Still alive, still working · 3:34pm Feb 28th, 2019
Good morning everyone! I'm still alive, still writing, and still have things in the pipe. Updates on three stories and their progress.
First, Tides of Love:
Without spoiling much, this is a story about Twilight and Cadance dealing with a crisis in the Crystal empire that draws them even closer. This is subtly AU, in that Twilight is much closer to Shining Armor and Cadance, to the point of calling them her two first, and best, friends. A non-spoilery snippet to show off some of that from Chapter 9.
“Ah, of course.” Sapphire tapped a hoof to my shoulder. “Yes. A minor change in plan. But I know just the thing. You will be a lady of the night, Twilight. Beautiful refined… Rarity knows how to make your coat pop, dear. I apologize for attempting to dissuade you.”
“Thank you.” I settled in, still relaxed as Painted Beauty continued to work a file fine enough that it looked almost smooth along the edge of my hoof.
Cadance smiled across at me and wiggled her shoulders as she settled into letting Ruby fix her mane into a tri-color twisted Prench braid. “This is nice, Twilight. I don’t think we’ve sat in a parlor like this since… gosh. Your graduation?”
“No…” I ran back through my internal calendar, checking dates and events. “Didn’t we go to a parlor together after the Games were done?” I let my tongue hang out for a second. “Gah. I know I needed a hooficure and some pampering. My horn tingled for a month.”
“That was you and all the girls and me. No, I meant just you and me. Together like…” She sighed. “When Shining was on his long assignments. Like he is now, right.” She chuckled darkly. “Ah, stars. The universe loves irony.”
Even at her wedding preparations, post-Chrysalis and post-cleanup, we had been together with the girls.
“Was it really that long ago?” The girls had been scared that I’d be going back to Canterlot forever. “I… I think they wanted to come, too. But it was all so new to me. I needed…” I almost shrugged and ruined Painted’s work. “I needed some time to process that I was moving away. And I needed to say goodbye for now.”
“That was a sad day for us, you know. And happy. You grew so much, Twilight, in so short a time.” Cadance chuckled softly and lifted my chin with a gentle spell. “We were afraid you’d grow out and away from us. I’m so glad you didn’t.”
“I could never, Cadance. You’re my life, both of you.” He was my reason for being. A shiver went down my spine. Starlight and I were so alike. But it was true. I could see it if I lost them both. If I had, so young, I could see myself on the same path. But I hadn’t. I lifted my chin a little higher. “I have more friends now, a lot more, but I’ll never lose my two best, first friends. And nopony is taking their places.”
“Not even…” Cadance flexed her stomach.
“Oh, well, I’m not so sure about that.” I chuckled and tweaked her ear with a spell. “You might just have some competition.”
I try to fit in little snippets, less directly addressing the difference, here and there, referencing events and activities that would be far more likely if Twilight, Shining, and Cadance were all close. In this AU, Twilight's journey for friends became more of "Making new friends doesn't mean I have to leave my old behind." And a lot of her journey afterwards concerned maintaining that link to old friends and making new.
Also, a snippet from a possibly abandoned story about the Canterlot Wedding with this in mind:
“Cupcakes…” I patted the box, resisting the urge to open it again and count them. Fourteen cupcakes. Two for everypony, one of each pair decorated with Cadance and Shining Armor’s cutie marks.
Everypony would be arriving soon. It wouldn’t do to ruin the surprise so soon! Cadance had said they would send it at noon, on the flash. The sun was nearly at its zenith right then.
I pranced around the clearing, with Canterlot visible in the distance. Direct transmission didn’t matter, but it felt like it would come faster if Spike stood in the open right… “Right here.” I pranced around in a circle, flattening the grass with spell and hoof just so he would know where to stand.
And Rarity! She would be the last to arrive. “Oh! I hope he’s not hanging around her again!” There was another worry to add. That the letter would arrive while he was still mooning around her. I trotted around the picnic blanket one more time, checking alignment, cups and utensils, plates and the punch bowl. Just in the center of everything. Covered, of course. It wouldn’t do to have it spill. Or get leaves or bugs in it. And the cups!
“Shoot!” They shot out of the basket, clattered for a moment, then settled down at each place, just an inch above and to the left of the plate. Just like Cadance had taught her. Proper etiquette was important for such an important event.
It wasn’t often one’s brother and best friend got married.
I didn’t have to wait long for Pinkie to show up. Honestly, I had expected her to arrive much, much earlier and try to be stealthy about approaching the part. But Marecaspia’s Meandering Marker let me know when Pinkie got within a hundred paces. Just as a precaution when the spell tingled a warning, I cast a small version of the shield Shining had cast around Canterlot as a precaution over the picnic.
Rather, she came very sedately for Pinkie. That is, she landed right on the edge of the shield and pressed her hooves to it, slurping all over it.
“I smell cupcakes!”
“Yes, they’re for later,” I said calmly, forcing my own excitement to wait at the back of my mind. It was rather like trying to corral a hydra. “Is everypony else coming soon?”
“Huh?” Pinkie did not take her face from the shield. “Oh! The others.” Pinkie slobbered over the shield some more, eyes almost rolling up in her head before she shook herself and tried to look nonchalant. She failed. Miserably. “Yeah. They’ll be along shortly. I think Rarity was trying to make her dress just right.”
Currently at 18 and a bit in chapters and approaching the halfway point for the story. The hardest part will be the transition from pre to post-middle.
Second, a new story: The Primrose War
Currently at 22 chapters. They're overall shorter than most of the chapters in Tides, as it's a quicker paced story, with multiple characters and viewpoints. This is a historical spy/romance/thriller kind of thingie. It involves an AU, 500 years in the past, in a city by the sea named Merriedamme - before that city became its present day self (not used in any story yet) and is roughly modeled off the city of Amsterdam (Dam on the river Amster). It's an erotic story, too, but there's only one explicitly sex scene, though there are moments of M rated action elsewhere, it's not the focus.
It needs a fairly large cleanup effort before it will be ready. This was largely stream written, with a lot of discussion with Carapace on some of the small details after some discussion of another story some of you may remember: The Primrose Promise, containing the crimefighting supermare "Pantymare" (*facepalm* Yes.) This story largely came out of discussing the past history and family history of the main antagonist/protagonist Primrose Promise, who is a direct line descendant to the main character in The Primrose War, Rosewater Rosethorn. There is not really a safe for work, non-spoilery snippet to share. Also, the early chapters, when I was still working on personalities and mores and goals needs some cleanup.
Third, another NEW story: Summer Reflections
This story follows Sunset Shimmer in two worlds. Or, rather, it follows two Sunset Shimmers in one world. The Sunset who's more familiar, the teenaged rebel who ran away, runs into a pony world (yes, not human) where she didn't. Also, her self there is 15 years older. And married. And the co-Princess of Love. What follows is her trying to get home, trying to understand why a spell to "Send her to her destiny" would send her to another version of her destiny, already taken, and trying to understand this strange world where Star Swirl the Mad has been the primary antagonist throughout history.
Needless to say, this is heavily AU. It's also in the process of being rewritten now that I have a more solid feeling for how the characters all interact, and how to balance writing from the perspective of two different versions of the same character. It helps that older Sunset is very much a distinct character on her own, her path having diverged radically from where the rest of her lives largely went.
Also contains multiversal coincidence hijinks.
Snippet of her first encounter with the new world's inhabitants:
A quick circuit of the archives showed nothing but dust, and objects covered by cloth that had no dust on them, that vibrated eerily when she touched a hoof to them. Other objects had obvious purpose and were as familiar to her as her four hooves. A lantern, a bowl, a set of silverware.
But on closer inspection, all of it was subtly wrong, bent or warped out of true, at angles that made her head hurt to study them, and others that felt like they wanted her vision to slide off them.
Nothing useful was in the room on first glance, but nothing overtly dangerous. So far as she could tell.
Which key opens the way out safely?
She returned to the mirror, sighed, and shook her head. She would need to expand her search. Perhaps this world’s Star Swirl had left behind works as well. There had to be one, otherwise his mirror had no reason to be there.
She ‘returned’ to the entrance with a wry smile. A different world, and everything was so similar. Even the items in the archive were similar. That there was an archive seemed a remarkable coincidence.
She took a deep breath and covered the door’s lock with the a simple telekinetic spell, not even requiring sigils to operate. A few seconds later, the tumblers clicked, and she pulled the door open.
Two guards in royal silver and gold stood on the other side, lances leveled at the door. At her. A third was already galloping away.
Time to talk fast.
“Excuse me,” Sunset said in as polite a tone as she could manage. “I came from the—”
She ducked as one lance buzzed past her head.
“Whoa!” She danced aside as the second snapped into the ground at her hooves, discharging blue energy when it hit. “Hey, I’m not an enemy!”
Both guards shouted at once.
“Changeling!”
“Sound the alarm!”
I'm primarily focusing my emotional efforts on Tides of Love, with brief breaks for this or that story here and there when things get heavy or I need a break. I've been averaging about 4-5 thousand words per day. Though, with editing and throwing out stuff, that probably edges closer to 2-3k per day.
Toodles, alla'y'all!
Best of luck with the work. Seems like there's much ahead of you.