New stories, old stories and stories yet to be written

It’s been months since my last update via blogs, though if you follow me on my Discord server, there have been some others. Anyhow, with the most recent batch of content I have uploaded, some people may have a few questions; even if not, I still have something to talk about.

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There are two main topics I’d like to discuss and I will start with the more familiar one - Aftersound.

As you can see, I am true to my word, working together with IAmApe and Jay Tarrant on re-editing Aftersound. Nothing substantial is taking place, like a complete rewrite of any chapters (though I do have some ideas). The re-editing is aimed at cleaning up the text through fixing typos, grammar and logic mistakes. In a few rare cases I may add or remove paragraphs, but it is not anything crucial, so you are not missing anything if you have no desire to re-read Aftersound again.

I have also posted a new side story, ‘Faceless’. It isn’t going to be the last of them, as I have unearthed another ‘frozen’ side story which I haven't touched in a year, but am going to. There is at least one more story I have planned (actually two, but for a really stupid reason you are not going to see the other one until winter). 

And now some big news.

I’ve started working on the Aftersound sequel, so far called ‘Resonance’ (there are at least six stories with that name on fimfiction and I am not sure if I can use that name). I have had some ideas for it even before I finished the original story, but I need to separate wheat from chaff and knit all the concepts into an adequate plot. 

I’m also backing on my previous statement about posting stories chapter by chapter as they are being written. I still believe that writing the whole story and posting it at once is a more reasonable approach leading to a final product of higher quality. However, neither you, nor I have patience for that kind of thing (I bet you would forget about ‘Resonance’ over the two-four years it will take me to write it, even if I remind you about it monthly); also, while it is none of your concern, posting a story chapter by chapter keeps it relevant. I was told numerous times that Aftersound has gotten very little attention, now imagine if it wasn’t featured six times. Of course, it is not my ultimate goal to become a local celebrity, but just believe me, it stings when so few people read your stories, compared to some other stuff on the site.

All that said, you can brace yourself already if you want, but it will be months before the first chapter of ‘Resonance’ is posted. To alleviate the downsides of posting it the ‘old’ way, I am going to put a huge effort into planning everything in advance. Though I promise no strict schedule, I hope to keep it three weeks between the chapters as before (it doesn’t depend only on me, so no promises), which means I need to write at least two-three of them before posting anything. And since English is still a language I struggle with at times, they need to be edited beforehand. Finally, I need to finish some due stories before I start writing anything massive. With all these factors taken into account (which includes some issues IRL brewing for me), don’t expect to see the continuation of Afteround anytime soon. My best bet would be autumn/winter, but I even can’t fully promise it will be this year.

The second topic will be something brand new - Niello.

It is a name you might have seen mentioned on my Discord server as I was talking about a short story. That story is ‘The Darkness I Can’t See’. Now that it is out, let’s talk about what I mentioned in my previous blog post - some mysterious massive project.

It started as a pretty vague idea of Silver Spoon fleeing from Ponyville with two nurses during what appears to be a zombie-apocalypse, though in truth nothing is that simple. Taking it as a starting point, for months I worked on a new story, as a result creating a massive project that could easily span the course of a few books. However, before beginning to actually write it down, I decided to create a short story first, to see if people care and if the concept works in practice, not just on paper (it is still on paper, but you get what I mean). 

As an insecure person who doesn’t believe in their own ability to produce anything decent, I started to convince myself that literally no one will care for Niello. However, it was something I really wanted to write - my own story. As some would say, I am passionate about it. I will digress here a little so you understand what I am rambling about.

While I did type the entirety of Aftersound with my very hands, the thinking and decision-making behind it was done by two people: yours truly and Geka. In the early stages of developing the story a lot of fundamental decisions were made by the both of us. They weren’t compromises or agreements made as a result of a fight, but equal contributions. I am very thankful for his assistance, but I can’t help but feel that, because of that, Aftersound as a whole isn’t genuine proof of my ability to create an amazing story; I wasn’t even putting the concepts I came up with on my own into the story until I thoroughly discussed them with Geka. 

Another thing that I wanted to mention is that I had to ‘kill my darlings’ in Aftersound, sometimes literally. I’d like to have a story with Princess Celestia and Fluttershy not being dead, for an example. Also, though I like Twilight, she wouldn’t be my first choice for a  main character, but she worked too well as one in Aftersound. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Aftersound or didn’t enjoy writing it, but I do wish for a story with different things.  

Now, back to Niello and me giving up on it before it was born.

You may remember from one of my blogs that Geka and I wanted to make a game based on Aftersound, but taking place in an original non-MLP universe. I am not gonna lie, very little progress has been made towards making any game (it is on me, I haven’t touched coding in weeks), but it didn’t deter me from taking the time to work on adapting Aftersound into an original universe - I greatly enjoy doing that. By this moment, I have a rather big text file detailing it with a lot of lore and such written down.

You can probably see where this is going.

After some thought, I tried to adapt Niello to that original universe and… I actually liked it more. Writing an MLP fanfic, an alternative universe, puts some constraints on me. With how Niello is set up, the way I avoid them is a bit similar to that of Aftersound, which isn’t a very good thing. And while I did manage to construct a working and somewhat decent plot, I can’t call it very thrilling or really impressing. It changes drastically with the original universe, the material I have so far vastly overshadows the MLP version. 

This blog has over one thousand words and it is time to make my point.

Unless you give me a very good reason, Niello is going to be an original story not affiliated with My Little Pony in any way. It will take place in the universe stemming from Aftersound’s headcanon, though it isn’t going to be cyberpunk. Obviously, it isn’t going to be posted here, but on some other website. ‘The Darkness I Can’t See’ can serve as an extremely approximate teaser of what you can expect; methinks that only the Darkness will make it into Niello unchanged, but only in appearance. By the way, Niello isn’t going to be written in the same style. Finally, it is the same case as with ‘Resonance’ - it will be quite a while before I have anything ready to be posted. But when I do, I will post the link here. 

I will be very happy if you let me know what you think about it all.

With those two topics discussed, a few other things.

The romantic story ‘We Have No Mouths And We Must Confess’ is a bit stalled at the moment, but not cancelled, meaning you are likely to see it in the near future. In fact, it is one of the few stories I am adamant smash on finishing before beginning to work on something major.

Not to mention Aftersound’s side stories, I am intent on finally finishing one of my two clop stories and writing one more. Mayhaps I will also write a short sweet story I have had in mind for more than a year, but no promises. Other than all that, there are a couple of stories I may consider finally digging out of the ‘freezer’. You can also expect the unexpected from me or even try to push me in the right direction if you feel daring.

Among the last, but not least important things, I changed my alias, as you’ve probably already noticed. There are a few reasons for this, starting with a very simple one - it wasn’t very good to begin with, if we are being honest. It was too much of a mouthful, could be weirdly translated, and was not exactly original… So a new one was in order and here we are.

My Discord server. It makes no sense to call it dedicated to Aftersound only, considering that I write stories unrelated to that universe, as well. While it doesn’t have much going on at the moment, I tend to post news on my progress there at a rate more frequent than it happens here. And if you are interested in Niello, then you may find it necessary to keep track of that project’s progress.

Thanks for reading.

Stay Awesome,

Oneimare