//------------------------------// // Final Letter // Story: The Little Pony legend: The Guardians of Harmony // by MaggiesHeartLove //------------------------------// I've been thinking long and hard on how I was going to write this. So many times I would rehears it in my head, and a lot of times it just got tangled up in a huge mess. I realized I was trying to inset FIVE YEARS worth of ideas, explanations, apologies, thank yours and everything into one letter. But, I also realized a lot of these were more personal than anything, so rather than leave them out in the open, I'm going to focus more on why I'm retiring from anymore Little Pony Legend Projects, Why it's become precious to me and how it all started. I think I can't start with how it began without explaining more about the two shows this saga focuses on. And that's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and The Legend of Korra. There is no hiding my love for MLP. From the very first time I saw "Dragon Shy", I was hooked. Legend of Korra was a show I eagerly awaited ever since I first heard about it and I will admit that book 1 was my favorite season overall, alongside book 3 and the second half of season 2. (Not gonna lie, season 2 was a mess!) In full honesty, I wasn't aware that I was making a "Fix Fic" at the time. I just saw myself playing around with the idea of the two shows meeting, and with the interactions between characters. I didn't have wireless internet until my second year of college so throughout my life I had a telephone line that I used to connect to the internet. It was so slow I had to wait TWO HOURS for a YouTube video to upload. I wasn't active on social media until I moved to my grandmothers and THEN I had the wireless internet… in 2013. Needless to say, I was way more naive about the internet world and fandoms back then. Over time, I just grew to love the idea of the two shows combining. There was so much to chew on and since it was a personal project to begin with I focused more on what I wanted to see and how I wanted things to work out. The first chapters of the story were in script format (Yeah, I know), but thanks to the support and generosity of my best friend Atea1793, I started writing the story more like, well, a story. I got inspiration from my favorite books and references wherever I could. It was during my early stages, so please forgive me for the naive and at times REALLY stupid mistakes I had made at the time. I was still new and learning as I went, thankfully Atea helped me through it. In fact, a mayor part of the Legend's story is because of her. She contacted me via YouTube and suggested Avatar Wan being accompanied by somebody from Equestria, like maybe the leaders of the four tribes or Celestia and Luna's parents and a connection to the Tree of Harmony. That's how White and Leilani and the AU version of the origins of the Tree and Elements of Harmony came to being! Yes, book 2's history of how the two worlds were connected wouldn't have been possible if not for her. Words can't express how much I still treasure our friendship, Atea. All the fun moments, laughs and tears we shared will forever hold a special place in my heart. It's why I ended the saga with Leilani in the forefront. In honor of you. From then on, Atea and I worked on the story as the episodes kept coming in, working around certain things in cannon to make the pieces fit, and leaving a HUGE gaping hole open in between "The Great Change" and "Balance of the Heart" to insert season 5 of MLP (A Kingdom of Friendship). I'm still surprised so many ideas managed to remain and fit into the story. The experience I had in making this fanfic, meeting Atea and all of you guys has made me realize I wanted to try out writing. It became a way for me to self reflect on myself. I wanted to get better, and I wanted to continue making stories. RE-writing an already existing material simply for fun and to share with friends, old and new, was a nice way to practice. I know I wasn't the perfect writer, and yes I made a ton of mistakes, some of which I still cringe upon looking back or want to slap myself in the face for it, but I'm glad I was able to learn from them as well. It's funny, I did always intend for LPL to have positive, heartwarming messages, inspired by my Christian faith (out of all the things that don't make sense to me in this world, Jesus was always the one thing that ever did.), but I never knew that this saga had, unexpectedly, transformed into my own personal allegory. It was during season 3 of Korra, if I'm not mistaken, where I discovered Shady Oak Ministries. A YouTube Brony Bible study, using illustrations from MLP and other form of media to explain the Gospel. Animation is used as a tool to explain scripture and opened my eyes to things I never even knew before. Now I know why I was so drawn to MLP to begin with. No, LPL did not start out as the tried and true Christian inspired crossover it is today, at least not as completely. Yes, I did intend for it to have Christian based morals, but I learned over time it takes a lot more than pretty words to make a good Christian message. Looking at the story now, so many moments and events have taken on an entirely new meaning than they did when I first started. LPL started out as something small. Something I never imagined would go farther than a script document on my computer. And now, five years later, it became that "One Small Thing" that inspired me to try writing, make new friends, learn and grow, and exercise the lessons I learned from scripture. Of course, I still have A LOT more to learn. That's why the Little Pony Legend means so much to me. What started out as just some fun idea to past the time had grown into a five to six year long project, and through it I met so many beautiful, amazing people who inspired me to continue doing this. You guys are all so incredibly amazing, I really don't know how in the world someone like me was lucky enough to meet all of you. I also included Chi and Nadare into the finale as a shout out to my friends, blueblur and Ginga, because if not for them, the Guardians of Harmony wouldn't even exist! You two are the coolest dudes I've ever met! I'm not perfect. FAR from it. I'm still short-tempered, impatient, sometimes impulsive and my emotions tend to flare and I do succumb to sadness every once in a while, and yes I can even be lazy and scatterbrained and oblivious at times. I'm not perfect, none of us are. But, you know who else wasn't perfect?…. Korra and Twilight, and look where they are now. ;) Friendship(Jesus's Love) never failed them, even when times got really tough… so it won't fail you either. Remember, my entire island took a massive blow from Hurricane Maria, but I found traces of Hope even in the smallest of places. Which leads me to my final conclusion. Why am I retiring from the series? Well, just as Korra and the Mane Six aren't the same teenagers they were back in book 1, I'm not the same college girl anymore. I'm not drastically different, but after graduation, and moving to Florida for a while, experiencing life on my own, and growing more and more interested in story writing, I realized it was high time for me to be more independent on and put my experiences to the test to focus more on my original projects. Yes, I know I've said this before. "This is the last chapter!" No, "This is the last chapter!" That's because I was trying to force myself into something my heart wasn't ready for just yet. I will always love this saga and I will always look back on it, and visit the old chapters and update them whenever I feel I have some time to just relax and rekindle all those memories to begin with and talk about it with my friends. The nostalgia no doubt will inspire my future projects, I'm sure of it. But, to make another epic story, and another, and another about the exact same thing… I just don't have the same energy as I once did. I'm not retiring from writing fanfiction as a whole, I'll still make one here and there, but it just won't be a massive part of my life anymore. I've spent years playing with characters I adore but I know they can never truly be mine. I want to create babies of my own. Writing this final chapter was a serious tearjerker. I couldn't type two words without crying. There might not be anymore new stories of LPL, at least not from me, I've got a couple of good friends who I've allowed permission to write in between stories. But, that doesn't mean the saga is dead. At least, for me it never will be. Nothing stays the same for long, but when it changes doesn't mean it's gone. Things may come and things may go. Some go fast and some go slow. Few things last, that's all I know. But Friendship, carries on through the ages. Words can not express how thankful I am to all of you for joining me on this fun ride. The story may have been about Korra, Twilight and their friends, but you guys are every bit a part of their story as much as I was. You all became a part of the legend too…. The Little Pony Legend. I love you guys. God bless, *kiss, kiss*