• Member Since 30th May, 2018
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Wings of Black Glass


The worst fanfic ever written is still better than the greatest story never told.

More Blog Posts30

  • 168 weeks
    Pony Wars

    So that Pony Wars project that I’m posting the character backstories for: That’s a project trying to make a new setting for people to create stuff for. While I was initially brought in to help with some of the worldbuilding, I’ve since turned into the lead author for it. (right now the *only* author for it, but that’s another issue) Dratta Arcana is the project lead, and he wants people to

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    0 comments · 221 views
  • 185 weeks
    I still exist.

    I’m still here.
    I’ve just had nothing to say.

    Read More

    0 comments · 162 views
  • 204 weeks
    Out of time

    I have something of a confession to make.

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    2 comments · 176 views
  • 212 weeks
    Mask of Despair and EQD

    A couple months ago, I submitted The Mask of Despair to EQD. Rejected, obviously. At the very least, they gave me some notes on it. More notes than all the other comments and messages combined. On that note: why did no one tell me it was such a mess? It’s got random capitalizations, missing words, and

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    2 comments · 220 views
  • 214 weeks
    My first Shipfic

    So yesterday I wrote my first Shipfic, and it’s doing alright. 60+ views, 8 upvotes, a dozen-or-so favorites. (Nothing I’ve done can come close to competing with The Alicorn Limit, though.) I had wanted to get it done for Hearts & Hooves day,

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    0 comments · 182 views
Jan
4th
2021

Pony Wars · 10:15pm Jan 4th, 2021

So that Pony Wars project that I’m posting the character backstories for: That’s a project trying to make a new setting for people to create stuff for. While I was initially brought in to help with some of the worldbuilding, I’ve since turned into the lead author for it. (right now the *only* author for it, but that’s another issue) Dratta Arcana is the project lead, and he wants people to make their own stories, or art, or whatever for the setting. “Like Fallout Equestria” he’s said several times. I think that’s probably overly ambitious. Fallout Equestria got popular because it was an already established and well liked setting to begin with. See also: Star Trek and Star Wars, of which I’ve seen quite a few fanfics.

But enough about my doubts, lets talk about the setting itself. There’s about 15 named characters that I’m making stories/histories for, we’ve got 5 nations and 6 races for now. I’ve avoided the topic of how the magic works so far because… well, it’s… I’ll just say there’s some creative differences between how I’d do it and how Dratta wants it. It’s his game, so I’m working with what he’s giving me.

One thing I’m going for is a grey vs grey morality. It should be something most of us are familiar with once you start thinking about it. Star Wars is *not* grey vs grey. It’s solidly white vs black. The jedi/republic are good guys, the Empire/hutts/vong are all evil. Game of Thrones is closer, while Jon Snow is clearly the goodguy, pretty much everyone else is some sort of morally grey personality. They lie and cheat and plot and betray, but most/many/some are doing it becuase thats how the world works, and they are otherwise loyal to the crown or to each other and are nice enough if you can get past the crapsack world they live in. Warhammer and 40k are another source of grey vs grey, although I’d argue that 40k at least is straight black vs black. Everyone is horrible to everyone all the time, no exceptions, there are no heroes, only villains in someone else’s story.

Much rarer is the white vs grey story. By their very nature, there’s not a lot of examples in war settings. Many, many, slice of life stories are like this, where almost everyone is a decent person and the worst are just misunderstood or not really all that villainous. So, this is what I’m going for. I’ve only got one of those characters that would be hard to say “Oh, he’s not that bad.” All the rest are people you could sit down with and have a civil conversation. Maybe you would disagree with them, or they’d have an agenda, but you wouldn’t worry about Solarflare blowing your head off because you said you don’t like her mane or something. Even the assassin who kills King Halo has his good points, and in fact might be one of the more moral characters. His story isn’t out just yet.

Some of the names we’re using might seem familiar. Gleaming Shield was originally named Siegfried, which stood out because it didn’t fit the theme of any of the rest. It’s a name some of you who know your mythology might recognize, and that would have been intentional. I wanted him to be an allusion to Shining Armor, and he’s fairly paladin-ish, so it felt appropriate to me. I was unaware at the time that Gleaming Shield is also the fan name of the gender-flipper version of Shining Armor. Solarflare is one I’ve also seen used as the “evil” version of Celestia, pre-daybreaker anyways. Midnight is also one the fandom knows, being the “evil Twilight” but ours is a very different character. In fact, none of the canon characters will show up in any meaningful way. I *might* use Star Swirl as the POV character making notes on this world, visited through one of his many mirrors, in some of the location/culture stories.

A name which showed up in Aqua’s story, Ormyryx, is pretty weird. There’s actually an in-universe reason for that. Which you’ll get once I release his story. It’ll be late in the month, because there’s something of a mystery in the way I’m giving out the story and I don’t want to spoil.

I could go on and explain the various cultures here, but that’s the story I’ll be doing once the characters are out. There’ll be long descriptions of the Lumahina Empire, the Sunbound Kingdom, the Kirin circles, the Changeling guilds and their protectorate Griffon State, and the Dragons. Then after that will be the various location stories, the capital cities of each faction (where applicable) and other places which matter. Scattered throughout will be hints of places called the “Nexus Temples” which are important to how magic works.

(Oh, bonus points for those who figure out why the Lumahina has the name it does)

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