Random Ramblings CCCXI · 7:01am Sep 5th, 2018
IN WHICH I RETHINK MY RETHINKING
But first, on the advice of Billy, a worker at the gym I go to, I checked this band out. Enjoy.
I liked this song. Didn't like "The Way of Vikings" -- I've low tolerance for cookie monster vocals. More past the jump.
So several followers were kind enough to reply to the question I posed in my last blogpost, and the response was unanimous: Do Not Change Canterville's Name. So, I won't. There were sound reasons given for not following through -- it might confuse readers who haven't read the entire thing, it's a good name, and canon be damned. Given how far behind I am on the series as it is, canon's been damned for a long time anyway.
Y'all may have noticed that I dropped a story this morning (yesterday). After I came up with its title, all I needed to do was make a few tweaks and it was ready to go. It's gotten a small but positive reception so far, which is more than I can say for most of my recent stories. So, yay.
I didn't peg an Author's Notes blogpost to it because, like my Twilight Sparkle shitpost, I felt the story spoke for itself without needing much more from me. While it has plenty of callbacks to other stories, I linked THE GUIDE, which is more than enough. But that leads me to a comment left by one of my readers that got me thinking:
Why, WHY must this be non-canon?
Allow me to answer that right now. It's because I never intended for the Recovery Arc to end in a shipping. It was ALWAYS meant to end with Sunset getting that reply from Celestia and crying happy tears.
That said, I've come to enjoy writing Rarity's so-far fruitless attempts to get Sunset-sempai to notice her. Rarity has been my favourite of the Mane Six since late in Season One, and was only dethroned as my all-time favourite pony by Sunset Shimmer herself. I also adore writing Sunset and Flash interacting as "friends". Like Sunset said in NQST, the cutting banter with Flash makes her feel like herself again, even if just for a moment.
I don't know if you can call this a spoiler or not, but I wrote a story where Rarity finally gets Sunset… last year. However, I wasn't happy with it after I completed it, and as I added more detail to Sunset's Recovery Arc and finished that, I was even less happy with it. The story needs a major tune-up before it's worthy to print and I'm not good enough a writer to do it. Slowly, I've been reaching out to some friends on this site who regularly write M-rated stories to pick their brains (as they've also asked my advice -- poor bastards).
Intentionally or not, I set it up such that Rarity will celebrate her 18th birthday before this final ship story occurs, so I could get nasty if I wanted to, but I don't want to. As it is, the story contains heavy groping, sloppy kissing, and partial nudity, but no sex. And I want to keep it that way.
You're reading a blog post by a guy who once had Sunset make a masturbation joke, for what it's worth. Kudos to the readers who caught it.
Where was I? Oh, right. Continuity. As I look upon the three dozen stories I've written, probably two-thirds of which are part of either SRA and/or The Burritoverse, I realize that that throwaway line about my world being as confusing as the Zelda timeline may not be that far off. I wish I had a working scanner so I could draw a flowchart to explain things better than THE GUIDE can.
Trust me, it's only going to get more confusing.
Essentially, there are THREE parallel timelines in the Humanoid world, one of which has yet to be revealed. The Burritoverse is a sort of "Perpendicular Universe" that interacts with everything. One timeline is SRA, ending where I planned it to (plus tacking AMDQ on at the end). Another timeline -- let's call it the "Romance Arc" (ORIGINALITY!) -- splits off after Recovery and goes full shipfic. You can take it or leave it. I'm writing it, but I'm not considering it a continuation of the Recovery Arc; it's its own thing -- a gift to my readers for being so patient with me these past three years.
Sunset On The Couch IS canon to something, but I'm not sure which timeline or timelines (possibly all of them).
The third timeline is where it gets interesting, at least to me. It will split off after Sasha and prominently feature a character I have intentionally kept out of my stories. Once she appears, everything should click into place and I'll finally get to reveal more about Sunset's past that I've only hinted at up to now. And also the universe itself.
But I've run out of time for tonight. Hopefully I've broken your brain. I sure broke mine trying to explain this.
Peace out!
Can one break what is already broken?
This has me excited though. I can sense your excitement and its bleeding through to me. Or am I just projecting onto you? I dunno.
And I must thank you for all the work you've put into organizing your universe. It's inspired me to do the same and tie all of my different story ideas together. And I honestly can't separate the stories from each other anymore. Dunno if that'll make my stories harder to write, but its definitely making them more INTERESTING to write :D