My stories, a look back - #13: The Shadows Before Dawn · 5:49pm Jul 31st, 2023
Mike Cartoon Pony suggested I get this one down while it's still fresh in my mind, and since there's not really a lot to say, why not?
This was an entry for The A Thousand Words Contest II, which at time of writing has only just finished taking submissions. I was determined to try to do something for the contest. 1000 words is such a low bar that it felt like a relatively easy win.
Of course, writing is hard, so it didn't go that smoothly.
The Shadows Before Dawn
A dead King Sombra finds himself in the Astral Plane, with an unexpected proposition to consider.
July 2023
Drama
My plan was just to come up with a simple idea, write enough of it to fill 1000 words, and submit. It didn't have to be particularly good or thought-provoking, it just had to be something. I'm not trying to win the contest, I just wanted to use it as an excuse to write and publish a story. (Actually, I've yet to see anyone give a different motivation for entering the contest. Is anyone actually trying to win?)
I've already had some experience of constrained writing via the monthly 150 word Flashfic contest, so I kinda knew what I had to work with. I know how difficult it is to work with just 150 words, so 1000 feels positively luxurious in comparison. It's easily enough space to establish a problem and resolve it. When dealing with space limitations, the golden rules of improv are useful: Say yes, Add new information, Don't argue, Don't block. Anything that isn't moving the story forward is burning words, so it has to be worth it.
My first idea was a Tell Your Tale parody, leveraging the manic pacing and poor writing of the series in my favor while also taking the opportunity to roast the series. To my surprise, this idea actually got away from me, and I realized I could turn it into a full-fledged story in its own right. I'm still working on that.
After going back to the drawing board, my next idea was a Young Six story, which features them trying to enact a plan to celebrate the anniversary of the Tree of Harmony's birth. The relationship between the Young Six and the Tree is something I've always liked about the late seasons of MLP. The Young Six are all such great characters in their own right and could easily carry a series on their own, and the fact that they have this connection to the Tree gives them the same kind of unifying bond that the Elements did for the Mane Six. I love exploring that.
However, as I've noted before, I have an unwavering tendency to overcomplicate plots unnecessarily, and in the end I wasn't really happy with what I came up with. It would have been a farcical comedy involving the Young Six staging a fight to summon the Tree of Harmony's avatar, then using Silverstream's Pearl Shard to transform the Tree into a real pony so that she can attend her own birthday party. In the end it didn't really feel like their motivations made sense (after all, how do the Young Six know the Tree can't create herself a real body if she wants to?). So I gave up on that one.
However, this aborted attempt did move me slightly closer to the end product. My next idea was to focus on King Sombra. He had "died" during the course of season 9, and that episode - "The Beginning of the End" - had always bugged me, because it makes no sense. What is King Sombra? How can he be brought back to life so easily? And why does the episode end with the Mane Six celebrating their defeat of him, when he can apparently just come back to life at will anyway? What's to stop him returning again and doing something even worse?
My idea was a meta fic which parodied these inconsistencies, by proposing that Sombra is a character actor who keeps getting returned from the dead to play villainous roles. Thus, he is Sombra, but he also played Svengallop, Gladmane, Sludge - basically any one-dimensional, one-off villain who we never see again. This time, however, his new role would be playing Opaline in G5. The two characters are similar in their hamminess, and it felt to me like a role Sombra would relish - the opportunity to chew the scenery without ever actually getting closer to her villainous goal. The fic would be Sombra talking with his "agent" in the afterlife realm he keeps ending up in, and would play out like an episode of Pitch Meetings, taking various potshots at FiM Season 9, Pony Life, G5, etc. etc.
I abandoned this idea because I couldn't really figure out how to make the timeline work for the jokes I wanted to tell. But, this finally got me to the story I ended up telling. I realized there was a simpler, more dramatic angle that could work, if the Tree of Harmony was the one to bring Sombra back.
Making the Tree the instigator solved several problems all at once. We know the Tree has the power to pull off magical feats of this magnitude, and that she also plays an inscrutable 5D chess game, manipulating destiny by putting ponies in the right places at the right times. Even better, she already has a connection with Sombra, because he's the one that "killed" her original form. Thus, the two have a history that can be alluded to in the story, but doesn't need to be explained.
Incorporating Misty into the story came somewhat naturally from the Tree's motivations. After all, this is kind of a strange move for the Tree - why is she setting up a G5 antagonist? Isn't that actively going against harmony? And my answer is that she's actually trying to bring Sombra/Opaline to the light by giving her something to care about, ie. Misty.
But, since it's me, I can't leave it at anything that simple, so I had to throw in a twist - namely, that the Tree is also doing the same switcheroo with Tempest Shadow by allowing her to be reborn as Misty, with the justification that this will finally give Tempest the redemption she's been seeking. And to add some mystery, it's not revealed to be Tempest until the end. I'm not sure how exactly I came up with the idea that it would be Tempest, but I think it fits really well - not only is there a tragic irony to Tempest being denied magic in all her incarnations, but there's also a reflection of Tempest in Misty, in that they've both been manipulated by a powerful figure promising the use of their horn in return for their obedience.
The fic doesn't address the aftermath of Sombra's and Tempest's rebirths, and so some questions are unanswered: did Opaline and Misty already "exist", or were they complete creations of the Tree of Harmony? My answer is the latter, as this explains why Opaline and Misty just seem to show up out of nowhere. Of course, you have to ignore Opaline's claim that she was around since the time of Luna and Celestia, but hey, who listens to Opaline anyway?
I chose the title at the last minute and I'm not really happy with it since it's terribly bland, but I couldn't think of anything more poetic. Sombra is shadows and Misty is dawn, alluding to her invented name, Brightdawn.
The scene where Misty chooses her name is actually one of my favorite in G5, and I think its power is quite understated. It's heavily implied that Misty simply has no last name, and while that would be normal in G4, G5 has already established that last names are a thing in this setting. And it's a clear indication of just how deprived Misty is. She's basically a non-person, and this is the first time she's had to adopt a mantle for herself - the first time she's really had something that she can call hers. And the name she chooses is such a fantastic motif for her character.
Anyway, that's all I have for this one. There aren't really any references or jokes to point out. Still, I'm glad I was able to turn around a story in a relatively short time.
...says the bunny who's written more words in the blog here than in the actual story! I've only briefly skimmed the post, since I haven't read the fic yet and so am a little cautious about spoilers. Still, I'm glad I can come back to this when I do read the story.
(Also, I really ought to steal this format, since I quite like the idea of rambling on about my old fics now that I feel no pressure with them.)
5740148
Steal away! I found it strangely therapeutic. ^^
What Logan said – both in my skimming this as I haven't yet read the fic, and in this being longer than the story. Heck, even though I did Author's Note lookbacks on all my stories following publication, I didn't bother for my 1K entry last year, as the interesting behind-the-scenes stories started and ended with "I'd been holding these particular jokes for ages", with a dose of "these ideas struck me as cool in the writing process, so in they went". And you don't need a blog post to tell you that. This fic must be a very dense 1K, or just have more ideas then it knows what to do with…
Neat on the shoutout too – now you just have to look back at Something to Rave About 2: Second Night and you're all done!
As someone who's been doing these since my first fic, albeit right after the story, they can be, yeah. I do find doing them after time as opposed to right away does make one more humble and less likely to ramble with uninteresting development anecdotes alongside the worthwhile ones. Plus, if it's a lot of time since the fic, you're justified in recounting it and explaining things the reader would know just from reading it. Make of that what you will!