New IYGALL-Verse Story Out Soon (IMPORTANT BLOG POST) · 8:58pm Aug 23rd, 2020
Good news: I finally finished something fanfiction related over the weekend and am very close to sending it all you guys' way. Bad news: this is going to be a fair bit more complicated than any of you might be expecting. In fact, it could very well be the most controversial thing I've ever written. This week, I will be providing you with official IYGALL cut content.
To explain, I'll back up a bit to 2016: while I was planning the Orange arc, I had intended for it to be way more Teen-rated, because the minute people started comparing the Oranges to a cult, I wanted to explore that. I wanted to look at what would happen if a rich, abusive family was also cultlike and what that would imply for all their members, all the additional trauma that would stem from being in both situations at once. What I wanted to say was that all Oranges ended up irreparably rotten by the end, even--and especially--Valencia. But a lot of Valencia's deprogramming arc was cut for a variety of reasons.
Main among them: a prominent Featured author told me that it was guaranteed to bomb. IYGALL would lose many of its upvotes and its Featured ranking if it went in that direction, because it involved Valencia being a psychological case study for a very taboo subject. I've talked about this interpretation of her in blogs before, but I've always had a nagging feeling that Valencia was never fully "released" to the readers without this important detail of her Orange life. Her motivations, while understandable in the context of the story, seemed somewhat clouded to me without it. And so, in 2019, I announced that I intended to release an incredibly controversial IYGALL "director's cut." I did this somewhat jokingly, knowing this could be shooting myself in the foot, but then PatchworkPoltergeist personally backed the concept. Yeah. Holy shit.
And so I began progress on what I came to call Rotten Oranges, a miniseries that explores just how much the Oranges messed up Valencia's life and how Coco and the rest of her household help her recover. There will be divorce. Secret affairs will be exposed. Valencia is absolutely, 100% f*cked up in the head.
I could very well cancel it after the first chapter due to downvotes. But that's all right, because this is an experiment. I genuinely want to see if there is a place on FiMFiction for this kind of messed-up story, or it bombs as badly as the Hitler sitcom. Because I know now that I can't keep myself from writing controversial stuff because of what others think. I can only hope that this won't end in a total flop.
Best of luck!
I'd just like to point out one thing before you dive into the muck. In general, people would like to see a pearl in the bottom of the pile of poo, a glimmer of hope in the ebon mists of darkness. Admittedly, it's not something that shows up in real life often enough, but these are *fantasy* stories after all, and we'd like to see some cheese on that mousetrap.
Looks like you got that one last surprise after all eh?
Sorry, had to. Anyways, I agree with Georg. Let me cite the AssassinationVerse by RatedPonystar. Started off good, started losing readers as it became darker with each passing chapter, to the point why should anyone care what happens to anyone? That's my point, we want pearls of hope here, reasons to continue following the story and it's characters.
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I'd like to clarify some things before the release. The dark events that happen in it are mainly set in the past and alluded to in the present, to the point where, after some thought, I can barely justify using the Dark tag. Nothing bad will happen to Coco, or Babs, or anypony.
This is, first and foremost, a story about recovery. The characters (and even me) thought that Valencia could be rehabilitated in the course of the IYGALL series. But she hasn't opened up about everything, and once they learn her secret (which is confessed entirely in the present, no flashbacks), they realize there's still a lot to do. Yes, it is dark in the sense that it's about a victim who's been through cultish circumstances deprogramming with the help of her friends. But part of that comes through realizing the Oranges are gone, this is all over, and now she can live her life on her own terms. And that, I feel, is empowering in its own way.
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Ah. You should have clarified.
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I was kinda in a hurry when I wrote the blog post, so it didn't come out as well as I would've liked. Sorry for the confusion.
5342047 This does give you a wonderful opportunity for a chapter title, though.
Burnt Orange