Fasten your seat belts! · 2:39am Oct 10th, 2021
Okay lads and lasses, lets jump right on into the deep end. Within a few hours of this post the next chapter of Growth will be published for your viewing pleasure. Part of me wanted to wait until Halloween, the anniversary of Rot, but I figure you all have waited long enough.
Now, there are a few things that I have been keeping to myself that I'd like to get off my chest...
A few years ago, my writing had dropped off. This was due to two things that were related to each other. My boss at where I had worked was becoming increasingly abusive to myself and the other employees that were under him. It was the classic 'no one wants to stick their head up because they didn't want it chopped off' scenario. Employees were encouraged to spy on each other, any interest outside of the boss's was met with ridicule and disdain. Basically he was a complete asshole.
But I took it.
I live on my own, and I needed the job, so I took it. I would come home every day an emotional wreck. My body was exhausted from working in a building without air conditioning, and if anyone else lives in the deep south in the USA in the summer, you'll know the daily hell that I speak of.
But I took it.
It was winter several years ago that I suffered a complete mental collapse. It was like nothing that I had ever gone through before. For over a week I couldn't eat. I managed to keep down a kids sized applesauce, and a piece of beef jerky a day. After that week, my best friend found out about it, and helped me to my doctor. He put me on escitalophram. (Which sounds like something completely made up, but there ya go). And after another two weeks I was able to knit my mind back together. Unfortunately, this was what led to problem number one.
The medicine almost completely muted my creativity and imagination.
Before taking it, I read on average of two to three full length novels a week. Story ideas would come to me all the time, it was who I was. But the medicine changed me. I told my friend that I could literally feel it happening. It was like dark ink was spreading across my mind. And I could swear that I felt myself, everything that I was, die.
It changed me. I was different. My mind, which once before could stroll down lazy paths in other worlds was now living 'in the moment'... ALL THE TIME! I wasn't even able to enjoy reading a good book. (Thankfully, I could still handle Manga).
Yeah sure, I could function in society. Sure my anxieties lessened. But it cost me a fundamental part of who I am. To this day, that still makes me sad.
Anyway the other problem was my job. It was hard enough to create before the collapse, but with my new mental state, and the pressures of my job, it became almost impossible. And that's why I haven't been around anymore.
But that all changed the first week in September. You see about six months ago, my boss hired a friend of someone in the front office. She was in her late twenties, attractive, and had a really hostile attitude. If she didn't like something , it was a 'problem'. And she would whine and complain until she got her way. (Imagine the queen of Karens).
I was a problem.
You see in a matter of weeks she had all the male employees following her around, buying her lunch, giving her gifts etc. Never mind the fact that she, and most of the guys involved were all married. My boss, unfortunately, was one of those guys. I was not.
Before I got this job, I was dating basically the perfect woman. She was smart, beautiful, she liked to read, hike, fish, even tennis. We could go see live theater together one day, and hike up a mountain the next. I was completely in love with her. I proposed to her, we were going to get married. But one day my best friend told me that she found out that my girlfriend had secretly been sleeping around on me with my friend's ex-husband. She showed me the proof on facebook. I called my girlfriend over to the house and confronted her about it. She admitted to everything. After that, I showed her the door, and haven't been interested in dating anyone ever since.
This was why I was immune to the cheap charms the new employee was using on everyone. Well, needless to say, she didn't like the fact that I wasn't falling at her feet. She began making up stories to tell the boss to get me in trouble. He would come to where I was working, start yelling in my face about things that I had no idea what he was talking about, and then call me a liar when I tried to explain to him the truth.
Finally, I had had enough. I told her in front of another manager, (so she couldn't make anything up), that this was it. I was done. And that the next time that she made up stories to get me into trouble, that I was going to take it straight to the owner. And with that, I went back to work.
Less than forty-five minutes later the boss storms in, still in gym clothes and leg weights, comes up to me and tells me that I'm fired. That he wasn't going to stand for me 'threatening' his employees. I tried to get the other manager to back me up, but instead he just fell in in with the story that she had told my boss.
And that was it. Eight years of blood sweat and tears, gone in less than an hour.
BUUUUUUUT on the upside. I can finally give you a decent sized chapter. 
Now back to important things, like the story.
In the previous story 'Rot', Twilight had taken Discord at his word. She assumed that because off all of his knowledge and power, that anything he said, had to be true. Neither she, nor many readers, had considered the possibility that Discord might merely BELIEVE it to be true. That his point of view was merely just that. A point of view.
Consider if he is wrong. Consider the idea that what he, and other members of his race have been doing all this time was more of a 'religion' to them instead of some bit of omniscient knowledge. How disastrous could that be?
And if that's the case, what if the reverse were true? What if Sombra and Chrysalis for example, had a REASON for what they had been doing? Had anyone ever wanted to know their side of the story? Even in fiction the villains are rarely BORN evil. No, most good villains are made, not born.
So what made Sombra and Chrysalis the way they are? What was Discord doing before Celestia and Luna locked him in stone? Yes he had been ruling over Canterlot for awhile, but what about before that?
Well, let's just say that now that I have some time on my hands, I intend to start filling in some of those holes. Including a rather obvious (plot) hole in Season three episodes one and two.
Harsh but on the upside you got out of that hostile work environment and into an worker's job market good luck hope you start feeling better. Sure i'll enjoy the next chapters.
Congratulations on the new found freedom. Hope your next work experiences are better.