What am I doing?

Hello, my little ponies. I think it's about time that I give an update as to my writing progress, as the one or two that follow me with interest will have noticed the particularly long gap since my last release. I can assure you that I have not lost my passion for the fandom or these projects, and I wish to outline my state of progress below. I'll start with all current uploads, oldest to newest, then move on to unreleased work.

Ask-Pink-Pony (Everfree): The Fall of a Pink Pony - Complete
This story has been finished for some time, and while I may be pivoting back to the original APP title over the Everfree change, I can't see myself ever returning to this piece, despite its age. It is what it is, for better or for worse, and its content remains canon to the APP universe.

The Tale of Two Sisters - Active Development
My flagship fiction, which has clearly earned the lion's share of attention. While I continue to work on chapter 18, I am also actively rewriting the first five chapters, to bring my older writing up to my current standards. Chapter 1 had already been rewritten and posted, and I had seemingly completely rewritten chapter 2 and not posted it, but I want to go over all of them at once to ensure a cohesive story, rather than juxtapose old against new. The first major change you will see is the reframing of the prologue chapter to be a history lesson taught to young Celestia, rather than a letter from future-Starswirl; I think this will make the characters more relatable from the beginning and give you a little more time in the castle before things change.
The second major reason that a release has taken so long to come is the repeated rewrites of chapter 18. I am currently on my third full rewrite, feeling time and again that this chapter's events weren't being given justice, while addressing my issues of not being descriptive with locations and characters. This chapter became so long that it had to be split after the second rewrite, and may need to be split again, with an all-together wordcount of around 15k, I'd say. When it releases, I really do hope that it will put you in the world and the minds of the characters unlike any chapter before it.

• Released: Prologue > Chapter 17
• Actively Working On: Chapter 18, Prologue Rewrite
• Drafted: Chapter 19, 20 (barely), Tirek side-story
• To Do: Chapter 1 > 5 Rewrites (to begin with)

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Ask-Pink-Pony (Everfree): The Shadow of a Pink Pony - Hiatus
The dark sheep of my published works, Shadow was part vent piece, part spin-off/tie-in to the APP comic. It released way before its instigating event in the comic and doesn't hold much storytelling merit beyond the misery-porn that APP used to be. While its events were planned to be tied in to future comic events, the increasingly laboured release of the comic has put into question what the point of it is yet. I want to work on this only when I have the correct energy for it, and there is no planned third chapter yet, but there will be one day.

Flight of the Valkyrie - Backburner
My passion-project spin-off from The Tale of Two Sisters, allowing me to slip into the nostalgia of the future Mane Six--writing them in show-accurate form for the first time. This story is a joy to write, but is also completely directionless. I have been writing events purely for the sake of interacting with characters and entertaining slice-of-life moments, but there is no planned story arc, and that's a real issue. I began with the intention to leave Shooting Star in the future, seeing her fit-in in this new, peaceful time. Then I wrote lore that accounted for her being returned to the past, using her future-knowledge to shape what would become the canon timeline. Now I don't know which path I want to take, and at chapter 6 I feel like I'm dragging my feet on a problem that should have already been solved. It was by design a character piece, but without an end goal the story has stagnated. As such, I continued writing chapters with the intent to figure out where I was going, which have yet to been released.

• Released: Chapter 1 > 3
• Rewriting: Chapter 4
• Drafted: Chapter 5, 6, Epilogue

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The Journal of Starswirl - Hiatus/Placeholder
Keen-eyed followers may recognise this title, but the majority of you won't have heard of this, because it hasn't been released yet. The Journal of Starswirl is a planned spin-off from The Tale of Two Sisters, following Starswirl directly after the events of chapter 15 and his journey to unite the Pillars of Equestria. For anyone that enjoyed my portrayal of Starswirl and felt he was unceremoniously booted from the story (given he was effectively the main character for those first 15 chapters), this will be the adventure you wish he had had. I wrote 3.7k words; just enough to remind myself where I was springboarding off from when it comes time to write the story properly. I have no idea what the timeline of this work will be, as ideally I would like to finish TToTS first, but that is a long way off, so I may find myself dipping into it when the nostalgia hits.
While TToTS was for people who wanted to see a journey with the young sisters (albeit locked behind hours of Starswirl, sorry), this story will be for those who want to see the journey of The Pillars not influenced by the comics. As a spin-off, this will of course include the lore and characters of TToTS, and explain some things that may not be addressed in the original.

The Original Six (Working Title) - Hiatus/Placeholder
Now this is something that I don't think I've ever mentioned before publicly. This was inspired by a friend's fanfiction, and follows the original Hearth's Warming tale from the "Founding Six"'s biased points of view, written as a series of journal entries and letters. The intention was to write a more realistic account of the racism, politics and personal dynamics of the era, but I don't really know to what end. I wrote 1.1k words, and at the rate it is already progressing, I can't imagine it being much longer than a chapter. I believe one of my original intentions was to segue into the early history as written in TToTS's prologue, but again, I don't know how much story there is to tell through the medium of short "collected" entries.
Much like the Starswirl story, this was started and left for a later time, though this may be one I eventually abandon.

My Little Pony: The Movie: Director's Cut - Hiatus
Now this is one definitely no one has heard of. After yet another rewatching of the (G4) MLP movie, I decided I would fix its shortcomings, not through critique, but rewriting--or rather, filling in--scenes that I felt were missing or needed expanding. For example, actual dialogue and events in Klugetown, getting to know the sky-pirates more than not, etc.; think of it like "what if the movie had been a season of the show". I wrote 1.9k words and ran out of steam, but it is something I feel like I will return to whenever I watch the movie again in the future. For as many new and interesting things that movie does, it feels like 2-3 movies crammed into one, and suffers for it.

Isekai World (Working Title) - Backburner
This one stands out among the others and being the only non-fan-fiction I'm working on, sort of. As the title suggests, it is a fantasy isekai setting, with the protagonist initially suffering from amnesia--generic, perhaps, but I was more interested in writing an abrasive and unlikable character being forced to form a party for survival in a game-like world. The problem here is that I don't have a goal--no endgame means that instead of a story arc, all I'm doing is desperately laying track in front of me like Gromit in The Wrong Trousers. I've written 14k over two chapters and have plenty of story and character notes, but until I find a specific meaning to the story, I don't know how to frame my potential twists, so I'm left just blindly world-building without any purpose. I like the characters, but without knowing the world and having that One Piece to aim for, I find it hard to write more at the moment. It also doesn't help that my first draft of the story was written in a weird, third-person, never-refers-to-self way, which became confusing and difficult, so I had to rewrite the whole thing from scratch.

So there we have it. This isn't an account of everything I've written, but it is everything relevant and actively being thought about. Special mentions go to:

Ask-Pink-Pony (Everfree) - Semi-Active
Listing my creative endeavours should not forget my years-long tumblr-blog-turned-graphic-novel. APP is still high on my to-do list, but drawing has become increasingly mentally painful for me. On one hand I'm passionate about the story I've created and want to tell it, but on the other hand it takes SO long for me to draw a single page, and only a handful of people even look at it, so the effort is wasted. TToTS has certainly overtaken APP as my main outlet for creativity, but sadly even fewer people read that, so I'm stuck between these two failed projects I love. I will continue to draw APP in some form or another, but the time it takes me to produce a page is equal to the time it takes to write an entire chapter, so progress is slow and unrewarded.

Dirge: The Chronicles of Midghar - Hiatus
My original storyboard-turned-comic-turned-prose, Dirge, still takes up plenty of real estate in my head, but I just don't know how to progress it when all my ideas are these grand-scale, series-defining moments, but I can't think of how to write dialogue between all these characters or write interesting fight scenes. As I've gotten older, I've realised how many of my "original" ideas are plagiarised, and I lost a lot of steam when I realised that everything I wanted to say had already been said. That world is dear to me--19 years in the making--but I just don't know how to move forward from where I am, after all the rewrites and attempts at different media... In the end, all I've got are characters I can't write for and moments I can't recount because they're not connected to anything. I've started that story over in many forms time and time again, but I never get far before I feel the need to restart, or that something else needs to be finished first, like designing every side-character before I can introduce them.

"TToTS Original Rewrite" (Working Title) - Hiatus/Placeholder
This is something that I've been thinking about for a long time, but haven't really put much work into besides some concept notes. This project is my intention to rewrite The Tale of Two Sisters, but as a non-MLP work of fiction. I have put a lot of work into TToTS, and a lot of what I have created is original, just fit into the mould of MLP lore. I am incredibly passionate about TToTS and filling those gaps in Equestrian history, but it's a dead end job with little support and no reward. I want that hard work to have some kind of dividend, so slowly I will be rewriting my story with original locations, trimming the fat of all the lore hoops I had to jump though, like all the time-travel, and one day, maybe I will actually be able to publish this hero's tale journey without Hasbro breathing down my neck. (Alternatively, if you want a writer and like what I've done, hit me up, Hasbro xXxXx)
So yeah, I don't just want this to be Princess Shmelestia of Equingdom, it's going to have some actual thought put into the location, what races I want to use, and more, so this is a long-term project, and will certainly require all my TToTS rewrites to be completed first.

So, to summarise, right now I am simultaneously working on:

• The Tale of Two Sisters: Chapter 18, pre-release revision 3
• The Tale of Two Sisters: Prologue, 2nd edition
• Flight of the Valkyrie: Chapter 4, pre-release revision 2
• Ask-Pink-Pony (Everfree): Page 86
• All the art I've promised and still haven't done after literal years

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I do hope that someone will appreciate all the effort I put into this work and look forward to their eventual releases, given that I've made this my (unpaid) job at this point. I'm still active and need all the support I can get, so feel free to join my Discord server if you want more timely updates. I also have a Ko-Fi if you want to donate. Thank you, and keep your eyes open for updates soon! (haha, this took hours to write. fuck.)

Comments

[DeathR]

Wow that's a lot of works you have.

[Underwood]

5590901
Tell me about it D: So many ideas, so little time. The depression doesn't help matters either.