Sequel to Playing House out tomorrow! · 2:23pm Feb 1st, 2020
Howdy, y’all! Not really sure this is needed, but I wanted to make a blog post for my new story that’s coming out tomorrow and show off its cover art. “Thicker Than Water” is the sequel to “Playing House”, following Fluttershy as she tours with Bitchette as their manager. It’s probably my favorite “Who We Become” story 
So “Playing House” was pretty damn heavy. Kinda too heavy for me, honestly. Like it was a good story, but was it an enjoyable story? I don’t know. Looking back on it, I love the first two acts, and then it just gets real sad all the time. What really made me realize I wasn’t happy with it was when I’d release genuinely happy chapters and people would just comment “shame this won’t last” because the sad was so prominant that it spilled into the happy chapters.
I don’t really want to do that anymore, so I stopped and had a bit of a think about where I want my stories to fall on a drama scale. Pasu asked me to rank this story’s drama on a scale of one to five with one being “In Quiet Moments” and five being “Playing House” and I decided I wanted a three but kind of a weird three. See, I want the drama to be able to get every bit as intense as PH, but god damn do I not want it to be anywhere near as fucking thick. Give the characters (and the reader) a chance to breathe.
And what better time to try this new goal out than on a punk rock tour? Lots of chances for fun shenanigans, but also able to explore a world where the characters have no one to tell them “no, this is too far”. So if you liked the high drama of “Playing House”, don’t worry, it’ll still be there. But if you thought it was a bit hard to get through, then this should be easier on you.
So that’s where I’m at right now, and where I want to go in the future. I won’t pretend I got the balance perfect on this first attempt, but this is easily the closest I’ve come to where I feel “Who We Become” should be in the balance between drama and fluff since “Finding Home” and probably closer to it than that story was. I’m really excited about it, and I hope y’all will like it.
Now then, y’all probably clicked that “read more” button primarily to see the cover art, so here it is. I’m still playing around with the text, so that’ll probably be different by the time the story comes out tomorrow. My frequent collaborator (and official WWB artist) Pasu was going to do the cover, but she didn’t have enough time because of school, so she did the sketch while Adgerelli lined and colored it, for a cool collab cover 
And as one final thing, I often link music in my stories at the end of the story/act, which is intended to be sort of like special end credits music for the season/series finale. Well, for the first time, I also found some opening credits music. If this story was an animated series, this would be the song that would open every episode. Of course you can ignore it if connecting music to fanfics isn’t your thing, but I think it sets the tone I want for this story perfectly.
It’s good to see that the storyline will be progressing from the rock bottom of the previous one. I look forward to seeing the girls pick up the pieces.
Awesome I look forward to more of this adventure.
Also I love that idiom.
5195753
There will be plenty of drama in this one too, don’t think the girls are getting off easy
5195756
I became very fond of it once I learned the full version (”The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb”) means found families are more important than the ones we’re born into. Very much in line with my own thinking, and a good summary of how I write Fluttershy and Rainbow
That....took me a long time to realize that was Fluttershy standing next to Rainbow. I guess she decided that the manager of a punk rock band should look the part just as much as the band members?
5195767
Hehe we’ll see what brings Fluttershy to this new look in the story itself, but god damn do I ever love it
I just started rereading wwb this week; I'm so hyped for more bunwords. Actually, with the announcement of this fic, I have a question to which you may/may not know/want to share the answer:
Now that we've seen Sunset, Twilight's, and pony Fluttershy's arcs (as well as Amber/Luna and Scootaloo's) somewhat concluded, what comes next? Obviously there's this fic, which I'm sure will have it's fair share of romance and drama, but do you have plans for like, a sequel to the TwiShySet polygon or new stuff altogether? or are you still thinking about all that? or possibly was all of this mentioned somewhere else and I didn't see it because I'm blind?
also, inner strength is just as good the second time through. There's a lot of detail and foreshadowing in it that flew over my head the first time, and I imagine playing house has even more that I missed—although, that could've just been because it's harder to read when my vision is obscured by tears.
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I'm always so excited when I hear people are rereading my stories. I'm a huge fan of foreshadowing and have slipped things into older fics like WWB that still haven't had their payoff yet
As for what’s coming next, oh man, I hope you wanted this answer because I’ve got one
I’m wrapping things up with Phase One of WWB (out of three phases total). That’ll include five or six more stories, most of which will be shorter (by my standards). First up in “Thicker Than Water”, which is the only one currently written. After that (or maybe I’ll release it in between acts of TTW, idk yet) I’ve got a three-chapter story called “Empty Sky”. That’ll be set shortly after Finding Home and will be about Sunset telling Twilight and Fluttershy about Sky for the first time. I was originally not going to write that, but one of my editors convinced me it would be worth visiting.
After that I’ll finally stop jumping around the timeline and push forewards, with the next story being a six-chapter one called “The Open Road”, which is about TwiShySet going on a road trip in the human world, and is mostly a for fun story. Fourth up I’ve got an unnamed story about Sunset’s parents that I forget the length of (I either outlined it as four or six chapters idk) which will give some clarity on why they’re so awful while also revealing why two ponies who clearly never wanted a kid had one anyway.
Fifth and maybe sixth is The Grand Equestrian Soap Opera (working title) which serves two purposes: to wrap up everyone’s Phase One stories while introducing some elements and characters that’ll be important in Phase Two. The scope of this story is large enough that I might wind up splitting it into two; essentially it covers multiple years and touches on every ongoing plotline to give them all satisfying resolutions.
Phase One is the slice romantic drama that everyone knows, while Phase Two is a high stakes adventure story. Because of that, I expect not everyone will want to read past Phase One (and not everyone interested in Phase Two will be interested in reading Phase One). So I want The Grand Equestrian Soap Opera to work well as a pseudo ending of the series, a place where people could optionally stop if they don’t like the change in direction, while Phase Two is a place people could start reading if they don’t care about all the slice of life setup. I have all of Phase Two planned down from story to story (it’ll be five or six stories in total, unless I add side stories to it), while I have Phase Three very roughly planned in my head with only the first few stories well defined.
Now, that’s not to say I’ll be able to keep doing these stories back to back like I’ve been doing. I’m writing an original novel at the moment (taking a short break to write Empty Sky as a way to recharge), and I really need to focus on that and trying to pursue a paying career as an author. So while I’ll hopefully be progressing through these stories steadily, it may not be quickly. My goal for 2020 is to get everything done up to the Soap Opera (since TTW is already finished that means I’ll be writing three shorter stories) as well as two original novels because I have exactly zero chill.
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> Sunset telling Flutters and Twi about what went down when she was playing house.
um, how about YES. I was looking forward to that moment the entirety of finding home, but I realize that it was written before playing house.
> Big adventure
I love a good adventure fic, especially long ones (if it spans a whole phase I'm guessing it'll be pretty big), and especially ones with at least a little romance. You're a fantastic writer, so it'll be worth a read regardless of romance anyways.
Also, all of wwb is only like, one phase so far? Out of three? That's nuts. Honestly, fair play to you for not only making a massive (at least in fanfiction terms) series, but also continuing the universe.
5196039
Ye, if I had written Finding Home before Playing House it would have directly addressed Sky instead of hinting about her here and there. One of my regrets about writing FH first, so I might as well set it right!
And glad to hear you’ll be sticking around. I get worried a lot that I’m going to lose all my readers due to the genre shift and just how long this series is going to be. I’m pretty sure that once the 110k TTW finishes publishing, the series as a whole will be at a million words, and it’s already getting harder to attract new readers (not to mention that unless G5 revitalizes the fandom, pony hs long since peaked). But you can count on me to see it through, no matter how long it takes
All I’ve really wanted to do for the past four years is tell this story, and I’m going to do it no matter how long it takes or how many readers I’ve still got by the end of it! 
"Who We Become" in general (and "Playing House" in particular) is actually what made me finally watch the EqG stuff (so thank you for that!), and I am very excited for this one.
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Oh nice! As a fan of the EqG stuff, I'm glad I convinced you to give it a shot
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If it does turn out that way I think the fandom is in a kinda cosy spot right now. Having things winnowed-down means less of a deluge of stuff on the frontpage, and the big-name authors/reviewers that have stuck round for the long haul stand out more.
Unless things get really heated I get the feeling that G4, G5, etc content will be able to peacefully coexist with the work that's been done on the site's search algorithms and the bonds that have formed.
Of course, many of those famous long-haulers are slowly fading away due to how long it's been and the stress of putting out the content over the years. I wonder what it would take to have many of them leave for good or switch 100% to G5 content...
5196516
Maybe so, but a smaller reader base is a smaller reader base. I may score a bigger slice of the pie than I would if there were more writers, but it is a smaller pie. That coupled with the fact that to get caught up on WWB you'll need to read a million words by the time Thicker Than Water is finished has seriously reduced the amount of people I have reading my later stories (a whopping two people came out to comment on the end of Piece by Piece, for example).
Anyway, I'm probably sounding more grumpy than I mean to. I'm not really upset, just worried about the future if this trend continues
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Always suspected things tended towards smaller slices of bigger pies and bigger slices of smaller pies... for most authors.
And if a pie grows but your slice shrinks by a large amount, things can be great for readers and the big guys, but confusing for most people that might not benefit or even get shut out. (Applies to many social/economic situations)... what was that about 'growing the pie so all can benefit' again? Of course, there are then questions about whether the pie will grow and people's slices will also grow and vice versa, and of the size of the slice vs 'absolute' resources and 'opportunity'. So measuring just the pie can be quite deceiving.
I get the feeling that trend will continue TBH, and that anything G5 will not trickle down so well into views for you unless you mix in G5 content and/or have stuff lined up for frontpage, etc.