Progress Update, Hearts and Hooves Day Edition · 8:01pm Feb 14th, 2021
It's been so long since I blogged, I should just do it and break the hesitance barrier.
So. Quite a time we're having, isn't it? Happy Hearts and Hooves Day!
I managed to finish another chapter of The Crown of Night, it went up a month ago and I didn't blog about it then so here's the mention. Progress on the marathon!
Since then I've been working on chapter 10 of The Seven Trials of Clover the Clever, and just today I finished... well, not the first draft, but the zero draft. Meaning, the text is very fragmented but the story is all there. And I'm mostly quite pleased with this one, it has a lot of good bits in it, a lot of nice character moments. Even, appropriately for the season, romantic bits. I have never written a romance that wasn't horrible, so it will be interesting to see how that goes down.
Zero drafts is a thing I've been doing with this story, leaving the smaller chapters at that level so I can quickly move onto the more exciting Trial chapters, and try to maintain some forward momentum... We see how well that's going. Well, the next chapter is the Fourth Trial, and it's going to be amazing. It has a famous public domain villain in it and also ties in with a canonical magical artifact, all filled out with Star Swirl and Clover the Clever's signature brand of magical adventure.
Some links:
Also this week BrokenImage321 asked the site populace to fill a survey of demographic information, so give that a look. BrokenImage321 was actually the guy who recommended Discourse on Fillies to the Royal Canterlot Library, so I owe him one 
Hey, did you guys know Tara Strong has started her own youtube talk show? On The Ship-It Show she and cohost Greg Cipes, aka Beastboy from Teen Titans and Teen Titans Go, interview both show creators, voice performers, and fan figures, and even read some fanfiction. There are multiple episodes with fellow pony alumni and it's well worth checking out.
And finally, have a preview of The Seven Trials, chapter 4:
They looked at the chamber in which the falling stone block had locked them. It was a simple, square chamber, with another passage at the far end where a descending staircase led further into the temple. Otherwise it was empty, except for the paintings on the walls.
The paintings showed mostly gruesome deaths: beheadings, dismemberment, ponies drowning and starving to death and dying of poison or disease or being crushed by rocks or eaten by wild cats. The ponies’ faces were all visible, and all shared the exact same look of surprise.
A plaque by the front of the room read simply “The Intimidating Entrance Hall”, with some rows of pronounced dots underneath the text. Clover and Platinum both looked at it. “Is that braille?” Clover asked.
“It also runs along the walls,” Platinum said, pointing to rows of dots that were only barely visible in the dim light. She took a few steps and ran her hooves across them. “Whose barrel is crushed beneath a – Yes, it’s describing the images. I suppose the creator didn’t want to risk blind ponies coming in and missing the effect.”
Hope you're all doing well.
ETA: Darnit, I screwed up. The preview I posted was from chapter 3, which I already previewed last time. It has been replaced with one from chapter 4.
Hope you're doing well yourself. And I find myself very conflicted on the Tara Strong show. I always feel awkward about inflicting fandoms on the actors, though I suppose it's voluntary here...
5454154
All very voluntary. The fan figures are generally cosplayers and artists, rather than writers. The fanfic is drabbles written from prompts they put out themselves, I think?
There are occasional awkward moments, but I guess that comes with the territory of talk shows. Like, my biggest complaint is that Tara Strong is a bit too New Age for my comfort. Normally it's not a problem, but one of the latest episodes (the first Bleach episode) went completely round the bend and it was very yikes. But there's a lot of stuff that's just delightful.
What what WHAT???
Also, everyone needs this video of a horse playing with a ball.
5454227
Exactly so. I'm too lazy to go digging up an example to link here, sadly.