Housekeeping · 4:27am May 8th, 2018
Morning Sun is Vice-Chair of BronyCon, and in her official capacity as the person responsible for keeping fanfic writers from going feral and kidnapping the VAs to get readings of our work, she’s looking for ideas to keep us occupied in our hidey hole, Quills and Sofas. If you have suggestions, go here!
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I’m discontinuing my Patreon. This is probably overdue, as I haven’t been keeping up with my blogging in about forever, and the people who are still supporting me (and who did support me long after I stopped supplying blogs) are simply amazing friends, saints, or blessed with entirely too much money. If you are one of those people, don’t worry about me, my financial situation has changed slightly so this won’t be a major hit.
So, a final thank you to all of my patrons. You guys have been awesome, and I owe you lots of favors if you ever need them.
I might, in the future, still need to do something for some extra cash. In that case depending on the situation I might do a paypal drive, gofundme, or restart my patreon with project-based pledging (where I don’t get money until I’ve produced a thing.) Obviously people reading this will be the people I’ll tell if that sort of thing happens.
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However, if you do want to help out, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask for a while: I know that over years in fandom many people build up collections of merchandise, and sometimes they feel the need to cull those collections. If you’re looking for a good home for pony toys (blind bags or McDonalds toys or brushables) or kids picture books or unused stickers or board games, let me know. Trixie still loves ponies, and always loves new pony toys.
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Sun and Hearth is still being worked on. I’d love to have it done before BronyCon, which could happen if I would stop getting distracted by other projects. If you’re dedicated to keeping me focused on this goal, dropping me a note in PM to encourage me or talk about the fic is an almost surefire way to make me work on it.
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The project that’s been most distracting to me recently is a story that literally no one has ever asked for. I’m pretty sure even my normal brainstorming friends hate the idea. But, if you are the one person in existence who’s been looking for an EqG-based dramatic Rainbow Dash/Snips romance, you are potentially in luck! To everyone else, I’m very, very sorry, but it has an awesome soundtrack.
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In personal stuff, everything continues along pretty much the same lines. No exciting new news. Trixie is adorable, she’s maybe trying to talk more (indicating possible aphasia, where there’s a motor control problem making it difficult to form words), and is generally being a toddler. (Jumping off of things is her new favorite sport. If she can arrange it so she can jump off the thing onto her trampoline, even better.)
That’s it for now! More news when I have it.
I can honestly say that I have never sought out a Snips story in any context.
4855915
Neither have I. I came up with this idea entirely on accident.
…
Hearing that concept from most writers would have me running away, laughing, or both… but you're not most writers. I'd check it out.
I feel your
paindistractedness regarding Sun and Hearth. I still absolutely want to read the rest of it, and to help out however I can. And here I figured I should keep quiet so I don't pull you away from writing.I wouldn't say I've been looking for it, but I'm certainly intrigued.
And I'm definitely there with you with the focus issues.
4855924
Hey, accidental stories can be a lot of fun. It's like wandering around in a dark room, and you trip over something, and, hey, story!
Though I do have to say, that is a pretty random pairing.
More news in 5 sentences than I do in entire 3 page diatribes.
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That's one I don't think I've ever heard of.
I may have an embarrassingly large collection of unopened brushables and opened blind bag ponies I was recently thinking had outlived the interest I had in keeping them. I can message you with details if you'd like; I'm sure it would be no trouble to dust those off and mail them.
The ship does sound crazy, but if you're writing drama I'm sure it'll be worth reading.
Hope things are going well for you and yours.
Snips with Rainbow? What? Okay, sorry if I sound rude, but what made you think of that ship?
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Thanks for the updates. Good thoughts.
Sometimes "everything continues along the same lines" is about the best you can ask for. The world being less interesting means that you can focus on creating more.
I have a decent number of blind bags sitting around somewhere I would be happy to have go to a good home. And I'm glad to hear you're still keeping on keeping on.
4856352
That isn't rude, it's totally fair.
So, I had a bigger and different (and darker) idea which I'm not going to write, where the villain had the mane seven against the ropes -- couldn't use magic, couldn't contact Equestria, ruined socially and worried about putting people in danger. It was to the point where I couldn't think of a way out of it for them, so I tried to think of who might help while being overlooked by the bad guy, not particularly care that they're social outcasts, and... not someone the girls would be especially concerned to keep out of it (so, not the CMC or other family.) So I landed on Snips and Snails.
I kept coming back to this scene where Rainbow is beaten down, frustrated at being a loser and having no way to fight it, and Snips is basically like, "yeah, this is how it always is for us. It sucks. But it's not who you are." Rainbow both empathizes with him and desperately needs the faith he has in her. At the same time, Snips wants Rainbow to be the awesome, amazing girl he can fanboy, but this is the closest he's ever come to having a girl like that see him as an equal.
In that fic the girls were seniors, and Snips and Snails were 16, and that relationship grabbed me in a way the rest of the fic didn't. So I started developing it as its own lighter and hopefully shorter story that continues a bit beyond that dynamic.
There were other things I liked about it as I messed with it. It's interesting writing a specifically high school romance; normally I'm concerned with setting up a healthy relationship for the future after the fic, but here... It's dramatic and all the romance emotions are there, but they're in high school. It's probably not going to survive when Rainbow goes to college, and that's okay as long as it leaves them better people than they started. I also really like having a not conventionally attractive romantic protagonist. While I'm no Rainbow Dash, I always dated guys who were overweight or had bad teeth or were, ya' know, normal people, so getting to look at what makes someone attractive to the person who's attracted to them (even if not to the general public) is a fun challenge.
4855924 Is it because Dash likes Snips but is also embarrassed by her, and so has very mixed feelings and sends mixed messages, and the story is about overcoming this?
4856559
Nah, see: 4856491
If I had to really boil it down, it's about how Snips and Rainbow Dash are more similar than anyone would notice, and what (if anything) really separates the winners from the losers.
4856491 That sounds like a really good idea. You could also write it as a non-MLP YA novel.
That certainly is good news!
(It is good news, yes?)
4856941
Sort of. Money is almost always good. Trixie qualified for disability, so it's not without its downside, but it does make things easier.
Good to hear that things are going well with you and little Trixie. And you're headed to BronyCon? Assuming my finances allow, this year should be my first BronyCon. Maybe we'll run across each other.
On a fanfic-related note, do you have any plans for that sequel to A Guide to Magic? I know that in fanfiction terms, 2015 might as well be the Cretaceous Era, but that story was what led me to you in the first place.