Rolling in Beaches

Rolling in Beaches started to form in my head around the time I realized that Pegasus and unicorns were Greek in origin. Further, I heard people talking smack about the sea ponies and how they wouldn't fit into the FiM world. I thought to myself, "That's not right. The one major type of pony that's missing from Greek mythology is the hippocampus, and sea ponies are very similar to those, anyway." So I set out to make a story that would feature a hippocampus, preferably based on one of the original sea ponies. I also knew that they should have their own princess, and after mulling it over for awhile, I decided to go with one of Poseidon's daughters, Rhode, who was conveniently also the wife of Helios, god of the sun, who was the twin brother of Selene, goddess of the moon, and also brother of Eos, goddess of the dawn. Of course, their names in Latin are, respectively, Rodi, Sol, Luna, and Aurora. Figuring out whether Celestia would simply be a gender-swapped Sol with a different name or Aurora with a different job took some time, but I quickly realized that having Aurora inherit Luna's twin brother's power would make for some juicy possibilities.

Of course, the backdrop of the story had to be near the ocean, and I realized that making this a story about Spike's immense swag would be quite simply awesome. The concept of the Rainbow Pearl came from watching G1 and connecting the dots, basically, and while Scales was originally more of an out-of-the-blue character (and I'd originally had Garble as her underling, but I honestly don't like his stereotypical teen bully characterization), when I watched a few of the G3 movies (against others' advice, I assure you, but I'm a big believer in giving the older gens a chance) the thought of connecting her with Master Kenbroath Gillspotten Heathspike was too rich to pass up. I also incorporated a lot more Greco-Roman mythology into the side characters' backstories, and I'm hoping to expound a lot more on that.

Handling the Sparity stuff was a little difficult, as I didn't want to make Rarity be really in love with Spike. Too many fics just have Rarity randomly being totally in love with Spike from the get-go and just not wanting to tell him. I wanted a good reason for Rarity to take Spike seriously, and what better way than when some other girl starts showing interest? Of course, she may think that she's just protecting her Spikey-Wikey from some hussy, but it lays a foundation for future development. I also honestly think Spike/Wavedancer and Spike/Scales would work quite well, and given that I left the question open, who knows what will happen?

It's funny, because I actually wrote the entire story out before I started posting, and yet I can honestly say that I probably had to rewrite a good quarter of each chapter before I could actually post it. It's really helpful that I did this, because if I'd just started posting as I finished each chapter, I would have lost a lot of opportunity to tie things together, foreshadow things that occurred to me later on, et cetera. When I start writing longer stories I probably won't have the option of finishing the whole thing before starting my posting, but I definitely like the idea of writing a good chunk of it before starting to post. This is actually the first with which I did that, and I think it turned out quite well. Heck, it just made it to the featured box, so that gives me a good idea as to how successful this method was.

Anyway, I'm going to be in transit back to the US very soon, but I'm going to try to post a quick one-shot called I'm Not Your Sister once I get the cover art done. That always takes the longest, I swear, but I like making my own art, and I'm getting used to Illustrator. I think the only problem I'll have with that fic is going to be what tags to use... you'll see what I mean.