• Published 6th Jan 2016
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What If... - TheMajorTechie



A buncha stories based off of random "What if?" questions. Eight years old and one thousand chapters long. Holy crap. BROKE THE 1000 CHAPTER LIMIT WITH A 1001ST CHAPTER!!!

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Unpublished story #1: [One More Time]?

Title:

One More Time

Short description:

Sometimes, it's hard to let go of what you love. Sometimes, it's the only way forward.

Long description:

This is likely my final story on Fimfiction until further notice.

It's hard to leave behind things you once poured your heart and soul into. It's harder to sever yourself from a community you've grown fond of and attached to. But sometimes, it's the only choice you've got.

Nopony knows this better than Twilight Sparkle as she stands in her castle one more time... One last time.

Explanation:

I originally was planning on posting this story right around the time when the finale came out, if not sooner. I wanted to focus solely on original fiction for the first time since seventh grade, but I ultimately decided against it. Most of the story is more or less a second-person perspective of my reasoning behind wanting to leave the fandom, with an unfinished chapter that was meant to kick off the final story's events.

Ultimately, I scrapped the story around the beginning of October. Several things came up that changed my mind, though I won't talk about them. I've found joy again in writing fanfics, and I've been able to balance fanfic writing and original fiction pretty well, lately.

One funny thing I've noticed in retrospect is that while I avoided watching any leaked episodes of the finale, the second chapter that was meant to kick off the story itself is frighteningly similar to how the finale opens: Twilight is packing her things, and getting ready to move away from the home she knew. Forever.

It's a little unnerving to see that I managed to almost precisely copy the beginning of an episode without ever realizing it, but that's just how life is sometimes, isn't it? Anyway, I'll go ahead and post the story below. :twilightsmile:


Chapter 1: Foreword

It's hard, sometimes. You grow up in a community of familiar faces; people you know, friends you've made, those kinds of people. You come to the community, unsure of what you would find. Your skills have yet to be discovered, interests yet to be refined.

But gradually, those skills and interests begin to take root. They begin to blossom into something bigger than yourself. You begin to write. Slowly, at first-- rather shakily, as well, but you persist. You write more, and improve as the years pass.

But eventually, you begin to outgrow the community that took you in. You begin to limit yourself. Things begin to stagnate as you begin to turn away. Interests and ideas begin to drift further and further from the community, and soon you find yourself forcing those same ideas back into the community, even if it might not have been in your own best interest.

Passion projects begin to fizzle and dissolve. Disillusionment sets in. Writing becomes a job, rather than a hobby. Your progress begins to slow, grinding steadily to the ditch that it rapidly approaches. You make up excuses for your lack of updates.

You're too busy, you tell yourself. But you have more time than ever before.

You have other things to worry about, you argue. But you have fewer things to worry about this year than the previous three.

Maybe it's time for a change. Maybe it's time to spread your wings. You may look back with sad eyes at the community you'll leave behind, but it'll always be there, waiting for you. You've still got countless amazing stories to read and experience in the community, and your confidence begins to grow.

You begin your first steps. It begins with adaptation: You begin to dissociate your favorite work from the community, freeing yourself from the chains you created yourself in self-limitation. You begin to branch out, accelerating as you replace more and more of the community you left behind with your own reality. You begin to take control of your work.

You begin to take control of your reality.

You start simple; Beloved and classic icons of the community become your own, original characters. Personalities, traits, and characteristics vital to the identification of a character are rewritten from the ground up. Your characters become truly your own creation.

Settings come next. Sprawling kingdoms not of your own creation are replaced by quiet suburbias. Soaring cities, ever-drifting in the realm of clouds vanish from sight, for they were never much relevance to your stories anyway. Dark forests and high mountains alike are wiped from existence as reality begins to reform around you.

Backstories are written. History is recorded. Explanations for every mechanism that comes to mind begin to compile as you take control of your lore. The story you once enjoyed countless hours writing for the community begins to morph into something truly of your own creation.

You look back again to the community you left behind. You see happiness. You see sadness. You see gains and losses as it continues on without you. You catch a glimpse of the stories you once contributed to the community in years past. How long had it been?

Not long enough, you tell yourself, forcing your hand one more time. You try one last push to write for the community. You try one more time to associate yourself with the characters you knew and loved. Yet, it is lost on you now. Trends grow increasingly foreign to you. Characters you never knew even existed begin to take the spotlight in the community. You look at your own collection of works you've written during your heyday in the community, and find the inflection point.

There it is, you realize. The point of no return.

You begin to backtrack, scanning through your old community works one by one for confirmation, until you know for sure that you have found your highest point in the community.

You look over your stories again, and notice a startling increase in original characters, while references to community characters have plummeted simultaneously.

Finally, you decide that it's time to say goodbye. You abandon your ambitions in the community, for they are no longer your own. You retreat once more to the reality you have created by your own hand, still unsure of whether you made the right choice.

That choice remains ambiguous to this day. There is no right or wrong in the world of authorship, so long as you enjoy what you do.

Author's note:
This is how it goes down. No with a bang, but with a whimper.

As a homage to just how frequently I've written her over the course of the 4+ years I've been sticking around on Fimfic, I'll write Twilight Sparkle again.

One more time.

One last time.

I don't know how long I may keep my radio silence on Fimfiction, but for the most part, especially if you've been keeping up with my blogs, you'd know that I've just lost interest in MLP over the course of the years.

I never thought that I'd spend so much time on this site. Heck, I never expected myself to enjoy writing ponies, of all things. I joined the fandom after being pulled in by some of the site's classic sci-fi stories such as the Hard Reset series, and eventually decided that I'd stay. I'd even eventually create an account roughly half a year after stumbling across the site.

From that time on, I took the meager skills I had in writing and refined them. Yeah, I definitely began on a rather shaky start, but that's a given for anyone new to writing. For the next four years I would continue to write, steadily improving my writing and adopting my own "style" of writing in the third year.

But all things must come to an end eventually, don't they?

My only interest relating to MLP anymore are the stories others have written. I don't quite enjoy writing my own fanfics anymore, even when only a few months prior I had plans to get another year-long story going with Worlds Reset. There have been countless times where I wanted to try getting a sequel to Pony-Me off the ground, especially when considering how I enjoyed writing that story the most out of anything I'd ever done on this site. I didn't want that to end.

But at the same time, I knew that I wouldn't have the same drive to write fanfics as I had before. A few months into Pony-Me's writing, I had begun tinkering with a new way to plan out stories, and with me being unsure of the story's direction at the time, I decided to begin fleshing out as much as I could of absolutely anything I could think of.

It was then when I realized that I enjoyed planning out the original fiction segments of the story out more than the MLP-related segments that I was already shoehorning in just to keep the story within the rules of Fimfiction. I made a copy of the planning document, and began to replace more and more pieces of MLP-based lore with my own ideas. Ponyville, and by extension, all of Equestria, instead became a mirror-image of my own quiet hometown when I first moved in, much like how in Pony-Me, the bustling tech hub that the latter half of the story takes place in is based on my hometown as it currently stands.

So.

There's no guarantee of my return to posting stories on Fimfiction, but until I finish them once and for all, updates will continue to flow at a very slow pace to mainline stories such as Worlds Reset. I'll still be active on the site, but only from reading stories and general chatting and managing of groups. There is, however, a decent chance that I may resurface whenever Genfic may come around, but until then, this is pretty much my final dedication to the fandom.

As always, thank you for reading, and enjoy the story. :twilightsmile:


Chapter 2: Forward

Twilight let out a silent sigh, looking over her shoulder at the castle she'd called home for years on end. Her life had certainly moved on since the fiery battle between herself and Tirek had raged. Especially so with the School of Friendship and other new responsibilities piling on.

"Is everything packed, Spike?" she asked, turning to her assistant.

The dragon nodded, waving a flimsy list in the air.

"I can't believe we're actually doing this," Twilight murmured, stealing another glance at her castle. "It's really been that long, hasn't it?"

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