Rain and Lightning: Behind the Scenes · 8:02am Mar 31st, 2020
When Twilight Sparkle is an Espeon Now finished its run on Patreon, I asked Starscribe if I could write a side-story, and he said yes. My original idea was Autumn Blaze arriving in Ponyville and being transformed into a Girafarig by residual magic or something, but I couldn’t think of where the story would go from there.
I got the idea for Rain and Lightning while reading the comments on the original story shortly before it finished its run on Fimfiction; several people were worried about Cloudsdale. Originally, Rain and Lightning was going to be about Sassaflash seeing the entire population of Cloudsdale dead in that random field, but then I realised that Rarity said in the epilogue that they were transformed into “winged creatures”, implied to be a Flying-type Eeveelution. More on that later.
Why did I choose Sassaflash and Sea Swirl to be the main characters?
Back in the summer of 2019, I wrote a fanfic on this site called Moonkind: The Wayward Butterfly. It was an attempt to do A New World, a New Way my own way - humans from the Pokémon world turned Pokémon in Equestria - but it didn’t work out. Firstly, it was easily mistaken for Displaced because I had a hard time succinctly describing the concept without spoiling anything. Secondly, I made the protagonist’s transformation into a Beautifly so realistic that she became helpless, meaning I had to keep coming up with contrived reasons for her to get from point A to point B. I cancelled it a few chapters before I planned to end it because I was stuck on how to link two events together. I unpublished it a few days ago because I’m ashamed of it.
I decided that Moonkind should begin at the Rainbow Falls trade fair, and I wanted a later chapter to take place in Cloudsdale, so I chose the first background pegasus to appear in “Trade Ya!”, which was Sassaflash. Since she didn’t have an established fanon personality, I could do whatever I wanted with her. I included Sea Swirl in the fanfic as well because she was often seen alongside Sassaflash, but I couldn’t think of anything for her to do. This line in “Sassaflash is a Jolteon Now” is a reference to Sea Swirl’s introduction in Moonkind:
Okay, so Sea Swirl complained about Sassaflash always ordering carrot juice at Clover Café, but that was completely different. She wanted to support the Carrot family’s business!
I was stuck on “Visitor from Above” for a while because I wanted to reveal what happened to Cloudsdale, but couldn’t think of a fake Flying-type Eeveelution. I asked no-one in particular if they could direct me to an artist who would let me use their design, but I didn’t get any responses, so I came up with Nimbeon instead. I wrote the description of it in “Visitor from Above” before I drew it, and the drawing is supposed to represent a generic Nimbeon, not Rainy Rays in particular.
Speaking of which, Rainy Rays came about because I wanted to give Sassaflash someone to talk to in Cloudsdale in Moonkind, so I decided to make the pegasus variant of Sea Swirl into her own character.
The title of “Brawling Wonders, Fire and Thunders” is a reference to the theme song of Power Rangers: Time Force. Braeburn was originally going to be a Jolteon, but I changed him to Flareon because he has “burn” in his name. I chose Apple Fritter to be the Jolteon instead as a reference to A Brave New World, where she befriends an Electric-type Pokémon.
