It was leading to rabbit holes of character arguments that spiraled into hellish domains where finding a feasible 'out' for Sunset grew dire indeed. After several attempts I've decided to just rip out the rootMarch Update Blog; Or, Where is Chapter 25?!?! · 8:17pm Mar 1st, 2020
It's being worked on, I promise! It's just very slow going due to the usual host of factors, and a few unexpected ones.
At present chapter 25 is 6.7k words. I'm suspecting it ending up around the 10k range once everything is filled in, polished, and edited. One of the biggest hurdles has been the sheer number of characters involved in the story and action that need at least some mention. To form a quick and dirty list: Twilight, Soir, Fleur, and Hades being central characters to the chapter's action, with an additional 16 characters all being involved in some capacity. Some get as much as a page with dialogue and action, others get just a quick line here or there. A pair of characters I'm very pleased with, one moment they share in particular standing out that could be a little controversial, depending on what ships you like.
Another aspect that has been tricky to manage is just the amount of 'flash' and 'power level' involved. The fight between Faust and Zeus set a baseline of what a battle between two gods could entail. I've gone back to that chapter in also using Soir as the PoV character. I don't want us to be in the alicorns' heads during the fight. I'm also using Celestia having once accidentally causing Sol to crash to the disk and incinerate the not-Aztec nation as precedence on what I can do during this fight. Since it is the big, last hurrah of Myths I want it to go out with the appropriate bang, but not overdo it. Its a fine balance, and I think I'm a bit too far in the 'over-the-top' side in the current draft.
For, ahem, 'research', I've been reading/watching various shonen battle manga and anime. Okay, that is an excuse to just watch/read more than usual since I've been a fan of the genre since Dragon Ball Z first aired on whatever the kids cartoon network was here in Canada back in the mid-90s. Wow, can't even recall the channel's name now. I feel old.
Anyways, back to work. I hope to have this published in a few weeks, if all goes well. Gods, hope I didn't just jinx myself....
keep going this is a great story
Looking forward to it. Been waiting in anticipation for the climax. I've really enjoyed this story, and I've been reading the spinoffs and I really like them too especially Velvet Sparkle and the Queen in Stone.
Hope you continue to do more with the Myths universe in the future. Great job man.
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Thanks! Getting close to the end, though.
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What I plan to do with Myths is scrub it of copyrighted material, polish the world some more, and rewrite the novels into a single, cohesive series spanning from Velvet through to the end of the Rariad. Going to be a lot of rolling characters together, cutting others, and so on involved. Its a long, arduous process.
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Just off the top of my head; Zubu, Gilda, and associated characters are all being removed. Pinkie is also being removed, with aspects of what she does spread out among the other Mane 6 as appropriate. Those are the big ones. Applejack jumps off and on the chopping block. Scootaloo has a high probability of being removed as well. It's very tentative, early stages thinking about how important characters are and how to change/De-Pony-ify Myths.
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I love Zubu personally, for a host of reasons not directly connected to the story itself but his inspirational roots. Him and Gilda's story and characters would and could be a book in and of itself and I see that as a possibility.
The weakness of some of the characters is something that I've noticed and struggled with correcting. Part of it is the huge roster of characters. There are simply far too many and need condensing down. I didn't even touch on the alicorns/gods and how much that is going to change. I'm pretty much blank-slating things in that department. I've not settled on whether I want to use the Greek pantheon. If I do I'd want to have it be the proper version with the proper familial ties, not the horribly mangled version I ended up making in Myths. That is the single, biggest regret I have is how badly I transposed the Greek pantheon. It is a jumbly, nonsensical mess. Tyr, Shyara, and Talona can be smashed together to have just two, or even one, character, as well.
I mean, it is possible that I keep Zubu and Gilda, and it is Trixie and Shyara that get the axe with their roles and events rolled into other characters as necessary. One of the things I need to do is get a large white board, print out all the chapters, make notes, and plot out EVERYTHING. Make character lists. And really figure this out. I mean, there are probably five or six novels that can be made out of Myths and its various side stories. It is a daunting undertaking, and that just makes me feel overwhelmed whenever I think about it, honestly.