On 'The Pantheon of Harmony' and other writing. · 2:44am Feb 20th, 2012
Someone left a comment on 'The Pantheon of Harmony' on a prior blog post, and my response wound up large enough, and off-topic enough, to merit a blog post of its own. So here goes.
'The Pantheon of Harmony' will need to be restarted from the ground up for a couple of different reasons. One is that I need to have at least some idea where the story's going to go. Saying 'okay, this is the situation, then what happens' can work—it's how most of 'The Monster Mash' was written—but for something a bit longer (as TPoH would be), I want at least some idea of where to go with it.
Another big reason comes from a reader comment, mentioning that the girls were still acting like, well, girls, and not like ponies with lifetimes of accumulated experience. Which is true. So I'd need to arrange for their apotheosis to happen near their show ages in order to have them not be show ponies in name only. (I'd also want to review the other comments on the story so far to see what I want to take on, feedback-wise.)
The third big reason is worldbuilding. I know how I want the fic to start: the Mane Six ascend to godhood, then leave Equestria to take on the challenges of a new world. What I need to figure out is how to get the story moving in that direction. How do they become gods? Why can't they stay in Equestria? Can they come back? Can other gods visit, or invade, their world, or vice versa?
So there's a fair amount of work I'd have to put in to get that fic going again, and I've already got four fics in my 'in progress' bin. (Admittedly, three of them are less than a paragraph long currently.) And then there are the two other things in my 'hiatus' bin: bonus chapters of 'The Monster Mash' (I have one half-written, but it's venturing into areas I'm uncomfortable writing, and I'm not sure I can pull it out) and a rewrite of 'To Serve' (which I'm not even sure I want to work on any more—I've become disenchanted with the Conversion Bureau premise—but the idea of writing a fic about an artificial intelligence interacting with biologicals still interests me, if only so I can turn that old chestnut about the machine wanting to become human in a different direction).
That said... well, I'm thinking about TPoH now. I wasn't ten minutes ago. I guess you'll just have to wait and see.
Awesome, I missed reading TPoH
Well, don't fuss too much about them acting like "girls." they're acting recognizably like THEMSELVES--- which for a fiction book is a remarkable accomplishment in character consistency. If you actually were successful at making them behave like wise old immortal mares.... they'd be unrecognizable. Worse, they'd be BORING.
Anyway, Most of what people like to call maturity really consists of being your same old youthful self.... in a tired, aching, older body. They're immortal now, in eternally youthful bodies. So who has a better excuse to have the zest of youth?
Yay! Awesome, I really want to see more of that one, in my opinion it was already a good story, but with all of this it'll be even better!
damn, now I really can't wait.