• Member Since 18th Jan, 2015
  • offline last seen Last Wednesday

TikiBat


Tiki Enthusiast, Bat fan, writer

More Blog Posts116

  • 83 weeks
    New chapter update tomorrow

    It's been almost nine months but Night Terrors should be seeing an update tomorrow morning. This is a story that I feel has been underperforming a lot throughout its run, and there's a good chance it'll be my last long story for the foreseeable future. That said, it's still one that's very special to me, and I hope people will stick around to the end of it. I've wound up altering the outline I

    Read More

    0 comments · 156 views
  • 112 weeks
    April chapter updates — an update about updates

    I’ve been running into a road block while working on some of my current projects lately and thought I’d write out a little status update for where I’m at story update wise for this month. This is going to be a mixed bag in terms of update timelines, but I always like to share where I’m at with my work anyways, even if it’s the kind of content that maybe one or two people actually enjoy reading

    Read More

    4 comments · 218 views
  • 115 weeks
    Odyssey Chapter I is out

    Because of how I'm working on this particular rewrite, the reworked chapters will not appear as "new" chapters and the story won't appear as "updated". So what that means is that I'm going to have to work harder with every update to get the story out there. This chapter shouldn't be unfamiliar to longtime readers, however, it will have some very subtle yet significant lore changes towards

    Read More

    0 comments · 177 views
  • 116 weeks
    Relaunching "Odyssey"

    You might have noticed, I rebranded and did some tweaking to "Odyssey". The first "prologue" chapter is up, though I guess it's not technically a true prologue, but rather more of a lore-filled intro. I don't want to get people's hopes up yet, so I'm not going to commit to a full structured release schedule yet, but expect infrequent updates that are made up of the original chapters but

    Read More

    2 comments · 165 views
  • 122 weeks
    Unsure what to do with "Odyssey"

    So I'm going to preface this by saying that the point of this blog post is to gauge interest on whether this story should continue or not, and how that should go if I do. If you like the story and just want to see it continue then please let me know below. If you want to read into more of my thoughts on it and get an explanation for *why* it's been on hiatus for so long, then feel free to read

    Read More

    3 comments · 183 views
Mar
23rd
2021

My passion project is one year old today! · 3:53am Mar 23rd, 2021

Do Ponies on Earth have Magic Dreams? just turned one year old today, and that's an exciting event for me just because of how special this story is to me. This story started as a rewrite of the very first story I had ever written. As first stories often are, it was rough around the edges, overly bloated, and the dialogue and characterization were just a complete mess. That said, it was the first long story I had ever finished, so even if it was a complete mess, it was still special to me. Fast forward eight months later and I decided to take what I had learned so far and look over that story again. At this point I had only been writing for maybe a little over a year, but in that time I had also started a few other projects that gave me some good learning experience. As I sat there and re read the story I wrote, I began to pick out little things here and there that I wanted to improve on, and even more things that I knew didn't live up to my original vision. It was at this point where the small goal of cleaning up a few rough chapters quickly turned into deciding to scrap most of what I had written and rewrite the story entirely.

This was a slow project at first, but as I continued to write the new chapters (while taking inspiration from and including elements of the original edition that actually worked), this project really became extra special to me. I wasn't just cleaning up a "mistake", but instead I was revisiting my first big project and giving it the love it really deserved. As the chapter count and release schedule grew, the story very quickly became my favorite creative project I've ever worked on, and it still is. Fast forward a bit and we're in late summer, 2020. I had just gone through some rough personal stuff, and instead of just laying around being depressed I decided to do something productive. Chapters began releasing every week, and my passion for the project grew even more. I decided to clean up some stuff that was still a little rough, get some art made up for the chapters, focus on making it the best it could be, etc., and as we crossed into the new year I was really happy with where I was with it. By that point the story was now twice as long as the original version was, and still growing.

Looking back at the original, something I was really unhappy with was how one sided and emotionless the characters were. I liked them, but they had no depth-- just a single goal that pushed each of them through a very rushed storyline. Something I really worked hard on in the rewrite was giving those characters more depth. Now instead of just wanting to do something with little to no explanation, they had their own personal stories that drove what they wanted to do. The ones that wanted to help ponies had more compelling reasons to, the ones that wanted to start a new life got better explanations for why they wanted to move on from their old lives. Romances didn't just happen off screen and get little to no development, but instead got shown in detail, in ways that even contributed back to what they wanted to do. What was most important to me with this project was improving on what I had written before, and by all counts I think I've done that and more. I'm really happy with the characters, I'm really happy with the storyline, stuff happens for a reason and seldom just exists without contributing to something else down the line.

And this brings us to where we are now. March 22nd, 2021-- a full year later, and the story is now roughly 15-20 chapters away from being completed. What started as a super rough cobbled together 18 chapter story has spiraled into a nearly 40 chapter long slice of life that's still growing as we speak. This is the longest story I've ever written, and will probably be the longest story I'll ever wind up writing, and that just makes me so proud of how far I've come. I know it's a long story and I know it seemingly has a long way to go until it's over, but I really do appreciate everyone who's ever stopped to read it, leave a comment, liked, favorited, or even just shared it. I can't tell you how much that means to me, and continues to mean to me. This story's more than just a random writing project to me, it's a piece of art that I'm really proud of, and I hope you've enjoyed it. And if you haven't read it yet, or are just starting out, then I really hope you'll stay along for the ride.


As a little bonus, here's every single piece of art I've gotten for it so far!


Art by: https://twitter.com/BrokenTRabbit

Art by: https://twitter.com/FlagStopAgent

Art by: arttartistry


Art by: https://twitter.com/Acesential

Art made with a base from https://twitter.com/smolducko

Art by: https://twitter.com/FanDrawsArt


Art by: arttartistry

Art by: https://twitter.com/FanDrawsArt


Art by: https://twitter.com/FlagStopAgent

Art by: Almy

Comments ( 1 )
Login or register to comment