The direction of A Moon and World Together · 5:35pm Aug 19th, 2021
To our readers, Anon and I have come to a point in the planning where we are divided in how to take the direction of the story. There are plans to take the story, in the last arc, in a much more dramatic manner that will involve us adding the violence tag, among other things. However, as Anon has pointed out, while this story was inspired by the Thousand Year Change and the general consensus is that the massive conflict aspect in that story was poorly received, and how our other story, Scavenge For the Future, was also poorly received due to the tonal shift, among other things, he is concerned that this will be a bad idea to take A Moon and World Together.
This blog is meant to ask your opinion on the matter, and if you, the readers, will be okay with us going for a darker tone or not.
That's a difficult question to answer.
I know that I personally don't have a problem things taking a darker turn to tell the story the way you want to.
But at the same time I can understand Anon's concerns and I can't in good conscience ask you guys ignore the potential backlash that would come from it.
Sorry don't really have a good answer for you guys
Honestly, I came into this story EXPECTING violence. After all, we've got so many elements that could feed into it. Stuff like pompous leaders with questionable motives, long-standing and unresolved grudges, two almost diametrically different societies reuniting/meeting for the first time in a millennium, superstitions and false/flawed beliefs over numerous things, not to mention all the different ways family drama could come i to play to affect the political landscape.
Admittedly, when I started reading, I had hoped that we could see another type of slow progression towards the inevitable conflict. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the inspiration story this is derived from. But that story also had its flaws, like how Lu a was CLEARLY the author's favorite.
But I digress, if you don't wanna add the tag, that's fine. As for the tone shift problem, just be sure that you don't change it too many times too often. Like going from quiet and peaceful to a bloody battlefield to a joke shop filled with innocent foals. You need to give us some wind up or cool down time for each shift you make.
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well said.
Quoting my response to a more detailed description of what Evil had planned:
Until next time...
Anon e Mouse Jr.
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If I unterstand correctly you have planned something like Discord comes back but the Elements are not prepared and completely loose to him. Most die or suffer.
I think you could pull something like this off. Just change the ending and have a good explanation for how it happened.
I think due to how this has become a story of two peoples reuniting and there still being tension between them, that tension could be used as a justification. What you could do is Discord and/or those loyal to him, start a conflict between the people. Maybe using some unfortunate event or manipulated event, like Scotaloo having an accident or a faulty recovery from her condition to not be able to fly. The main cast should however mostly know that this event is in some way used to devide them, if you want you can even have Discord free again then and try and manipulate the main bearers and drive them apart with chaos magic. Celestia and Luna should not be affected by him. They know what he does, as leaders there hands could however be tied by their people. Like bureaucracy for Celestia and democracy for Luna. The sisters try to get the group back together but the people (knowingly or not) make it real hard for them and Discord has made some sort of trap for them so that they cannot directly intervene. Something like the people believing that Celeatia is controlled by Luna, Cadence is of course trying to get that under control and has some effect but its clear chaos magic is the reason the ponies think their deepest fears come true or something like that.
You, in my opinion let the bearers overcome this, maybe even have sunset and twilight together during this hole process and have their friends partially turn against them, thinking Sunset and Twilight are controlled by the other, even tho thats ridiculous. Eventually they overcome this division and unite stronger than ever/ they manage to convince enough of the people around them that the other side is not the bad guy here and eventually win against Discord.[Sidenote] If the fight etc is to long you could theoretically turn it into its own story two worlds fighting together but I think there it too little content there to make its own story. If done right you could to it however. Beware the cliffhanger, I would unite the friends before staring that.
In the end I dont speak for everyone but what I think most people hate is unjustified or in their eyes badly justified changes to get the story an a certain direction. As long as there is a clear way how something happend and why it keeps happening most people should be fine. Some might still dislike this shift in tone and I can't speak for them.
I think the way Luna and Celestia interaced is an example for what I am saying. If I interpret them correctly they thought Celestia and Luna should not continue to fight because there was too little reason why they continued fighting, in their eyes. And tbh. I don't have a good way to solve that except trying your best to explain though the story why something is happening. Maybe more world building, that has its own problems however.
I just realised I wrote a f******** essay at around 11 pm on my phone. What is my life
Hope I could help answer your question tho. If there are problems in my movie script people will hopefully point them out. And If my starting thesis is wrong this is all just nonsense anyway. Hope you had fun reading anyway...
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Tl;dr
You can do it, make it believable.
My opinion.