Equestria: The Afterlife

by Timzocker201

ANNIVERSARY: The Story Of This Story

Heyyyyy, I noticed that I missed the anniversary of my own story! YAY, for fuck's sake. Anyways, I take this grand occasion and thank everyone who has accompanied me along this journey and to celebrate one year of Markus's shenanigans, I give you a.. somewhat different kind of story.

Once upon a time, I was me. 'Once upon a time' being fall 2019. Back then, I was going through my youtube recommendations for something to watch or listen to, when something caught my eye. It was a fanfic-reading for an MLP fanfic called 'Changeling Queen'. I've had many videos like that sitting around in my recommended section, so, at first, I paid it no mind. That is, until Autoplay decided that it was the perfect thing to listen to after some song I don't remember anymore.

The thing is: normally I would have just skipped the whole thing and gone on with my life, but... I was playing Stellaris with mah bois and didn't want to tab out and skip. And I'm glad that I didn't because, while I was subjugating aliens left and right, I listened to this fic and thought:

And before I knew it, I listened to more fanfic readings. Among others, I remember 'Scent', 'Queen Twilight Sparkle', 'Leviathan', 'Anonymous Letter to Celestia' and 'Johnny never knew what hit him' to be among my first and the list grew quickly, until I came across a single fic that would become one minor reading for me, but a major stepping stone for this story: 'My new life in Equestria'.

The thing with that fic, you see, was that - firstly - It was my first multi-part fanfic reading, and secondly, I had discovered that one doesn't need a hero or a villain to make a story worth the read. 'My new life in Equestria' solely focused on that one guy, who gets transported into Equestria and just... lives his life. And thus, I found the joy of the genre of 'Slice-of-Life' (Well, not really found, but it was the first time that I came to actually fully enjoy it).

Of course, as a boy with WAY too much boredom, I wasn't satisfied with simply listening to his story, but I wanted to be part of it and so, I imagined that I was part of the whole action. Why is that important to know? Well, you see, on one point, the protagonist faces off against King Sombra with the power of the Elements and wins the day. However, I imagined: 'What if I was there and he didn't win?' and my answer to that was: 'I would likely make myself a bomb and sacrifice myself to kill him... and then come back as an alicorn, because sacrificing myself has bound me to the aspects of life and death for some reason.'
Anyone get the feeling that this is familiar? Yes? Just wait, it gets even better, 'cause after that whole Sombra-shit, the protagonist goes ahead and marries Applejack. So far so good, but what if I appeared at that wedding in my new alicorn form and revealed some scheme or another? Again, sound familiar?

Now, as some of you might've noticed, by the time that all went down, I had yet to watch a single episode of MLP. That was to change, when the october holidays rolled around and I thought 'fuck it.' and binge-watched the whole series in less than a week. Just as a side.note: during that time, I was going through the officer exams and... failed. Frustratingly enough, I aced all the theoretical stuff and then crashed at the interview. It was also around that time that I found that site called 'fimfiction.net' -- Anyone know that site? Meh, dunno, what that's supposed to be either. -- and actually read a few fics myself for the first time.

Fast forward to early december 2019, I begin contemplating writing my own fic. the protagonist of that fic would be modeled after about half of my personality. Stoic, calm and level-headed... and a virgin. In addition to that, I also made it so that he was the same age as me, just a few years in the future, and that he accomplished what I had failed to do - becoming an officer. Ta-dah, Markus was born!

I took the fantasies I mentioned earlier and slapped them into the roadmap for that fic, but quickly noticed that I couldn't just let him die immediately after I put him in there, 'cause boring and stuff, so I made up a few things that he could do. The expedition to the north and the Pony-Gryphon war, that would ultimately lead to his death being among the first to come about. Of course, that required for him to hold command over a unit... a company maybe? And just for the fun of it, I let Celestia and Luna hate him at first, only for him to save Luna in an assassination attempt... or maybe just a kidnapping, we'll see.

The ideas kept coming and coming and thus, the 'Brave New World'-arc was born or, as I refer to it: "The longest exposition ever made, blyat!"

Fun fact: originally I estimated this whole fic to come out at around 20 chapters and 50k words... yeah, we've crossed that line a while ago...

Also: one thing was still missing. One thing, that by now has become such a major plot point int the story, that one probably wouldn't even think that, in the beginning, it wasn't even meant to be there. The Bloodmoon cult.
It wasn't until a comment from 'XBlaster' under the 4th chapter pointed out that Fluttershy was behaving out of character. Now, you see: I don't like to fiddle with the chapters that I've already written, so most of the time, I come up with something that may invalidate the criticism I get and/or add something like that into the next chapter and that was exactly what I did in this case.

Suddenly, I noticed that the addition of that cult not only could help with my current problem, but also help with other problems I had put on hold for now: Who would start the war? Who would try to kidnap Luna? Whom would Markus try to fight that whole time? The answer: The Bloodmoon cult.

Fast forward into late January 2020: A hacker hacked my friend's steam account, so I intelligently decided to mess with the hacker, so he decided to mess with my PC in return and made it go

So, without a PC to write on and - more importantly - the word document that I am still writing this fic in still sitting on my hard drive, I decided that I should take a forced break... or just start another fic that I could write in the meantime. Ta-dah, Homo Draconis was born! And I actually managed to (almost) finish it before my new PC arrived.

fast forward another few weeks and CoVID comes knockin at Germany's door, forcing us into lockdown and while the whole world was running around in circles, panicking and spreading the virus even furth, I went "Hmm, I am locked down now and manage to finish all that homeschooling stuff before I even eat breakfast... Hah, more time to write!" And so, I churned out chapters like crazy again and quickly came to notice one critical thing: I was writing faster than I could come up with new ideas...

Luckily, there was a solution to that too: I wrote another fic! It's called 'Curse of a Poet'. Never heard of it? Hah, no wonder it only got 116 views! And that even though it's completely rhymed. Like, even the descriptions are rhymed for flak's sake.

In all seriousness though, by the time I wrote tht fic, I had actually put E.TA on hold already. Why? Basic Training, 'cause I may have messed up my officer's carreer, but I joined the army anyways, 'cause fuck you, I'm going to keep annoying these guys, until I get my officer!

Anyways, due to corona, the first month of it was spent in homeoffice. Did I make use of that time by continuing E:TA? No. I wrote a sequel to Homo Draconis, which I dubbed 'Homo Draconis 2' - ♫Caaaan you feeeeel the creativity toniiiiight?♫ - and which simultaneously was my first time writing erotica... Nothing more to be said here, EXCEPT that I pre-wrote one chapter of E:TA shortly after I finished HD2, so I didn't need to find time to write during basic.

After basic, I sadly then had to tone down my schedule to one chapter per week, 'cause the barracks I'm in don't have internet. yay. that means, in order to upload a chapter, I have to come back home, which means travelling 2.5h by car and 4h by train. Needless to say, I can only do that during weekend leave.

But yeah, that's about it. Of course, there's also my current secondary project, 'That Time I conquered Equestria... As A Colt', but they have really nothing to do with each other, other than that it was probably a bad idea to write two fics in parallel, while working in the army... Meh.

So... that was it. Basically a 'behind the scenes', now that I look at it, of Equestria: The Afterlife. I wish you all a happy new year 2021. Stay safe and stay tuned!

Also, one thing I just noticed: I know it's likely just a coincidence, but one of the important locations in the new 'Cyberpunk 2077' game is a club called 'The Afterlife'. Truly pure coincidence? And what does Illuminati have to do with it?

Comments

[Inqusitor]

Hmmmm interesting

[Foxtrot315]

Hmm good luck in basic