K'awka Supay: Rukuy Qhepa

The haze of sleep dissipated as Mrs. Cake felt her husband stir in bed. She opened her tired eyes and turned slightly around in time to see Mr. Cake stand up.

“Dear? Is everything okay?” she asked, her voice still groggy.

“Don’t worry, hun. I’ll be right back,” he replied as he walked out of their room.

Mrs. Cake rubbed the sleep off her eyes and was about to lay back and try to continue sleeping when she saw the red sky outside of her window. It wasn’t the red tint the sky got when the sun was setting, it was far more intense. It was a red that brought to mind hurt, and pain, and anger. Once she heard thunder echo somewhere deep in her mind, all thoughts of were chased away from her mind save from one.

“Carrot! The twins!”

“Shhh… It’s okay dear. I’ve got them.” Mr. Cake walked back into the room, cradling the sleeping twins on his back while looking no more worried than the time the oven took longer than usual to heat. When he looked at her, he must have noticed the worry in her eyes, for he was quick to add: “It’s okay. Pinkie said she was going to be staying up late with a baking project.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Cake said as she remembered. “Oh…” She said as she realised the implications.

“Yeah. We can deal with that in the morning, just go back to sleep, dear.”

With that, Mr. Cake nestled the twins between them and got back into bed. However, the jolt of adrenaline she had gotten still hadn’t run its course, and Mrs. Cake felt too alert to sleep.

Then, an ethereal snake creature came through the closed window, spun a couple of times and exited through the floor. Mrs. Cake blinked a couple of times, and was about to say something when she felt her husband pulling the duvet over them.

“Just… Just go back go sleep, dear.”

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Boy, I can’t believe it’s been a year already since I published K’awka. I’ve got to say, that has to be one of the stories I’ve had the most fun writing (and editing!). It’s got the right mixture of romance, alleged comedy, mystery, and horror window dressing to guarantee a fun time.

Anyway, for its anniversary, I thought I could make a little retrospective, talk about what went into writing this story, some of the more obscure aspects of it, and why I love Twinkie (Twipie? Is that the official name now?) so much.

Goals and Motivation

I love romance, and I love Twinkie as well. So the course of action is obvious, right? Make a Twinkie romance story!

I could’ve done that. I certainly have a good track record with those. That being said, I’m not the same person who wrote those depressing Twinkie stories back in ‘14, I wanted something more than just a straightforward “X meets Y and fall in love” story, so I started thinking about what I could do.

Have you seen the movie Shaun of the Dead? If not, you should. It’s a great movie. Either way, that story depicts the transformation of the titular character Shaun Riley and how he becomes a better person, one who can complement the woman of his dreams. He just had to go through a zombie invasion of London to achieve it.

That’s what I wanted to do: a story where the main focus was romance but where the relationship developed as a result of an actual plot. And hey, I like horror as well, so why not give that a shot?

Have you noticed how some horror movies get a romantic subplot that feels tangential to the story? It’s just there to supposedly make you care about the main character’s (and his love interest’s) survival. There are a lot of movie executives who do this kind of thing. Just attach a romance on a horror movie to “increase its market appeal”. George A. Romero had to deal with this. When he was going around movie studios, some people were interested in financing and distributing Night of the Living Dead, as long as he added a romantic subplot. He was having none of that, so he went independent.

Personal opinions on that aside, I always wondered why did nobody seem to want to try doing it the other way around. If shortsighted movie execs can add a romance subplot to a horror story, why isn’t the opposite more common? Why not add a horror subplot to a romance story? Keep the love and relationships as the main focus, but use a horror theme to explore and develop it. Just think of the potential!

A middle aged couple who has become strained due to the husband’s dedication to his work, and he must learn to value what’s truly important in his life. Also, he works in a science lab and his team has accidentally created grotesque abominations that threaten to take over the world and now he has to work together with his wife to come out alive!

Oh, or how about two newlyweds who go to a remote country town for their honeymoon, but there’s a cult trying to take over the population with mind control, and their newly forged matrimony is put to the test as they fight for their love.

None of these are super original ideas, but they’re very rarely done.  So that’s what I wanted to do. A love story about Twilight and Pinkie Pie forming a relationship while dealing with the anger of an eldritch goddess.

What went into writing it?

This story was originally written for the WriteOff event “No Turning Back”. For those who don’t know, the way these work is you get a prompt, and then have the next three days to write a story. Those who have followed my work will know that I am not a fast writer.

This proved to be true when I spent the first two days planning and then writing the opening scene. It was only in the third day that I kicked myself into overdrive and managed to write the rest of the (original) story in a frenzied Sunday night. As a result, the first draft was full of rough edges, to the point it was less a story and more a sorry pile of clichés held together by love and frosting.

Nevertheless, I was aware of the problems the story had and started working on polishing it to the best of my capacity. Along the way, I got a lot of help from a lot of people. The WriteOff community, the gentlemen of good fortune of the FiMFiction threads over at /mlp/, and good old Fome.

After half a year of on and off editing, the story was finally ready for publishing.

What worked?

I think I did a good job with the romance. True, as someone in the comments mentioned, I may have gone a bit overboard with how Twilight thought about Pinkie in the latter half, but hey, that was justified by the story. She had to think about all the ways Pinkie complemented her, otherwise the recipe wouldn’t have worked. Plus Inanna could’ve punished them by trapping them in an otherworldly dimension where they would’ve been baked inside a multidimensional doughnut for eternity if she didn't do it right.

I think the pacing works well. It’s not too fast paced, nor does it lag at points. It’s a brisk if somewhat speedy sprint towards the end. I don’t think there’s much I could’ve removed or added to make the story better.

What flopped?

The comedy.

I know it’s subjective and all that, but I am really not at all happy about the comedic aspect of the story. That stems from how I feel I’m just not good at comedy. My process for the funny bits of the story was to just throw stuff at the story and see what stuck.

Curiously enough, while editing, Fome mentioned I kept repeating the phrase “the insect-like legs that came down from the ceiling” because he assumed I thought it was funny, and that made me laugh harder than anything I wrote in K’awka. Plus, it’s true, I did repeat it a lot in the story for the sake of repeating a theme. After some discussion it was decided that some parts flowed better if I altered the description a bit.

Something else that bothered me was how the chapter spiraled out of control from its original 7.8k words into almost 11k. I don’t have anything against longer chapters, but it seemed excessive for a one-shot, even more so since the bulk of the story is one long scene. It’s not like there’s anything I’d want to remove, and I don’t think I could’ve structured it in a way that would allow it to become a multi-chapter story.

Such is life. Like I said in the previous section, I like the pacing of the story, and I don’t have any real alternative to the single long chapter. It wasn’t that big a deal, anyway, so I can live with it.

What was your favorite part?

Two things, mainly writing Twilight gushing over Pinkie and how she felt they could complement each other. I acknowledge it was a bit telly, but there was no way for me to show that in a way that wouldn’t make the story’s pacing go out the window. I would’ve liked to, I’unno, have Inanna create hallucinations for Pinkie and Twilight and they had to realise how much the other means to them and how they have to work together to break out, but that’s a different type of story.

My other favourite part was the process of baking the Twinkie. Detailing the process of how Twilight and Pinkie had to follow each step of the recipe while dealing with setbacks and fighting eldritch creatures from beyond this realm was a lot of fun.

And now, time for my favourite part that isn’t in the story: Inanna herself.

The decision to completely hide Inanna’s reasoning and motivations throughout the story was a somewhat controversial one, but I feel it was worth it. I suppose I could use this section to spell it out, so if you’re amongst the few who read the story, and the even fewer who are reading this blogpost, and you don’t want to know what Inanna’s deal was, just skip to the next part.

Imagine you’re the ancient Suneighrian Goddess of Love (also War and Politics, because the Suneighrians liked to multitask). You live a happy life because all of your ponies respect you and your traditions. Whenever a new couple decides to join their lives, they come to you and work hard on the Kanu Arammu Sibutum to prove they love each other and are worthy of your blessing. All is well.

Then, as with all ancient civilizations, it comes to an end, and you are forgotten. Your traditions fall into disuse and nobody comes to pay respect or ask for advice in their love lives. Noone even wages a war in your name. Bummer.

But wait, what’s this? This little pink pony comes and unearths your most ancient tradition. Could it be? After thousands of years someone will finally treat you with the reverence and devotion of the ancient times?

No… She’s not doing it right. Where is her partner? Why is she doing it on her own? Does she think this is a joke? What kind of disrespectful behaviour is this? Have you waited for millenia only to be mocked like this? Well, she’s not going to get away with this. Such insolence must be met with appropriate punishment, so you open a portal to a dark dimension. Maybe stewing in unearthly despair for an eon or two will show her not to mess with you.

Oh. What’s this? Is she her lover? Why wasn’t she present for the ritual? That is it. She’s getting punished too, nobody mocks you and gets away with it!

Huh… Interesting. They want to make it right this time? Well the purple one seems to have some reservations. She doesn’t want to admit her feelings for whatever reason, so let’s test them. Let’s see if their love have what it takes to face you.

Well, that was a nice turn of events. Who would’ve known those two could do it. As disrespectful as they were at the beginning, they pulled through and proved their love was worthy. After millenia, you finally get to give your blessing to a couple, and it feels great.

What was your least favorite part?

I have to go back to what I said. I didn’t like the comedy.

Oh, sure. In the mad dash to write the story, the jokes and gags I included seemed funny. But then I spent the better part of a year going over it and editing it, I no longer knew if the stuff I put was funny or not.

I like comedies, but I don’t like writing comedies, even if nowadays I do enjoy writing stuff that’s more lighthearted. If you write a dramatic, or serious story and fail, then you still get some hilarity out of the ordeal, but if you write a comedy and fail, then you are left with an unfunny pile of words. Perhaps it’s just my insecurities speaking, but I don’t think I gave the Comedy tag a run for its money.

What did you learn?

Not to mess with spiritism. No ancient goddesses for me, thank you very much.

Other than that, all that time spent editing helped me get a better view on pacing and sentence flow, as well as making me less afraid to cut stuff.

Sometimes you can get attached to a specific phrase, or bits of dialogue that you think are great, and they may possibly be. However, if they don’t work in the context of the story, sometimes it’s better to just get rid of them. I mean, Joy Division didn’t include “Love Will Tear Us Apart” in their album “Closer” because they felt it didn’t fit with the album as a whole. Make sacrifices for the greater good, and save those good bits for future stories.

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That was a nice trip down memory lane. K’awka is still one of my best works, and I look forward to writing more Twinkie, more mystery, and perhaps even more comedy in the future.

Cheers!