[AUTHOR'S NOTES] Read the chapter first, or this is gonna be confusing... · 4:20am May 11th, 2020
So since this one chapter is as long as some entire multi-chapter fics, I figure it deserves some specific author's notes to this chapter, also because it deserves it.
So one thing I do want to do is a shout-out to spotty8ee, Rune Soldier Dan, Wanderer D, and WulfyMail. The first three are going to be obvious to most, but the last one will require some explaining:
So if you haven't yet, go read Friendship is Monsters and add Friendship is Monsters: Meliorism to your "read it as soon as it's updated" bookshelf. I've exposited quite a bit on this fic in the past, but I can't say it enough; this story and it's setting is so damn compelling because it does what any good story should; it takes the stuff that's already there and makes something new. If the story remained 100% identical to what spotty8ee has already but the names were changed to protect the copyright, they could probably publish this as original fiction and it'd be amazing!
So yes, huge thanks to spotty8ee for letting me play in their sandbox!
Rune Soldier Dan is the one that, not gonna lie, completely hooked me on Momlestia, and did so in the most fun way possible with the "...Hunts the Undead" series:
The section of Music Box Blues that takes place in this universe is actually a sequel to another story idea that I had that will be showing up in A Band of Misfit Losers Hunt the Undead (unless I totally misunderstood Rune Soldier Dan when I was explaining what I wanted to do with this section). One way or another, though, I'll be writing up said prequel to this section at some point in the near future.
Naturally, if you follow the feature box at all you know about Wanderer D. I'm happy to be able to call Wanderer D at least a very good acquaintance, if not a good friend, for a couple of years now. I first read Gunsmoke during its initial run and earned a place as "One of life's Good Things that got me through my divorce." I first got on Wanderer D's radar when, after reading Gunsmoke and getting really excited about the story, went back to watch Sword Art Online and found I hated it with enough passion to write a few thousand words about how it sucks and Gunsmoke is, like, WAY better. Imagine my surprise when I was asked to write the intro to the published version of Gunsmoke by Wanderer D himself. (Knock me over with a feather, you could have...) To explain how critical this wound up being to this story, if Wanderer D hadn't written Sunset's Isekai, it's likely that Music Box Blues might never have even happened, because I was struggling with how to get Celestia to the other time frames at all, and this was before I even thought of having the other fanfic universes be part of the story. One day I was checking my "Tracking" bookshelf on FiMFiction while pondering the problem and listening to some truly epic Christmas music covers and Sunset's Isekai came up...and so many pieces fell into place I couldn't not write it at that point. And once I had one alternate timeline's Sunset Shimmer involved, a whole bunch of other Sunsets wanted to come along for the ride.
Pretty much nobody is going to know the reference to the setting where Celestia is an elf. Well, half-elf. And that's because this version of Celestia is based on a homebrew D&D 5E campaign with the current working title of "Feverdream." This was the brainchild of WulfyMail, who will likely not respond if you poke her via DMs because she's shy. She had the idea to make MLP into a playable campaign but instead of just rehashing it a-la Tales of Equestria, fully adapting it using the content of D&D's core rulebooks. My involvement mostly comes in the form of, "OK, that won't work because..." or "Don't you think this is just a touch OP?" That said, she kinda begged and pleaded, and when I finally said, "Okay," that's when a few other pieces fell into place and I realized it just plain worked.
Once we have something that's remotely playable, we're going to start posting modules, character sheets, etc. out for it.
Oh, another fun fact for this section; the "harpies" in it aren't actually harpies. They are just as mythical in this world as they are in ours, but they have some descriptions of them from other worlds (like Equestria), so when Vrocks from the Abyss show up, they get mistaken for Harpies. The more you know!
I've mentioned in my blog before that I primarily use music for inspiration and focus in my projects, and if you're curious, you can listen to most of the playlist I use for Music Box Blues on Spotify. I say most, because I've got a couple more things to take care of for this fic, and I don't want the music to act as spoilers, even if you can probably guess what I'm going to do next with this beast.
One person I want to do a special shoutout to is The Crazed Werewolf. There work isn't as popular as the other big authors in this fic, and no, the universe doesn't appear in Music Box Blues. That said, they have many, many good ideas and most of the ideas I've been tinkering around with for the future of Empire of Dirt came straight from Sirens of the Night. That work is so influential to how I want to build Empire of Dirt to set up for its sequel that I almost included it as one of the alternate timelines for the Anon-a-Miss journey, but I realized that it would be severely off message and (at the time) "If you'd just believe, Just believe with me" was already ballooning larger than I wanted a chapter of my work to go, so I cut it for time constraints.
Yes, yes, you can laugh at that statement.
One final note; in my rush to get it published, I did miss a decent number of things that should have been corrected, like spelling and grammar errors. If you notice something, bring it up in the comments of the story, as usual.
Rune Soldier Dan did ask me at one point if I was going to just push off the final release of Music Box Blues until Christmas 2020, what with it being a "Christmas" special and all, and I told them what I'll tell you all now; Nope, 'cause Christmas 2020's got it's own special, and it's gonna be GLORIOUS!
Well, I guess that now I know whom to blame both for the lack of progress on your older stories and for the yet additional influx of the "reformed Sunset" stories which tend to annoy me more and more these days. (and the less said about how much I already hate "Sirens of the Night" the better it is =)) )
Well, at least now I know that ya are actually writing stuff, as I do follow stories, and tend to miss author words even if I follow them, so I seriously thought that you just haven't written anything since late 2018, so it's a good sign and some hope of progress, right? **bitter laugh**
At the very least I hope that your writing itself is satisfying and enjoyable for yourself, that's the main thing that matters in the end.
GLHF!
Looking forward to seeing the finally of Music Box Blues and more Empire of Dirt
Well, the D&D stuff sounds fantastic. And now I have more stories to read!
👀