Stealing a Rad Writing Meme · 7:42am Dec 14th, 2020
Heyo, folks! Enjoy some past midnight typing from yours truly. This is a threat, of course. Posh did this and so did Jake the Army Guy, so I knew I had to do the thing too. You should check out their versions too.
Expect all relevant story stuff to be spoilered for your sake.
1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?
Ever since ~2013, when the first concrete ideas started Happening (tm) in small Ice Star's head, I've been putting together the series that has become Arcs One and Two. The current installment is Enemy of Mine, a story that I've admittedly been stuck on because of irl upheaval that has happened since I started it in 2017 and how demanding it can be. This story has been the hardest to write to date, and it's nearly done! There are two and a half chapters left, for real this time! Aside from print versions requiring most of my stories to get revisions, this is the biggest baby I've got in progress at the moment. There are so many years of work that have gone into this series, and yet I'm still going to probably be known as the dude who wrote Discord Pokes Fluttershy's Tits or "he has a Sombra avatar" and yes, that does kinda bug me...
Oh, and there is the story you never expected. Stay Golden, the story devoted to me saying "what is the most fucked up world-building I've probably had" and "how do I gross even myself out with stuff I can write" and writing just that! I wanted to write a story where the only good characters show up for a couple of chapter at best, and just write a very small segment of history that's kinda fucked up! It's primarily all-OC! There are like three different third-person narrators! I wanted to make readers as uncomfortable as I felt writing this! I needed to distill my autistic as hell special interests of "fuckin' colorful horses" and "why do I know so much about murder" into a historical fiction romp that is viscerally mean and awful.
I absolutely love it!
...And so do, uh, two other people?
Yes, this makes me sad and is part of why it is hard to feel as motivated to play around with the five or so in-progress chapters I have going on. Because it's not even ten or so people that like this. It's literally just me.
2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project
The rest of the Strange Future novel arc. There's plenty of fun future ideas for the Iceverse and fantastic OCs that I've been dying to introduce to y'all for literal years!
3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)
This isn't really applicable. I write pretty much everything that comes to mind, and have been willing to wait fucking years to write my stories. If I had to pick anything close to this, I believe that three ideas that I've had but never written and wanted to would be:
- A huge All-OC story about the gods of the Old World, pre-Antumbra detailing how Lumina, Noctus, the Weird Sisters, and their friends became the original Element Bearers, interacted with Sapphira during the founding of the Crystal Empire, and delivered the prophecies of the World Tree. This shit would have required years of plotting, been a huge vaguely-sci mega fantasy epic clocking in somewhere around 300k, most likely.
- A World Where Nopony Would Burn, which ended up being reduced to notes for Missing Pages. Novella to novel length.
- A story about G1 Somnambula similar to Stay Golden. Vaguely novel-length idea.
- More about the wards of Starswirl the Bearded, purely for the self-indulgence of various scenes. Novella length, likely something closer to an anthology rather than anything linear.
- Weird Xphobia poetry and just general abstract fiction nonsense even longer than the previous installments (to date) detailing Discord's whole imprisonment and bouts of insanity in stone. Novella length to novel-length, meant to chronicle over a thousand years.
- A Spare Him His Life alternate universe that's likely going to end up in Missing Pages instead of just here where: shit gets mega-fucked up. Celestia is incapacitated and Luna is kept prisoner to manage the heavens, where she eventually comes to get to know Sombra and his plight with Onyx. As the young nation of Equestria collapses and falls into Discord's grasp due to collapsing into anarchy after mortal attempts to rule, Luna and Sombra manage to piece together some of the mysteries of Favorable Alignment way ahead of schedule. Though Luna is still in a place of despair, she, at last, has someone to open up to, and is fully aware of the dramatic irony that comes with it taking imprisoning her and a rocky as fuck relationship to open up to anyone, especially someone as bitter and volatile as Sombra the quite-literally-inside. They both realize that as the last born and most powerful of the gods, Luna can't stay in the Crystal Empire, and that while her being a prisoner is cruel, Onyx would eventually find out about her. This dilemma throws a wrench in whatever future they might have, and as Sombra realizes he's falling in love with her, he decides to set her free and force her out of the Crystal Empire. After he forces the reluctant Luna to abandon him, she finally feels she has agency in her life once again without Celestia. She travels the world to find more about how to put an end to what comes to head in Favorable Alignment and to save Sombra, whose mortality is something that worries her. After a couple of years, she returns to the Crystal Empire, only to find that the last Old World sanctuary collapsed after another mortal attempt at ruling, with the Crystal Heart never being found and most of the ponies killed in various civil wars. Only then does she learn that Sombra pushed her away not just for the one creature he cared for to attain freedom, but because he felt the only way to stop Onyx/spare the Empire and relieve his misery was to end his life. And this is only the beginning. From Sombra, Luna learned all she could of demon species, and heads to the nearest gates to Tartarus. There, she journeys through literal hell to save the one soul of the closest companion and one friend she's ever had, coming to form her own romantic connection with him in his absence mirroring his eventual initial attraction to her in the main timeline. She refuses to take no as an answer from anything, be it the very god of Tartarus or the evil within it, and female-Orpheus' the shit out of the GODSAWFUL AND HORRIFIC TRAUMATIC AWFULNESS that Tartarus is in order to find the soul of her male-Eurydice, Sombra. She becomes to the first to make this accomplishment, and when they reunite she is able to bargain for his soul and get him into an advanced state of immortal lich-hood. With much stubbornness, Luna is able to leave Tartarus with her beloved, who is so grateful that for the lengths she went to for him, and to have his soul finally separated from his summoner. Promises of recovery await the goth horses, who have a shot at sappy happy eternity and only one great evil to avert, that which comes in Favorable Alignment thousands of years down the line. Luna never becomes Nightmare Moon, and abandons ever managing mortal kind entirely except in the usual distant, classical goddess manner. She instead chooses a life of adventure and horse smooches with Sombra, where they focus on recovery from all the negative things that have impacted them. Yes, I 100% think of this as the Orpheus/Eurydice AU, if you can't tell. It would have ended up being 500k or something like that at least.
- Anything with liches to be honest. I never got to write anything that was a true lich.
- Equestria Girls stuff I'm not sure I'll write for the Iceverse just because of too many projects. A series of novellas and longshots for each of Sunset's years of high school, and a couple after focusing on college. Maybe one or two would be a full novel.
- A novel-length story for each of the timelines in the S5 finale. Maybe someday one will show its face, and yes multiple ones have Luna/Sombra planned because I'm me and I have a very intricate timeline thank you very much. I have ideas for all of them but the Flim and Flam timeline, but holy shit that is so many fucking things for the Iceverse and just in general. I'd end up with six million words at least if I ever got all these ideas down. Please help me.
4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)
We'll just pretend that this is a sentence.
5. What character you’re writing do you most identify with?
To the surprise of absolutely no one, the character I identify most with is Luna! A multi-interest artist prone to be gloomy, with an unusual sense of humor, an affinity for goth lads, she's perfectly happy if you just get to know her really, awesome asexuality, manic swings, who really just wants to share art with pals, oddball storyteller, asocial weirdo, permanent sense of Otherness, and completely unfun struggles with mental illness that has left far too much of an impact on her life and relationships haha oof ouch what the fuck. The most of myself the I actually bothered to put in her would have been Song of Myself though, main timeline her is just more "damn I relate to this character a fucking lot" tier, which is actually really hard for me to find in fiction!While I can identify with most of my characters, there are others I have a pretty decent handful (usually antagonists; sometimes others) that are conceptualized largely so I can get to know them because of how alien they are to me.
6. What character do you have the most fun writing?
LOOK AT MY PROFILE PICTURE AND SCREAM HIS NAME WITH ME Y'ALL KNOW IT'S MY BOI
7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?
Funky vocabulary, very mean comedy, scenery porn, and goth horses in love. If someone wishes to challenge me on this, I am open to comment duels.
8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?
More or less! I really like to read Luna/Sombra and I like long, dramatic, dark adventures. Also, romance and first person. I clearly write a lot of these things, but I don't always write them. If you've been a long-time follower, you'll know from my Barcast interview that I essentially started writing because I couldn't find what I wanted to read.
9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?
To the surprise of no one, I am both. At the same time, even. It's scary stuff, yo.
10. How would you describe your writing process?
My writing process varies per story because I am an entity of chaos and despair. if you're curious about a specific story, please ask me in the comments.
11. What do you envy in other writers?
I actually do not believe I write enough or update consistently. I greatly admire (envy really isn't the word) writers like Skirts, Cynewulf, and others who can/have put out frequent stories with consistently good-editing. Editing is very hard for me. I have a hard time writing particularly well in certain states of mind, especially if I'm sleepy or my ADHD is acting up. The latter happens often, which can make my attempts at focusing for more than a few hundred words very hard and frustrating. I really wish I could put out a few thousand words in a few hours or per day, but as I've been diagnosed with ADHD I've had harder times hyper-focusing in ways I used to. Also, college. Even though I'm at the point where I'm considering a double major, I always have so much problems with ADHD and just... well, I guess a bit of everything at times? I can pay attention to reading and understanding things like reading Renaissance-era philosophy, but I will forget to eat more than cereal in a day or mail a package.
Also, the ability to manage consistent follow interaction that makes fucking sense. I don't really have the personality for it.
12. Do you want your writing to be famous?
gods i wish
13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself?
14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?
I usually have a few working titles, and even the eventual final title, developed before I write the story. Alternatively, I often have it when I'm early in the story too. Stories are like people in that regard to me. If I can't name you or encapsulated you in a title, why should I bother with you? Titles are fun for me, and often my 'Eureka!' moment to deciding upon a story. Then, I usually start writing afterward.
15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?
Summaries. There are some that are short intentionally (Forever Mare) and others that are long and careful on purpose. Many others, I just work out in about half an hour. Tags are fucking easy because if I can't explain what the fuck a story is using the barest minimum of genre tag, why the fuck am I writing it? This isn't to say I have some that are difficult to tag, but I generally have a really fucking idea of what they'll be.
16. Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?)
I wrote a more personal story than usual in Song of Myself, which was also my first foray into actually writing longer M/M. This is something I aim to do in the future, for, uh, obvious reasons? Also, gay ponies are good 'n' shit. I've also started my first long-form M-rated story with sort-of sex stuff and multiple thrid person narrators in Stay Golden.
Yes, I have a therapist. You don't need to ask me that.
17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?
My comment sections are generally quieter than I'd like (lots quieter) on the stories that I would hope to get the most discussion. It makes it incredibly hard to know this. One of my recent stories had a few people remark they were surprised it was an Ice Star story. This tells me that there is a clear idea of what an Ice Star story contains. I'd love to know these kinds of things.
Over the years, I've also had a fair share of people ask me why I bother to write the things I do, or at all, when they're non-comedic, generally bizarre, and don't pull in a ton of readers.
(Spoiler alert that I cannot emphasize enough: If I don't write these stories, no one else will.)
I'd really like to know the answer to this, honestly.
18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterizations?) Tell us about them.
Missing Pages contains most of these. The S5 alt timeline fics would have basically all the major divergences. I have some strong scene ideas and outakes that generally appear in Missing Pages and some I never bothered to write down, they're just different ways things could have gone. Asking in the comments of stories is by far the best way to find out about these things, just because I am usually at my keyboard and can offer plenty of notes or digging around to find what I need, or just see what I remember.
19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favorite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)
Each character (and generally longer stories) all have tics, symbolism, vocabulary, magic, and more tailored just to fit them and their narration. I love it when readers pick up on these things!
20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)
It's past 2 AM and this is the kind of shit my stories are crammed with. Comments and PMs work best for this kind of thing.
21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)
A series of graphic novels. Film wouldn't capture enough and an animated series likely wouldn't be able to get the more introspective/interior narration that I have so much of translate right. Graphic novels would be able to handle these really well, while offering a visual representation of everything that's happening.
22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?
How do you think I know they needed revising? But yeah, I love reading my own stuff. Often I go back to it just because I'll think "Man I want to read X' and I'll look around for that and realize "Oh shit, I wrote that" and the like. I often have to re-read my stuff to refresh my memory for future stories and the like.
23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?
Arcs One and Two. You know, the meat of my stories and the majority of my word count. Stuff that's been snowballing since 2013.
24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?
I got good, son.
25. What part of writing is the most fun?
Getting to share my stories and talk about them with y'all. That they have any reception at all. And, of course, the sweet satisfaction of finishing a story. Rereading my stuff and being awed at how all that hard work meant something and knowing I've improved. I like getting to make those nice and official story pages and selecting cover art too. Sometimes, it helps hype me up for a story.
Okay it's past 3AM and I kinda lost my focus at 14 because I'm sleep deprived and that's so many words at once I can't do that right now, so I'll get back to those ones later but I gotta speak my mind about the beginning half at least.
I love your stories and I'll read them I swear I'll be gushing about Favorable Alignment once I'm done with my Jinglemas gift. Seriously though the reason I stopped reading wasn't even 100% because I was busy as much as I know that if I do get back to reading it, there's a chance I won't be able to focus on anything else, which is bad for projects with a deadline.
ALSO I know they might never get done but I love some of those unused story ideas I would love the Spare Him His Life alternate version it sounds great. The alternate timelines would be really neat to read too because I've been thinking about what to do in those timelines myself (Mostly Nightmare & Sombra's) so I would love to see what you'd have thought out.
But of course, it'd be a lot of work so I get why it probably won't be done.
Anyway I know I said I was gonna do at least half of these but maybe not because I'm a bit out of it still... Sleep time I will read and comment better tomorrow
and also maybe do this too.Ha! I don't know you as that at all!
...god damn it...
lol real talk, I mostly know you as a friend and author I need to read someday. I do associate Sombra with you (especially Sombra x Luna) but like I actually know you so I guess I get around that little issue a bit? Still, I really gotta read your writing (I plan to buy your fuckin book to read your words on thin slices of dead trees!)
This was an interesting and informative read
ha ha why would you be worried about that c.c asking for a friend, no reason
Oooo
Man, that alternative universe story would have been wild, and oof ouch my heart @ Sombra ending his life/Luna saving him ;o;
I absolutely love your writing, and your stories/detailed universe, and I wanna eventually git gud at writing at some point. I think all I've ever done is tried to write some things, lost motivation and just sort of left them short and unfinished on my computer (sometimes I'd end up going back to read them and being like 'ew I need to just redo all of this' because it's not as detailed or w/e as I'd hoped).
I know I've said it before, but I'm looking forward to how everything unfolds, especially with Sombra and Luna. Though, I'm terribly curious about what happens to Celestia, not just with the latest chapter(s) in Enemy of Mine, but what's mentioned throughout a few of your other stories that seems to hint to something happening to her? Or that she's not raising the sun anymore/Luna and Sombra's rule. Just little details that have snagged my attention and has left me wondering. 👀
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Mothy it means loads that you love my stories but you don't have to inject 'em all at once like that!
If I never do them, I will at least dump the notes I had for them in Missing Pages.
I have a lot of other projects in the future that just ended up being a much higher priority than "hey watch me elaborate on what the episode did" except done, like, five times.
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This pleases the Ice Star. Being known for Luna/Sombra means that people have noticed something about my actual writing/content more than just what my profile pic or meme-y side is.
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It's really just a matter that when I write stories like Discord Pokes or Bat Ponies Aren't Real (which people expected to be a comedy despite not being tagged as such) it's as though I don't get much of another chance. Most of my stories get around 50 upvotes, even after a lot of effort goes into them. Those stories both got 250 or more. The fact that the gulf is so wide bothers me. I expect sill, quick stories, and fluffy stuff to catch on more because it's the literary equivalent of pop music. What I really never counted on was for the actual bulk of my stories to lag behind so much. Being remembered for one or two shitfics and having Sombra as a profile picture tells me that there is a really skin-deep perception of me and what I can do as an author, regardless of how much I work or any amount of followers I gain or just anything. Not to mention, there are so many other shitfics out there that get loads more in terms of popularity. Pinkie Pie Watches Paint Dry is a well-written shitfic that's insanely popular, but I don't think anyone would act like AA only wrote that, actual numbers aside.
Does that make any sense?
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OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO to you too!
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*slaps roof of demon*
man this bad thude can fit so much trauma and mental illness inside haha
Hearing these kinds of things will never stop making my day. 🖤
If you ever need help, I do editing too. If you don't need an editor, my PM box is always open for advice.
Don't worry, you'll find out soon enough!
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But I kinda want to.5415668
BUT THE SIDE EFFECTS
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Oh fuck I'm excited.
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Certified Ice Star Promise (tm)! The final chapters will cover this!