A Dream
Chapter 222: author note
Previous ChapterAuthor's Notes:
“Nothing much happens without a dream. For something really great to happen, it takes a really great dream.”
-Robert Greenleaf“Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous…”
-T.E. LawrenceNovember, 2019-
This story has been a part of my life for the last seven and a half years. Thinking about it, it kind of blows my mind that I’ve had eight different addresses in that time. I even wrote the last part of season 2 while living out of the back seat of a Dodge Ram in the Florida panhandle.As the opening author’s note indicates, Valiant started out as a self-insert. Somewhere in the last half a million words he gained a personality of his own and things just kind of took off from there.
As you’ve probably gathered, a lot of planning went into this story. Many plot points were set up, or at least thought of, in the season before they actually appeared. I kept a couple running Google Docs filled with ideas and reminders of what I had already set up. I’m notorious for just writing without any prep and by the seat of my pants, so this story was good for my personal growth as a writer, because I learned how to plan ahead. I even started writing this author note in October 2018.
That kind of planning, I have to admit, almost became apart of the story itself. I successfully predicted my exact final word count in a blog post wrapping up Season 8, published December 2018.
One of my big regrets, however, could have been solved by even better planning. In the later seasons, there were a couple of soft reboots, usually explained by resetting the universe. Every time Valiant got a little too god-emperor, I had to knock him down again to keep the struggle real and the story interesting. I should probably take a little personal heed, but also find a better plot device. Plus, this is still a pony story, so rearranging the plot let me get back to more canon events, especially because it seems like many readers had eventually stopped watching the show itself.
I selected the above quote by Robert Greenleaf like four years ago, until suddenly stumbling upon the T.E. Lawrence quote in May 2019. I struggled for a while to figure out which one to use and eventually just did both.
Despite the volume of swearing, I generally held off on really good ones, just so I could have that little bit of room to escalate should it be required. “Fuck” was said exactly seven times - three of which were to Discord’s face.
Getting down to the end here, I'm feeling things and I want you - yes you - to know that I appreciate your patronage. Couldn't have done it without you.
-totallynotabrony
THE DREAMS MASTER INDEX
Even with 540,000 words in the main story, there were still dozens of related tales that add up to about another 350,000.
Side Stories
More Dreams (random chapters)
Wet Dreams
Sir Win's Hellish Beverage Brewing and Infernal Event Planning
The Adventures of Trixie if Her Father Was a Badass Alien
The Adventures of Crackhead Limestone Pie
Science, Steam, and Beer (by mines5, Altoid, and totallynotabrony)
The Pointless Adventures of Guinness (cancelled)(by Altoid)Spinoffs
The Vampire Cheerilee series
The Adventures of Vampire Cheerilee
The Night Shift
Murder on the Mind
Fiends of Manehattan
(written by Skrive Flip)Luck of the DrawWeakness of the FleshThe Hunted (cancelled)(written by Thegodhand)Dark Operations (cancelled)(written by CenturionFox13)Turn That Frown Upside Down (cowritten by Brony Tom)Hearts and Hooves Day Hurts (cowritten by zaponator)
The Cyborg Braeburn series
Cover Art Archive
The original, used from 2nd Mar 2012 until 22nd Nov 2015. Made with General Zoi's pony creator and some photoshopping of the lampshade Spike wore in the first episode.
Briefly used 22st Nov 2015 until 4th Dec 2015. Drawn in five minutes on random tree screencaps.
Current cover art
At one point there was also an Ask Valiant tumblr.
And if you haven't seen it, there's an archive of Dreams-related art at my DeviantArt.
