Commentaries on the "Ink Saga": Spilled Ink post mortem · 4:28pm Jan 17th, 2021
Do you hear that? It's the sound of me sighing contentedly in front of a bonfire. Because I've now finished the first part of what I've been calling "The Ink Saga". Don't @ me if there's already some fanfic 'verse with that title, because there probably is.
In the last month, I published the final two chapters of Spilled Ink, bringing the totals as follows:
- 18 chapters
- 93,264 words
- 602 unique views
- 4,388 total views
- 30 comments
- 33 likes
- 2 dislikes
For me, that's pretty substantial. My past fics, while seeing small scale success, were pretty bland in execution. The most impressive things in my opinion are the word count and the dislike count. The wordcount, because I don't think I've written a single work with one nearly as high. The dislike count? Well, I'm amazed there haven't been more dislikes.
I don't think I'm the first to say that Fimfic is in it's twilight years. The show's over, the fandom itself is on the downturn, and right now it feels like Fimfic is sitting in the corner of an old office as it slowly withers away.
...That said, it pleases me to know that there's at least a few people coming to this site, and stumbling over little ol' me, scribbling away on scraps of paper as I crouch in the ruins of a shack. First off, they've surprised me by looking at the crazed writings of a madman. Second, they've surprised me even more by enjoying it. (Perhaps I am not as much of a madman as I thought.)
If you want to remain disconnected from my writing process, and come to your own conclusions about the story's continuity, read no further. Below I'm going to detail a but of my behind the scenes thoughts and plans, so unless you're into that stuff you're probably just gonna end up spoiling parts of the story that have already been hinted at or discussed.
Regardless, I'm going to try and keep it to things that aren't integral to future plot developments.
As an idea, Spilled Ink isn't unique. The "Human in Equestria" subgenre disproves that by a long shot. As such, I need to differentiate it in such a way that it stands out. Think about how so many video game releases in North America has the same sort of cover design: dark figure on dark background looks in vague direction while in action pose. I didn't say a name, but you could probably list a dozen games from the past 2 decades that look like that. That's what you need to consider when writing in well-defined genres and sub-genres. (Though a thrifty writer could decide to make content for a large genre because by definition it would have a large audience)
Because of this consideration, I made a few odd choices when coming up with backstory elements. Two of them are significant enough for me to point out.
To start, Ink Blot does not come from our world. Elements of his backstory are derived from an old setting I developed as part of a fantasy project I dreamed up one day and haven't finished yet. Of course, for the sake of storytelling I've put it forward to a time period similar to our own, and as revealed in Ink Blot's flashback, it was devastated by nuclear war.
Perhaps some day I'll come back to that setting, maybe when the Ink Saga comes to a close.
The second choice was Ink Blot's cutie mark and appearance. The honest truth is that I liked the imagery of ink spilled on a page, so that may have influenced more of the story than was necessary. There may have also been a subconscious effort to go against the unfortunate trend of garishly coloured OCs with insane potential such that the supplant the show's original cast. So, my brain went in the opposite direction. Boring OC with no power, despite being a unicorn.
I don't consider him particularly special, aside from the special set of circumstances that led to his arrival in Equestria. Which we should also talk about! How about that ritual, and that cult? A lot of things happened there in a short time, so I'd understand if a few things get overlooked. Like how the cult leader, despite being unhinged, succeeded in tearing open the fabric of reality. This hole directly results in Ink Blot entering Equestria, albeit accidentally and with some... manipulation behind the scenes. Who, and why, is currently up for interpretation.
There's not much else that's left for me to comment on, this was kinda one of those streams of consciousness where I spew out random bullshit and then look at it later while thinking to myself "what in the goddamn?"
