Self-Indulgent Author's Note Pizza Party! Chapter 11 Edition · 8:41am Jan 9th, 2013
Here we are at the blog, where I convince myself that people want to come here week after week just to watch me masturbate to my own writi-WAIT, THERE'S PIZZA?
Damn.
Welcome to the author’s notes for chapter 11! Where we file for creative bankruptcy!
• This is another chapter that turned out much longer than intended. After the big emotional payoff of Diamond’s speech in chapter 10, I thought I’d take things a bit easier this time. But things didn't go as planned, and that's probably for the best. Almost the entire Rarity flashback, much like Triage’s backstory last chapter, was unplanned. Originally it was meant to consist only of that brief image of Applejack walking out of her life, but this felt too easy somehow. It also made me think that perhaps I’d failed to reinforce just how important the Mane Six had been to Rarity. They almost made an honest pony out of her. Almost.
• The revelation about Fancy’s blackmail scam, on the other hand, has been in the works for a long time. I wanted to make sure that Triage and her allies had a compelling reason to want to dethrone Fancypants. “They want him gone because he’s a huge douche” wouldn’t cut it: no one gets that far in the world without learning to put up with well-connected assholes. Beside, somehow I think a secret society of rapists is going to have quite a few unlikable people among its ranks. Somewhere around the point in Twisted where the esteemed Mr. Pants was showing Rarity and the kids his paintings, I realized that he’d probably try to find a way to collect aristocrats, too.
• This chapter leans quite a bit on actual MLP canon, doing that “between scenes” thing that fanfic authors who think too much about this horse cartoon love to do. Stuff like “We didn’t see Fluttershy in Boast Busters because she was off having an amazing adventure of her own, and here it is!” Well, now I’ve made my own entry into this illustrious subgenre. Hey, you know what Rarity was doing between scenes during Green Isn’t Your Color? She was RAPING A SMALL CHILD. It could happen, only on the Hub!
Using canon is tricky. I’ve mentioned this before, but for the record, in this universe, the first two seasons happened mostly as they were depicted onscreen, with some small exceptions (the major change being that Rarity’s parents are dead and Sweetie lives with her.) This also kind of reinforces the idea that Rarity was living a double life: she’s generally a nicer mare when she’s around her friends, as they bring out the best in her. The gradual breakup of the Mane Six probably went a long way toward turning her into an even more uncaring predator.
• Speaking of canon, one thing that I always found annoying about Sweet and Elite (an otherwise excellent episode) was that Fancy somehow didn’t know who Rarity was, despite her being a national hero and the two of them spending all that time together. Ah, but if he was scamming her, then it all makes sense: Fancy did know of Rarity (although he didn’t recognize her by sight) but went on letting her “impress” him so he could ingratiate himself to an Element Bearer. Maybe that’s why he’s the only society pony who isn’t outraged by the Mane Six’s behavior at the garden(ing) party. And also why he bought that ridiculous lie about Rainbow Dash being the trainer of the Wonderbolts, something that could be easily debunked via a quick chat with any sports fan in Equestria.
In retrospect, Canon Fancypants is kind of an idiot. But the other society ponies in SaE were explicitly written as trend-chasing dullards so this actually makes a good deal of sense.
• Aaaand back to Twilight and her goddamn owl. After two months, we finally close the book on Sweetie Belle’s sticky note. This one was a fun challenge for me.
For those who have forgotten (I don’t blame you) the original fragment which Twilight received reads:
TERLOT
ELP YOU
OO!
I wrote the complete note when I first came up with the idea (Silver Sky chapter two) but that turned out to be harder than expected. I needed it to be concise (in case you haven’t noticed from the length of this post, I AM BAD AT CONCISE) but still inform Twi that Twist needed a teleporter and Silver needed a therapist. The really tricky part, though, was that I had to end the first three lines with things that I could turn into interesting looking word fragments, and I had to layer them on top of each other, so each line had to be about the same length. And of course, I had to word the fragmented part in a way that would make Twilight think Indigo (when she eventually showed up three chapters later) was there to help.
It was a tall order, and frankly, I kind of screwed it up. It wasn’t until 20 minutes after the story was posted that I realized I hadn’t lined up the words correctly. The line endings didn’t quite sit on top of each other the way they did in the fragment. And somehow I didn’t notice this for the entire two months it had been sitting in my hard drive. I rewrote the note so it fits together now, but I still kicked myself about it a little.
Thank goodness for the edit button! The nice thing about publishing a story on the internet is that the revision process never has to end. That is also the worst thing.
• PIP IS BACK, AND HE'S ABOUT TO PUT THE "NEY" IN "COCKNEY ACCENT." WHY NOT THE FIRST SYLLABLE? BECAUSE HE'S SAVING THAT FOR YOU, LADIES.
"Ello, guvnah? I need some 'elp! I'm about to be raped by a 'orny 'orse! No, I said a 'orny 'orse! What the 'ell do you mean you can't understand me? Curse my chimney sweep ancestry!"
Pip doesn't actually have a cockney accent but it's funnier that way. Also the text on the pizza box says "Hello, I'm King Sombra and this pizza lasted longer than I did."
Lol Pizza.
Don't worry, I love watching you masturbate.