Almost next year, but not quite!

So, I think I’m gonna have about 50,000 words written in the month of December. Which is pretty neat. Still all in that mess of a slice of life shipping (with a tiny bit of adventure) ponyfic-shaped pile of words. Sunset/Fluttershy, Spike/Rarity/Applejack, Twilight/Sunburst. Dash/sirens. A few neat ideas mixed in. I think my favorite was that I made human-world Spike a person, instead of a dog. I went with the idea that the events of Friendship Games, instead of making him a dog who could talk, gave him some dragon abilities. Strength, toughness, the ability to breathe fire. Along with a good dose of greed and aggression he has to keep under control. I also had some neat ideas about human-world version of the Nightmare Moon incident. Going with a semi-serious one for the actual writing but I just today thought of a great comedic one. Luna and Celestia were opposite sides in a big LARP event. Luna lost, and due to a bet the sisters had going, Luna was forced to speak terrible ‘ye old english’ for a year. All thous and thees.

 

Winter hasn’t killed us yet 2017

Which is my favorite way to refer to the winter holidays, since that’s the foundation of pretty much all of them.

Anyway! I got some cool stuff. Though, when everything is said in done, the biggest gift I got was several hours of sorting audio files on my computer. When you get down to it, organization micromanagement is the best gift you can get a nerd.

 

Writing continues

So, still chugging along with my pony writing practice project. Where I managed, completely unintentionally and more or less at random, set up a situation where everyone in humanland that got touched by the elements of harmony magic is in relationships with one or more of each other. Guess I was channeling that one chapter of The Combinatorics Project where the elements of harmony nudge the mane six into romantic couples. Well, I suppose Spike is the outlier since he wasn’t touched by the rainbow magic, though I did make him an actual person and not a small yappy dog.

Weird that it came about because of me: “I should hook Rainbow Dash with someone since she’s the only one besides Pinkie I haven’t attached to anyone. Hey, I should hook her up with the Sirens.” Then bam, surprising thematic/narrative consistency out of nowhere.

 

XCOM2 Expansion

Got back into XCOM2. Primarily (if delayed effect) because of Viking ZX releasing the Dusk Guard and Dusk Rogues as soldiers. Splruged on the expansion as well. Cleaned up and added more mods. Apparently a whole lot more pony voice packs now, so most of the pony soldiers will have proper pony voices.

Opening mission was not exactly smooth. Crystal Wishes didn’t survive. Apple Bloom and Buttercup were injured. Apparently in the expansion you can make propaganda posters for fallen teammates. Might have to see if I can export them to put them up here on the blog. Second mission was a total failure. Mostly due to it being a new sewer map that was throwing me off with weird camera angles and layout. That’s the excuse I’m using for going back to earlier save and trying it again, anyway.

 

Celestia’s Scheme

My new theory is that Princess Celestia never does anything worthwhile because she’s actively trying to get fired/impeached/deposed from the throne. She doesn’t want to just quit but she hates being in charge. So she’s passively aggressively trying to be the worse ruler ever, but without hurting anyone. One thousand years of her suggesting crazy out-there utopian policies and when disaster happens she does the bare minimum to save the kingdom. The ponies of Equestria just love her so much that they do their best to carry out her crazy insane utopian policies and have put together the chessmaster Celestia myth to explain how she never does anything but disasters get fixed.