On the future of Who We Become, and on its ending · 1:59pm Oct 23rd, 2021
Hey. I wish this was a fun blog post, but it's not. I just have... a lot of thoughts, and they're all crystalizing at once.
So like, WWB, right? Been a while. Acts of Love finished on January 14th, and then there's been periodic things since then. Coda being the most significant, but also the side stories In Her Shadow and Coloring Outside the Lines. Still though, 2021 has not been much of a year for WWB, updates being further between than previously. There's a lot to that.
For one thing, there was Coda. I've talked about that here and there, but it bears repeating. The vitriol that some people have for human Fluttershy is upsetting to me. She's my favorite character, and I relate a lot to her struggles. It angers me to see people drag her, and I'm not someone who handles anger well. It is the only thing in my entire time writing on this site that has actually angered me. I've been unhappy with other issues, but that really bothers me. It completely sucked the joy out of writing for me, and is the biggest reason I decided to stop writing WWB for a while.
Or rather, it was the catalyst. The burnout was happening without that, it was just the breaking point. Which is the main thing. I'm just... tired of writing WWB. Not completely. I think about far off things that are planned and I feel a burning drive to see it through. But just, there are so many factors to this.
For one, WWB is maybe not a good series. It's a good story, and any individual fic is good, but it's not tied together in a professional manor, the pacing is wonky because I didn't have enough of a plan going in, and there are a lot of details that just don't work because I had no idea it would expand the way it did. Sunset's parents weren't presented as flat characters because I was obscuring sides of them that added depth, they were just flat fucking characters that I later decided to round out. TwiShySet gets a disproportionate amount of the spotlight to the point where it's strange that characters like Rarity, Rainbow, and Pinkie never have any relationship development. And the god damn changeling hints that don't go anywhere for well over a million words and six years (and then some, because those hints still haven't come to fruition)...
It's well known that many long stories never reach their end. We're not professionals, life gets in the way. But there's more than just people losing interest. I've spoken with people who just don't didn't know what they were getting into when they got started. Writing a long fic or even a whole series, it sounded so good. So many of us, we all have so many epic ideas, so many things in our heads that we just can't cram it into one fic. So we start writing a series, because what else do you do, right? And you know, god, I've learned so freaking much writing this series. And... I learned how badly I did at it.
And I see the comments already, people racing to tell me how much they love WWB and how good it is, but like, yeah it's a good story. Maybe it's even a great story. But trying to wrangle this thing is a nightmare, and I'm generally losing readers over the length already. Looking Glass gets so much traffic, y'all. It's been years since it finished, it still pulls 1k-2k a month. I'm so happy with how it does. But Coloring Outside the Lines got less than 500 views total. In Her Shadow got around 200. Acts of Love, my most popular story in a long time, got 1,355 views. LG gets that in a month. Like, so many people start this series, and most fall off along the way. It's too long. And still, Acts of Love did very well, I felt. I know to a lot of y'all this is first world problems, because you'd love for any of your fics to crack 1k. And this is okay for now, but what happens when the series is three times the length? Because man, I am not even a third of the way through what I wanted to do with it.
Which is another major problem. See, the series is meant to have a huge tone change. Like colossal difference between Phase One and Phase Two. And like... I don't like that anymore. This series is special to people. This series is special to me. I no longer want to do the things I wanted to do. I like those ideas. I adore those ideas. I desperately want to see those ideas come to fruition. But I want all that to somehow happen without touching my special story because I've spent over six years with it and I no longer want what I once wanted for it. And like, I really do not know on any level what to do with this.
So as you can imagine, I was getting burnt out and took a break. It seemed sensible. I had other ideas anyway. Pride and Positivity rolled around, and we were allowed to submit four fics for charity donations. Two pony, two non-pony. I decided on two pony stories – a sequel to Each Small Step, my Sunaria fic, and a happy family AU for Sunshyne where Sky Shimmer lives. And I had two non-pony stories – a side story set in my original fantasy universe that I've never published anything for, and a Deltarune fic in which the character Noelle is trans. It was a lot to take on, but it was (mostly) a break from WWB so I thought it'd be a good idea. They never wound up going anywhere, but still, this will be important later.
But first, I need to take a break to tell y'all a story. Because see, it's not just about numbers and readers. It's not just about the reaction to Shy. It's about me. It's about losing something that I forgot I ever had, and how it took losing almost everything to see that.
I need to break to tell you all a story. It's no secret I'm fucked, mentally. I've struggled with depression for many years, and Fluttershy's suicide attempt in Thicker Than Water was based on my own from 2019. I've talked about that before. I don't think I talked before about how I tried again four months ago. I was at work, overnight stocker at Walmart. This is straight from a fucking fic, but that night as I was driving to work I said to myself "This is the best job I ever had." I'm not exagerating, I said that. And I get there, and something triggers me, I start to think I'm not good at this job because I learned I'm going way slower than expectations, and I panic, and I think if I can't do this I can't do anything, I'll never amount to anything, I'll just lose this job like I lost my last one, which was because I couldn't handle the strain there either, and nothing I do will ever matter because I'll never be any good and I'll never be happy.
And that wasn't enough. I texted my then-girlfriend and obscured what was going on. The details aren't important, but what you need to know is that I manipulated the conversation and pushed her buttons in the right way so that she'd get mad at me. Then I used that as motivation to leave work. So I did, just walked out, didn't say anything to anyone. Messaged Gowak on the way home just to give xir my Fimfiction password (I knew xe would be asleep). Went home, which was empty that night because my wife and her boyfriend were out playing D&D (I knew this would be the case otherwise I probably wouldn't have gone home). So I looked around. My metamour has a handgun, which I looked for and found. I made sure it was loaded, then I took it into the bathtub so I could confine the mess, and I pressed it against my head.
It goes without saying that I could not do it. I don't know how long I sat there, in my work uniform for a job I no longer had, sitting alone in a bathtub with a loaded gun in my hand. So what the fuck do you do from there, right? Well, in my case you put the gun away, message your soon-to-be ex-girlfriend that you don't know when you'll be up to talking but that you need space for a bit, then just kinda disassociate for a while. I think I told Gowak what happened. Xe was the first person to find out about my last suicide attempt too. Eventually I talked to my now ex-girlfriend and we agreed to take a step back (I legit couldn't tell you how that conversation went, life was a bit of a blur). I eventually tell my wife and my friends, we get a lockbox for the gun that I don't know how to open, I tell my therapist, that becomes a focal point of our sessions for a while, and life goes on I guess.
So why the fuck am I telling you this in a blog post about WWB? Well, it forced me to stop and think about what I wanted, because it was all almost gone, and I lost some important things along the way. And those four stories? Only one of them did I actually feel anything for. The other three were just stories. Just ideas I could write. Nothing pulling me, but then, nothing had been pulling me to write in a very long time. It was just something I did, I just wrote because I was good at it, and because I like when people say nice things about the stuff I write, and not for much else.
But that trans Noelle story... that was something. I reconsidered the whole thing though. It was meant to be a one shot, and that wasn't enough. I wanted to write a Deltarune novel, I just couldn't justify doing so. I had WWB, and if not that, then surely original fiction. Why would I write a whole freaking novel in a new fandom that I have next to no readers in?
Well, I found my reason. Because it was the only thing that felt like it might be something more than busywork. Like I might get some modicum of enjoyment out of doing it. I did it for me. I didn't know if anyone would read it. But I wanted to write it, and for the first time in years, I let that be enough. And I want to say that the moral here is not write for yourself and only yourself, because for a lot of us, that's a crock of shit. This would never have worked if I hadn't been brought to the point where it was what I desperately needed.
But it was what I needed. I planned the story Tension Points with my frequent collaborators Gowak and thedarkprep, with occasional input from Hoofclid. And it really did have to be a novel, because at first, I didn't feel anything. I wrote the first chapter and thought it was meh. I wrote the second chapter and thought it might be worse. I wrote the third chapter, and... felt something. Something small. Just a little spark. I kept writing.
I got to chapter nine, and I knew this one was different. WWB has many great stories in it, but they suffer a bit, even if only in my eyes and no one else's, by being tied to a flawed series. There's a lot of baggage in there for me. Tension Points doesn't have that. It's new and fresh, both because it's a new fandom and because it's not WWB.
You know what people keep telling me? That this story feels professional. And for once, I believe it. Because WWB isn't professional work. It's highly skilled amateur work. And sometimes skilled amateur work is better than what so-called professionals put out. I know I write better than dozens of other authors who have etched out a living with books. But it always had that baggage, that "Yes, but..." aspect to it. Tension Points doesn't have that. I planned this as one novel, and I planned it well. It's staying one novel, and it'll accomplish everything I've set out to do with it, and then some. Because never did I think this would remind me that writing isn't something I just do because I do it; it's something I do because I love it.
So let's get back to Who We Become. What's my highly skilled amateur series going to do in the future? I wish I knew. I just don't feel the magic there like I used to. Sometimes I get flashes of inspiration for it, but it's all so different. Like I said, I don't know if I want to take it to the same places, and that's a major problem. So what do I do?
Well, I'll tell you that no part of me wants to throw in the towel right now. I've got a few more stories planned for Phase One. But... that might be it. I'm going to finish those stories. I owe it to myself to put a cap on this thing I started, even if it's not the cap I had originally planned. It's true that a lot of plot threads have been resolving because I was building to this end of Phase One, but I need to see all those threads finish to resolve. I need this. But I don't know that I need anything past it anymore. I've seen first hand that joy in writing for me no longer comes from Who We Become, and while that makes me very sad, it is how I feel right now.
I actually just watched the new movie. I don't want to talk about it here, I don't want this to become a G4 vs G5 discussion or whether you liked the new movie or not. But I want to talk about it on a meta level. Because I loved it. It sparked something in me. It sparked something else I haven't felt in a very long time, which is the joy in just experiencing ponies as a fan. I haven't finished FiM or EqG. I'm on S9, I watched up to Rollercoaster of Friendship, that's as far as I've gotten. And that's not to say I dislike later episodes, because I do like what I'm seeing of the later stuff. It's good, I enjoy it, it doesn't do what it once did though. I watched the new movie, and suddenly, I want to see more of these characters. I want to see more of this world. It's not a burning desire. I'm more into Deltarune right now than I am into G5 of MLP. But like, I haven't felt this way about pony in a long time, and I want to see where it goes.
And now I'm here. It's not coincidence that I watched the movie and came here to talk about my own pony story. It's... Well, I just know that I watched the movie, I felt things for pony again, and I felt hollow towards my own series.
The first time I tried to kill myself in 2019 I thought about ending this series. I wanted it to be over in my lifetime, and I wasn't sure how long that would last. But I thought I needed to keep it up for that reason, because it would be one more string tying me to this world. Now, I just want it to be something I did. Something I completed, and most importantly, something I moved on from.
Oh, that's the other thing. I feel like I could be happy. For the first time in my life, I feel like I might actually get to be happy someday. I spent many years believing I was just too fundamentally broken to ever get to that point. But now, I think I could get there. I'm not there. Not yet. But I think I can do it. And I think that Who We Become is not part of that process. I really hate to type that. I hate to put that thought into existence. I literally hesitated before I put down those words, because it's so unthinkable to me. But it's where I'm at. Who We Become has been so extraordinarily improtant to me. It's kept me going when I felt like I had nothing else. But I need to move on. I need it to be a part of my life that I moved on from. I keep saying those words, move on, and I mean them. I'm not giving up, I'm going further. I needed this story for a very long time, and now that it's brought me to this point, I need to see how far I can go.
Life In Equestria is actually half written. I do not know when I'll finish it, but I will finish it. It's a story focusing on the supporting cast, because I never gave them the care they deserved. After that, I'll write another similar story in the human world called Life in Everton, about the supporting human cast. Then I'll cap it all off with one final story, Shimmer and Shines, which will bring Who We Become to its end. I may write one other story idea I had somewhere in there, a Cadance focused story I hinted at in Coloring Outside the Lines, and but Shimmer and Shines will be my farewell to Who We Become. This isn't easy for me, but it's right for me. I really hope you'll be there with me for it.
I'm glad you're still here, if that helps. D:
If it also helps, at least part of the diminishing returns on views is just because stories don't get thousands of views on this site anymore. 500's actually pretty good. Long-series falloff is of course a thing, and LG getting that many views still is an anomaly you only get with a bonafide hit, but I know it sure doesn't help to compare a story like that to anything new that ends up at 300 after half a year. :B Not sure where I'm going with this, but it's not that bad, I guess is what I'm saying?
Also, love the idea of trans Noelle. :D
5599162
Yeah, I'm really not complaining about the numbers. I feel like Acts of Love did very well. But it is a factor in continuing a series that will likely have increasingly diminishing returns. Mostly though, this really is about me and what I get out of writing, and the fact that I no longer get what I once did from Who We Become.
5599165
that's a really good reason to bring things to a conclusion
or just stop, whatever is fine with you XD
They didn't come across as shallow or wholly flat to me, but they did come across as less dynamic than the main characters. That wasn't much of a surprise, though. They've had hundreds of thousands of words to shape them into who they are, and there are always going to be characters who need to be a little less colorful. Flat(er) characters are a natural element to the supporting and background cast of any stories.
I was under the impression the series was mostly about them, and that the characters were either gathering in off-scene moments like normal or growing into their own lives. It's perfectly okay for fanfics to have that kind of indulgent focus.
This is inevitable when writing a multi-book series all on your own. It took me 4-5 years to use some of the things I built towards in the notes for my main series, which still isn't done yet.
It's perfectly alright to drop projects, swap them around in rotation, or do what else you may need to for the sake of your health. Your update schedule is insane, and if you feel you need to slow the output for one of those projects, you really should. Most authors on here couldn't come close to the number of scheduled updates and output you power through, and if you do want to preserve it, then it should reflect your interests. If that means slowing (and eventually phasing out) WWB to mix in original fic, G5, unrelated G4 stories, and other fandoms, then that's what has to happen.
WWB is one of my series on the site, and I was really looking forward to Phase Two. A lot of people drop off a series if it includes something that deviates from the main arc, like certain side stories, or just due to reading so much backlog since that takes time to get through and means those notifications will be delayed. But you'll notice that each time you publish a new main story, it garners a really healthy rating and regular amount of attention... and all the previous stories start getting their time in the spotlight again too. It gives new readers a dive into the stories and others an incentive to catch up. I'm going to be really sorry to see this go, and I would have hoped that maybe it would have become more of a pipeline updater, where progress slowed so that it was only updating every few months instead of at a rate that doesn't reflect the amount of investment you want to put in.
But it's good that you're alive, and to hear that you still want to keep creating.
This was honestly what I figured you'd been building up to for the side characters.
5599177
Writing this blog really finalized in my head that this series needs to end at Shimmer and Shine. A lot of what you say makes sense even if I could argue some of the points, but when it really gets down to it, this is mostly about me and my need to move on from this series.
Hey I’m really glad you are still here. I may be a huge fan of WWB (I often call it my favourite fic series and it has a few of my favourite fics ever) but I’m an even bigger fan of you and you should do what feels right. If WWB no longer has that spark for you then… well that happens! I mean, heck, you’ve put so many words into it I think it’s more than justified that you move on.
I wish I was a Deltarune fan so I could read your story. I actually only started playing it yesterday so maybe once I finish it I’ll read it!
Regardless, take care of yourself because we care about you so much and you’re more than just the author of WWB. I know we don’t talk much anymore (which is my bad) but you still mean a lot to me. I’m eager to read literally anything you write (though I will admit I have been slacking recently) and if that ends up not being WWB then that’s okay because you are not WWB.
Anyway, do what’s right for you. I hope your future endeavours go great and if you need a friend to talk to, I am around for you, even if I am mostly absent from your server. <3
I think you're completely right that you can be happy, and that you don't need WWB, or any specific story to do it. Ending a story that means something to you like this can be devastating and painful, but at the same time also the right thing to do, and having it be something that you have done and have moved on from can be something emotionally liberating and comforting given enough time and perspective. WWB or a different story might not be part the path toward happiness, but maybe writing can be part of it, and having that joyous spark for something is a wonderful feeling that I hope stays with you always. Hold onto it and run with it, bun.
We're glad you're still here with us, and I'm rooting for you, Krickis.
5599178
Completely understandable for all of the reasons you outlined. Will there at least be a blog post to explain what could have been for Phase Two? Just to act as a final footnote?
5599181
Thank you, I really do appreciate that. I knew you'd understand. Not just understand why I need to do this, but understand how hard it is for me to walk away from this series at this point. If you ever decide to read my Deltarune fic that'd be awesome, but if not no worries. I plan on getting it printed (which given my track record, should only take a fucking year of procrastinating to get to lmao) so maybe you can grab a copy then and read it all at once. In any event, just thank you for your support and for being a friend.
5599190
I'm glad you understand as well. And yeah, writing is a big part of the plan. I need that in my life. I don't know what stories are in my future, but I'm eager to find out. Thank you so much for all your support, it really means a lot to me.
5599236
I'm undecided. Probably someday because of who I am as a person. I know people are going to want to know, and I'm a sucker for attention; when this series is said and done I'll be craving some of its popularity again, and I'll cave and make a blog post about it. But like, a large part of me never wants to explain that, because I truly do feel like while the plans I had for it are great, it does a disservice to the story I've told. To say things get dark is an understatement. And a lot of people would like that. I do think you would like it, actually. Hell, I might still like it as a reader. But as a writer, as someone who has poured so much of herself into this world and these characters, part of me just wants to leave them relatively happy. Making that story something that exists, even if only in a blog post of could have been, makes me feel like I've done the things to these characters that would've happened in the story, and I no longer want to do that. But still, I am who I am, so I won't rule it out ever happening.
5599247
That makes sense. I look forward to seeing the remaining stories either way. Take care of yourself too.
*hugs* if I may.
5599322
*Hugs*
I don't blame you at all. You know I'm a big fan of all your stuff, even if I'm the slowest reader on the planet right now. But I'll happily read anything you put out, no matter the fandom. I'm glad you're getting to write something you really enjoy. ^^
5599394
Thank you, I appreciate that. It' just a hard feeling, getting ready to say goodbye to this series.
I enjoyed everything I've read of WWB, but of course it's your series and there's no reason to force yourself to write anything more than you want. I've been enjoying Tension Points since I've come to enjoy you as a writer. I will miss these versions of the characters when it's finished, but it seems it'll have a proper send off by wrapping up what was originally just Phase 1. Many people are moving away from FiM and that's fine. The show ended, and the fandom has cooled. I haven't watched any actual episodes in years myself, but I stuck around here just for authors I enjoy.
5599480
I've always appreciated you commenting on every chapter, and for jumping over to read Tension Points as well (one of only two people to make that jump; there's probably more that are silent readers but I wouldn't know). Dedicated readers like yourself seemed to be the main ones I've been writing for, since there are fewer and fewer new readers and I'm just not getting what I used to out of it. It kept me going for the last few years, knowing that I had people like you several others who enjoyed what I do so much.
I do hope to write the occasional pony story here and there. Certainly not at the same output once WWB is over, but I've got some other ideas. I think in the future, I might have more fun doing AUs. I've had a Fluttershy x Nightmare Moon novel idea for years now that I've just never found the time to work on. Dunno that it's what I'll do, but it's something on the table.
I can't say I didn't not expect this to come eventually, what with the length of the project and the presented tone shift past the end of "Phase 1" (which seems set to be the only phase now- probably not an unwise decision. Especially if it doesn't bring you the spark you have found elsewhere.) Thank you for these stories, I've found Coda to be delightful and it did resonate with me a lot, so I suppose I'll just have to finally hop over to Tension Points like I've been telling myself to do since I've bookmarked it to read later.
Best of luck,
5600014
I'm always really glad to hear people liked Coda. I know the anti-Shy sentiment is a minority and that most people were happy with the development I gave her, but still, it's nice to have that reassurance. And mostly, I'm just happy that you and others stuck with this series. If you read Tension Points, I hope you'll like it