CRISIS: Equestria - Why It's Finally Ending · 5:27am Aug 17th, 2019
"When are you going to finish CRISIS: Equestria?" "Why aren't you updating CRISIS: Equestria?"
I've had these questions asked of me dozens of times in the past five years, and I feel I owe it to the fans of the story to give a proper explanation.
Several factors played a role in me stepping away from CRISIS in the first place:
- While writing the opening scene of Chapter 38, I had a number of personal things going on in my life, from my mother being diagnosed with breast cancer (she's made a full recovery since) to going back to school to obtain a formal education as a writer. The stress and lack of free time made it difficult to maintain a steady schedule for writing fanfiction.
- The show itself became a point of contention for me around the beginning of Season Five, when Starlight Glimmer was introduced. I have a fully separate rant on her that I'll post up some day, but to sum it all up, the show's canon was doing things more and more that I disagreed with, or that I felt detracted from the work I'd made - Discord's redemption was the first nail in that coffin (I like him better as an antagonist, or at worst a nuisance, not a protagonist). I kept up with the show over the past years via artists I follow and reading transcripts of the episodes, and generally speaking I felt the direction the show was taking was weaker than it had been when I started watching.
- Most critically, the entire BogyleBronies radio play proved to be a critical mistake on my end. Not agreeing to the project in the first place, no, but getting so involved in it and overexerting myself revising older chapters to better flow for the different format, including adding updated references to the show, correcting errors, and giving more character to the Mane Six to reflect their canon personalities as they were changing in canon. I had a falling out with the crew shortly before starting work on Chapter 38, mostly issues that wouldn't have happening if everyone involved, myself included, didn't act like a bunch of immature children.
This was the real final nail, as between my tight schedule, my disinterest in canon, overexertion, and general displeasure with the radioplay, I couldn't bring myself to continue writing at all, really, outside of school.
I made attempts to write further in the years since, but never really had the drive to do it., not until fairly recently. I've gone on record that GMBlackjack contacted me about writing an ending to CRISIS as part of his fic, League of Sweetie Belles. I agreed to let him have a go at it, since I'd lost interest in ever doing it myself and didn't really think anyone actually cared if I did apart from a few random people basically begging me to finish it. So he wrote up an ending, I looked it over, and I liked it so much that I declared that, unless I ever finished the ending myself, it was as good as official.
Then, of course, i got to thinking, "Y'know, I could finish up CRISIS myself in about a week if I put my mind to it." So, I did. Apart from corrections, editing, and fleshing things out, the final chapters (which as of this writing are not all posted yet) took me about a week to write. I trimmed down my original overly-complex encounters and filler-feeling scenes to focus on a much more streamlined, take, part of the style I developed during my education.
So there you have it: that's why it's taken so long to finish CRISIS, and why I finally got a fire under my butt to make it happen.
Kept us waiting, huh?
Sorry to hear about the radio play and the cancer (glad she got better!).
Thanks for coming back to finish the story despite the issues mentioned. I was really excited to see it.
If it turns out that this is the last fanfiction you will ever write, I can’t wait to read how you’ll wrap up CRISIS: Equestria. I’ve been waiting ever since the chapter 37 cliffhanger to see how far you would take this story despite the ongoing show that’s gonna wrap up in a few months.
Been a fan of your work since your progress on the mid 30s of CRISIS: Equestria. I almost have to reconsider reading the story from the very beginning to get caught up on this once more (and also to see how well this holds up)
I also enjoyed your story with Trixie. It also had some PinkieDash in it so it was rather up my alley.
I was always pointing people to Crisis (especially in the PinkieDash threads) as a great example of earlyish MLP fiction that was a long epic kind of story. Always hoped to get an ending and so happy to see it now. It may not have been time then but if you feel good about doing it now that is awesome. It was also one of the earliest stories I read. I found it before this site.
I get it. I got my own epic on the back burner that's nowhere near as complete as yours and will take years for me to get back in the queue.
I only found out about this story through GMBlackjack's stories, about a month ago. I really like your story. I can agree with what you said about not liking some stuff in later parts of MLP. I don't even watch the show anymore, I just like reading fanfics. Many fanfics are much better than current MLP, storywise. Yours included, I'd say. Sometimes stories end, it's unfortunate, but it happens. At least this got finished, thanks.