Retrograde - End of Line · 2:00pm Apr 11th, 2021
Well, somehow and someway, we finally made it to the end of Retrograde.
There were many times when it was uncertain that we would actually ever get to this point. Perhaps in another life, that was the actual fate of this story. With any luck, however, this is a nice alternative.
There are some things to talk about concerning this story. This was a bit of a bumpier road than the other stories I’ve worked on. This is reflected in how long it took for the last chapters of this to come out.
In this postscript, I will detail my side of the story about this fic. Onyx Archer, my collaborator on this project, will detail his side of the story in a separate blog post on his page; the link to that blog post is at the end of this one.
There are, obviously, major unmarked spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!
It was during production of Substitute that we first started talking, but it was of the normal friendship sort of talking. But we did talk about things. I’m fairly sure that one of those things was about Cracks in Our Reflections which was some project Onyx was trying to work on. That project did not come to fruition, but I can still recall that we had quite a few discussions on some mechanics intended for it.
These discussions probably appeared the most while I was working on Reflections. And then I let him view a chapter on fimfiction early, but in doing so I unwittingly gave him access to the entire story. I had a habit of uploading completed chapters ahead of time (as with that story and many others, I kept a consistent posting schedule). So, making the most of my situation, I made Onyx a prereader of sorts.
Not long after I finished writing Reflections, we started talking about an upcoming special called Forgotten Friendship. The thing that we noted was that this special was it was based on a book that has already come out, called A Friendship to Remember, that was a novelization of the special. I haven’t read it and I have no reason to believe that Onyx has either, but we caught wind of some things that were supposed to be in it, and we found ourselves intriguing. But we more found ourselves interested in a hypothetical alternative ending where something, namely Sunset getting her memories back, didn’t happen. We knew it would have profound implications going forward.
So we started working on the story. We did so under the assumption that the special would indeed follow the story and that there would be an altercation between Sunset, friends, and Wallflower Blush in the parking lot where Sunset would dive in front of the beam to save her friends and have her own memories erased instead.
I can distinctly remember sitting in one of the dining halls at university and eating a cheeseburger (I did tend to eat them pretty often back then) while working on the first portions of the story.
We shot for having at least the first publication of Retrograde on the day following when Forgotten Friendship came out. We figured it was a good idea to capitalize on the number of readers who probably would have just seen the special the day prior and would have been interested in reading stories based off of it; with any luck we would be the first; we were, if memory serves.
Back then, the cover art for Retrograde was much different. It consisted of several snapshots of Sunset involved in various key points in her life in the human world, with a significant portion of them also featuring Twilight. This was done with screenshots, making it consistent with cover art with all of my other stories.
But Onyx Archer, with this being a collaboration, was interested in doing things differently. I do like my consistency, but that point was perfectly valid. Enter overlordneon, a fellow Sunlight shipper and experienced artist, who Onyx commissioned to do the cover art for us. We worked well with each other trying to get the cover art looking a good way and the results turned out very nice.
Back then, the intention was to write and release chapters on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. When we started, we were motivated enough to keep to that. The prologue and the first couple of chapters came and went and the story was received quite well.
A bit more well than my other stories. I must confess I am dismayed by that because I would rather have people reading those stories instead, as they are more my genre and I am immensely proud of how those turned out. But alas.
Chapter three was where things started getting rocky. This centered around the introduction of a new character into the fold. Her name is Crystal Faire.
And she is actually not unique to Retrograde but she actually first starred in another story, likely my most ambitious story, Reflections. In a way, this is the exact same Crystal from that story, making Retrograde a sequel to Reflections. But there were some reasons why I did not make this known: one was that the two stories are entirely different genres and this one certainly did not at all depend on that one, so it would seem silly to label it as a true sequel but it was plausible to designate it being in the same universe; the other reason was that such a designation “This story shares a universe with x but reading x is not necessary to understand this story” personally is a turn-off for me. There have been a number of stories that I have turned away from myself which have had that disclaimer. Strange, I know.
She actually appeared in the story as early as the very first scene of chapter one, but it wasn’t until here that she was given a name. It was around this point that she started worming her way into the story, as prior to this, I had not planned on giving her anything more than a cameo. But it became apparent from her viewpoint that there were diminishing reasons why she wouldn’t become involved in current affairs. I also wanted to do a little more with her than I already had. I had always intended her to have a minimal role in the story (something which still somewhat holds up even now), but she did have much more to do with things than I first planned.
The way in which we introduced her was contested. Some said it was out of place. We did want to establish her as having some connection with the present characters, but in some retrospect, she was a little too chummy. It makes sense for those who were already familiar with her and Reflections, but it did not sit well with those that didn’t, and it was a priority of mine to make sure that it could indeed stand alone for those that didn’t. So we tried a different approach to her introduction that ended up working better anyway.
That said, her existence did fluctuate within the story for a bit after release. She was removed entirely, but then we put her back in. Lots of comments happened. I can’t say I’m particularly proud of some of the times I engaged with the comments on the story (not just about this particular aspect either); I want to hold myself to a high standard of behavior, after all.
The more important thing about this was that this dealt a huge blow to our momentum. While we were able to get the next couple of chapters out within a reasonable timeframe, everything after that fell to the wayside.
It was also around this time that Onyx Archer and I started developing diverging opinions on where the story was to go. These grew to a considerable degree over time, fatally (development-wise) so. This likely happened because, as best as I can recall, our dialogues were not as consistent or focused as they should have been and our work was piecewise. There are very few scenes where, aside from editing, had both our hands in the drafting process.
Other things happened which prevented our real working on Retrograde which I will speak of in a moment. I will briefly skip to the end and say that as time went on, our interest in the project waned. I had at least tried to occasionally revisit and work on some parts. But doing this actually managed to drive a final nail into the coffin on Onyx’s interest in writing the story when I wrote a scene he had been looking forward to writing. The option to scrap what I had done and have him do his own take on the scene was on the table, but the damage was done.
Onyx talks a little about this in his own postscript, but to give a short version, real life issues (of a personal kind) cropped up which tore him away from the project, and then along came an ever-waning interest in the show. And then came that nail.
As for me there were a few things that tore me away from this story as well.
The first was Divergence. Divergence is the last in the Crystal Ball Trilogy which, along with Reflections, is much more my usual genre of writing. With that, and in addition to having complete creative control over those stories, I was rather motivated to work on that instead. While I gave Retrograde my attention when we were actively working on it, the more we broke away from working on that, the more my attention shifted to Divergence. Eventually, I found that to be the only story that I was working on.
At least, until I discovered Dungeons & Dragons at the start of 2019. I’ve spoken about this in Divergence’s postscript, but I fell in love with my character, a magicless arcane archer by the name of Salimuyne Vakarian, and kinda stumbled my way into novelizing her adventures. Given that this was happening as we were playing through our campaigns, I thought it prudent to keep up and try to keep current. That broke me away from Divergence. We then finished the campaign (quickly, at that), so time was no longer a factor. I returned to Divergence and finished that before finishing my novelization of the campaign. (I will now admit though that I now intend to write an original story with her as the primary character some day in the near future.)
All the while, Retrograde more or less sat around. The show ended around this time so my own interest in writing it effectively died. After all, I felt that there was nowhere else to go. The hype was gone, the run was over. I thought to myself, This is the part where everyone starts leaving. And thus left the pressure to create pony content for what I guessed would be a diminishing audience.
And I had also wanted to try writing a story that I’ve been trying to finish since 2010 (which I want to professionally publish some day); I have since made considerable progress on this story and it is by miles looking the best it has ever been. The choice between pursuing my potential writing career and trying to finish a passionless, gated project that had fallen to the wayside felt like a no-brainer.
Or, it should have been. The fact that this story was unfinished had continuously bothered me. I knew it was something that could be finished. I had already finished five stories of greater length; this should have been doable. The only reason it had not been completed was that it was meant to be a collaboration, and that doesn’t work if one or both authors are not working on it. I wanted to try and get Onyx to try and finish it with me, but I knew that was an increasingly impossible task. He realized this too.
After admitting this to ourselves, I laid my intentions to finish the story on my own bare to him, and I received his blessing to go ahead and do it. And so I did. I finished up what little of chapter seven still needed to be written and then turned my eyes forward. I had an idea of possibly wrapping the story up in one last chapter (a chapter eight), but quickly realized that was too quick to wrap up the story elements set down thus far in a satisfying way. I did not have the drive to write five chapters either (which would have gotten us to twelve chapters total which is what I was shooting for when first starting out all those years ago). Ten is somewhat a happy middle.
As it is, the last few chapters are my doing (with some suggestions and input from Onyx). And the later parts especially follow some ideas I had for the story a long time ago and had some excitement about doing, particularly Sunset and Wallflower in the garden as well as Princess Celestia popping over for a visit. That ultimately gave me a motive to do as much as I have, anyhow; the prospect of finally getting to write those scenes reignited my passion.
There was more that I originally wanted to do with the story. A lot of it is still vague ideas, considering there had to be room for things Onyx wanted to do with the story as well, but there would have been a couple of chapters to do that. This final product is, after all, two chapters less than I had at least originally planned to have. I don’t know what would have specifically been in those chapters, but perhaps I managed to encapsulate what might have been there into chapter eight anyhow, in addition to things originally intended for chapter eight. Is there less build up in the end? Yes. Might the story be lesser for it? Possibly. Can we readily tell if that is indeed the case? No.
What I would say for certain is that, after all this, a good portion of what Onyx Archer wanted to do with the story fell to the wayside. I am sure that he will detail what these things were in his own postscript.
Would I say that I am a hundred percent proud of the work on this story? No. There are one or two creative decisions that were for the worse, particularly earlier in the story; creative decisions that came from me. And I can’t help but wonder if my prose in the latter sections when I took over isn’t quite up to my usual standard: while I did my best to write as well as I usually do, there was the ulterior motive of simply getting some things done that always floated behind me. As it is, I am uncertain whether this new pace, a little faster than I had planned, actually works.
There are parts about it that I do like, don’t get me wrong. And I am willing to attribute the difficulties the story has with circumstance. It is not a perfect story, but it is still something I had a big part of and drove through to the end. This story, through and through, is mine to be proud of.
So, here we have it. We are at the end of Retrograde. This also brings about an end to my fimfic career. Well, an official end, anyway. I’ve known this was coming anyway.
I’ve been interested for the last while in pursuing original, tentatively professionally publishable works, anyway. It wouldn’t be tenable for me to write those and similarly write more fimfic, as I simply do not put out at a high enough pace to warrant it.
I did express during Divergence’s postscript that I was looking to thin out the number of projects that I had. With this, I have successfully done so. It’s refreshing! A new chapter is starting now, and I’m excited for what I will be able to produce in the future. With any luck, I will eventually become a published author; well, an author published in two separate circles: one for literary fiction, the other in scientific literature (with my doctoral thesis).
(Maybe someday I will try my hand at adapting The Crystal Ball Trilogy into a unique setting that I can share with millions around the world).
That doesn’t mean I’m completely gone from fimfiction. I do tend to lurk, after all. There may be, in fact, one more thing that I will do; I won’t say what it is, just in case it does not come to fruition, only that it is specific to this story.
But for now, this is it. Thank you all. And cheers!
-RQK
To see Onxy's side of the story, see here: An Overdue Post-Mortem on Retrograde From the Other Writer - Fimfiction
It's always good to complete a project. For the time being, I hope that you do poke around here from time to time.
Haven't read it, but I will say keep up the good work and stay safe out there!
I'm glad you managed to complete this. I've really enjoyed it. I hope everything goes well for you.
As someone who read Reflections ages ago, her name cropping up in the story poked my brain a little. Then I went to your stories page, saw the listing for Reflections and then as quick as popping a balloon I remembered everything lol
After that I was pretty much settled in for the duration of the story. I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I came in late and started reading after you guys had written most of it.
Speaking of coming in late, now that I'm aware Divergence exists I'll have to read that next at some point. Not sure how it flew past my radar.
wait, turns out I wasn't following you, I just had reflections fav'd. WhoopsI'm glad, despite the hurdles, that you managed to get the story finished, both for your own peace of mind on having it completed and for our pleasure to enjoy.
I may have said it before, but the mystery of Crystal Faire gave me incentive to check out Reflections after viewing the comment section in finding out who she was (which similarly led me to check out the Crystal Ball Trilogy, after reading that to find out who what all happened to that Sunset)
Whatever last thing you have planned for FiMfiction, if it comes to fruition, I'll be ready to read.
If nothing comes of it, then I'm okay with that. You still have five wonderful stories under your belt.
It still mostly worked, to be honest. What you are great at as a writer still absolutely shined. As you said a few paragraphs above this though there was more that you wanted to do and what you wrote still shows that. There is still a sense that there are some details missing from the latter parts of the story. An ever lingering shadow if you will. Even with the shadow, the story as is is still a very enjoyable one. The last chapter as is I think is a fantastic chapter with a lot of great small details that I absolutely loved. I don't know if it was deliberate but the friendship lessons in the last chapter were a fantastic touch that harkened back to the early episodes of the show. As a likely final nod and goodbye note, I loved it. Speaking of goodbyes the epilogue felt a lot like an alternative to another epilogue that I read before... I am also curious to hear about what other ideas were in mind for the story.
I hope to everything that you do touch up on that last potential thing. If you don't then please do keep me up to date on anything you do write. I love your style and the stories that you tell are absolutely captivating. You are genuinely one of my favorite authors. Don't take this as pressure to have to write though. I have Reflections and the Crystal Ball trilogy in book form to go with everything else you have here to enjoy should life take you in another direction that doesn't allow you to make it as an author. Here is to life letting you make a career as an author though, even if I do say this for my own selfish reasons. Either way, thank you for the wonderful stories that you have shared with us. With me. It has meant a lot over the past nearly four years and thank you isn't anywhere near enough.
Be sure to take care of yourself mate, and have fun. Rain