ANNOUNCEMENT: RETROGRADE

Hey all, it's time for one of my blog posts again (joyus day, I know), but this time, it's for something that actually sort of has a point! Today marks the release of the Prologue of a collaborative project the myself and RQK [His Account] have been slowly working on for about a month (admittedly, it's been mostly him so far, oops), titled Retrograde! You can read it here: [Link to Prologue]

This story has been something the two of us have been talking about on Discord for a little over 3 months I believe, with the full on idea of working from the "Forgotten Friendship" special being the point we actually got started on plotting and what not. We're not super deep into the writing yet, since from what I'm told, he's cooking up something else, and I've been working on other, non-pony things for a little while. Still, we have SOMETHING actually going somewhere, and I'm glad that he's there to kick my ass into gear, since I need to seriously stop being a lazy turd when it comes to writing. I hope you're all looking forward to seeing where it goes!

The story, at it's core, is a pretty simple one: What if for some reason, Sunset's memories never came back once the memory stone was destroyed. There's a little more going on than that, including some kicks to the feels, shipping, and some honest to goodness use of Moondancer as a central character, at my insistance of course. I wanted to have the Nerdicorns all play a part (Nerdicorns being my affectionate term for the group of Twilight, Sunset, Starlight, and Moondancer) in a story that, in essence, is a magic based problem, and who better to tackle it than two book loving horses and two former villains that double as powerful as heck unicorns?

Seeing as I'm co-writing it, here's some "questions" that I'm pre-emptively answering, for those who actually want some info that isn't gonna spoil them, but have a decent idea as to what's gonna happen. Think of this as a... pre-milestone Q&A thing, like RQK typically does.

Is it SunLight?: Yes.

What kind of SunLight?: The good kind. The kind with Princess Twilight.

Any other shipping happening?: Maybe. Possibly. Perhaps. None that will overshadow the SunLight though, regardless of whether or not there is any, which I can neither confirm nor deny (coughcoughcoughStarDancercoughcoughcough).

Where did the name "Retrograde" come from?: This was my idea, so I can actually elaborate on this a little. I've been thinking of writing a timetravel fic (which this isn't) that was called "Retrograde," since the idea was "going back in time," which is at the core of the definition. Obviously, this didn't happen, so I was left with a neat title, but nothing attached to it. So when it came to a title for a fic involving someone's memories disappearing, my brain instantly shot to that unused title, for two different reasons: 1) Because "retrograde amnesia" is a thing, and 2) because when one loses their recent memories, it's as if they stepped back in time. Since Sunset lost all of her memories after coming through the portal, but nothing before that (presumeably), it stands to reason that Sunset has "stepped back in time" in terms of growing as a person.

A shorter answer, and one that is a little less "cool" is that I look to song titles for chapter names most of the time, and I have a song in my iTunes library called "Retrograde." Ironically, the song is on an album called "Dead Reflection," which is what I think one could call a person who's lost their memories, and with it, the experiences of those memories and their affect on your personality; the you that you lost is a "dead reflection" of the person you became at the point of divergence. It probably sounds a little silly, but I like the way it sounds, so whatever right? If you're interested in the album, here's a link to the YouTube playlist, though be warned that the songs feature some unclean vocals: [Dead Reflection album]

How often are chapters gonna come out?: This is still up in the air, since we're both working on things that aren't Retrograde. What those things are is not important, but it will mean things will be a little slower than what you are used to from RQK, if you're familiar with his work, though that should be relatively obvious seeing as it's a collaboration fanfiction and not something he's writing alone, and I'm kind of a slow writer by comparison. This is, of course, subject to change.

It doesn't read completely like a collab. Is this because you didn't work on the prologue?: Sort of? I did some minor editting to the prologue, but that's because RQK had a more defined idea how to start the fic than I did. We had a lot of back and forth on what should be what, but other than that, the prologue was more him than me. I did write the bulk of the long description though! Of course, in the future, I'll be doing more, and have already chipped in to some capacity on Chapter 1. That said though, since it's on his account, the writing will be smoothed out to match his style more than mine, which will hopefully hide the rust on my gears until I can get them moving properly again.

RQK's blog post mentioned that the cover art is a placeholder for a commissioned cover?: Yep! While the cover that RQK made isn't bad by any means, we both agreed that, since it's a special occassion, and because when I spend money on something I'm more likely to invest time in it, we paid OverlordNeon [Tumblr] [DeviantArt] to do the final cover art, which, upon completion, will replace the cover that exists now. If you follow Novel Idea, you've seen her art on some of his stuff, and likely will in the future.

If I had my way, I'd definately pay for in chapter illustrations to add some production values to it. Sadly, I'm not made of money, so that would have to wait. IF, and only IF, the fic someone gains enough traction to appear on Equestria Daily (which is possible, seeing as RQK's got his work featured on there before), I may sink some money into some chapter art for that, just for the sake of adding some more "professionalism" and stuff. I'm not 100% sure of this though, and I'm not even sure that Neon would be the artist (if she's reading this for whatever reason, and is interested in that, then she knows how to contact me haha), so don't expect anything in this regard. This is just a what if thing anyway.

Why Moondancer, and not Trixie?: This is more an answer for the Trixie fans out there (like Sethisto), and not because I think people will ask it. The short answer is because I'm a selfish shithead who wants more Moondancer. The longer answer is that, since Trixie is a stagemagic focused magic user, she's not as knowledgeable on the subject of ancient artifacts (like the Memory Stone), and as such, wouldn't really be much help beyond maybe moral support. She'll appear in the fic, to a similar capacity to characters like the Mane 6 (sans Princess Twilight obviously) and the Human 6. Which Trixie? Both, probably. We'll see. After the special, I have some ideas for how to use human Trixie, but again, we'll see.

Does this tie into any other fanfictions you or RQK have written?: Technically speaking? Yes. Does it impact how you read it? No. RQK and I more or less write within a defined multiverse, so technically everything we write, in some capacity, is linked tangentally to something else we've written, unless stated otherwise. Well, as far as I'm concerned anyway.

Does this have anything to do with Fractured Skies?: It's part of the same multiverse, though beyond that, no. Fractured Skies is more or less completely seperate from this fic.

Does this have anything to do with Expect the Unexpected?: Not really, no. That fic is, for the most part, a seperate entity from the rest of my fics, though that may change in the future, since people have been asking for a sequel, which I've been putting a fair amount of thought into when I haven't been thinking about stuff for this collab.

Will this impact the development of other things you two are working on?: A little, but not much. We both have other things we're working on, but at the moment, we're trying to carve through several chapters to get ahead for the sake of trying to form a release schedule of some kind. When it comes to productivity, it's better to be ahead than it is to be behind.

So that's it! Here's to the release of Retrograde! I hope you all enjoy it, since I'm enjoying working on it!