Author's Notes for Recovery · 1:12am Jun 21st, 2018
IN WHICH ALL THINGS INEVITABLY END
Well, this is it. The final entry in Sunset’s Recovery Arc. It’s been a long, tough ride. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed delivering it to you. Please follow me below the jump for more talk.
With this story, SRA officially comes to an end. Chronologically, it’s not the end because, as I mentioned in my previous blog, I intend to make A Midsummer Day’s Quest canon to SRA since it doesn't contradict anything to my knowledge, and it (obviously) takes place later. Call it an “After The End” story.
If you’ll allow me, I want to spend time talking about Sunset’s Recovery Arc as a whole. It’s a bit long, so I’ll apologize in advance.
I wrote the very first entry in what would become SRA — Highs & Lows — way back in March 2015 (you can check the publication date on its only chapter) during a manic high possibly exacerbated by too much sugar. However, because I worried about causing offense to the… as it turns out, many readers dealing with depression and other mental issues, I sat on the story for eight months before finally working up the courage to make it public. I even apologized for its existence in the afterword.
How the hell could I have known then it would become my most popular story?
From there, I felt obligated to write its antecedent, Lows & Highs, based largely upon my own experiences dealing with being inconsolable and longing for the sweet embrace of death. Have I mentioned before that 2016 fucking sucked for me? Seriously. I even did financial calculations to see if I might be worth more dead than alive — the results were inconclusive.
Anyway, that story was highly regarded as well. So, like the Burritoverse, I felt obligated to keep going. I didn’t want to leave Sunny in such a poor state. I wanted her to feel the comfort and closure I wasn’t going to get, especially as my own long-term relationship with my girlfriend unravelled, ending in my being dumped.
More stories followed as I slowly worked to repair what I had done to poor Sunny. She reconciled with the Other Five (in a story I feel is the weakest of the bunch, except for the Fluttershy chapter). And she met with Flash in a way that earned me praise for actually giving him a character and motivation. I’m very proud to have written a Flash Sentry story that has a >90% positive rating.
After Reconciliations was over, I realized immediately that, even though I’d originally planned to end it there, Sunset herself had more tales to tell me, and by extension you. I had to keep going.
I’d been teasing Rarity having a crush on Sunset from the very beginning, but it was only as the series wore on that I realized I really wanted to explore that. A chance encounter on Derpibooru with a really hot (IMHO) piece of art prompted me to create a story out of it and tie it into SRA. I messaged the artist asking to use the image. He said yes and told me he was flattered that I liked his art enough to base a story around it.
While that story was with CoffeeMinion for proofing, Posh — who like me is a fan of SF Debris — suggested I write a story about a spider. I immediately thought about the episode of ST:VOY where Tom and Harry encounter Queen Arachnia or something. It was a holodeck episode. After spending so much time working on heavy stuff, I wanted to do something silly again, and Sunset Shimmer: Spider Queen proved the perfect setup for what else I had in mind. And it let me explore Fluttershy's character again.
Meanwhile, I wrote Night Of Faded Sun and Sasha to fill in some early story gaps and give more of an insight into Sunset’s broken state of mind. Also Rarity’s.
Sasha was actually very difficult for me to write because, as it’s the first story chronologically, I had to work to put myself in the mindset of the earliest stories for both Sunset and Rarity and temporarily force their character development backwards. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but I tried. Bootsy Slickmane, one of my very first followers, was kind enough to let me use his art of Sunny’s tattered jacket.
It was at about this point that CoffeeMinion suggested I make a guide for all the SRA stories since it was getting unwieldy and an increasing number were written out of order. I’d already thought about it, but hearing it from someone else made me get off my fat ass and create THE GUIDE, which will always be pinned on my userpage.
The Rejected was intended to follow immediately in the wake of Rarity Reveals, but before I could finish it, Knighty’s 4.0 update left the site almost unusable for me on my eight-year-old Macbook. I quickly discovered I could still blog, and announced my temporary hiatus. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, I continued to write, finishing Rejected and Recovery provisionally in early July 2017.
When I finally bought a new laptop — thanks to earning some money ebaying stuff my ex had left behind — I had always planned to write a story about Sunny getting a new laptop to celebrate as well. The story became A Midsummer Day’s Quest and turned out, once I got into it, to be an absolute blast to write. I could have written much more, but I strongly believe a single chapter should avoid going over 10,000 words, and AMDQ sits at 9,500. It’s one of the stories I’m most proud of. It’s also VERY important to world-building, which is one of things I love most and another big reason I’ve kept this series and the Burritoverse going for over three years.
A random walk in the park jabbering to myself like a nutcase led to And That’s Good Enough, which I realized needed to exist in between RR & TR. Sunset’s self-actualization would put her in the state of mind to be sassy with Flash. However, before I could write the story, I suffered a depressive relapse. This prompted me to make the same happen to Sunset in Minor Relapse. I realized immediately this story also needed to exist, because anyone who has mental issues knows that the road to recovery, if it happens at all, is not a straight one.
With CoffeeMinion busy with his family, work, moving, etc., I needed a new prereader. Loyal follower Nonchalant gladly stepped in. As I’ve said before, the last two SRA stories are much better thanks to his input, because he caught mistakes I hadn’t.
I won’t lie; I teared up a little as I wrote the final epilogue. Rereading it just now, it still gets me. It is my fondest hope that you experience even half the emotion I did. Everything, two-plus years of work, has been building up to those last hundred words.
The point of SRA is to show that even in the depths of despair, there is hope. You’re not alone. Facing the sins of your past is difficult, but it can be done. You can, as Ringo Starr said, get by with a little help from your friends.
So, here we are. Save for one or two non-canon side stories, SRA is complete. To be honest, the full impact of it ending hasn’t quite hit me yet, so I don’t feel much.
Also the fact that I have a LOT of other stories still on my plate. As of now, the Burritoverse is still going; I was just working on its latest story last night. Unlike SRA, I’ve never solicited help for Burrito stories. Not sure why. I guess I just feel like they should be 100% my insanity.
I would never have gotten to this point had it not been for the support of my prereaders, the occasional constructive critic, and of course y’all — my readers, who left lovely, encouraging, sometimes funny comments on the stories and in my blogposts, convincing me that all my work hasn’t been in vain, that my words are capable of moving people to feel things, which is all any aspiring author can ask for, really.
Thank you so so SO much!
SRA ends now. But, I’m not through writing Sunset Shimmer, not by a long shot. She is my muse, after all. Plus, you might have noticed I’ve set up several questions about my world I have yet to answer. Those answers will come. However, other characters need my attention first.
I hope you’ll stick with me as I serve up more stories over the summer.
Peace out!
Alright! Time to re-read the entire series all at once. Woot woot!
It's been great proofreading your stuff, man, and I'm good to offer my input whenever you may want it. This has been one hell of a ride so far and I honestly wanna stay on and see where it goes, beyond Recovery and Burritoverse.
Congratulations on finishing the main body of this project.
I'm going to miss SRA, but I look forward to what you come up with next.
This was one hell of a journey and I'm glad to have been there for the last leg of it! :D Looking forward to more of what you do. <3