The Diary of Lilac Boughs

A silly little diary and ask blog.

[lilacboughsdiary]

Dearest Diary,

I’m writing a bit late at night and I’m feeling a bit exhausted. Just a bit.

Still feeling a bit blah regarding my previous entry hence my overall silence. However, I am still working on the project. I picked up the code and starting going through my old notes. As it turns out I really spaced my notes out among quite a few files so getting a good picture of it all was a little trying. But I am back at it now and I have made some excellent progress.

The difficulty with Twine games is that there really isn’t anything to show of in-progress work... The best I can do is make updates here and intimate the amount of progress I have made so far.

As it is, the game is playable now. It is lose-able and win-able as well. But there is a far amount of content still to be built. I wonder why I’m doing this at all other than the satisfaction when things work well. I want to tell stories but I wonder if this is the sort of story anyone wants to hear? The high water mark for the Conversion Bureau as a genre in the MLP fandom seems to have passed in a fairly significant way, a long form narrative game like this seems unnecessary now. But I want to tell the story and I hate to leave something undone.

I could also endeavor to put content of other sorts on here as well, but I’m not sure what would be appropriate.

Overall I feel about as float-y as I look these days.

As always,

~Lilac Boughs

[lilacboughsdiary]

Dearest Diary,

Another new year has come and I want to make something of it.

I realized that I stopped updating this almost immediately because I was feeling quite pressured to try and appear in person anew for each update. But due to various factors I just couldn’t, so it languished.

BUT I have decided to update it regardless and just try to get my gorgeous floaty visage in when I can rather than every single update.

I hope this will make it easier to write to you and let you know what I’m doing and what I’m working on.

So, let me tell you about today.

Today I found out that one of the people I looked up to from time to time, that gave me some long lasting and incredibly important advice, has bowed out of writing fiction about ponies. The actual announcement of it was old, old old, I just have gotten so busy that I missed it. (Truthfully it wasn’t a surprise as the final piece was planned ahead of time.) I guess the fact is that she was right in her assertions about the tone of the newest stories to come from Ponyville, the inconsistencies and the shift to something a bit more nebulous in shape than it had been.

I loved the Equestria that she described, that she saw in those early stories. And I lament the way she was forced to deal with unwarranted cruelty and division among her peers. It was her visions of another Equestria, bound up with a rotting Earth, that inspired me to start working on my game... it also inspired me to start writing Science Fiction again, to start working on my strange hyperspacial dreams.

I have a lot of feelings about it in general and truthfully it saps some of my drive to work on the game inspired from her stories. But, I’m going to try and finish it anyway. I want to tell this story, and I hope other folks will get something out of it when it is finished.

On a more deeply personal note, I wish I could interact with her more. I’m just very nervous about approaching her and I suffer from this pervasive thought that I have nothing to offer others and therefore shouldn’t waste their time. But that is an old struggle that I am very familiar with. I miss the community fostered around the warmth of her stories but that is many many years deceased at this point, a ghost town of aborted threads and shouts into the void.

I should have been a positive voice when it mattered for her, maybe it would have helped and maybe it wouldn’t have. I could still be, if I weren’t a coward.

[lilacboughsdiary]

Dearest Diary,

So, I said I would keep a diary… so I am!

Hilariously enough that game I said I was working on is actually taking up a lot more of my time than I had originally assumed it would. Even if even making this entry is really more of productive procrastination than anything else. I wrote the last entry in May… my hope is to update this more often than that!

Aside from that, the lilacs have all bloomed and the blossoms have fallen… it’s really bittersweet. I miss them already. They remind me so much of when I was a little filly. I have such wonderful memories of laying on the floor of my room with a book, listening to the wind with the scent of lilacs through the window.

I’m desperately trying to arrange the world of this game, and having constructed all of the major mechanical aspects of it I find myself struggling to do the writing of the scenes. It isn’t as though the characters aren’t ready to talk to me, they don’t mind chattering my ears off for the most part. It’s more that sitting down and plotting this all out is so daunting.

Oh Diary, I have this odd feeling of loneliness sometimes. It’s terrible, it isn’t as though I live alone. I just miss having so many friends like I once did. I’m used to having a bevy of people about, people to play with and chat with at our convenience. As somewhat of an introvert it feels antithetical to consider having loads of people around but I just miss… the opportunity to have them around.

Those are my thoughts right now diary, I hope to chat with you again soon.

~Lilac Boughs

[lilacboughsdiary]

Dearest Diary,

Recently I was thinking it might be nice to keep a diary, if for no other reason to help me get more writing done on a regular basis.

I admit this might just be because I’ve been feeling rather creative recently and needed an outlet.

So here we are!

I’ve made this nice empty space to float about in and an avatar to answer questions with... those seem appropriate for this sort of enterprise. We’ll see if any more than that is necessary.

OH and tea, because I can’t be gently drifting along on ethereal breezes without tea. I’m working on an interactive story in Twine based on the Conversion Bureau setting so expect me to talk about that a lot at length.

I also admit, I admit many things today, that this is an odd sort of ask-blog to interact with because the primary conceit is so unusual but if you bear with me I will try to be entertaining.

As Always~

     Lilac Boughs