Magisight: Chapter 25 + Music coming soon! + Other Tweaks? · 3:00am Nov 25th, 2019
Holy crap, a bunch of things happened in this chapter! First things first, I'll get the music information out of the way, then talk about chapter 25. As usual, chapter discussion will contain spoilers! Much like Amethyst Hollow and Peacegrove Village, my proofreader, Cadenza Heartsong, is working on a song for the Cloudsbane. Unfortunately, it has taken him a bit longer than anticipated to create it. It's a very ambitious piece for him, and he is experimenting with a lot of new things. I will be sure to post a link to the song once it is finished; likely in the next week or two. The rest of this blog post pertains to chapter 25, so don't click if you want to avoid spoilers!
So, chapter 25!
We have finally arrived at the missing weather factory, or in this case city, known in stories as the Cloudsbane. In terms of drafting and revising, this part of the story underwent some massive changes, much like the middle/later sections of Peacegrove Village. The Cloudsbane scenes were initially incredibly rough, almost rushed. I never had a super clear vision for how this part of the story would unfold until very recently. It was always very vague and kind of flimsy. I'd like to extend personal thanks to user Logarithmicon for offering advice on his thoughts on pegasus magic. Some of his opinions and descriptions helped refine my own while revising the chapter.
The trek through the original Cloudsbane factory was initially very quick, and barely covered a chapter-and-a-half or so. Initially, Rainbow Dash wasn't present (she stayed behind after destroying the tornado in order to help the villagers) with Twilight in the Cloudsbane, and since there was no city surrounding it, that entire scene was not present either. In fact, let me pull up the old draft and see what exactly happens...
....
Yikes, that was terrible. It felt disjointed, rushed, and the factory itself was not really set up well. This will never see the light of day. The exploration of the factory barely lasted half a chapter before getting into the big climax. The stuff about dark magic was still present, but it was applied rather differently. Also, as you might imagine, there were no weather golems in the initial draft. I got the idea during a random conversation in Manechat and thought to myself "hey i'mma use that." There was a lot of inspiration from iisaw bleeding into this, and I especially wanted to incorporate some of that "badass Twilight" here. The pegasus arc of this story is meant to be more action-based than the previous two, and having a force to actually combat against definitely adds a lot of tension! I'm too soft-hearted to actually harm any real ponies though...
Chapter 26 revisions are well underway, and I'd say the chapter is about 80% written. There's a few more parts to flesh out, some lore to check and re-check, and the upcoming climax to consider. Big, exciting things are just around the corner for our duo!
As for other tweaks, I might go back to prior chapters (especially all of the earth pony chapters) and make slight, minor tweaks to some of the magic descriptions. During the editing process, Ember, my editor, expressed concern that some of my initial pegasus magic descriptions were too similar to my earth pony ones. Many of these were fixed for the final revision, but upon reflection, I may go back and tweak older chapters a tiny bit just to ensure consistency and cohesion. I haven't decided yet. I need to take a few hours one day this week and just re-read everything and see how happy I am with it all. Of course, if I do make any changes, they will be minor word tweaks or a sentence re-write. The devil is in the details, after all. I'll be sure to make a blog entry for any changes I make.
May the stars shine until the end of your journey!
-PK
