Author’s Notes:
Hey everyone, this is a section where I put down my personal thoughts, inspirations, and comments regarding my own writing. I’ll also give any appropriate thanks, where deserved. Not everypony will be interested in these things, but for those who are I thought I’d include them. I also wish to apologize for a possible lack of aesthetics in uploading to this site. I wrote all this in googledocs and there was no import feature so some formatting may be a little off (for instance, a lack of footnote explaining the Pinkie Pie scene).
This is my first real fanfiction I’ve ever bothered writing out and I can say it takes a lot longer than I thought it would. This is probably a function of me being picky with details and feelings of certain sections.or how words will lead to a sense of repetition. That being said I’m pretty lazy when it comes to proofreading so all my (slaves) pre-readers who took the time to scan it for me, I give you my biggest thanks for doing the hard part for me. All in all I have no idea how good this thing is. I was hoping for at least ‘Okay, not bad,’ but I guess I’ll have to leave it up to my readers to decide.
The origin of this story came when shortly after coming up with ideas for OC ponies that represented us, I told my boyfriend that we should both write fanfiction for MLP. Since Twilight Sparkle is my favorite pony he said that I should ship my pony and Twilight, and I countered by saying that he would then have to do the same for him and Pinkie Pie. Being that it was kind of a tease (and that our OC ponies would be in love with each other), we both just actually ended up writing intro fics. I find the idea of shipping my own OC pony with any main character in the show incredibly pretentious anyway.
Lounge Lizard is a pony that represents me, but not perfectly. In real life I am (at the time of writing this) a graduate Psychology student with a BA in both Philosophy and Psychology, I am very tall, have red hair, and I have folded several thousand paper cranes in my life. I do not own or have ever worked in a paper store, nor do I ever want to. I’m not otherwise particularly good at origami, but I’ve folded sets of 1000 cranes for important people in my life a few times. My cutie mark to me represents this feeling of importance, but also that the way I try to express myself isn’t simple. I also had the nature of my unicorn magic reflect this complexity (in the episode “Boast Busters”, most unicorn only have a little magic having to do with their special talent). This theme of my personality doesn’t come up in this fiction really, but backstory of the idea helps. Another few notable distances between Lounge Lizard and I are that I’m not single, I don’t find ladies falling for me that much, and I’m not a socially ostracized loner. I’m actually pretty happy to live in a place where I don’t feel that I’d need to actively worry that much if someone thought or knew I was gay. The name Lounge Lizard comes from my personal tendency to be lazy and from a nickname my boyfriend has for me. Names don’t perfectly match cutie marks, so I felt this was okay.
Twilight is the main character of the story, so to speak. Her expressions probably follow my own a bit more closely than is true to the character in the show, but I like Twilight because she is a smart, bookish pony and I feel that she more closely matches my life than any of the other ponies do. I played her up to be a bit more shy than usual to match, but nowhere near Fluttershy’s level. I didn’t focus on my own character so much as I felt that readers would prefer to follow a character they knew and liked rather than some random author’s OC pony that I imagined you, the reader, would more than likely not give a shit about. This was written for my boyfriend (and tangentially my other friends who like MLP) who can see Lounge Lizard as a representation of me and can mentally fill in the blanks. In any future stories I should hopefully present readers with a better feel of the characters. Having multiple character’s all presenting their internal feelings and dialogue to the reader might be a bit much, so I would either focus on one character or split that effort amongst every major character.
And before I get to the end of the notes, I think its pretty sad that I can write three pages of author notes in a fraction of the time it takes me to write ten pages of actual fanfic. That’s how much trouble I have with details. My only hope is that it makes for something at least modestly enjoyable to read.
Several references I should explain.
Dülmenstein’s Relativity: The Special and the General Theory is referencing Albert Einstein. Amazon told me that it was the title of one of his books, and wiki told me that a Dülmen is a German pony. Einstein was born in Germany, so I figured it would be close enough.
Similarly, Platony’s Complete Dialogues is actually Plato’s Complete Dialogues. I have a copy of a book myself.
‘Nippony’ is essentially Japan. I’m not really that big of anime or Japanese culture nerd in real life, but I do like some of what I have seen come out of it. For all intents and purposes that section doesn’t contribute at all toward the story except to very lightly express an activity that Lounge Lizard and Spike engage in, which could have just been represented by a generic board game. Again, this is sort of a function of Lounge Lizard being a representation of myself, so I apologize to everyone who might find it too ‘weeaboo’ or otherwise a waste of a plot point.
I learned about hanafuda cards from a Nintendo DS game called ‘Clubhouse Games,’ and eventually bought a deck of my own. Koi Koi is a quick and fun game to play and you can use it for gambling if you’d like, but really not much more complex than other normal card games. You can learn about the cards here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanafuda
‘Matcha Sweet’ is a pony name that an MLP name generator produced when I entered my own name. Matcha is finely milled green tea (according to wikipedia), and I thought the name was actually pretty clever since green tea confections and sweets are pretty common. I thought the name would fit pretty well for someone who had connections to ‘Nippony,’ The name generator can be found here: http://rumandmonkey.com/widgets/toys/namegen/14459/
That scene where Pinkie Pie pops in for no reason and references a story you’ve never read? I was writing in a googledoc I shared with my boyfriend so he could help me out when I was stumbling over certain sections, and he wrote that in as a joke when I wasn’t looking. Yep, he’s writing his own fanfiction too and his OC pony is named Poodle Puff. I actually found it so funny and fitting for Pinkie that I decided to keep it. His story should have a 4th-wall breaker event as well involving Pinkie popping into my story so when he uploads his story, I’ll link to it here.
UPDATE: And here it is! http://www.fimfiction.com/story/896/Party-Planning
Time for shoutouts and inspirations!
‘Platony’ as a replacement pony name for Plato was borrowed from the fanfic “Progress” by Andrew J. Talon on fanfiction.net. Luna is reading Platony’s Republic at one point in chapter 7. Its quite an excellent and entertaining work of fanfiction and I would very much recommend it. It’s even had some fanart inspired by it made!
You can find it at : http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6982210/1/Progress or at http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/05/story-progress-luna-versus-microwave.html
I personally loved Plato most of all those early philosophers I learned about, and I thought it wouldn’t be strange to have some of his works in my pony’s collection too. ‘Platony’ was a great replacement name, so why mess with a good thing for the sake of a small nitpick on originality when I can instead give props to an excellent and inspiring work?
Similarly, my daydream scene with Twilight imagining an epically suave Lounge Lizard retrieving her book is inspired by the many amusing daydream scenes in “Progress.” Really, go read it if you haven’t, its great.
Music usually really inspires me for ideas... not this time! The whole idea was pretty much an idea based on me an my boyfriend being silly. In anything I write in the future, you might see more stuff here.
Special thanks to Nick for his love and getting me into MLP:FiM in the first place, and for taking spoilers on a story meant for him like a champ for the sake of proofreading. I am still not going to write clopfiction for you. We have every other author for that.
Thanks to Kyle for giving me great ideas for my other upcoming fics and being up late at night for me to bother and tease. You’re a great sport.
Thanks to Aaron for agreeing to read my fic even though you aren’t a fan of MLP. I haven’t read anything you’ve written and I know you’re the better author. You bring a helpful outside perspective.
Thanks to Wolfie for being a pervert. It’s your fault LL didn’t get laid and you know it!
And thank you, reader, for slogging through this wall of text I made.
You can find me and my other work at:
FiM Fiction: http://www.fimfiction.com/user/celestial_okami
FurAffinity: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/oddlyenough/
GoogleDocs: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B-2LklE1U7B4MWU1YmMwMjktMTE2OC00NGU3LTliOTAtYjZkZTQ3NTQwYTM4&hl=en_US
Tumblr: http://im-not-sue.tumblr.com