Whatever happened to the Doom Patrol? · 4:26am Feb 21st, 2014
Okay, I don't know how to start this entry so... well, first of all I've been deciding the whole day if publishing this or not.
Well, the thing is that if you're following my first story, The Doom Patrol, then you provably noticed the complete lack of updates since July of 2013, there's a reason for that. The first one is my other fic, The Conversion Bureau: Judgement Day and the other is that I'm starting a new project that involves a joint micro-verse composed of three stories:
Mare-Do-Well Strikes! Lightspeed Rescue and of course The Doom Patrol.
The point of this entry is that in MDW and LR I'm already sure of the direction of both fics and also got the first chapters mostly planed and/or written, by this point it should be obvious that this is not the case of DP.
For those who doesn't know, Doom Patrol's main plot is more or less this: Transformed by Discord the trio know as the Cutie Mark Crusaders were turned into three monster mares, now using their new found powers to help ponies as Equestria's strangest heroes. The transformations are Applebloom as a changeling, Sweetie Belle as a robot and Scootaloo as sentient energy being all of this an attempt of homage to the comics version of the team and the comic book in general.
When I first started with that fic I just wrote whatever that came to my mind in that moment, a technique that lasted five chapters before I got a massive writer's block, and when I finally could overcame said block I just couldn't decide what kind of story I wanted to write to the point that Doom Patrol actually passed through FOUR rewrites, the different plots were these:
-The first take involved Princess Luna sending Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo to the Everfree to recover an ancient artifact. No, it doesn't make sense in context nor survived a second read neither.
-The second was a more psychological approach about the CMC's having nightmares involving their new powers, it included Applebloom being overwhelmed by the changeling instincts and forgetting her life as a pony, Sweetie Belle outliving everybody and loosing her emotions acting more like a machine and Scootaloo loosing all control on her powers and destroying everything on eyesight. It became too depressive too fast so I trashed it as soon as I finished the first draft.
-The third try was a succession of different villains attacking Ponyville and Equestria for no reason at all, as you can guess it didn't survived a logical inspection.
-And the fourth would be the one that I'm trying to write right now but I realized that there's no direction at all about what I want to do with this fic, the only thing I'm sure is that I really want to do something with this fic, not only because its my first one but also because just canceling it out would be a middle finger to the readers following this story and I don't want to be that kind of writer.
So yeah, this is an emergency flare shot into the night to get some help, if you want to see this story out of development hell, just want to help or simply got an idea, comment below any suggestions that you have and I will thank you.
well if you're open to suggestions , the second idea wasn't bad at all
so may be you could use it a bit with the one you're writing right now
since we're talking about foals being suddenly turned into monsters
they sure going to have a hard time to adapt , so make them have nightmares and starting to change , until somepony (Babs seed may be ?) try to help them to become who they truly are.
in then mean time they got to stop some villains , and making them slowly change could change the
way they want to stop the criminals , and if they finally can stop them by being alone or together
Of course I'm open to suggestions, this blogpost if the proof about it.
My problem with the second take was that it was too much depressive and as one of my favorite writers said:
-Only a bitter little adolescent boy could confuse realism with pessimism.- Grant Morrison, one of the greatest writers out there.
So when I snapped out of it and realized how dark things turned in less than two thousand words I erased it so fast that the "erase" button cracked.
Curious that you mentioned Babs, in the third version I came to the concept of a meta-bomb, a plot-device that randomly gave superpowers to different ponies and other species around Equus and the portion that reached Manehattan gave Babs the power to accumulate and shot energy, like Damage from the JSA.
Care if I send you a draft when I have it? I think that I may have a strand to pull and I would like to have some external perspective, also you were already pretty helpful the last time.
Thanks for the comment.
1861433 by seeing things like that , it's true that it was may be for the better to erase the second idea.
thanks Grant Morrison.
and of course if you want an opinion , i'd be glad to help you again
take your time to write it and then PM me
Ps: today you made me discover Damage , he's a bit like Nova from what i read except that it's not a helmet who give him , his powers