I'm officially cancelling Torn · 8:14am Jun 19th, 2022
Hey, y'all. Bad news, as I have my first ever story cancellation notice. There is maybe, maybe, good news for fans of the story in here too, but it would be safest to assume this is a cut and dry case of it's gone and it ain't coming back.
So I started Torn almost on a whim. This isn't going to surprise anyone who read the story, but I like MLP porn. I was reading a porn comic and lamenting that there aren't more comics that give me the emotional side of sex that I wanted. Part of why I like MLP porn though is because I can and do fill in the blanks; Maybe it's just a picture of Pinkie and Rainbow boinking, but nothing is stopping me from constructing scenarios for them that give more emotional depth to the scene. I kinda wanted a longer comic though, one where sex was a regular thing but wasn't mindless porn plot levels of "excuses to fuck". Well, I can't make a comic, but I can make a fic!
So I did. I didn't know what I wanted in the story, but I knew what I wanted in a porn, which was Twilight gets a dick and has sex with her friends. Calling Torn that is a bit of a disservice to the story, but that was the point, yeah? Craft a porn with a higher level of storytelling and address the complex emotions behind sexuality. I love that idea so much, y'all. I still want to do that idea. But as for the story? It wound up being a mess.
So first and foremost, I made it a porn. That was a concious choice going in, and it was the wrong one for me. Turns out, I hate writing porn. Should've known that, I hate reading it. It's just boring to me. I love reading about sex though, and as it turns out, I love writing about it too. If I had gone in with the mentality that this would be a non-porn story with explicit sex scenes because it's still about sex and it's M-rated, then I might've liked it more. In fact, that is what I decided to do a few chapters in, but damage had been done. I loathe the first few chapters, and can't stomach reading them back now.
Then there's weird plot threads. Twishy was meant to be the main emotional ship with Twipie being the main sexual one. In the end, they were both going to date Twilight. Starlight was just supposed to be there, a side character. But then, Twilight has so much more chemistry with Pinkie and Starlight than with Fluttershy. In fact, Twilight and Starlight are the biggest reasons I'm remiss to actually end this story. I adore their relationship in it, and I hate that I never got to take it more places. But also, I never planned a lot of places to take it. That's a problem. This story ran away from my outline for it so heavily that it would be a disservice to wrestle it back to the outline I had (which was when it was a porn story first and foremost). So I just rework the outline, of course, except then I don't like what I've already started with 
And there's emotional baggage here. I said in another blog post that I have a lot of life stuff that I don't know if I should talk about publicly because it's not all about me, it's other people's business too. But I think I can safely say this much: I've separated from my wife. The separation was my decision, and we remain extremely close friends. I don't want to say too much more, but for those who keep up with my personal life (...why...?), my wife served as the basis for Fluttershy in my ongoing WWB series, with me as the basis of Twilight. And like, WWB is removed enough by this point that I don't feel like I'm writing about us in it anymore, but she was 100% the reason I wanted to write Twishy in Torn.
And we can't address emotional baggage without addressing the elephant in the room, I'm trans, Torn is a trans adjacent narrative, and I feel like I could've done that better by planning it more. Or I feel like I could have told a better story by letting it be Twilight, not me. The trans aspect would always be there, but ultimately I feel like this was weakened by me being wishy washy with how I presented things.
So yeah, I just can't manage to write this story anymore. Plus I have so many other projects, and aside from WWB, I'm pulling away from pony a bit anyway. I'm working on an original novel right now, and I want to keep focussing on original content. But...
But one of my original fics is called Woman Seeking Succubus, about a lonely and nerdy woman who summons a succubus to get some company. It's a sexually charged story that I'll say more about if i ever write it, but I think writing a sexually explicit story like Torn would be great practice in that one. So I'm thinking I might remake Torn from the ground up, maybe someday. Might maybe someday, I ain't committing to shit here. But like, if I do, it's going to be a new story with the same ideas, not a direct continuation of Torn. We'll see what happens at that time though.
For now, I thank everyone who has taken an interest in Torn. Thank you all for the encouragement and kind words you've shared, and I'll see you in other stories down the road!
Thank you for this
Hey, sometimes it happens. Not every story is gonna turn out to be finishable. I hope you have fun with your other stuff, and I look forward to more. ^^
I'm torn about this. On one hand, I want you to know I support you and your decision and you need to put yourself first. On the other hand, obligatory pun is obligatory 🐰
ah dang
i really enjoyed the combination of emotional complication with some sex mixed in that it became in the later chapters (looking at the right half of the background of my avatar- wow wonder why), but i completely understand cancelling it if you don't see a path forwards for it (i did really enjoy the interplay of twi, pinkie, and starlight and will be sad to see them go)
i'll certainly give the spiritual remake a shot if that ever comes to exist!
*snaps fingers* aw shucks. but you know me! i think whatever you decide to do for whatever reason is the decision you should have made. thanks for the update, and while i know a lot of us (definitely not me your internet son why would you think that
) will be sad to see this story go because of the potential narrative, its ultimately your choice and I will always vouch for whatever that may be!
5665997
So this is so late I should maybe just skip on replying, but it didn't sit right. I wanted to thank you for the time reading and comments on Torn, and the interest in a spiritual do-over. You've been among the story's biggest supporters, and I actively thought of you and just a few others before cancelling, knowing the story meant something to people aside from myself and debating if I should go through with stopping it. Ultimately as you see I reached my decision, but it did give me pause.
More importantly, you gave me a lot of encouragement with your words. I am a vain author, I think very highly of myself and my writing, but while my ego is big, it's also fragile. It's like the glass canon of egos, if you will. And doing something new for me was scary. Seeing your positive encouragement while I worked on the story meant a lot, and it gave me the courage to pursue something like this again with what I've learned in the process (be it the spiritual remake, or my original novel idea of Woman Seeking Succubus).
So just again, thank you for sticking with it!