Five Fun Facts! The Rise of Order. · 2:49am Aug 27th, 2016
Remember me telling you guys about these blogs? Here's the first one. And what better story to start with than with my first one!
Harmony Undone: The Rise of Order had a heck of a way when I started. It went through some major changes pre-publish and certain aspects of the story that were originally set in were cut out due to them making no sense or I deemed too dark. Without further adue, here are five facts you might not know about The Rise of Order
Fact #1: My three OC ponies—Wanderer, Tourmaline, and Tormod—were originally set to be one off characters. They first appeared to start the story and appear only at the conclusion. In first drafts, Wanderer was supposed to have died or vanished at the end of the beam struggle, but after writing for them, I grew fond of the three and their interactions with each other. With this, I couldn't stomach killing any of them—Tormod was originally meant to remain a statue—so I saved them. From there, they became something more to me, my favorite characters to write for. Which lead to me wanting to share their background and the birth of Three from the Forest.
Fact #2: When designing Tyranny, I set out for him to be as completely opposite of Discord in everyway. With Discord, who appears in flashes of light when he teleports around, I chose to do the opposite with Tyranny. In this case, Tyranny stepping from shadows or appearing from blotches of darkness. This also lead me to use the shadow theme for Tyranny and many of his powers. Discord is creative, wacky, and extravagant in his chaos powers, shadow powers were meant to be stale, lifeless, and cliché, just like what the aspect of Order can be. His name is also the opposing aspect of Discord. What is control taken too far where freedom is nothing? Tyranny. Thus the name was born.
Fact #3: Chapter two, the one with Twilight and her friends having fun at the lake, was a test for me—who was a beginning writer—to see if I could write a Slice of Life type of story. I had read many like it before and I wanted to see if I could do it as well. The concept was simple enough and I made it fit into the longer aspect of the Adventure theme of Rise. Every great adventure story has a part of the heroes starting out before the plot moves them along, the lake scene was that. Some might call it filler, and I can see why, but I enjoyed writing it as it showed how fun Twilight and the mane six are when not saving all of Equestria.
Fact #4: Back to Tyranny again, as I've said before, he is heavily influenced by both Emperor Mateus from Final Fantasy 2 and Ashera from Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, but many of his abilities and some action scenes were influenced by the fighting game Final Fantasy Dissidia. The 'wall of force' that knocked out all of the crystal pony guards in Cadence's throne room was a near copy of Cloud of Darkness's move [Wide Angle] Particle Beam. The fight between Celestia and Tyranny over Canterlot was also influenced by Warpout's animation for "Lullaby for a Princess." And each time I began writing for a battle scene, I used one of three boss battle songs to write by. Between Luna and Tyranny, it was the boss theme of Final Fantasy Four, Celestia vs Tyranny was "Battle Against the Four Fiends", and the Elements of Harmony vs Tyranny was written by listening to "Atma Weapon's Theme" from Final Fantasy Six.
Yeah, I like Final Fantasy... Rather, the older games. Moving on!
Fact#5: Originally, Rise was meant to be a one shot story that I wrote for my niece who was eight at the time. But when I finished it, I had so much headcanon lore that I created, that I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get everything into one story. Thus the series was born. Over the next few stories, more of the lore will be shown through the characters of the stories. Consequence of Choice deals with events of the past, and those dealing with them. The story after that, is where the major world building will come into play. There is a lot I want to share and am looking forward to doing it in the future, no matter how long it takes me to get it all down. My niece has since moved on from My Little Pony, but I'm still a fan and likely will be for a long time.
Extra Fact! The colors of Wanderer, Tourmaline, and Tormod was randomly chosen by blindly reaching into a box full of colored pencils. The Velvet, purple, and gold of Tyranny was chosen due to these colors commonly associated with nobility and the ruling class, something a Spirit of Order would also be associated with.
And there we have it, five plus facts about Harmony Undone: The Rise of Order. If you have questions about it still, feel free to ask. Want to know why I think Trixie is best pony? Because it's fact, deal with it. :P
Cheers, all!
