Cancellation Annoucement / Behind the Mind looks of HAP · 12:42am Jun 15th, 2022
A dreadful title or a dreadful ending. However It must be done... I apologize but HAP as of today has been cancelled.
Why? Well... HAP was my first story published on here, it was expected of me for it to be a early flop however I was blindsided by the strong wave of thumbsup, favorites, and even tracking. As a result the story I originally planned to drop pretty quickly became well received and I felt more comfortable and obligated to continue. I used the story as my setting foundation into writing, using it as a example and study to learn, improve and adapt while also experimenting. Aka, a story that starts of mediocre writing but gets better over time.
However, as time on I felt less and less passionate about the story... and more passionate about others. Having written down concepts and ideas for other stories and even one long one. However I feel unable to hold up two long stories up at once thus I feel to drop HAP, my founding story for a story that has been boggling my mind since the start of this year, a story that is to be a upgraded and better version of my previously deleted work "Inevitable". For now that's all I'll say about it. So, HAP has fallen. However I will keep it's remains up and take some. I will mention this in BTM below.
Behind the Mind
BTM will be a little behind the scenes I will post on some of my stories. Why? Well because I feel like it stays as a look back on my mindset for if I decide to look at these post in the future but also to allowed readers or writers to read these and perhaps take my concept, ideas and use them as foundations for your own works in the future.
HAP, is a founding story in which I used OC's from my own (potential) DND or roleplay universe, to explore the world of FIM. It was easy for me to put in established characters of my own into a setting I was familiar with.
However! When it comes to writing you have to make your story be similar to that of a show, aka, a good first episode or impression. So to plant an a foundation of interested I decided to do a unique way of storytelling, using 4 protagonists, each baring different personalities and being separated in different environments. Resulting in the (P), (W), (F), (D) chapter formatting. A interesting format if I say so myself. As for bonuses, well I did that as miniature breaks for myself to write something silly or away from the main story, intended to be segments you can skip over without being thrown in the dark in the next chapter; which worked!.
Anyway, as for their personalities well... to use a quote from the comments.
Wait, so, Famine is always angry, War is chill as fuck, and Pestilence loves to eat? Methinks you swapped the characters and their personalities by (I'm hoping) accident.
I swapped them on purpose because of irony.
Having characters personalities based on their name is boring. It's like having the sin of gluttony being a fat man with a eating disorder when you could use gluttony differently other than to eat but rather to over indulge in something. Back to the point, though Pestilence personality isn't about eating. it mainly to be positive and uncaring. Death is the leader, thus made to be the one to corral the rest together while also being the one to cold calculated decisions.
For settings, I set Death with the dragons due to the idea of having the dragon lord staff broken being a interesting Idea to go on. Though I didn't explore it much. Pestilence was position by the rock farm due to how close to the badlands it was, the idea for him was always connected to him going through a changeling route. War was the hardest setting to chose, due to his personality, out of all protags he was the hardest one to write for due to me having no clear arc or goal for him. Famine was always going to be in Griffonstone simply because his backstory resonated with the current state of Griffonstone.
This was a hard task to manage 4 different characters in 4 different settings that could change per chapter which lead to me getting burnt out pretty quickly in trying to play manager sim with these guys. Especially since the ones I enjoyed the most were Pestilence and Famines story lines. If could go back I'd probably mainly focus on these two storylines, I even had their routes planned further ahead than the other two. That said I plan to take their concepts (Changeling & Griffon restoration story line). As of currently I am unsure what exactly to use.
As for future planning / concepts in the story. Originally War was going to have his next chapter focused on him dealing with the CMC and being dragged until he comes across guards, being a wanted person he would have to face them and eventually the mane six would come. Making the next chapter be War vs the Mane Six, the fight would be pretty one sided but eventually Twilight would figure out Wars ability. In the midst Discord would show up and a encounter would occur where Discord would be the first to see War true nature. Discord would've been amused at this and state he is keep his hands out of this situation just to see if Twilight can figure it out.
For Death I honestly don't know however at some point Death and Twilight would talk to each other regarding his nature and the nature of horsemen to exist in order for harmony to also exist, with her being forced to acknowledge that perfect peace cannot exist without embracing the bad sides of life. That's all for the plans I had, there is much, much more for Pestilence and Famine's route however due to me wanting to use them in another story I will not speak of them. So this is pretty much all I have to say about this story, I thank you for taking time out of your lifespan to read it and hope you continue to look forward to my future works, speaking off.
Future works
With HAP dropped of I can now focused more on other short stories I cooped up, not oneshots like in the anthology stories but a simply 1- 5 chapter- like stories while having my long story being fleshed out, so it may be a while till you get another story you can heavily invest in but I hope when it does come out it will come out even better and gain even more investment than this story has. So for now, I'll hope to see you on my next work.
P.S. I may update this post with art of the characters depending if I have time.
I'm sad, but I respect your decision, I just hope at some point. You come back to it, whether it be a year or a decade. I'd like for it to come back from the grave.