Hello everyone, GM here. Today, Songs of the Spheres entered its one-year anniversary. Woohoo! Time for you to ask me quesitons and me to tell a nice 'little' story!

On that first day when I published the first five chapters to establish the contract with the audience, I quickly realized that maybe starting a story at 50,000 words wasn’t the best idea, but whatever. It worked well enough, and I had enough people who had helped me launch the project that we got a good following right from the get go. It took a while to attract some bigger names (and to get featured by EQD) but all those things happened, and now SotS has passed the 100 like mark and is growing at a relatively stable rate. It’s the story I’m by far the proudest of - and I know I’ll only get more proud of it as I publish the rest of the chapters.

Good galoshes, I’ve got more words stored up in drafts than are actually in the story right now. How crazy am I?

Anyway, I wanted to do something special, and I thought about having a writing prompt contest again, but seeing as I’m so close to the 200 followers mark I think I’ll hold that back until I get there. Plus, I kinda want to get through the climax-level chapters I’m currently writing so I can get to a breathing point. I haven’t breathed in weeks. I’M A ZOMBIE.

So I had some trouble thinking of what I could do to celebrate. I already make drafts available, have a discord server, have a fimfiction group devoted to it, and my Mega-Crossover group, while cool, isn’t exactly the sort of thing for SotS itself. So, how’s about this?

Ask me questions. I know I usually answer all questions posed to me anyway, but let’s make a point of it. Ask me deep questions, probing questions, or perhaps even some stupid questions. I’ll try my best to answer as many as I can! (Comfortably, anyway). Hit me with them, ALL OF THEM! Consider this your day (or a few days, if I feel generous) to grill me for everything you’d want to know! Be warned, if you ask something relating to a future SotS spoiler, I WILL answer (with the appropriate text spoilered, of course). And for those of you who’ve read ahead, no, I am not answering any questions about what happens after 130. Don’t even try it.

And you know what? As an extra bonus, why don’t I give you a little story… The story of how Songs of the Spheres came to be.

There was a day, when I was young, somewhere around twelve, when I was told fanfiction existed. That was all I needed to know to be hooked on the idea. I had always had an active imagination. I spent my backyard time with my brother and sister spinning wild tales involving a mixture of tabletop RPG storytelling and just throwing in whatever sounded cool at the time. There was a LONG sequence of adventures where we imagined ourselves on the Blue Typhoon from Sonic X and just went to every world of fiction we could imagine in our little kiddy minds. So when I heard of fanfiction, I knew that was EXACTLY what I had come up with. And it just so happened that only a little while before I learned of fanficiton, I entered a creative writing class to see what it was like, and discovered I had a knack for making people laugh with oddball absurdity. My writing back then sucked, but it was somewhat impressive for someone who had never done it before. (Ah, the old adventures of C. C. Cockroach… Nostalgia.)

So basically the moment I knew fanficiton existed I knew I wanted to write a story with all my favorite shows in it - an Omniverse story.

SO IT WAS THE FIRST FANFIC I TRIED WRITING.

This. Was the worst idea. I have ever had. EVER. Of all time.

It was a horrible mess, the characters lines sounded like they were recycled out of a machine, nobody acted with any nuance, there was no overall explanation as to why everyone was here, and I jumped all over the place with no idea where I was going. It was so bad. I deleted this story eventually, and to this date it is the only story I have ever deleted. I BURNED this thing. It no longer exists, and I am horrified to think of what it did to those few who read it…

I dilly-dallied a little bit after that, but not for long. I was somewhere in my teens when I began Omniverse II, a story I called 2012. You can still find this mess on the GMBlackjack fanfiction.net account, if you want to subject yourself to something that’s not quite horrifying, but not worth too much either. Originally I tired to write it with a lot of my friends as part of an ORBSyndicate, but that eventually fell through completely. The gimmick here was that there would be 365 chapters, and that each chapter represented a DAY. It was an interesting idea, and I had read a lot more fanfics at this point so I understood a bit more about plotting and world integration. But I didn’t have the experience or the understanding I needed of character. It has some merit to it, I think. It’s also the progenitor for the idea of a ‘Movie Chapter’. If you want to read just one chapter of 2012, read ‘Spooky’. It’s a weird mess, but I also think it’s fun.

Anyway, I decided to end 2012 on February 2, Groundhog Day, because the friends I had been trying to write it WITH had abandoned it and I kinda knew it wasn’t great at this point. I ended the story and left it open ended about what might have happened, collapsing the universe.

Omniverse III was created on the Spacebattles Forum, a sort of ‘rebirth’ of 2012. I smashed as many sci-fi worlds as I could together in one galaxy and opened the various ‘sectors’ of the galaxy to the other SB forum members who wanted to write for it - and called it The Galaxy Project. There was some success, but it quickly stagnated and drifted into another project that collapsed. The issue with this one wasn’t that it was bad - it was actually somewhat decent - but because it had no focus. The quadrants acted regularly independent of each other and everything was all sci-fi grand-scope with no real fixation on CHARACTERS, just events. It was dropped, but it still left an impression. I think you’ll hear something about it in ARC 6, actually.

As The Galaxy Project was ending, I created a special Forum RP I eventually decided was Omniverse IV. You’ll recognize this as the Evermore Recursions, the source material for Jane, Sunny, E-Thrackerzod, and a few background elements in SotS. It started out amazing - every player was an Evermore who could translate between a few universes, and with their power could create new universes that the players got to control and run. It was an amazing synthesis of players, GMs, and larger insane plots. But it eventually became too much to keep up with, and the larger story splintered off into a million different directions. I also noticed I was writing to PRODUCE content, not to write better - it was actually detrimental to my skill in writing. So I left. There’s a successor to it still going that I have little to do with, but it does take place within the SotS multiverse. The guy who runs it will occasionally run things past me to make sure they aren’t too insane.

And then Omniverse V. Songs of the Spheres was known first by this name. It was a working title. What I wanted was to create a finite multiverse where a STORY could be told. I chose the ponies as the protagonists so I could focus on one nation’s journey through the bizarre cosmos, but I also crafted the Class 1 societies, the structure of the multiverse, etc. It all started as a simple forum post where I asked for people to tell me about multiverse societies. You have that forum to thank for me reading Homestuck at ALL. But over time, I crafted the full multiverse, placing the Dark Tower at the center, seeding it with Class 1 and Class 2 societies, and forming a story around it. Because the multiverse is finite, it is possible to tell a story about ALL of it without letting it break apart. It can both include everything, but believably reach a scale so high it can’t get any higher. Above all, there would be a focus on CHARACTERS, something that hadn’t really existed in any of the other projects. (Evermore Recursions had a focus on them that was uncontrollable.)

After a TON of careful planning two summers ago, including a plan that outlined the main conflicts of most the arcs, I was ready to write and launch. It started on the SB forum, but was eventually published here alongside fanficiton and AO3. (though only this version is actively edited when people point out mistakes.) And now here, we are, a year along. You all are just getting ready to figure out what the Collector’s deal is. But to me, the present is in the 120s, where… well, the stakes have gotten pretty high, let’s just leave it at that.

And that’s the story of Songs of the Spheres. It’s been a long battle to get here, but after four projects that crashed, burned, or evolved out of my control, I’m finally able to do this. It’s HARD to write a story this long and keep track of everything, but thanks to my army of Editors I’ve managed to keep myself afloat. Thank all of you so much. I hope you’ll stick around for the other year and a half-ish it’ll take to finish this monstrosity.

tl;dr: look just ask me quesitons, I'll answer. The story above is just if you're interested in hearing some SotS history.

-GM, master of a year.

Any plans to add another team/crew to the pony roster? If so, any ideas from which 'verse(s) the non ponies will be?

6641964
Some new team members come and go as time progresses. Pinkie's Party is pretty much in its final iteration, but that's not an absolute thing. Remember, I've written past 120 already, so I already know specifically who's going to show up and when. Corona's team changes a lot, and the USM has a 'team' of sorts as well.

-GM, master of mice dice.

What is the secret message in Arc 5?

6641969
Go find it. That's the whole point.

-GM, master of find it.

6641967
Love the use of the Dark Tower series for the ultimate layout of existence btw . Any more manga/anime groups of interest featuring in some of the upcoming chapters (would rather try to figure them out on my own, just want to have a yes or no type answer please)?

6641972
Oh sure, some more anime do show up. But I believe you know all the major anime franchi- actually, nope, I just remembered a major one that comes in much later. Hope you enjoy when they do show up.

-GM, master of coco

6641974
Cool thanks for the heads up, hope i recognize it as i know only SOME anime brands

6641959
It's always intriguing to hear some background on a story like this. Goes to show just how much work and dedication some of these stories have, and how much love is put into something like this. When reading about the Omniverse stories before Song of the Spheres, I can CLEARLY relate and reminds me of my early days. A LOT.

My story "Crossover Together" especially can relate to this. The story actually had a previous version beginning off back in 2015 and, to sum up, had the exact same problems. … Well, sort of. This was a story I started because I heard of the game "J-Stars Victory Vs", and a review said this story was just fanservice with little development in plot and story, and I asked myself "What story will make something like this work?". It started off fine sure, but as it reached about the second arc things began to stray: I was adding characters just for the sake of doing so, leaving out plotpoints overtime cuz I can't fit them in, and by the beginning of the fourth arc, it was just too randomized and too muffled for me to say it was any good. the flow was not consistent, and it just became a mess. So I decided to rehash it altogether, and rework the story from scratch into the one you can check out today. It was a decision I'm glad I made, really. (it's the first and only time so far I did this for any story).

Gee, when did this happen, didn't mean to chat about me XP. If there's anyone who deserves praise and credit, it's you. I've seen a number of crossover stories already, but this one's the biggest one I've seen yet, and the most developed. Though I do have to wonder where so many of these ideas came from, the alternate universes mainly. And I'm not talking about Avatar or Zelda, I mean the original worlds, like the one Lieshy came from, or the very first world the ponies went to that mirrored the nightmare Moon series premiere (you know the one x3). Creating an entire different world with its own rules is as fun as it is complicated.

6641981
The original worlds? The two you mentioned:

Lieshy's world was based VERY vaguely on that Star Trek episode where the alien race spoke only in historical references. Honestly, the idea came to me all at once "what if there was a society that spoke only in metaphors and muddled language?" It's also based somewhat on the fact that older societies trained their noblemen to speak in rhyme.

Siron's world was mostly me just having fun. The idea of Siron and the demons are based vaguely in the idea that in the deep past there must have been SOME reason Tartarus was created. I threw in dinosaurs just for the fun of it, and the other moon because... I felt like it. Honestly, this is an example of me just smashing things together and seeing how it works.

-GM, master of splice.

6641984
very intriguing ^^

What is the Dark Tower?

6642003
The Dark Tower is a series of books by Stephen King that are the source of the word ka and a lot of background lore for Songs of the Spheres.

The Dark Tower in-story is a construct built in the 'early' eras of the multiverse that is the source of all ka, fate, narrative, etcetera and is essentially the thing that controls everything.

-GM, master of spice.

6642019
Oh, ok!
Also, why spice?

6642044
Because I'm the master of everything.

-GM, master of nothing.

Hello, thank you for crafting such a wonderful story. Some question as your asking for them.
What was Twilence writing in her book just before the conversation with Twilight in 034-identity-crisis?
If I may ask another question is what happens to Twilight because Twilence not interfering or her changing things to save someone else?

6642195
She was writing down 'stories.' As a Prophet her stories influence reality, like Rohan.

In Identity Crisis Charter-Twilight dies and is replaced. There's not a hidden meaning. twilence's interaction only gave Charter-Twilight an extra conversation she wouldn't otherwise have had, that was the only real difference.

-GM, master of pies.

6641959
Whatever did happen to Oncoming Storm and human Tempest? Mike and Ike got a recent mention, but those two kind of fell off the map.

Now that we have an explanation for the Runes of Lai, is there anything more to the process of making them, or is a Rune just an unprocessed Star-corpse?

Oh, and how do fictional settings that already come with their own multiverse (e.g. Magic: the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, etc.) work in this context?

Sorry if there was an implicit one-per-customer policy.

6642512
They were mentioned in the clipshow as a 'list of characters GM forgot'. I kinda just left them to the winds of time. I DID eventually figure out what Storm did, he's working under Renee for now as an agent organizer. Tempest has... kinda vanished. No idea where she is.

An unprocessed Star-Corpse specifically created through use of the Starstream War weapons. Which is to say mostly unprocessed.

They exist in smaller sections nested within the full multiverse. i.e., sub-multiverses or universe clusters. All claims of infinity are unfounded.

There was not. Feel free to ask more if needed!

-GM, master of mice.

How many flavors of cake have the Pinkies invented and who actually framed Roger Rabbit? These are the real questions.

6643320
Because they are able to substitute single atoms into recipes with precise precision, they can make a functionally infinite number of flavors.

Watch the movie and be enlightened. Or don't.

-GM, master of prizes.

A question for various characters, just for the hell of it and because I just rewatched Ghostbusters and I think the reactions will be entertaining:

"Are you a god?"

Eve, Corona, Toph, Cosmo, Twilence, and anyone else you want to answer.

My 2 cents (the second one is mostly because it's funny:

Vriska: *malicious grin* Yes. *proceeds to give Gozer an unexpected steamrolling. Possibly with a literal steamroller*

Vimes (post The Collector): Yes. And you're nicked. For disturbing the peace, conspiracy to cause an affray, destruction of property, going equipped to commit an offense ("I don't see any equipment, sir?" "What do you call those dogs they had, a Cavern Club meet? Oh yes, that reminds me:") failure to properly control animals under your care, demolition without a proper license, failure to comply with a duly-authorised representative's reasonable request to vacate the premises ("That's an awfully long list, sir.") - and for making me work on my day off. ("Ah.")

6651136

Look at you, submitting something way late. Tsk tsk tsk. Oh I'll indulge anyway.

"Are you a god?"

Eve: depends on your general definition. If you mean a being of supreme power that asks for worship, then no, I am not. If we're talking purely on a power scale... I do qualify in some worlds.
Corona: what? No! Why do you all keep asking that? I am not an angel, stop it!
Toph: Yes. God of melons.
Cosmo: I have a divine spirit within me, so on some metrics I surely am - though that's not something I'd flaunt around. It's not something to be that proud of.
Twilence: I can be if I want to. Currently don't.
Pinkie: IT'S A TRAP *runs away*
Rev: ...I think you've missed the entire point of this conversation.
O'Neill: That depends on what you think of gods.
Jotaro: Yare yare daze...
Vriska: *malicious grin* Yes. *proceeds to-
-Dio: ROAD ROLLA DA!

(I'm not sorry)

-GM, master of spice.

6651839
Huh. I was expecting something a little more dramatic... guess I should have been more specific about the context. Having Vriska and Dio showing up to face Gozer (or just interfere, who knows *shrug*) would completely and hilariously derail that scene, heh.