New Story

Hi everyone, how are you all?

You may have already noticed, but I finally uploaded the first few chapters of my new story I Need to be Honest With You and I'm really happy to finally have it out there. The idea for this has been around for ages, maybe 6 months or so, but trying to get started on writing it was so hard as it is completely different from all the other things I've written. (This story contains no omorashi themes whatsoever, so it's suitable for a lot more readers).

Semi spoilers/plot spoilers ahead:

As someone who knows quite a few people who have mental illnesses and as someone who suffers from depression and anxiety themselves, raising awareness of mental illness is very important to me. That's kind of where the idea for this story came about. I wanted to try to raise awareness in a slightly different way and I thought, why not include it in the lives of characters so many people know and love? So I did.

Applejack is the main character in my story. She's the one I decided to use as the 'victim'. Mainly because she's my favourite and I feel most confident writing as her, but also because I relate to her the most out of all the characters in MLP/EqG, but that did make writing this quite hard as it made me emotional (the part I'm about to write will probably also make me cry).

Almost everything in this story is from personal experience. Everything that Applejack thinks, feels, says, does is something I have thought, felt said or done. Some parts of the story are made up/things that I haven't experienced, but the bases of everything is from my own personal experience with depression. Even the small details like not being able to sleep because of all the thoughts racing through her/my mind - I'm writing this at 1:30am because I can't sleep for that exact reason (That's my excuse for any typos/ bad grammar) Projecting my thoughts and feelings into a character that so many people love, into a story that hopefully a fair few amount of people will read, has made me feel slightly vulnerable because I am opening up more than I ever have done, but I need to raise awareness, I need to reduce the stigma, I need to get the word out about how people really are with depression.

Having said that, as this story is from MY experience, it is not representative of everyone's experience with depression. Mental illness affects everyone differently, everyone copes with it differently and not everyone is in the same situation, therefore, it is almost impossible to get an accurate representation. Nothing in this story is meant to represent a whole group of people, I never intended it to. It's my story, my experiences, no one elses.

I hope people enjoy reading this story. I hope it helps to educate people on and raise awareness of mental illnesses. Although there are only three chapters up at the moment, I am planning on uploading more, the next upload will likely to be after I've finished chapter 5 (I'm currently almost done with chapter 4). I am taking my time on this story. I want it to be as well written as I can get it, which admittedly isn't that well, but it's important I try to tell the story well to really get across the message I want to get out there.

As this story is so personal to me, it would mean a lot if you could give it a read.

I also just wanted to say a little thank you for the FIMfiction team for giving me a platform to be able to release this story.

If you do end up reading this story, then thank you. Link is here if you missed it at the beginning. The story is also tagged, but I'm not sure how that feature works.

Expect a story update in the next week - that's if I don't get writers block like I've had for the last couple days.

Bye for now.

P.S. As this story does deal with the subject of mental illness, I will be providing trigger warnings at the start each chapter if there is content that may be triggering to some readers. There's a trigger warning at the beginning of chapter one and in the story description so keep an eye on that too.