Here We Go For The Hundredth Time. · 2:27am Jun 2nd, 2021
Salutations!
So, where to begin?
Practically, it is best to go to the start of this idea. To the time when this idea came to my head. Which places this about five years and nine months ago. Five years and nine months....Man, five years and nine months. That is how long it took for me to get this fanfic together. To get it right. When I first joined the herd back in 2015, I knew I wanted to give a shot at writing a fanfic for this fandom. Before that, I was very apprehensive on publishing fanfiction. The truth was is that I consider fanfiction beneath me back then; I wasn't engaged with the various fanfiction I was looking at. It just didn't seem to capture the spirit of the original work. So, why bother to intimidate it? That was my attitude until I stumbled into My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. See, even before I started watching the show, I knew of one particular fan work that has come from the brony community: Fallout Equestria (It also didn't help that I'm a daily reader of El Goonish Shive created by Dan Shive who made the artwork that spawned Fallout Equestria and made occasion references to the show.) So, once I was hooked with the show, my interest went to the fandom writings, and it is where my proverbial heaven began. A whole copious amount of stories was found on this website, and I was just scratching the surface.
It was in September 2015, when I was mulling in my brain and read through Fallout Equestria, when another fanfic came to my view. It was deleted from Fimfiction, yet various pages from TV Tropes kept mentioning it. So, I went to look at it. It was The Conversion Bureau: Not Alone. I was curious about the premise of the entire Conversion Bureau stories, but Not Alone sparked a question inside me. And it was just from reading the summary. The words being "Equestria invading Earth and Earth unite to fight back" got the ball rolling. I started asking, 'Who would actually win in a war between Equestria and Earth?' Yeah, sure, the regular ponies would perish in a battle, but they also have alicorns on their side, and they are nearly goddesses. Would the alicorns actually beat our technology and military might? How would this change Equestria? Surely, Equestria would want to adapt and copy our own technology. I started jotting down my response to these questions in my notebook. It was also with reading FE that another idea came up. That the Mane Six had their own guild like the Ministries from Fallout Equestria was forming in my head. Naturally, I try to link the two ideas together.
So a couple of months and about 74k words later, I wrote a couple of chapters and realize that the entire story was subpar. I suddenly didn't like the idea of ponies vs. human war story, yet I had a couple of really good scenes and wanted to write them. So, I try reworking them, rewriting the premise, adding more characters. I try to move on to other projects. I try writing sequels and prequels to the story. Make an entire timeline and series for this idea. But it didn't work. It grew too big, too fast, and too dull for me to actually publish. Yet I did. Back in 2018. To show that it wasn't a waste of time to me. Despite trying to get it noticed, I knew it was a lost cause. I deleted the story and nearly gave up on it. Yet it persisted.
It was like a flipping Terminator. It just wouldn't leave me alone. It wouldn't leave my head.
Then something clicked in my head. A vow of some sort. Make it your 5th story. If you can write four other stories on Fimfiction, then you can put it on Fimfiction. So that became the challenge. I needed the write other stories before I published this one. Unfortunately, the show was winding down, and my creative juices were not what they used to be. I was lost on what to do next. Then a miracle happened. After the show ended, story contests were popping up everywhere. First, it was just the Pony to Human story contest. But it sparked two ideas that I manage to write into short stories. Then last year was the Christmas contest that I wrote a story for. Then came the Sunset and Wallflower story contest that happened in April. These contests were giving me incentive, and I found myself with the four other stories suddenly. Yet another problem came. There were other contests (Cadance is a Bad Mom and Friendship is Optimal) that were coming down the line. I wanted to participate in them. But I want to keep my challenge. I also had the 8th and 9th slot filled with a story idea. (9th was actually going to be my entry to the Friendship is Optimal contest). So, I doubled down and put myself on crunch time. This time I was going to write this story and have it published. So, I started from scratch, and it grew, and it grew. And it grew!
Suddenly deadlines were flying by. I wanted to have it ready by Earth Day for obvious reasons. But that went by. Then came the end of April and then the end of May. See, I knew starting from scratch that I had to make the first chapter heavy on the word count. If I was going to rewrite it, then I was going to make it engaging and at least bring the stakes in from the start. I also wanted the mystery and suspense to keep readers from turning away at the summary. I had to make sure this count. I had to make sure I would not delete the story and give up on this. Not again.
It was an exhausting idea to see if I could try to write an MLP story. I was hesitating for these past five years. I knew that more work was needed to be done with my writing skills and that my storytelling needed to be improved before I considered that one of my stories was ready. But now I felt the time is right. That after nearly six years of being a brony, I would publish this story.
So after a month of intense work, I am presenting the result of Project After Canada, which is now written with the title The Tribulations of Earth Not a Conversion Bureau story. Not a Fallout Story. But an epic take on a question that has intrigued me: Are we alone in the Universe?
Enjoy the crazy journey!
Thanks for reading!
Ignited Sage
How long till 2nd chapter?
5530426
Aiming to have Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 published between the 24th and the 30th of June. We'll see.
thats something.