No Promises... · 8:24am Aug 19th, 2018
...I don't want to get anybody's hopes up...
...but I MAY have finally figured out a proper narrative direction for Super Smash Bros. Disharmony.
I don't want to get anybody's hopes up too much, as I'm currently focusing more energy into Applejack: Marvelous and a few other projects... but it may finally be back in the pipeline.
If y'all want some more info about what's taken so long, there's some spoilered shit below the break
(It's spoilered because I may still use certain aspects of it)
See, my original plan for SSBD, aside from simply wanting Nintendo characters to interact with the ponies, was to have Discord be the ultimate villain of the piece, manipulating things behind the scenes so that he could a) break free from his stone prison, b) give himself a humungonormous power boost, and c) spread chaos across the multiverse instead of just across Equestria.
Remember, I started this fic around the midpoint of Season 3. Discord hadn't been reformed when I started the fic, and even after he reformed, I initially intended to just ignore that, as "Keep Calm and Flutter On" was one of my least favorite episodes of all time.
(I still think Discord worked better from a narrative standpoint as an antagonist, but I've grown to like reformed Discord)
It was when I started reading fics by Alara J. Rogers (who writes incredibly awesome stories and you should absolutely check them out), though, that I really started thinking about the nature of Discord as a character; the things that motivated and drove him, the nature of his abilities, what his goals and interests might be... that sort of thing.
That, on top of just a few too many fics that portrayed Discord as a stereotypical moustache twirling behind-the-scenes schemer, made me lose interest in the whole Discord angle the story was going to take. I grew to agree with AJR's position that Discord was a big-and-loud sort of character-- the kind who wouldn't be satisfied manipulating events behind the scenes. Discord wants people to KNOW who's beating them. He wants to be spontaneous and wacky and do things that nobody expects. Sure, he CAN manipulate, but he's not really one for long cons.
So I scrapped the Discord angle.
Unfortunately, without an antagonist driving the events of the story, I suddenly found myself in a weird sort of limbo with SSBD. I stumbled through trying to write several chapters without any direction and in the end I simply didn't like them... so they never got released. Ultimately, I put SSBD on the backburner until I could effectively figure out a new story.
I think I might have finally found something. And it's so much darker than my original plan. It raises the stakes higher than ever.
We'll see if anything comes of it.
Sorry, didn't read the end of the message, already on the hype traiiiiiiiinnnn
Okay, I MAY have overreacted, but still, it's good news.
Since you told me to not get my hopes up I'll try not to but either way it's nice to know you've not given up on your old story.
(So... does that mean that you haven't given up on Applebloom: Transform and Roll Out either?)
Fingers crossed. Here's hoping that potential solution works out.
Hey I'll be rooting all the way for you on whichever route you go down. I love Smash, but this is really the only fic I can recall that made the effort to go over what the characters of a crossover of this magnitude would do or think... With Ponies as a nice bonus, of course ^_^
I mean, Tabuu is still a thing if you want Discord kinda-sorta in the picture. Similarly to how Master Hand was the "mastermind" of Subspace Emissary
Ah, that explains the delay. Unless you plan on bringing either Nightmares or the Pony of Shadows in as new villains I have no idea where you're going, but I'd like to find out!
Hey, you're still workin', that's fine by me!
I sure would like to see SSBD continued.