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Learning To Fly, Next Steps?
9 years ago
General
I've now finished chapter 5 of "Learning To Fly", total nearly 26K words for the story, and I don't know what to do. Status:
-The story seems to be about Sky Diver's decision to embrace being a new species both physically and mentally, and to some extent morally. He's embraced the pegasus part and the mental changes that go with it. Whatever he achieves from here leads him to decide that he does/doesn't want to remain one of the "ascended" who has an altered moral sense.
-There's also a conflict about his involvement in Earthside problems. Does he keep his promise to stay in Hoofland for a solid month, is he tempted to break it, and in the end is he eager to venture Earthside or does he not care?
-There's a war going on, which has two aspects. There's the conventional struggle for territory and power between factions, but also an unwelcome influence by griefers who don't care about winning so much as causing havoc among the {stream of profanity} pony players who they dislike both for the pony thing and for having a number of millionaires who abandoned Earth with their money. The fated ending of this war is that the world is somehow literally reshaped, a unicorn named Gentle Sun becomes a new Noble replacing the griefers' Sunward Ho, GS accepts the same mental changes that Diver and Harvest Moon have, and a religion springs up to treat the Nobles as gods. How do I get there and make it about more than the heroes conquering in-game nodes? How does their moral development affect their ability to not just fight the griefers, but win them over in some way?
-Does anything happen Earthside in this story?
-How do I juggle the mass of characters? Danio the zebra interests me but this isn't his story. Key and Kingsfoil get screen time but are currently not involved. Poppy is showing up about now but isn't in the story yet. Gentle Sun might actually be Nimbus, which raises the conflict of whether Diver leaves Noctis in both senses to follow the new ruler.
Oh, and if you're interested in Hoofland, note that "2040: Reconnection" has been re-issued at about double the length, including a version of the pony-focused "A Matter Of Taste" story and other new material.
-The story seems to be about Sky Diver's decision to embrace being a new species both physically and mentally, and to some extent morally. He's embraced the pegasus part and the mental changes that go with it. Whatever he achieves from here leads him to decide that he does/doesn't want to remain one of the "ascended" who has an altered moral sense.
-There's also a conflict about his involvement in Earthside problems. Does he keep his promise to stay in Hoofland for a solid month, is he tempted to break it, and in the end is he eager to venture Earthside or does he not care?
-There's a war going on, which has two aspects. There's the conventional struggle for territory and power between factions, but also an unwelcome influence by griefers who don't care about winning so much as causing havoc among the {stream of profanity} pony players who they dislike both for the pony thing and for having a number of millionaires who abandoned Earth with their money. The fated ending of this war is that the world is somehow literally reshaped, a unicorn named Gentle Sun becomes a new Noble replacing the griefers' Sunward Ho, GS accepts the same mental changes that Diver and Harvest Moon have, and a religion springs up to treat the Nobles as gods. How do I get there and make it about more than the heroes conquering in-game nodes? How does their moral development affect their ability to not just fight the griefers, but win them over in some way?
-Does anything happen Earthside in this story?
-How do I juggle the mass of characters? Danio the zebra interests me but this isn't his story. Key and Kingsfoil get screen time but are currently not involved. Poppy is showing up about now but isn't in the story yet. Gentle Sun might actually be Nimbus, which raises the conflict of whether Diver leaves Noctis in both senses to follow the new ruler.
Oh, and if you're interested in Hoofland, note that "2040: Reconnection" has been re-issued at about double the length, including a version of the pony-focused "A Matter Of Taste" story and other new material.
As of right now, the new version of "Reconnection" is indeed up on Amazon -- if you look at the "Look Inside" sample on the Amazon page, you can see the new version. But it's not being delivered to existing Kindle purchasers.
If you contact Kindle customer support and explain the situation, they will update your copy to the new version (at least they did for me).
Another interesting thing that might be quickly explored: How do conversations/relationships between Ascended and non-Ascended Hooflanders go? Do non-Ascended Hooflanders get the impression that Ascended ones are "acting weird" or "overdoing the RP"? Likewise, do Ascended have a hard time not thinking of the non-Ascended as "casuals" or "humans in pony suits"?
The Ascension news probably comes out shortly after Alma learns it ca. 2040 July, and this is back around Jan-Feb. Late that year, partly due to the events of "Coyote", is when the setting starts to get a little weird. I suppose Ascension initially gets overshadowed by the idea that they're roleplaying having a religion.
Considering that this is a sort of troll invasion and the good guys know it's not a battle for the fate of the world so much as establishing some kind of friendly culture, it seems like they should win by some weird method. Like, playing the religious angle to the hilt and asking the enemy for terms. They say "LOL, bring us beer!" and the ponies startle them by grabbing some Earthside robots and actually delivering a keg and popcorn to their forum head's party. Something weird like this seems fitting to show how Diver behaves back Earthside with his strange new perspective as an emissary of Talespace.
V.