Anniversary · 7:17pm Jul 4th, 2014
I've been writing Sunshine and Fire for three years now. June 2011 was when I started formulating ideas and July 3rd is when I put out the first chapter, though it was a few more months before I got around to Fimfiction.net.
I won't suggest that time has flown by quickly even jokingly; I know it hasn't.
So many other works have risen and fallen, stories far longer than mine have been started and finished, entire trends have gone by and gotten old. Three seasons of MLP have aired. A lot of stuff has happened. It's enough to make me feel rather bad, actually, and my first instinct for writing this post was more to make excuses for my lack of productivity. I don't see much of a point in that though, so I thought I'd use the occasion of the anniversary to tell you of how this story came to be.
I watched the first season of MLPFIM in the week between April 22nd and April 29th - "Party of One" was the first episode I saw as it aired. I delved into the fan community and associated areas of interest soon after. I read my first pony fanfics around that time (Half the Day Is Night from that period is still one of my favorites) and, perhaps even more importantly, took my measure of the memes. This period might well have been the height of the Trollestia hype. Jokes about Celestia's supposed tyrannical nature were omnipresent and unavoidable - and serious arguments about the interpretation of her ethics were a regular occurrence as well. Celestia had actually become one of my favorite supporting characters and I felt rather ambivalent, even dismayed, about her treatment, but suffice to say, the whole thing left a rather big impression on me.
I also did other stuff that spring - I read The Final Empire, the first book of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy. The Final Empire, in case you haven't read it, is about a ragtag bunch of misfits fighting against an oppressive, immortal ruler who'd taken over the world and turned it into a wasteland in the process of saving it from a great evil a thousand years earlier. I liked the book quite well, and it was hard not to draw a mental connection between that backstory and the legend of Nightmare Moon. Aside from that, while The Final Empire the principal influence to my story, I don't want to oversell how derivative I was being. There's vast differences in overall handling, with the real similarities being subtler details that might not even be apparent to readers familiar to the Mistborn series yet.
The final catalyst that gelled my various thoughts together into an idea was seeing this piece of fan art my MyLittleBrony8. Of the many evil Celestia designs I've come across, this one is still my favorite. It's pretty much what I imagine my Daymare Sun to look like. At the time though, it simply made me want to write a story featuring an evil Celestia. I was far gone into brainstorming the basic framework of the plans I'm still enacting today before I even realized it.
Once I had formulated a story, I wanted to get it out as quickly as possible. While Trollestia was all the rage back then, the idea hadn't yet caught on in fanfics enough to be considered passé. Alternate universe fics were popping up more and more though, and the idea of a world where it was Celestia rather than Luna who turned to the "dark side" seemed too obvious of a concept to believe that someone else wouldn't think of it as well. Timing being the key to success, I wanted to be one of the first to do it, if not the first.
There was a problem there: I was in the middle - almost exactly in the middle - of writing another fanfic at the time, one that I was attached to and would have preferred not to abandon. It was small enough in scope to make finishing it feasible, but in the end, I didn't. My older story was a Neon Genesis Evangelion fic I'd started as a cathartic reaction to the Evangelion remake, to get the bad taste out of my mouth. I reasoned that I'd fulfilled that goal as well as I could ever hope, but the sense of urgency I felt was still the main factor in the choice to start with Sunshine and Fire immediately. I'd like to think that the speed at which various gimmicky trends have appeared and faded into irrelevance among MLP fanfics has ultimately at least partly vindicated my decision. Besides, that pressure enabled me to write the first chapter at a pace I've only been able to match a few times since then, putting most of those those seven thousand words together in a couple of days.
Have any of you reading this been with me since then? If not, when did you join in?
It's been long enough that reading that first chapter is painfully embarrassing for me now, but I guess that can't be helped.
As annoyed as I am with myself for my terrible writing practices, I have to admit to a certain amount of pride as well, not only for making it this far, but also for creating a solid fundamental plan adaptable enough to reasonably accommodate the changes in canon over these three years. I have a pretty mixed view of my abilities as a writer overall, but the structure and strength of concept are something I feel positive about. Even after all this time, I'm no less excited for the ideas I intend to bring to the table nearing the endgame. I'm not impatient to end this story, but I am very much impatient to see it culminate and I am quite confident it will be worthwhile for you as well, if you can bear with me until then. I promise I'll do my best not to make it another three years.
I joined in during mid-March, 2011; the first fic I read was Equestrians in Undergarments by DizzyPacce, and I started reading Half the Day is Night by AugieDog the 16th of April.
Good times, then; better now :3
Been reading from the beginning. Always appreciated this story even though I dislike Tyrantlestia because it presents the concept as a contrast to canon, not an usurpation of canon or an interpretation of canon.
Also it's written enjoyably and honest with it's plot.
Joined in 2012. Like it :)
Took an interest in MLP in June of 2011 after a rough patch in my life and this was one of the pieces of fanfiction that caught my interest that summer was Sunshine and Fire. Celestia was one of my favorite characters from the show and at the time there was shockingly little written about her compared to someone like, Luna who appeared in 1 set of episodes and for about 10 seconds in her reformed state. Indeed what sparked my interest even more was pairing Celestia and Twilight(non romantically) together in multichapter adventure. Considering how big of emphasis the show placed on the importance of Celestia to Twilight I though it be a natural fit to have stories that revolved around the two of them but that was not the case at the time. Heck, I still feel Celestia/Twilight adventure fics are pretty rare birds.
Keep up the good work, I may not follow MLP as closely anymore but this is one of the stories I keep an eye out to see if there's been an update.
Thx for the story! Your fic definitely have a touch of good old adventure fantasy books!
Also, I personally think, that for writing long stories, pursuing cannon above all cost is kind of unproductive. Changing the story plan due to some external reasons, rather than due to rethinking and your inner evolution tends to be kind of lame. Though, truth to be told, so far you were rather subtle and fared surprisingly well with all new canon additions, way better then average long-story-being-adapted-to-new-FiM-canon-author (IMHO).
I only started reading this story not too long ago when you updated it fairly recently. I started reading MLP stories though two years ago after seeing so many darned pony avatars at my D&D sites. I had to find out why.
I've been around since summer of 2011, saw your story on EQD and fell in love with the concept. Now is one of my top five unfinished stories. I am glad you later posted it here on FiMfiction.
I've been in the fandom since 2012. Dragon Quest was the first one I had to wait for. Based on the air date from that, the first chapter of Sunshine and Fire I had to wait for was Overshadowed. It was this fic and the The Best Night Ever that convinced me that MLP fanfiction - and fanfiction in general - wasn't necessarily total garbage.
2911 here. Pretty much the same story as the rest of the guys here.
Though I am somewhat disappointed that your story conformed to the canon quo, I cannot exactly fault you for it. One being that it is your story and your story only. My own interests and desires wishing that the story somehow preserved what I liked initially about it mean utterly nothing.
I cannot say the ride has been a pleasant one, but the story itself is nice enough. Though the initial flare that I had got from reading it when it first began has since faded to a low burning ember. It's probably just my own bias conflicting with my thoughts here, so pay no heed to me in this regard.
If you ask me, I suggest you revise your story and wipe out any mention of any references to fanon from the S1 era and onward that have not proven accurate to the show. If you are going to stay true to the show, then you might as well do it in full measure. No sense in merely half assing it so to speak. I fully expect you to include alicorn Twilight into the story. You must do so. It is practically your obligation. But again, this is just my expectation and opinion. You can ultimately do what you want with your story.
I joined late winter / early spring of 2011, and I've been reading this since it first posted to EqD!
I can't be sure when exactly I started following this story. I was able to find an archived list of the stories I was following back when I had to bookmark things. The bookmark for Sunshine and Fire says "Update Part 5!". I didn't actually make an account on this site until early 2012, however I had been following stories on fanfic and gdocs linked from EQD for a long while before that. Half the Day is Night was one I read at the beginning as well....Looks at last update in 2015. Sees author has not logged in since 2016.
Well, it seems to be dead. Shame, it's really quite a fun read.