Broken Love · 8:52am May 17th, 2016
Some Spoilers follow, so be ye warned.
So I wanted to talk a little bit about the origins of the story Broken: Love, and why I decided to restart the Broken series. There are multiple sources for the inspiration of the story, as there usually are, but this one can be traced primarily to a thread on reddit. Someone had asked 'What if Cadance Became Evil' ala Nightmare moon, and Twilight Sparkle had to stand in the role of Celestia and defeat her. It was an interesting question, it's just that I thought it would be more interesting if Twilight wasn't the hero for once. Having her be defeated early on in the story was always the plan, with Spike, Starlight Glimmer, and Sunburst taking on the weighty task of defeating an evil Cadance themselves.
Partially I liked this idea, because in a war between Alicorn's things get rather flashy rather fast and it seems to end rather quickly with one side or the other as the victor. However, with a plucky crew of misfits (and not even the usual misfits) trying to not only work out what's going on, but also how to prevail, you can give the characters a little more breathing room before the inevitable show down.
The other part of why I wanted to do this story this way, though, was that I really wanted to do a story with Starlight Glimmer where her status as a former villain gave her some insight into how another villain might be thinking and planning. I also really wanted the story to end, not with Cadance's censure, but rather her absolution. A story where Cadance was banished to the moon or something like that would be no fun, and would beg for a sequel, but I really wanted there to be some kind of connection between a Cadance that had been driven to the darkside and a Starlight Glimmer that recognized some of the pain and desires that had lead her there.
As to my take on 'Nightmare' Cadance, I did draw some inspiration from the IDW comics idea of Dacadence in her initial design, but I didn't care for where the fandom had taken the idea. A Cadance that used her powers of love to inspire lust and degradation seemed at serious odds with her personality and power set, even inverted. Conversely, the true inversion that had her powers fueled by, and inspiring, hatred also felt wrong. The take I ended up liking the best was from the Ask King Sombra tumblr blog. The idea of a Cadance driven by her insecurities, thoughts that her subjects didn't love her or even accept her, that would then turn on her subjects and use her powers to force them to love her... Well that rang true for me. It also didn't hurt that this idea had an external, corruptive entity that was exploiting those feelings.
I'm actually NOT a fan of the IDW take on Nightmare moon, that it was the Nightmare Force and not Luna that was responsible for her transformation into Nightmare moon. I think that takes away a lot of the agency of Luna's character, and I was glad when the Tantabus in the show did not end up being explained as a similar entity. I did want to meet fans that like that theory halfway though, and my take on a corruptive entity that feeds off of negative emotions led to the creation of Despair.
Now, Despair is actually inspired from two sources. In his more shadowy form I was inspired by the Gen 1 villain Arabus. The idea of Despair slipping in and almost seductively playing on Cadance's worst fears and depression, whispering lies and half truths when she was at her most vulnerable, really appealed to me. In his revealed, crystal form, I took some inspiration from the gen 1 villain Lavan, but for his larger form I borrowed the idea for his look from the final fantasy monsters Behemoth and Griever. (The Griever part more the inspiration for how Cadance was a part of Despair than anything.) I wanted something large and imposing, but that was still wholly different from the power mad Tirek. Despair isn't interested in becoming more powerful for powers sake. The only reason he has to gain power is to more easily inflict suffering and inspire the negative emotions he feeds off of in the first place. He's ALL about taking sadistic pleasure in tormenting and torturing his victims for as long as possible before leaving them utterly broken.
I know from the start how he was going to end. But I also know where he comes from, and where he went... which is a story for another time.
As to the rest of the main cast, writing Sunburst was, of course, somewhat challenging since at this point in the series we haven't seen that much of him. Flurry Heart, of course, was even worse in that she is a baby who doesn't talk and barely understands what is going on around her. Spike was a welcome foil in that regard, as he often had the duty of saying the obvious thing or coming up with thoughts that I think the readers themselves might have at any given moment. I probably had the most fun writing the reluctantly evil Shining Armor and the angrily racist Flash Sentry. Taking two characters that are usually represented as being very goody-goody and making them villainous stereotypes was a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be.
But that's enough about characters for the moment.
Why did I restart the Broken series?
Honestly when I first started writing Broken: Love, it was going to be a one off stand alone story. The real turning point came when I was trying to figure out what to title it. I thought something simple like 'The Crystal Empress' would work, but that had already been done. More so, any titles that were more descriptive than that seemed to just be run on sentences that were more trouble than they were worth. I was wracking my brain when I realized the simple truth... the reason I couldn't think of a better title was that I hadn't gotten to the heart of the story... And that heart was that this was a story about broken love. It was a story about how Cadance, the Princess of Love, no longer felt loved herself and was finding it difficult to find anything worth loving in her life anymore.
Like most of the stories in the Broken series, this story also deals with a flaw or foible in the fandom. There are many, many fans who were upset about the redemption of Starlight Glimmer and her inclusion in the sixth season of the series as a semi-main character. While each episode she's in wastes no time in referencing her sordid past and establishes that she's still working to earn her redemption, there are still many fans that don't think she's appropriately penitent or grateful enough for her second chance. Indeed, there are some fans that express a desire for her to have instead been imprisoned or banished for her misdeeds, seemingly in total disregard of the message that the show has presented time and again of forgiveness for those that express remorse for their actions.
The show has put Starlight in a subservient role to Twilight, almost on the same level as her assistant Spike, but this isn't enough for a demotion for some fans that really seem to just want to either see her suffer or just go away altogether. I wanted to explore this lack of forgiveness in my story, and show just how strong of a character Starlight is to persevere despite the constant and crippling doubts about herself and if she deserves to be forgiven that she is clearly laboring under. Cadance's arc in this story is meant to parallel Starlight's, only it's her story writ large and to an extreme that does not require time travel or other similar tropes. Having Starlight comfort Cadance after she has been cleansed of the taint of Despair, and offering her the same absolution that Twilight had offered Starlight herself... That was just a really powerful moment to me, and one I hope to someday see in one form or another appear in the show.
The problem with redemption arcs in the show, I think, is less to do with their suddenness, and more to do with the long stretches of time that seem to pass between their occurrence and any kind of follow through that effects the rest of the plot. They haven't done that with Starlight, so I have high hopes that they can tell a story with her that has immediacy and value that some of the other redemptive arcs lacked. But on that point, I suppose only time will tell.
Speaking of time, it's getting late for me, so I'm going to wrap up this blog here.
I hope you enjoyed Broken: Love and are looking forward to the next two stories i nthe series. I'm already working on both actually, and hope to have the next one up in the next month or so.
Stay Classy!
Broken: Love was a great story. And thanks for all the insight here.