• Member Since 8th Dec, 2012
  • offline last seen Jan 28th, 2021

ssjgokillo


More Blog Posts7

  • 542 weeks
    NaPoWriMo

    Hey there your crazy peoples!

    Some of you may have heard of NaNoWriMo, a yearly event that challenges writers to try their hand at writing a novel. The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month,.

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    5 comments · 871 views
  • 562 weeks
    Make of this what you will

    This may or may not be a thing.

    6 comments · 744 views
  • 565 weeks
    Prompt Voting Results

    So I've ended the poll for the extra prompts I'll be writing. A lot more people voted than I expected, so thanks for that!

    Anyways, here is the results of the voting.

    Prompt #194: “The Facts of Life”-Sitting down to have The Talk. 42.1%
    Prompt #53: “Where I Came From”-Time to meet the parents! 26.3%
    Prompt #102: “Broken Promises”-Somepony breaks a Pinkie promise. 10.5%

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    0 comments · 648 views
  • 566 weeks
    Prompt Voting

    As some of you may have noticed I've been trying to do at least two chapters per day for Sparkle Dash Family. One is the TMP prompt of the day, and the other has been a prompt from a comment or an old TMP prompt.

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    1 comments · 634 views
  • 567 weeks
    The Making Of: Mare Do Well vs Professor Nightshade

    So, now that it's all wrapped up, I figured I'd write a quick little post about how Mare Do Well vs Professor Nightshade came about, and how it changed during the actually writing process.

    The following contains massive spoilers for the story Mare Do Well vs Professor Nightshade, read at your own risk!

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    0 comments · 561 views
May
14th
2013

The Making Of: Mare Do Well vs Professor Nightshade · 10:55pm May 14th, 2013

So, now that it's all wrapped up, I figured I'd write a quick little post about how Mare Do Well vs Professor Nightshade came about, and how it changed during the actually writing process.

The following contains massive spoilers for the story Mare Do Well vs Professor Nightshade, read at your own risk!

In case anyone doesn't know, the whole fic started as an entry for the TwiDash group's First Twidash Fanfic Contest. The prompt for the contest was that Twilight and Rainbow Dash had to start off as just friends, and end up romantically involved, and that the episode had to take place shortly after the events of the episode "The Mysterious Mare Do Well". I signed up for the contest on April 1st, and began planning what I was going to do.

The Original Idea

The first story idea I had was nothing like MDWvPN. One of the things that had really struck me about the Mare Do Well episode, was how Dash was written without any of her positive attributes. Instead, it really emphasized her negative ones, primarily her ego and jealousy. Sure, Dash does have those attributes, but they're not all she's about.

So my original story idea was to go off of that. In my head, I began wondering what if that wasn't the real Rainbow Dash? What if, Rainbow Dash had been replaced by a Changeling as part of the upcoming Canterlot invasion, and that was why she was acting this way? All those ponies loving her for her heroism? Of course, a Changeling would be all about that.

So the story was originally that the girls discover that Dash has been replaced, and they go on a mission to rescue her from the Changeling hive. They also discover from the Changeling that replaced Dash, that the hive has been feeding on Rainbow Dash by transforming into Twilight. So as they go on this epic adventure, Twilight is also trying to deal with the fact that Rainbow Dash seems to have more-than-friend feelings for her.

I never ended up writing more than a paragraph for that one though. In fact, a couple weeks later I had almost forgotten about the contest completely. When I did remember it, I pulled up the notepad containing my story ideas, and I just wasn't feeling the original idea anymore.

Mare Do Well Begins

I let my mind wander over the possibilities of what I could do for a story. Somewhere along the line I got to thinking, if Twilight and the girls could make such good heroes, they'd probably make amazing villains.

And that's when it hit me. Twilight, as a villain.

Of course, she couldn't really be a villain. Not without something drastic happening. But then I thought, what if she was just pretending to be a villain? To be a foil to Dash/Mare Do Well.

That was when inspiration hit for what would become MDWvPN.

Here's what I wrote down as an outline:

Dash comes to see if Twilight can do her a
favor. She pulls out Fluttershy's Mare-Do-
Well costume, and asks if Twilight can enchant
it with any cool spells to help her be a hero.

Twilight is confused, asking Dash what exactly
is going on. Dash replies that the thought of
being a super hero is awesome! Just like
Batmare! So she asked Fluttershy if she could
have the costume, and she was hoping Twi
could cast some magic to make her even more
awesome!

Twilight, still a little confused by Dash's
thinking, offers to cast a spell to keep the hat
affixed to Dash's head no matter how fast she
goes, and one to keep her dry and warm no
matter the weather, but that's about it. Dash,
disappointed that Twilight can't make her
shoot lasers or something, agrees, and then
takes off.

A couple days later, Twi runs into Dash who is
in a foul mood. Turns out that she's been
"patrolling' ponyville for the last few days with
nothing to show for it, not even a kitten stuck
in a tree. She laments on how lame it is, and
how she wishes there was a villain to fight.
She sounds so despondent that Twilight starts
thinking, and comes up with her own solution.

The next day, as Dash is parading around
Ponyville as MDW, a sudden "explosion" is
seen from near Sweet Apple Acres. MDW
rushes towards the scene, to find a black
alicorn with a purple mane. She cackles as she
announces herself as Professor Nightshade,
and begins casting spells on the rotten apples,
turning them into golems, claiming that with
her army she will take over all of Equestria!

Dash is ecstatic, and dives into the apple
melee, making quick work of the apple
golems. After the last one if finished,
Nightshade curses MDW, and teleports away.

Nightshade appears in the library, and
transforms into Twilight, who smiles at a job
well done. The next day it's all Ponyville can
talk about, the battle between MDW and
Nightshade. Rainbow is of course beyond
happy, and it reflects in her meeting with
Twilight and the others. After sharing her
story, she flies off, while AJ tells the others
that it's the strangest thing, that this
Nightshade pony only destroyed the rotten
apples that needed to be thrown away anyways.
Rarity asks if they should do anything about
this Nightshade character, but Twilight assures
them that Rainbow has things well in hoof,
and that she's already sent a letter off to
Celestia about it, but that they should only step
in if it's needed.

The next caper begins with all the books in the
library being stolen, with clues to their
whereabouts being left. Despite Twi's
attempts at leaving rather simple clues, Dash
cannot follow them, and ends up asking the
Unicorn for help. Twilight reluctantly agrees,
and the two begin what amounts to a
scavenger hunt, before being accosted by more
apple golems. Dash and Twi fight off the
golems, with Dash being impressed by Twi's
fighting skills, not knowing what she was truly
capable with magic. The two return to the
library, with Dash going on about Twi's
accomplishments, instead of her own. She
leaves Twi, saying they should definitely hang
out more.

The next couple days are quiet, and instead of
patrolling the town Dash decides to hang out
with Twilight, asking for more demonstrations
of what she can do with her magic. Twilight
shows some of her stuff, and Rainbow
comments that Twi is like the Dash of magic!
And that she was smart enough to figure out
the riddles that Nightshade left. In fact, Dash
claims, that Ponyville it self has gotten 20%
cooler since Twi arrived.

They part, but Twilight can't seem to get
Dash's words out of her head, nor the warm
feeling they give her.

The next day Nightshade begins "attacking"
Ponyville Dam, though really Twilight is
filling in the cracks of the dam with her "clay
golems". Dash shows up, and makes quick
work of the Golems, and begins fighting with
Nightshade. The two take to the air, and while
Dash has superior flying ability, Nightshade's
magic helps keep her at bay. The two play cat
and mouse in the air, until suddenly
Nightshade's wings fade away, and she
plummets to the ground. Dash dives in and
saves her, only to have Nightshade cling to her.
Without thinking about it, Nightshade kisses
her (over the mask), and then realizing what
she's done, teleports away.

Twilight can't believe what she did. She had
been having so much fun flying and 'playing'
with Dash, that she hadn't even paid attention
to the time on her wing spell. And then the
kiss! What had made her do that? Before she
can reconcile her thoughts, Dash shows up,
confused by what had happened, and wanting
to hang out. The two have dinner in the
library, with Twilight unknowingly flirting
with Dash (rubbing her tail against her, making
eyes at her, etc). As the night comes to an end,
Dash asks Twilight on a date, to which
Twilight agrees.

The two go on their date, and everything goes
well, enough so that they schedule another
one. During the next date however, Dash
seems out of sorts, and confesses that she was
kissed by Nightshade. Twi tells her she doesn't
mind, but Dash goes on to say how she's not
even sure if Nightshade is really a villain.
Aside from taking all of Twi's books, she
hasn't really done anything bad. AJ had told
her about the apple golems, and when she went
back to check on the dam had found it better
then ever, looking like the golems had actually
fixed the thing up.

Twi gets nervous, never having expected Dash
to be so investigative (which is actually quite
attractive to her, but she squashes that for
now). And while she gives a neutral opinion
to Dash, plans on her next caper.

Finally prepared, Nightshade "foalnaps" the
mane six (Twilight invites them on a trip to
Canterlot to meet with the Princesses), and
tells MDW that she knows all about her secret
identity, and on her crush on the nerdy purple
unicorn. She says she has five of them locked
away, but Twilight... she shows (an illusion) of
Twilight hanging over a pit of alligators, and
says that unless MDW joins her, that she'll
drop her. Dash tries to fly in, but finds a shield
in the way. Nightshade gives MDW a
countdown, and Dash uses that time to fly up
quickly, before sonic rainbooming down into
the shield, shattering it. The shock of the
shield breaking causes Nightshade to lose her
focus, and the illusion of twilight over the pit
disappears, leaving Dash to think that she was
dropped. Dash is furious, and begins fighting
Nightshade with everything she has, as tears
run down her face. Her costumer is in tatters
from breaking the shield, as she dives in and
begins fighting Nightshade. She finally
manages a good buck, sending Nightshade
flying. She dives on Nightshade, only to have
eyes widen in shock as the illusion fades
(having been disrupted by the physical
contact), leaving a out-of-it Twilight. Dash
puts the pieces together, realizing that Twi was
"tricking" her all this time, and flies of angrily,
leaving a broken hearted Twi.

Twi tries everything she can to get Dash to talk
to her, but to no avail. The others (who after
having returned from Canterlot, are both
appalled and bemused by Twilight's plan), try
to help, but nothing they say works.

Twilight recedes to the library, not leaving,
spending all her time either moping or
studying, making Spike run all the errands.
After a week of this Dash shows up, still very
angry. She yells at Twilight, who can only
flinch and take the anger, but after Dash
unloads on her for tricking her, she looks up
teary eyed and tells her that she thought she
had lost Twi, right after she had discovered
how important she was to her. And then she
realized that the pony she was ready to kill was
her...

Twilight apologizes, telling Dash she just
wanted her to have her fun, to feel like a
superhero like she wanted.

In my head, I was imagining Twi acting out as this Nightshade villain, doing the grandiose "crimes" where nobody was getting hurt, and in fact was actually helping out in the guise of villainous acts. This way she could give Dash the excitement she was looking for, and nopony would be adversely affected. Win-win.

Now I should point out that while I came up with this new idea near the end of April, I didn't actually start doing any writing until May. May 1st rolled around, and I suddenly realized I had 12 days left to start and finish this fic for the contest. This came at the same time as the end of my current semester, and I was suddenly swamped with tests, papers, and trying to find time to write for this story.

I got chapter one finished and submitted, then had to catch up with the rest of my finals. Suddenly, it was Saturday, and I realized I only had 2 days to finish. At first I thought I'd just give it up, my fault for procrastinating and all that.

But the idea wouldn't leave me alone. So I started typing up chapter 2. Then chapter 3. The words were just flying, and suddenly the story had taken a new direction.

The Story Goes Where It Will

The first change happened with Spike catching "Nightshade" in the library. I wrote it at first as kind of a gag, I was thinking that MDW would investigate the library to find Spike stuck to a wall or something. But I wasn't typing that. I was typing something different. Suddenly Spike was kidnapped by Nightshade, and more disturbingly, Twilight discovered that she couldn't remember what exactly she had done. This was the first point that the story started to escalate from the lighthearted tale I had planned on telling. Nightshade was no longer playing by the rules.

The Villainous Professor Nightshade

Originally in my head, Nightshade was supposed to be a mixture of The Joker, Dr. Horrible, Kronk form the Emperor's New Groove. She was supposed to be unbalanced, but capable of planning. Yet despite her best efforts, none of her evil plans were supposed to succeed. Tremble in fear Ponyville, as the evil Professor Nightshade steals your litter! Nothing quite so obvious of course, but that was the general intent. Honestly, it was just supposed to be a disguise for Twilight.

As writing went along though, Nightshade though, Nightshade gained more of a personality. She became more Joker and less Kronk. She was still Twilight, but she wasn't. She had evolved past the act Twilight had designed her for. In the story I attributed this to Twilight taking things too far, as she's shown she's capable of. She always does her best, even when making up a villain. And this made Nightshade too much like her.. enough like her that she was able to act independently, just a bit at the beginning. She still had to follow Twilight's general plans, though I shudder to think of what would have happened had Spike lost that game of Rock Paper Scissors.

So Nightshade slowly transformed as Twilight began loosing control. She became less Dr. Horrible, no Kronk, and more and more Joker. And she was capable of her own thoughts. She was very displeased with Twilight for helping Mare Do Well defeat the apple-golems during the Spike rescue. I think this is the true point where Twilight and Nightshade began to become separate entities.

The End Game

So suddenly my story had taken a completely unexpected turn... and I was writing it! Nightshade was becoming more menacing, and Twilight was starting to lose control. I was following part of my original outline, but it had changed enough to where the old ending just wasn't going to work anymore. The Nightshade part had to be resolved. Once again, the characters that inspired Nightshade helped me come up with an answer.

The Joker has said it in many different ways throughout his career. Without Batman, he'd have no reason to exist. This was the exact case for Professor Nightshade, who had been created with no other purpose in life than to fight Mare Do Well. If she attacked Ponyville, it was only to get Mare Do Well into the conflict, not to gain anything else.

And that I decided was the ultimate way to defeat her. I had thought of having Twilight and her duke it out in Twilight's mind, but that didn't seem like the correct ending to me. Instead, it was up to Rainbow Dash to make the choice. Spend the rest of her life being the hero she had wanted to be, or end it and get her friend/love back. No contest for Dash of course, and without Mare Do Well, Nightshade no longer had any reason to exist, and faded away.

Pinkie Pie

I had hinted early on that Pinkie Pie knew what Twilight was up to. This was supposed to be a setup for later, where Pinkie acted like a villain, the self-proclaimed arch-rival of Mare Do Well, who would show up to muck about. It was going to be another reference to Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, but while I liked the idea originally, I just couldn't find a way to make it fit without completely derailing everything else.

So instead Pinkie Pie was used as a bit of drama towards the end. She knew what was going on, and even worse she was powerless to stop it. All she could do was trust in her friends.

The Silver Age

While I had always intended to throw some comic book references into the story, Chapter 2 had started with a line I remember fondly from some of Stan Lee's works: "Welcome back true believer!". I wrote it on a whim, but once it was there, I thought "why not go with it?". Why not take all those things that make comics silly and great, and pepper them throughout this story? Silly comic book covers, using certain words, at one point I even thought of doing some of those old comic book ads. Bully kicking sand on you at the beach? Try Flim Flam's patented Miracle Muscle Powder! Go from nerd to Hulk in one week! Or perhaps Princess Luna's X-Ray glasses? And of course, there was my throwback to the great Batman television show staring Mr. Adam West. Same Bat time, same Bat channel and all that.

In case anyone noticed, most of the chapters for the story were parodies of some of the biggest comic book events/arcs.

Of course, there were more references than that, and not all from comics. Still though, I felt like that after I wrote the words "true believer", I had found this story's true calling.

The Crunch

So writing was going well, but I realized that the deadline for the contest was looming ever closer, and I still had much more of the story to go. Typically by this point, I'd have just called it and said better luck next time. And honestly, the only reason I didn't was the amazing comments I was getting from people . I already said it in my author's notes, but if it hadn't been for all of you, the story would've stalled. Instead, I ran to the store, bought a bunch of soda and sugary foods, and wrote. I wrote over 24,000 words over a 24 hour period. I stopped at 7am my time, May 13th with Chapter 7. That wasn't the end of the fic, but by that point I was spending more time fixing my sleep-induced mistakes than I was writing, and the deadline for the contest had been pushed back to midnight.

So I caught a couple hours of sleep, but even through the fatigue I was too excited to finish the story, to finally have closure for the characters within. So I woke back up, and finished up Chapter 8. And finally, it was done. I had written more in that weekend then I typically do over a month, and it felt FANTASTIC!

"Wait until they get a load of me..."

I've had some people send me messages about the last little part of Chapter 8. I'd already stated that I had no plans for a sequel, and then I write something like that. Evil right? Well, that wasn't my intent.

Honestly, I had almost ended the story with Twilight and Dash's reconciliation, but then that last bit of inspiration hit me. The line was taken and modified from Tim Burton's Batman, and it was meant more or less to show that, in this world, Equestria was changing. A new villain was in the shadows, which meant that new heroes would soon be needed.

It also kept the world open for me. This story was finished, but that didn't mean all the stories were finished. While I still am not promising anything, it means that I can go back and continue writing from these events. Or somebody else can. This world is still alive and kicking. At least until somepony sets off another doomsday device.

I think that about covers everything. If not, it covers the questions I have received, so there :P

If you have any other questions or comments about MDWvPN, feel free to ask. And thanks for reading!

~ssjgokillo

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