Ponyville Noire: Behind the Scenes! · 9:13pm Aug 11th, 2020
Hey guys, this is something I wanted to do for a while: just make a blog post detailing my thoughts behind creating the Ponyville Noire series. Let me preface this by saying thank you for reading and enjoying my work: seeing your likes and comments keeps me going even when writing becomes difficult! It really does mean a lot to me that my stories do bring a bit of happiness to people!
With that out of the way, let’s get started with my worldbuilding process.
This post contains spoilers from Ponyville Noire Volumes One and Two. You have been warned.
Designing the Noireverse
The original Phillip Finder series was a close-to-canon semi-AU: my basic rule was if it happened in the show, it happened in the “Phillipverse,” though with some alterations. When I was first starting out writing, I needed that basic structure to build off of, since I wasn’t confident enough in my own skills to develop my own headcanons and universe. Said confidence grew over time as I wrote and developed my skills, to the point where the final stories, particularly the finale Endgame, diverged from the show entirely.
When I first started designing the story that would become Ponyville Noire, I originally intended it to be a prequel to the series, focusing on Phillip Finder and Daring Do’s partnership prior to Phil moving to Ponyville. However, the more I started making plans, the more I realized that I felt like I was being held back by the old stories. What had become a baseboard for development had become a box that I felt stuck in. I looked over the old stories and all I felt was “I can do better than this now.” I also didn’t want to use a close-to-canon series again for similar reasons: the “rules” of the show would’ve constrained my creativity too much and prevented me from writing the story that I wanted to (and I would’ve had to deal with some of the shows many...divisive choices).
So my best solution? Wipe the slate clean and start over again with only the basic idea of the story I wanted to write: a nitty, gritty, noir action-adventure-mystery-romance series starring Daring Do and Phillip Finder.
This time, I focused on what I wanted for the story as a whole. Taking inspiration from classic noir tropes, I designed a backdrop for the stories: a dark, grimy Ponyville infested with criminal gangs and corrupt police officers. Bringing over some elements of canon Ponyville, like Sweet Apple Acres and the Everfree Forest, was part of the job, but painting in the rest of the city was my own work.
I’ve always advocated the idea of building stories and worlds from the “bottom up” rather than “top down.” By that I mean it’s better to start with a basic framework for ideas and build off of ideas over time, rather than start out with very specific, larger ideas for the ending, only to have to rework or delete said ideas when you find out that they don’t gel together well: I suppose it’s kinda like if you started out with a grandiose image of a Lego building you want to build, only to find that you don’t have enough pieces and have to start over after thirty minutes of work. In this example, once I had the basic backdrop of Ponyville for the stories, I started writing the first cases. As more details became necessary to reveal, I added those pieces in bit by bit, one piece at a time.
I’ll give you a practical example by demonstrating what I feel is a particularly important part of worldbuilding: what you don’t want to be in the stories, and dealing with problems. When I was starting out writing the stories, I decided that I did not want the Elements of Harmony to be in this universe. The reason for this was in the original Phillipverse, a frequent problem I ran into was that the Mane Six would be in the stories solely because there wasn’t a good in-universe reason why they wouldn’t get involved, even if they contributed very little and the stories would not have suffered in the least if they weren’t there (this was a particularly bad problem with Endgame and one of the reasons why I wound up hating it so much).
So the Mane Six did exist in this series, and I’d already figured out what to do with them in the stories: the only real difference was making Twilight a forensic scientist rather than a librarian. However, the Elements did not exist, giving me a good reason why they wouldn’t be trying to reform the city and reducing the main cast to a more manageable number. However, I quickly ran into a problem: if the Elements of Harmony didn’t exist, how did Nightmare Moon and Discord get defeated?
Originally, I was able to avoid this question, but wound up having to face it when I referenced the Nightmare Moon Disciples. After pondering this for a bit, I decided to make Nightmare Moon and Discord, alongside Daybreaker and Tirek, as pagan gods that were worshipped in pre-Equestrian times, and added a line to explain that to the readers.
(Side note: this also gave me an opportunity to work with Luna’s character without her being overshadowed by Nightmare Moon, which is something that both writers and fanwork tend to focus on a little too much at times, IMO)
This was at the same period that my current obsession with Lovecraft was starting to develop, so right around then, HP showed up, saw what I was doing over my shoulder, and started making some suggestions. And before I knew it, I’d developed a basic mythos of the Old Gods that was a large influence on later stories.
Similarly, the Crystal War in the stories. I decided that the Crystal Empire didn’t vanish in Noireverse (largely because I didn’t want to deal with the fallout of it reappearing: I simply did not think that I could handle that properly). But what was I supposed to do with Sombra?
Looking back over my noir inspirations, particularly the game LA Noire, I found myself meditating on the fact that most noir stories (including my own) were set in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, post WWII. I also recalled the Crystal War timeline from the Season 5 finale and began to think about adapting that into the Noireverse. Thus came the idea of the Crystal War, a war between the Crystal Empire under King Sombra and Equestria that had long-reaching effects over the world, including the development of weapons and technology and cultural evolutions. After planting the basic roots into the story with a few throwaway lines, I began to add to that foundation bit by bit, revealing more details as they became relevant and building off of those ideas as well to complete a larger structure.
However, I never revealed the full picture for two large reasons: one, the minor details were not relevant to the stories at the time, only the broad strokes, and expositing on it would’ve wasted both the reader’s time and mine. Secondly, I actually didn’t have the full picture until fairly recently, simply because it’s not something I ever really needed to finish. It is, however, something that I plan to reveal more of over the continuing stories, especially since it’s going to take a larger role in the overarching plot.
(Side note: a couple years ago, I tried writing a side story, Letters from the Homefront, that revealed more details of the Crystal War, but I didn’t have the time or energy to devote to it, so I just dropped it)
That should give you some idea of how my worldbuilding works. Next, let’s talk about the characters of the Noire stories.
Recasting Call
Of course the stories would be nothing without the main characters, and I started with the protagonists: Daring Do, redrawn through the lens of this universe, and my own OC Phillip Finder.
Before I start talking about Phil as he appears in Noire, I should talk about how I first developed him in 2014 (wow, that makes me feel old…) for my first stories. Originally, all I had for him was wanting to make a Great Detective character, so when I first started to craft him in my head, he was basically Sherlock Holmes as a pony--in fact, he was originally named Hooflock Holmes. Of course, I realized early on that this was a bit...dull, so I decided to add some more twists to it. I started adding some noir PI tropes into the blend (in fact, his admittedly-not-very-good-idea of a name was supposed to be a nod to Philip Marlowe). The fishing vest was something I put on him when I was first designing him in Pony Creator and I stuck with it because he needed somewhere to put his gear (and a utility belt was just silly). As for his Aussie heritage, that came when I decided to change his British accent to a Cockney accent, then Australian (I briefly envisioned him wearing an akubra, but...I like the trilby better).
When I was recreating the Noireverse, I also decided to rework his character and background a bit to fit the series better. One rule I had for myself when writing the Ponyville Noire stories was “No comic book stuff.” And one of those things that I really wanted to rework was Phil’s backstory. In the original story, his story was basically a ripoff of Spider-Man’s, and gave him the added angst of being one of the last Aushaylians after a fire destroyed his home (I...really don’t know why I thought that was a good idea. Something about explaining why none of the Mane Six had heard of them before?). That might’ve worked in the more lighthearted original series, but not here, not in this more serious, realistic universe. While I will admit that his Noire origin isn’t completely original (Daredevil), it fits the tone of these stories better. And on an extra plus, I got rid of the extra angst of him being a last survivor, too!
As for Daring: in all honesty, I wanted to keep her because I’d shipped her with Phil in the original series and I wanted to keep that, plus she was the first pony that came to mind when I was thinking of the trope of a former thief trying to go straight while using their street smarts to help the police. In contrast to Phil, she was meant to be a bit more adventurous, a bit less restrained, and a bit more clever rather than intelligent. One thing I made clear for myself from the start was that if Phil was the hammer, Daring was the scalpel. That is to say, Phil will go for the blunt and direct approach while Daring will use more subtle, indirect methods to get to her goal. For example, when encountering a locked door, Phil will try to kick the door down, while Daring will either pick the lock or sneak in through a window. It made for some great contrast between them, I think, and made each of them their own character with their own strengths and weaknesses when it came to investigations.
That being said, I’m man enough to admit that there were some mistakes made in her design, unfortunately. For one thing, as my friend Seriff Pilcrow pointed out (go read his story Spectrum of Lightning, it’s awesome!), the Noire version of Daring doesn’t always feel like Daring, lacking her experience in treasure hunting and archeology. This is something that I’ve worked hard to fix in rewrites of Volume One and in Volume Two, especially with the increasing usage of eldritch artifacts and ancient magic in later stories, but it is admittedly a problem that continues to bother me. Thankfully, few others seem to have any real problems with it.
Secondly, her cursed brand. When I came up with that idea, it was meant to be symbolic of the stigma of being an ex-criminal that she would have to overcome, as well as serve as a springboard for revealing her past and for driving her character. The idea that it burned whenever she got upset was something that slipped in there at some point, and I liked it at the time, so I kept it. In hindsight, the idea of it burning, if not the brand itself, did not make a lot of sense and I don’t think I would keep it if I had to do it again.
Nonetheless, I’m firmly attached to my choice to use Daring Do, flaws and all, and I’ll keep using her.
Another reason I liked using Daring was that her adventurous personality bounced off of Phil’s stoicism very easily and made for some excellent chemistry between them. Writing Daring as a bit of a troll was a delight for me, and I think her snarkiness was an important bit of levity for the stories.
Vivid Villains
Phil was not the only one I brought over from the original series. Pretty much all of the major villains were taken from my first work, but most of them vastly reworked.
Charlie August Silvertongue was a minor adversary in the first stories, only appearing two times, both in stories featuring Daring. In that version, he was a smuggler of artifacts who took on the facade of a philanthropist and art collector, a position that caused him to run afoul of Daring in the past, though he was never defeated. In Noire, I decided to take more inspiration from his namesake, one-off Sherlock Holmes nemesis Charles Augustus Milverton (not Magnussen, that was the TV series), placing him as a blackmailer and collector of information that headed the criminal enterprise of Ponyville. Of course, he was ultimately intended to be pushed aside so that the real nemesis of the series could take over, so I initially didn’t think too much about giving him deeper character. This, as Seriff again pointed out, was a mistake because he had too large of an impact on the story overall, a mistake that I spent a lot of time fixing, trying to paint him as a character that did think he was keeping order in Ponyville and did treat most of his companions with some level of respect.
Monopoly was the second enemy faced in the original series, an unscrupulous businesspony who attempted to force Fluttershy to sell her property to access a silver vein on the land. He went under very little change in the move to the Noire series, and like Silvertongue, he didn’t have a lot of character, since he was always intended to be shoved aside and forgotten. Unlike Silvertongue, I didn’t see much point in trying to expand that character via rewrites.
Whitestone and Roaring only appeared in The Sydneigh Ritual, the second-to-last story in the original series, as pirates who kidnapped Phil to get him to lead them to a buried treasure in the Aushaylian Outback. One story wasn’t enough to give them a lot of characterization, and they ultimately boiled down to a lot of pirate stereotypes. While they didn’t have much of an appearance in Volume One, I had an opportunity to expand on their characters more in Volume Two. One goal was to try to give them a few positive sides to make them slightly more sympathetic, so I gave them a daughter that they gave up for a chance to happiness, tried to demonstrate their loyalty to their own crew, and added in Whitestone’s maddened, drug-fueled belief in the “visions” of her gods that drove her forward, blinding her to right and wrong.
Scarlet Letter was a major crime boss in the original series, but despite her alleged position, she didn’t have as much of an impact as I wanted her to, not even in her introductory story, The Grilled Cheese and the Muletese Falcon. When I added her into Noire, I started with the idea that she was a devoted cultist serving [SPOILER REDACTED], gathering an underground army to serve her will: this gang war turned out to be the primary plot of Volume One. I added in her Prench traits from the original Scarlet’s henchpony, Laurier de Montaigne, which helped add a bit of a femme fatale side to her. Like with Whitestone as noted above, I tried hard to demonstrate that Scarlet had some positive sides to her, namely her affection and care for those that she works with and unwillingness to harm children (though the latter didn’t come up as much). I also wanted to make sure that while she wasn’t the toughest one out there, she was still a danger in her own right. As I was writing Volume Two, I found myself reflecting upon the fact that the fanatic cultist wound up being the sanest of the three primary antagonists.
Bright Sparks, the only major villain who was created specifically for Noire, came from a desire to demonstrate Daring struggling to deal with her past. I always tried to demonstrate that Sparks was a conflicted character, torn between her morality and her love for her sister, and her devotion to Scarlet, who promised her a way to destroy the mobsters that control Ponyville. This is one time that the burning brand worked for me, since it allowed me to subtly demonstrate said conflict in her scenes, especially in Volume Two, where her desperate worldviews started to crumble. For a long time, though, I was very conflicted about what to do with her in the ending: I was torn between her staying loyal to Scarlet or turning in the last second, and I was leaning towards having her die at the end of Volume Two. Leaving her alive was something I only settled on as I was writing Case Thirteen, but I’d like to think that it leaves me the option to use her in the future.
But out of all of the villains, most of the work went into one pony: Zugzwang. He was always intended to be Phillip’s true archnemesis, his polar opposite in many ways. When I came up with his original design for Checkmate in 2015 (making myself feel old again…), I blended together elements for Riddler, Joker, and Andrew Scott’s interpretation of Moriarty to create what was admittedly a less than original character. The idea was that Zugzwang was supposed to be a character who lived for the challenge, who delighted in making his crimes an intellectual challenge for his archenemy; hell, his name is actually a German chess term (yes, that’s why he’s Gerwhin, I’m so clever) that refers to a situation where no matter what move a player makes, they will be at a disadvantage. To that end, he...taunted Phil using riddles.
This wound up being one of the reasons I hated Checkmate so much, even as I was writing it, and is something that I tried to move away from or at least lampshade in later stories. My problem with this, aside from being an unoriginal comic book gimmick and a lazy way to move the plot forward at times, is that it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to. Instead of it being a cat and mouse game between the two where Zugzwang is trying to make a crime that even Phil can’t solve, it turned into a contest of who’s better at riddles between the two.
When I was reworking Zugzwang for Noire, I knew from the start that I could not afford to make that mistake again, not least because such a gimmick in a realistic, gritty series like this would make him impossible to take seriously. Choosing to make him Silvertongue’s assistant rather than the primary enemy was intended to allow for his rise to power to be the overarching plot of Volume One, as well as a way to keep him out of the spotlight for a bit to build him up properly.
One of my big goals in Noire for Zugzwang (aside from making him a legitimate threat and a deeper character rather than a Riddler-Joker expy) was to try to make him a more realistic depiction of a psychopath. Everyone knows that psychopaths lack empathy or conscience, but I decided to dig a little deeper than that, both to make him more realistic and to try to give his characters a few more angles rather than the admittedly flat stereotype that he was originally. One interesting thing I found about psychopaths was that because they lack an ability to connect consequences to actions, they are actually really bad at long-term planning: in layman’s terms, a genuine psychopath is incapable of thinking past “oooh, shiny, I want it.” This turned out to be a way to show some conflict between him and Scarlet, where he cares more about what he wants than her long-term plans, as well as being one of his most major weaknesses. Despite his facade of being in complete control at all times, he’s actually making it up as he goes along, which ultimately bites him in the rear and forces him to go it alone at the end. Well, mostly alone.
As for his being bonded to an eldritch being, that came out when one of my readers and friends, Micro-Song, asked why Zugzwang had black eyes. Originally, this was supposed to be just a cliche “black eyes=evil” thing, but his question got me thinking. As I said, my Cthulhu obsession began while I was writing this, so it was natural that tentacles and extra eyes fell into the mix, and it also worked to help introduce some of the more eldritch elements of the overarching mythos into the story. The idea that the Ngluwi (whose name comes from R’leyehian word for “eye,” according to an online translator) was this universe’s version of the Pony of Shadows popped up towards the end, and I tied it in as a way to connect the stories to the past and the myths of Equestria (though I did alter it slightly, of course: in this universe, Stygian managed to reject the Pony of Shadows himself, removing the hanging thread of the Pillars being trapped in Limbo).
Originally, I had the idea that the final case would involve the Ngluwi trying to take over Zugzwang and him forcing Phillip and Daring to help him while Scarlet tries to get them to kill Zugzwang. However, while I was attached to this idea for a while, I ultimately had to drop it because I couldn’t get the details gelled together well. I also had to make the decision to split the finale into two--one ending for Zugzwang and one for Scarlet Letter and any other loose ends--just to make my life a little easier.
Other Characters
Some brief notes about some of the other major characters:
Trace Evidence: Trace was primarily a Lestrade expy, I will admit (though he doesn’t get as jealous as Lestrade). And I will also admit that he’s kind of a flat character, and I’ll give a mea culpa with the excuse that I actually kind of intended him to die from the start so that Flash could take over eventually. Bringing up his best friend Lug Nut was an attempt to keep him from being completely flat (fun fact: Lug Nut was originally supposed to turn out to be a serial killer, but that idea got dropped fairly early on), and his deadpan attitude provided some humor. Primarily, though, he was supposed to be a friend on the force for Phil and eventually Daring, providing them information and a way to get into the crime scenes. And just like Lestrade, him eventually warming up to the detectives was a measure of development for not just the characters themselves, but also a measure for the police department as a whole.
Red Herring: Red was designed to be the bad cop to Trace’s good cop, an angrier, slightly more cynical individual who was more willing to bend the rules. His initial antagonism to Phil and Daring was also intended to make readers think that he was the mob’s mole in the police force (though, in hindsight, his own name kinda made that a self-defeating endeavor…). Like with Trace, his gradual warming up to Phil and Daring was a measure of development in-story, though he never really lost that initial sourness. He at least got the benefit of deeper characterization than Trace, since he wasn’t doomed to die from the start.
Prowl and Bumblebee: in the original series, two Canterlot City Guards (though Prowl was originally a male unicorn). Aside from being Flash’s first partners and mentors, they--and in particular, Bumblebee--were largely intended to be a bit of comic relief, as well as proof that not all of the PPD officers were corrupt. One thing I’d like to do with Prowl is use her as a way to introduce more thestral lore...once I develop that lore.
Flash Sentry: I know Flashlight has a...reputation in the fandom, but I like it. I guess I just have a soft spot for underdeveloped characters, I guess, partially because there’s a lot I can use to build upon. Flash in the original series doubled as Twilight’s bodyguard and Phillip’s apprentice, and I wanted to try to carry over the latter part in this series. One goal I had from the start was making Flash’s character and development was the idea of “evil triumphs when good men do nothing.” Showing his growth from a cowed pony who was trying to keep his head down in a dirty city to a genuine hero who stands his ground was not only a measure of him as a character, but a measure of Phil and Daring’s impact on the city.
Twilight Sparkle: out of all of the Mane Six, Twilight was the only one that had any major changes made to her. Deciding to keep her as a unicorn rather than an alicorn was something of a “balancing solution:” alicorn power level aside, having a Princess in Ponyville would’ve diverted attention away from Phil and Daring and brought up the problem of why she didn’t solve most of the cases on her own. Making her a forensic scientist made sense to me, considering her position as a student of magic at the beginning of the show, and it gave her a good reason to be part of the stories. Also, her being a somewhat more innocent character put her in a position to be a morality chain for Phil and Daring, driving some of their development.
Doctor Suunkii: I originally batted around the idea of having Zecora be the chief scientist for the PPD, but having to write all of her dialogue in rhyme would’ve been a nightmare. Thus, Doctor Suunkii (whose name means “poison” in Oromo) was born, a logical, Spock-like character who examined evidence dispassionately and was a capable mentor for Twilight. Making him one of Phil’s oldest friends also added some dimension to the both of them, and a bridge that could be repaired over time (I briefly toyed with the idea that they were “friends with benefits,” but that fell through. Probably for the best).
Doctor Mortis: originally, Mortis was supposed to be a necrophiliac serial killer as revealed in the last case of Volume One, but that plan fell through. Thus, I was set with the work of making her character more quirky than vaguely creepy, but I wound up having a lot of fun with her and she’s come to have a special place in my heart now. I’m not sure exactly when I accidentally retconned her into a Crystal Pony, but it kinda worked considering her name (Latin for “spirit” and “death,” by the way).
Cold Case: one of the reasons that Chilled Tumbler never had much characterization is that he, like Trace, Monopoly, and Charlie, was always intended to die. Chilled’s sole reason for existing was demonstrating the depth of the PPD corruption initially, then be replaced by Cold Case, who was supposed to herald the major cleaning up of the city. Cold was intended to be a strict, by the book cop who, by the necessity of her position, would be necessarily antagonistic to Phil and Daring at the start. Interestingly, her development would be kind of the opposite of Phil and Daring’s, where she starts to become more accepting of moral grays and playing a little looser with the rules.
I’m Just Here for the Plot
Just one last note and then we’re done, I promise. I wanted to talk briefly about how I come up with ideas for stories.
When I first start off with an idea, it’s usually in the vein of being a vague idea that I plot out over time, adding in more elements that I want to use: for example, Case Four (which was admittedly not very well thought out) was based on the Arson cases in LA Noire, while Case Five started as the idea of a reporter being chased by the mob, with the foundation being the first Traffic case in LA Noire. Other times, I’ll also ask myself what themes or ideas I want to bring up in the case: Case Three was themed with the idea of having Daring start to truly move on from her past and cement her position as one of the good guys, while Case Five had the role of introducing some more changeling lore.
I will usually try to outline cases in their entirety, but oftentimes, things don’t go exactly to plan. My friend Olakaan Pellik outlines it like so:
- Make the plan.
- Execute the plan.
- Expect the plan to go off the rails.
- Throw out the plan.
While I wouldn’t put it that crudely, my writing style often has the same rhythm to it. At some point, I’ll usually encounter an unexpected problem or realize that whatever plan I made isn’t working out the way I intended, and have to rewrite it. And more often than not, a good portion of each case winds up being made up as I go along (this is why I try to write out chapters ahead of time: gives me a bit of a safety net).
And there you have it: a behind the scenes peek into writing Ponyville Noire. I hope you enjoyed this little talk and are looking forward to more of Volume Three!
Josiah
Ooooh, all this is some interesting shit. Really, more authors should do this if you ask me.
Love it!
Very nice!