The gigantically long delay · 11:56pm Feb 14th, 2012
Sooo... Yeah. I haven't posted a Banishment Decree chapter for a month and a half. My bad, peeps.
The delay has been due to three things:
Firstly, I'm back at uni after xmas break and have actual work to do, so my writing has unfortunately taken a back seat.
Secondly, the next several chapters require a lot of planning. Chapters 2-4 were essentially all cut from the same set of planning notes, and I already had chapter five plotted out in my head before I'd finished four. As well as that, all I had to do for the first few chapters was make up a half-decent plot as I went along and sprinkle in any details I wanted to drop as I went along. That is not the case for the next few chapters, which require more finesse. It's difficult to say how far through planning I am at the moment, but I will hopefully have an overview of the next few chapters after a six hour shift of writing, a solid, meat and bones plan for the next chapter after the next six hours of writing, and then the actual write-up to publish will occur between 6-18 hours after that. When I can actually get around to fitting in all those hours is a different story entirely....
Thirdly, I'm trying to hold myself to a higher standard. The first two and a half chapters of BD have a lot of sloppy bits in them that just don't feel right, and I plan on going back over them, making edits and rewrites where necessary. The library scene where Gilda and Trixie are as subtle as Cutie Mark Espionage Agents is one example, and the forced "Oh look Dash and Gilda are friends again because I'm the goddamn author" bit needs redoing. Although I freely admit that I'm no Somber or Seiurin, that doesn't mean I'm going to let my work go all sloppy and not do anything about it.
TL; DR: Sorry about the delays, I'm a busy busy bee, but I'm still kicking about and updates are on the horizon :D
Thanks for reading,
CF
Please take your time it is an awesome story when you do. I was telling everyone at work brony or not about Trixie's talent for pulling a "houfdini" and her subsequent get paid as an escort by guy be assaulted by guy "disappear" him get paid bounties by 2 separate groups then get paid ransom by his daughter then make her "disappear" grand finale. I had to explain twice that it was a my little pony story.
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I gotta admit, a big chunk of why I wrote Banishment Decree is that I can't stand the way Trixie is usually written. I've read Discord knows how many stories where Trixie is either a near-powerless deluded hack, a washout woobie who loses everything after Ponyville must learn to accept the love and friendship of the Mane Six or whoever, or a combination of the two. Seriously, fuck that noise. In the show she completely tools the two toughest (physically speaking) elements and peforms an epic burn on Rarity; all of whom got what was coming to them for being hecklers. She chokes up in front of the Ursa, but she was being stared down by a gigantic starbeast after being woken up by two idiot kids at 1am, and to her credit still tries to stop it with the very first spells that come to mind. Twilight comes along and saves the day, but she's a) a prodigy with an incredible amount of raw magic, educated by the God-Princess of Equestria, and b) had spent all day reading about Ursas and how they could be defeated because of her ridiculous academic curiosity.
I mean, yeah, Twilight outclasses Trixie, but it's like saying Georges St-Pierre outclasses BJ Penn in Mixed Martial Arts - it doesn't mean that BJ Penn is a washout failure, just that GSP is the best. BJ Penn would still eat you, me and everyone we know for breakfast in a fight.
The way I sees it, Trixie is egotistical and amoral, but also highly talented and not so trapped by her narcissism that she'll stunt her own learning. She's definitely got her weak spots, because her ego does require a certain level of maintenence, she has a trouble letting slights go and she loves her luxuries, but she's certainly no hack or woobie.