What I would do differently · 6:09am Mar 7th, 2018
Well, seeing as this entire little series of mine has taken a good amount of time for me to actually finish (nearly seven years, what!?) I think I can say with a good amount of confidence that I have improved as a writer since that ship-feels-fueled night back in 2011 just after Return of Harmony part II aired, when I wrote the first scene that would become part of the first chapter of aPS.
I definitely think the Sympathy Series is of a better quality than my old fanfiction from my teen years, if only because I had had more practice writing in the intervening years.
Is DiH the best of the series, then? Or even is it better than aPS? That, I don't know if I can say. I might leave it up to the readers to decide.
What I can say is that while writing this fic series I have had a central question/theme going that I hope translated and resonated throughout the work as a whole. That being the question of whether or not Discord truly deserved to retain a place in Equestria, even if he did have a purpose in the maintaining of its balance. Chaos has its place in the universe, and as a contrary to order it should have the same amount of respect and understanding that order does.
I don't know how well that came across (probably more so in aPS), but then there were also the overarching themes of acceptance and – of course – friendship that I tried to weave in there as well.
As the 'leader' of the main six and the pony most associated with order and equality (IMO), I have always felt that Twilight would be the most interesting choice of the ponies to be the first to befriend Discord. There was also that shipping angle, but JSYK it wasn't my whole reasoning for bringing them together. As an outsider who learned the value of friendship herself, I felt that Twilight could relate to and yes, sympathize with him the best out of all the main six.
If I have failed at everything else in this series, I do hope that I succeeded in giving Discord Twilight a believable connection, whether or not you actually ship them.
All that being said; there are things that I would go back and fix about the three stories that – were I actually going to be publishing and selling these stories – I feel I'd need to do a bit differently to be able to truly call it a wholly well-written trilogy.
Here are some of those things:
- To have really figured out beforehand whether or not Discord ages or does mortal things. I kinda hand-waved the whole eating and drinking thing, but did he really need to sleep? And why did he look slightly younger in the flashback in aPS?
- Really should have given the main five more to do; and more subplots overall. That would have not only lengthened the fics but possibly deepened the feeling of bonding for the characters, especially if I gave the main five more one-on-one time with Discord then their acceptance of and friendship with him would have occurred more gradually. Plus apart from DD, I don't feel like I utilized any pony very well as individuals, although I set them up as a group a lot.
- Deja Discord. I know that its the longest one and some parts I am very proud of, BUT there were a few very vocal readers who had some problems with it that I would have like to have addressed. Especially the ones concerning the believability of how Celly and Luna could overpower Discord like they did.
- Just better description on things and settings in general. I just don't feel I am that big on doing descriptions of character's surroundings, and if I'm not careful I think I can suffer from a bad case of 'white room syndrome'. I feel like an underwriter and that is definitely something I need to work on.
- Another general touch-up would be to give the story even more romance or romantic tension. Seeing as aPS had been my very first fic I'd written with a kissing scene, I had approached writing any of the romantic scenes with more than a bit of shyness. I'd only ever written really one other 'romance' story (where the romance was actually central to the plot) and I had wanted to create a more 'slow burn' than I had done in my previous story. I also looked to some of my favorite romances in stories (that weren't actually romantically-centered) and figured that the romantic aspects of the story could be given a second place spot to the more 'important' aspects of the stories. I figured nobody wanted a story of Twilight and Discord just mooning over each other for pages and pages without something else going on. (I also figured that if Westley and Buttercup only had like maybe five scenes together in the Princess Bride, I could get away with just a few actual DiscoLight scenes per-story)There had to be some meat to the stories to hold the reader's attention. But I fear now that I might have over-done it and that the series could have used a few more of those moony scenes. Next time, I should definitely look at actual romance stories for inspiration.
Now I don't know how many of you agree with any of the above things (but I'm betting if you think about it, you might agree with a few of them), but that is just my opinion on my own work.
Hope everyone is having a great new month, and I hope you're all still anticipating the last chapters in the series (for now?). I really hope that I don't disappoint you. :P
-Ckat
I'm not going to pick favorites on the Trilogy you have put the time and effort in writing them into existence since I like the story you have told so far and of course there's always room for improvement and no story is going to be perfect from the outset but regarding the 5 points you made here are my few thoughts:
1-We see Discord consume lots of thing in the show but it doesn't seem to be based on necessity and more to do with killing boredom, messing with everyone around him or for the sake of good old chaos. So defining this trait doesn't seem that important or relevant to the story you are trying to tell so I think that ignoring this aspect of Discord wasn't such a bad call.
2-The main 5 main could have had more inclusions in your story but their absence doesn't take away from the story you have so far and it makes your story more "focused" on the two main characters but if you feel so strong about this than just do what you did with
Sympathy Series Side Stories and simply make a new side story that focuses on interactions with side characters between chapters of the "main story".
Or you could retroactively add more chapters to your story with these side character interactions but write them in a way that they don't abruptly interrupt the flow of your story between chapters but ultimately it's up to you what you want to do.
3-I didn't have a problem with this and we have been shown with Tirek that despite being a "God of Chaos" Discord is not omnipotent and can be in fact be brought down to his knees.
4-No comment on this
5-NoooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I actually love the slow burn of the romance you have going on and I haven't seen that many (if any) slow burn stories between Discord and Twilight on the site so I think you did a great job on that aspect because there are way too many stories on the site that want to push for the romance aspect of their story way too fast to justify the Romance tag they put on the story.
Take your time with the last few chapters I will still be here when you're ready to release them.
In general I don't know. Changes to correct internal inconsistencies and the like I can certainly back, but other than that I already like this story and tend to react cautiously to proposed changes.
To exemplify by commenting on your second point; why? Do you have that many main characters? Because it seems to me the main characters are Discord and Twilight, and that's enough. That's simple. A glance at what the others are doing "off-screen" if it is relevant to Twilight or Discord might be good, but there's no need to spin six stories at once.