Magisight: Chapter 27 · 8:47am Jan 4th, 2020
Great success! Chapter 27 is now up! And this time I'm actually posting a blog entry the night the chapter goes live (2:40 AM still counts; I haven't gone to bed yet). How exciting and unexpected!
Like other chapters in the pegasus arc, it's almost unrecognizable from its initial draft. The basics are still the same (SHOOT THE CORE), but it's been taken to new heights. I'm very proud of how it turned out, and a big thanks to Ember for helping me to flesh out some important descriptions! Some of the descriptions of Twilight's pegasus magic kicking into high gear when she's alongside Rainbow Dash came primarily from him, and he really helped add a lot of depth and dramatic buildup to just before Twilight launches her aerial assault against the weather core's containment unit.
This chapter drops a ton of important lore stuff, including some stuff I was a little unsure about. Dark magic, for example, is a huge elephant in the room for MLP's lore. We only really see it in the premiere of S3 (Celestia's demonstration, and then King Sombra), the premiere of S9 with King Sombra's return, and the premiere of S4 with Twilight drinking the potion from Zecora (although this might be an animation error. it's called alicorn magic, but the visuals are the same dark magic from S3. leaning towards an animation goof on this one). Beyond just a thing that King Sombra has, it's not really elaborated on.
I know there's a lot of lore dumps involving King Sombra and the Umbrum in the comics, but truth be told, I haven't actually read those comics yet. They're on my list to read, I just never got around to it. Since dark magic isn't really explained in the show outside of 3-4 little instances, I wanted to give my own take on it. I'm sure many of you are picking up the pieces on how it works, and being able to share it is super exciting. It's something I always wanted to write about. You can't write a magic-based fanfic with Twilight and not include dark magic in some way. One of the things I wanted to try to emphasize was its power. It may or may not necessarily be evil, but it's certainly powerful and should not be taken lightly. It's very difficult to control properly, which can easily cause a situation to spiral out of control.
The other big drop in this chapter is what awaits Twilight in the pegasus aetherstream. A more detailed encounter with this strange force that appears to be the one behind her dreams. Another piece of the message has been revealed to our purple pony princess too! I tell you, this message went through a handful of re-writes. The first draft had a much wordier message (I was trying to do some weird number play with it based on the number of words) but it got too messy. The second draft version of this message was much more concise, but my editor had some concerns about my word choice. He suggested the final alternative of "The Element will ascend," and after some back and forth with my proofreader, we agreed on this version.
This is the home stretch! I'm not sure exactly how many more chapters remain, but we are indeed approaching the end! I'm estimating the entire thing will be done sometime in March, but that depends on the number of chapters left, and any delays. The first draft clocked in at 36 chapters, but about 5-6 of them were super short chapters at around 1000-1200 words each. This was an intentional artsy-fartsy decision on my part, but that odd little quirk probably won't make it to the published version. I imagine the contents of those chapters will be retooled and smushed into 1-2 normal chapters (if not outright deleted). Chapter 28 is mostly written already, it just needs another once-over from me, then passed on to my editor. I can hopefully start chapter 29's re-write on Sunday.
And I apologize if this blog was too rambly. I wrote it at like 2:30 in the morning and I had a lot to talk about on this chapter, and I'm not even sure if I hit all of the notes I wanted to.
And if any of you find a dumb reference my editor snuck in, I'm sorry/you win 50 points.
EDIT: And have any of you noticed that little quirk with the chapters yet? There's some shenanigans going on with the number count and the word patterns. 
Okay it's almost 3 am time for bed zzzzzzzzz
May the stars shine until the end of your journey!
-PK
I am really, really looking forward to reading this story when it's done! I've only skimmed a few of your blogs about it to avoid spoilers, but what I've seen leads me to conclude that you're going about this in absolutely the best way possible!
5180265
Aww shucks, those words of praise are really inspiring and really make me wanna give even more of my all! Thank you!
I try to be careful about what I spoil specifically in my blog posts, since I dunno exactly who is reading them when. I like to talk about past drafts, the revision process, what I thought was cool/challenging to write, and sometimes that gets hard to do when spoilers are concerned!
As for the finish, I'm still looking at March, assuming I don't hit any delays. It also kind of depends on how many chapters the finished product ends up being. Wrapping this up in March means roughly 20 months from initial conception to final chapter published. I hope my next story doesn't take quite so long!
Considering the word-count, that's not bad!