This Thing Is On?! Eep! Now I Have to Say Stuff! · 7:09pm Jul 25th, 2016
So, for some crazy reason, I suddenly have a few more followers than I did about a week ago. Oh yeah, probably because I wrote this thing.
Well, first of all, I want to say thank you. All of you have had great comments that have encouraged me tremendously. As this was my first foray into the FiMFiction community, I wanted to make it a good one. Looks like I succeeded because the one message I'm getting constantly is "What's next?!"
Well, take a look for yourself below the break.
Grading on a Bell Curve is the next in a series of short stories based in this timeline/alternate universe. I don't have a name for the timeline yet, so you'll have to bear with me. However, it's a little different as it's set several years before the events in Applications. I go into a little bit of detail about the various plans for stories in this timeline at the end of Bell Curve, all leading up to the grand finale of the Shattered Dawn novel.
Here's the current synopsis for Grading on a Bell Curve:
After an accident helping Moon Dancer with her advanced telekinetic studies, Sunset takes refuge in the teacher’s lounge. However, somepony there has a lot more on her mind than games of telekinetic cat’s cradle.
From the cover design, you can probably already tell the identity of that other aide. 
(Oh and by the way, if you feel like playing editor/beta reader/whatever, let me know. It know how critical it is to get fresh eyes on a story)
...and yeah, since I started writing this, two new stories have appeared in my Short Story Idea list. Damn you!
So I’ll be honest. I don’t really know what to say for my opening blog with a bunch of new followers. I should do something witty, deep or snappy. I got nothing.
Most of you folks know I love doing cover design (note: not cover art, I’ve only done cover “art” for one story and even then I’m stretching the definition a little) for FiMFiction stories. If you haven’t seen then, you can get a glimpse on the right sidebar of my main page. You can also just check out the entire gallery right here.
Oh, one of the reasons I do this is because I always get EPUB versions of all the stories I read, but honestly the automatically generated EPUBs that FiMFiction leave a lot to be desired. So if you’re an EPUB nut like me, make sure to use Nyerguds’s totally epic EPUB converter. I know that there’s a trick to using Calibre to download the stories, but honestly, I can’t get it to work right now with my iPad and iPhone (I tried for a good three days). The only recommendation I have is that you also get Sigil and pop the story into there to fix any errors the Converter may have missed.
What can I say? I learned a ton about EPUBs when I put together the Fallout: Equestria - Project Horizons EPUB (Major shoutout to Djazz for all his help there).
Beyond that...hmmm...what to do, what to do...
So instead, let’s talk about me...well, talking mostly to myself! I did most of these before I had much in the way of followers.
One of my favorite things to do is these emotional retrospectives/follow-ups/commentaries/review things for some of my favorite stories. They initially began as a way for me to emotionally cope with the intensity of these tales (Hard Reset was the first and boy does that take you for a ride. Hell, everything Eakin does knocks you on your tail).
It took me forever to realize what I was actually doing until I read Albinocorn’s follow-up for Equestria Girls. I was doing follow-ups in the same vein as Equestria Daily’s episode follow-ups, only using quotes in place of the screenshots! Seriously, how did I miss that?
But they are a lot more than just that in places. If you’ll remember EqD’s excellent followup on my favorite MLP:FiM episode of all time “Crusaders of the Lost Mark,” Aquaman takes a moment when the girls finally get their marks to put aside the snarky comments to be up front, honest and straightforward. It’s an emotional moment in the series, the culmination of five years of attempts.
You’ll find a lot of comments like that in these follow-ups.
Ones like “On Hope,” “Sunset of Time,” and “Long Road to Friendship” mean a lot to me because these stories have intense, powerful messages that need to be recognized, messages that touched me on a personal level.
Now, I don’t know if they’ll reach you on a personal level. And I’ll admit that the stories I’ve chosen to do follow-ups for are some of the longest stories on FiMFiction (though ironically I haven’t done one for Fallout: Equestria. Honestly, I know that story so well from my GoE work--and listening to the audiobook nonstop for over a year and a half now--that I don’t think I could give it the proper treatment). So it might not be your cup of tea. That’s okay!
But in case you are interested, here’s a list of all the stories I’ve done follow-ups for! (And yes, I did custom cover designs for each one, even if they're not being used by the author.)
By the way, I have one already queued up for Quillery’s Dreams and Disasters coming up tomorrow!
"Because in the end, we’ve all made mistakes. We’ve all wondered what was down that path we didn’t take. And we all wonder...can we make up for what we’ve done? Can we be forgiven by others...and can we forgive ourselves?"
A story that transcends the adventure genre, Sunset of Time will take you on a journey through time and space to the darkest pits of the mind to the heights of love and hope. One of the finest pieces of fiction I've read in my entire life.
"Dammit. What is it with good stories making me cry? Oh yeah. It’s because they’re good stories."
An epic tale that takes three of our favorite pony heroes on a grand quest that covers far more than simple geography. MLP meets Tolkien in the best possible way.
"Heroes never die. Not truly. And we had a lot of heroes here...and it’s great to see that heroes do eventually get to rest...even if they’re tempted by Spatulas of Doom."
One of the greatest time-travel adventure stories I've ever read, Hard Reset is a must read for any fan of epic FiMFiction.
"Why is this so great? I don’t even know and I know it’s great. Gah. Stupid brilliant writing making me not understand my own brain...like I normally understand it anyway."
Simply the definitive EqG Sunset Shimmer novel. Albinocorn totally made me fall in love with Sunset all over again and twice over for seeing Sunset and Twilight together.
"Congratulations, you just destroyed all of reality. But it popped back a few seconds later and no one seems to care, so it’s okay."
A wonderfully sweet (and delightfully random) story starring everypony's favorite wall-eyed pegasus in a rather unexpected new occupation.
"It seems like this story was made up of a thousand small delicate brush strokes that made the masterpiece and each one was handled delicately and with intense care and attention to detail."
A fantastically unique take upon an Equestria of the near future with Scootaloo as an airship pilot taking a world-weary pop star Sweetie Belle on an escape from civilization.
"Any writer worth their salt originally started from someone else’s idea...unless you happened to have written Gilgamesh, but since I doubt any Sumerians are reading this, I don’t think that matters. (And yes, I just went Ancient Lit on you. *Mic Drop*)"
The sequel to Shipping and Handling, a fantastic adventure tale revealing that Celestia's School has little to do with Hogwarts and that the power of love will still conquer the greatest of darkness.
Well, I think that’s about it! I’m not going to introduce myself all over again since I’ve already done that all over the place (and I have a little bio on my main FiMFiction page.)
Until next time folks, have fun!
Ooh, looking forward to the next story!
And it seems Summer Island is the only fic on that list I've yet to read, so... adding to my list.
I'm definitely curious to see where the other mane 6 have gotten to in this universe of yours. Not that I'm biased much .
4112401 Summer Island is actually fantastic tale, but suffered from having a rather boring synopsis. I talked with the author for a while, made a few suggestions and he's got something much more interesting on there now.
You want me to put AJ and Dash together in this alternate timeline, don't you?
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