Toraka

Toraka
Toraka is a writer of fan fiction who publishes his works on the Pony Fiction Archive. His works are mostly romances, though he often writes slice-of-life side projects while working on said romances.

After joining the herd, he quickly ran out of content and thus discovered pony fictions. After reading every story on the Pony Fiction Archive (Thus being out of content again), he decided to produce some of his own.

All of Toraka's stories are in third person and past tense, which he considers to be "The most professional style." Furthermore, the narration usually "locks onto" the main character(s) of the story, detailing the world as they see it. As a consequence, all that is visible of other ponies' thoughts is how the main character interprets their expressions and actions. Logically, events the character did not attend to are not described. Both of those rules of consequence have been broken before, however those remain rare incidents.

After creating some "pointlessly romantic" stories, Toraka found the mental troubles of Midnight, one of his original characters, to be an interesting topic, after experimenting with the concept of such problems in A single seed. He says: "There are more tacky pony romances out there than the number of colors in Rainbow Dash's mane to its own power (6 to the power of 6, which equals 46656). So why should I also be producing them? If you're standing in a mass of thousands of people, all wearing silly hats, waiting to be recognised, you might as well wear a different silly hat. Or, to come back to the point, if you're at a pony convention where everyone's ponies are lesbian and making out with each other, your pony could just as well be mentally broken and trying to kill itself every five chapters."

Toraka uses a wide spectrum of characters, staying with one main character for only one story, then switching to another with a different story to tell. The exception to this rule is Twilight Sparkle, who is the main character and focus of narration in the following stories: An unknown sensation, On wings of Glimmer and A single seed (As well as his abandoned project Pony Life 2) and also appears in every single one of his works. He claims that writing with Twilight as a character simply is far easier for him.

Later, he revealed that there is something he calls "The Bleeding Effect", allowing him to temporarily take the mindset of people he knows very well and that are fairly close to his own personality. The ponies he can "bleed into" best are, due to being similiar to himself, Twilight Sparkle and Midnight, which explains why they appear so often in his works.

For the purpose of "being able to avoid having to use Background Ponies where they're not fitting", he has created two main original characters, Glimmer and Midnight. Those ponies get appearances in his works whenever possible, though character relations don't necessarily have to carry over.

Glimmer began as a manifestation of the love deprived Twilight Sparkle's imagination. He says in a note on one of his chapters; "When creating Glimmer, I had the goal of creating the single most desirable pony." Originally, the gray pegasus was intended to become Twilight Sparkle's marefriend after she had had a relationship with Midnight, ending in them breaking up. However, that idea was scrapped when he realised that a dramatic breakup did not fit into his story. Glimmer later received a story of her own, where that pairing is fulfilled.

Midnight originally was an almost exact copy of another OC with the same name by Esperderek, another author whose works on the Pony Fiction Archive Toraka had recently read. Having taken a liking for Midnight, Toraka decided to adapt her for his own works. He has stated that he is very well aware of the irony in making Midnight fall in love with Twilight Sparkle, who, in Esperderek's works, is her mother.

In order for her to fit his desire, Midnight soon had to go through some changes from the original. Over time, she received a different mane color, cutie mark, and a very cynical personality, with a bit of insanity created by her having to watch her mother get murdered as a filly.

As a result, Midnight, other than other characters, can see the world as it actually is, with all the violence, murders and exploits that literally don't exist in other characters' stories as they are set in more child-friendly environments. Midnight has learned that ponies cannot be trusted (Her mother's murderer was somepony whose good intentions she had high trust in) and thus relies on herself to solve her problems.

Splitting aMid the Night
Splitting aMid the Night is Toraka's current main project, as well as already his longest story to date. It describes the life of the cynical Midnight, trying to cope with some slight insanity, received after her mother was murdered at her hooves, while also getting through the final exams at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns (Where she has only managed to stay through hard work because she is technically just an average unicorn) and, at the same time, dealing with a crush on Twilight Sparkle, who is taking the exams in her class, although in disguise.

Toraka has mentioned that this story is supposed to be a hub for "The Midnight Universe", wherein many of his stories (At time of writing, Two of a kind, To Jack a Rainbow, Perception, An unknown sensation and Splitting aMid the Night) play in the same universe, at roughly the same time, to create one big world detailed from many angles.

Other stories
In the following list, Toraka's own descriptions are taken from the Pony Fiction Archive.
 * Perception - Some Dashassin backstory. A younger Rainbow Dash learns about how things are and how we want them to be the hard way.
 * Two of a kind - Sweetie Belle finds a dictionary. That's about it.
 * An unknown sensation - When Twilight is approaching final exams that she didn't expect to have to take as Celestia's personal student, she also finds out about what she has felt up until now but was too busy to notice. It's a better love story than Twilight, starring Twilight!
 * To Jack a Rainbow - Yet another Appledash fic. Plays in the same universe and at roughly the same time as my first story, An unknown sensation.
 * A single seed - Discord escapes yet again, but this time his approach is very different. He doesn't steal the Elements, nor does he hypnotise the ponies. Technically, it should be a matter of minutes for Twilight to stop him again, right?
 * Daring's Deeds - Rainbow Dash discovers that there is more to the DD books than meets her eye.
 * Pony Life 2 (abandoned) - It's HL2, but with ponies.
 * On Wings of Glimmer - Love story between Twilight and my other OC pony. Contains (magical) conception, pregnancy and birth, although it's not really the story's focus.
 * After the storm - This is how "Read it and weep" would be if I wrote it.