Lightning Chariot Master) in chapter 19. Throughout the course of chapter 20, Fluttershy is suffering from an attack of conscience. It's why she goes to such lengths to try to save the brainwashed Centurions, even though they're trying to kill her, even though her actions become questionable, and even though she simply can't save all of them. It's something I wasn't sure I'd successfully gotten across while writing the chapter, maybe because of my mediocre writing skills, maybe because it was such a loaded chapter, or maybe because Fluttershy did very little fighting in a story that's supposedly to be more action than drama.
Another thing I wanted to do in Celestia's Temple was to emphasize Fluttershy's sense of isolation. When you really think about it, Fluttershy doesn't have anyone she can really trust during the invasion of Skyworld. Celestia has turned against her and has spent much of the chapter mocking her. She's forced to rely on Luna for guidance even though she deeply detests her (a notable departure from the games, when Viridi and Pit have developed a bond by this point). Rarity has a bone to pick with her after what happened in the Thunder Cloud Temple. Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor (the Lightning Chariot unicorns) don't trust her at all and outright say that they'll kill her if she does anything they don't like. And Discord... well, Discord's just there for the fun of it and is happy to torture Fluttershy in any way he can. Chapter 20 has the most characters out of any other chapter to date, and yet Fluttershy doesn't have a single pony she can truly depend on, at least not until the very end.
Most of all, I found myself disappointed with how the boss fight against Celestia and Sombra played out. Even as I was writing it out, the entire progression of the battle seemed formulaic, a term that should never be used to describe a fight. But considering that the whole premise of the battle involved Fluttershy not being able to attack her main foe, Celestia, dodging most of her attacks and tracking down an enemy who was basically hiding behind Celestia, I'm not sure I could've written it out any better. It felt like one of my weakest boss fights, especially considering that I'd written arguably my best boss fight just one chapter earlier.
Going Forward
With all this in mind, I'm expecting chapter 21, The Chaos Vortex to turn out much better. It's a major action/battle chapter, and there's something I've been planning for the "air battle section" that, while it's going to take a lot of effort to do, I think you'll all be very pleased with. Chapter 22 is also going to be a good one, I hope, and it'll be an important Rainbow Dash-centered chapter. From the very beginning, I've wanted these two chapters to be the very best in the entire story, and despite how long it's taken me to actually sit down and get to them, I've been sorely looking forward to them for a very long time.
As for the rewrites I've mentioned before, I've decided to scale them back to a certain extent. To be honest, and I think you all agree, I've let them bog me down for too long. The rewritten Return of Celestia, Applejack and the Dark Lord, and Heads of the Hewdraw have been up for some time already. In addition, I plan on rewriting chapters 4 (since I've already started anyway), 5, 6, 7, 9, and maybe 10. So about half of the chapters I initially said I'd rewrite, I'll leave as they are. And even then, any possible rewrites are going to take a backseat to new updates.
So look forward to an eventual, real update to Filly Fluttershy: Uprising in the next 2 months (hopefully, the end of September will be the longest you'll have to wait.
... How on earth did this chapter slip by? It's, as you've said, been almost a year a half and I let it sink into the depths of my favorite list without my knowledge. That's an awfully terrible mistake on my part that I'll rectify post haste when the clock no longer reads 'A.M.' And here I thought that we were only still at the end of the chariot business.
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Yes, that includes you too.
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