Update on "Into Nothing" - Chapter 4 coming soon... · 1:33am Aug 6th, 2017
Hey guys, still working on it, would like to get it out within the next couple days. So far, it's content-complete at just under 7500 words. All that's left is to turn about half of it from the jumble I write in to ordered paragraphs, then I'll proofread it and post it. So far, it's got Meta meeting more characters, and the plot development starts to speed up. Hope you guys aren't minding these long, exposition heavy chapters: I swear Chapters 3 and 4 are the longest, most boring chapters, and that the others should be around 5000 words each with far more action.
Part of the delay has been the realization that I want to address some things, working out Spike's response, and writing out the parts where Starlight Glimmer was there, because this was originally set after she turned good, but I changed my mind about it.
By the end of chapter 5 somepony will take an axe to the skull. It'll be fun for the whole family!
Edit: Have an exerpt from the end of the chapter (I write out of order)
I wondered how fast I could go. I’d found that I didn’t have any sort of momentum to provide drag, nor did I accelerate according to Newtonian physics: I could basically maneuver on a dime, but I could only move about as fast as an average pegasus. Seeing as will played a large role in this, I wondered if there was some actual peril, if I would be faster. Could I outrun Rainbow Dash if someone had turned her evil? Was that kind of speed possible with this mode of transportation? There was so little information for me to draw on at this point, I had no idea what sort of equations my powers were bound by. I’d realized by now that will was becoming the main limiting factor in all of this: Magic = Will + Power, after all. I remembered the being which had “Displaced” me having a colossal amount or will and power to draw from, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. I wondered if I could some day have that sort of will, but what sort of being could have that kind of drive?
I remembered that Friedrich Nietzsche had theorized that all things, from humans, down to the smallest atoms, had an innate “Will to Power”, which drove them to seek a position of greater control over their environment: just as man builds his empires, so too does the wolf stake his territory, so too does the spider toil, so too does the bacterium feed, so too does the molecule within form the bonds of the lipid bilayer, so too does the atom vye against the atmomic forces to stabilize its own electron shell. All will was really the Will to power, only directed and harnessed, made into a fraction of what was truly beneath the surface. If directing it towards more specific goals fractionalized its strength though, I wondered what it would look like if that Will to Power could be harnessed in full? What kind of force could a being which had harnessed the will of its entire being bring to bear? If Nietzsche was to be believed, the being which could do that sort of thing would be like the over-the-top hero of an Ayn Rand novel.
But if the Will of this entity was simply that innate need for power that all things supposedly have, down to the smallest atom, then what would a being which built itself entirely off of that will be like?
Hope y'all are excited to see a revision of that in full context soon. :V
I swear, the amount of connections I'm making with this... I feel like I'm actually getting smarter from writing goddamn My Little Pony fanfiction. @!@;;
In other news, my Daimon is pointing out to me that I should be a bit careful about the actual occult information I put into this story. I figure any real-world stuff my mind casually mixes in with the fantasy / sci-fi shouldn't be dangerous in the hands of someone who can actually parse these big fucking wads of information, and from an educational standpoint it helps to have that nice layer of actual metaphysics between the philosophy and science and the fantasy and fiction. On his advice though (because one should never ignore the advice of their own self), I'm gonna restrain the actual occult stuff in this story to the stuff you can get off an internet forum: it's not like I was ever that into demonology or witchcraft anyway...
Not much to say to this other than that I've enjoyed all the chapters so far and am looking forward to chapter 5 and onward. Keep up the good work!
4625253
Ah, so you're one for the decapitation, are you? Well, wait about 2 weeks and you'll get a good demon fight...
4625961
Excellent! I wasn't sure if you were serious about the axe thing but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy seeing some violence in my pretty pastel pony stories every now and then. Fallout Equestria is what got me into mlp fanfics in the first after all.
4626572
Remember when Yudkowsky said he was going to kill Twilight Sparkle? What happened in the next chapter of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality?
I'm not kidding: the later chapters have an increasing focus on violence, as I introduce antagonists. I will be killing off at least 3 characters by the end of chapter 9.
4626584
To be honest I haven't read MoR in quite a while so I couldn't say but hey go for it!
4626601
...he killed Twilight Sparkle.
4626895
Riiiight omake... also apparently what you commented before didn't register. For some reason when I was reading your comment I thinking about Quirrell. Don't ask me why I don't know.
4626915
It wasn't an Omake: Harry finds a dead unicorn in the woods matching Twilight's description.
4627021
Interesting... i'm not sure when in the story that takes place. As I said it's been a few years since i've read MoR and when I stopped the story wasn't finished. The only two things I really remember are Harry's escape from Azkaban and his human Patronus. Looks like I might have to go back and re-read it...
4627026
It's when they get detention in the forest. Don't bother reading it a second time, as it's worth less to you the second time around.
4629827
Well that's the thing, from what my friend told me the story is actually finished now so since i've forgotten most of the story anyway I figure I might as well re read the whole thing beginning to end.