Hi! I'm working on a review for the Mailbox project, so if it's alright with the original authors, I'd like to ask you guys a few questions, just so I have some extra information to work with should the need arise. I may not use it all in the review itself, but it may help increase my understanding as to what went on behind the scenes of this whole thing.

1. What prompted you to start this project? Where did the idea come from?
2. How much of the project was planned out (in regards to things like: the TSxRDxAJ romance, the song experiment, Rarity’s crush, etc.)? I can reasonably assume that a lot of things were made up on the spot, but what kind of planning went into some of the larger elements, if any?
3. Did you ever plan on releasing a full compilation from the start? Or did Skeeter just randomly come to you one day with the idea?
4. Aside from the one other I can see in the group, how many stories (that you know of) exist in the so-called Mailbox-verse?
5. What happened to Rarity’s original author? (Or is this something best left alone?)
6. Did something go wrong with Mailbox: Reloaded? (Or, again, am I at liberty to ask?)

I will post a link to the review on this thread once it's uploaded.

I thank you in advance and hope to hear from you soon.

~CF

4995668

I offered to do it.

They, for some reason, said sure.

~Skeeter The Lurker

Wow, I'll be really interested to see that. The Mailbox was kinda nuts, so I'm curious about how it comes across to someone so long after the fact.

4995668

1. What prompted you to start this project? Where did the idea come from?

The idea was mine. I've always enjoyed roleplaying, but I've never been a fan of online, play by post style because I always felt the stories that resulted were bumpy and disjointed. In addition, in a fandom setting, the idea of OC based roleplaying didn't appeal to me.

But I knew a lot of good authors, and I figured that if I invited different people to take a canon character I knew they liked to write, they'd be able to "play" them really well. And by making it a series of letters, that made the disjointed nature a natural part of the story, and gave everyone more control over their character's story as it was happening "off screen." So that turned it from RP into a more joint storytelling effort, which was exactly what I wanted.

2. How much of the project was planned out (in regards to things like: the TSxRDxAJ romance, the song experiment, Rarity’s crush, etc.)? I can reasonably assume that a lot of things were made up on the spot, but what kind of planning went into some of the larger elements, if any?

Very little was planned out at first. We all gave a brief description of where our characters would be. I know I was keeping an eye on who was interested in shipping and what they shipped; I know that bats and Jake were shippers to the core, and that the three of us all tended to like various combinations of our characters. I knew that AcreuBall was okay with shipping, but it wasn't necessary, and that Churchy and X found the idea weird.

Actually, as I recall, Jake and bats and I made a specific deal not to plan out out character's potential romances and see what developed. But the meta knowledge was there, and probably played a big role in things.

I'll also admit that I had the "AJ gets drunk and swaps two letters" idea in my head from early on, and planned to use it when it might cause the most comedy or drama if I got the chance. I had no idea which characters it would be, and the other writers knew nothing about it until I posted.

3. Did you ever plan on releasing a full compilation from the start? Or did Skeeter just randomly come to you one day with the idea?

We never planned on a compilation, if I had I probably would have put more thought into arranging things in a more coherent way. The separate threads worked great for following along as things progressed, but not so well for the compilation.

4. Aside from the one other I can see in the group, how many stories (that you know of) exist in the so-called Mailbox-verse?

As Jake said, X and Steel were the only ones who continued the verse. There were some side stories published in collections, and some side letters, all collected and/or linked from this thread.

5. What happened to Rarity’s original author? (Or is this something best left alone?)

When I originally pitched the idea, it was supposed to be something that people could do at their own pace, with their character's plots giving them an excuse for not getting back to their friends right away. It turned out that some of us had a lot more free time than others, and AcreuBall had life get in the way and didn't feel able to keep up. That's also part of the reason Churchy's writing was kind of spotty.

6. Did something go wrong with Mailbox: Reloaded? (Or, again, am I at liberty to ask?)

Jake pretty much covered that. Mostly it was a series of smaller thing that snowballed.

If you have any more follow up questions, feel free to contact me here for via PM.

Most of the questions have already been answered pretty thoroughly but Jake and Bookplayer. I'll throw in that the song thing was entirely off the cuff. X's Pinkie song towards the start, gave me the idea to 1) play with the idea of song magic as the story went on, and 2) force everyone else to have to write a song, which I would have done again in a heartbeat (mwahahaha).

I'll echo what's already been said. I was brought aboard in Mailbox II to write Rarity, and while I enjoyed getting back in the swing of writing, I suddenly remembered why I'd put it aside: real life rears its head mercilessly. I thought I'd have both time and motivation and ended up with decreasing amounts of both. When other (far better) writers had to step back and reduce their output I should have increased mine to compensate but found the tank empty. Eventually MB2 just petered out. It was an interesting experience, collab-wise. I love the epistolary format in general.

Just a couple follow-up questions, if you guys don't mind:

7. What made you guys (4995800, 4995783, and 4995696) decide on the triad romance? You said that pretty much everything was "off-the-cuff," so how did you come to such a big plot development?
8. How did Steel Resolve end up becoming the new Rarity? Was (s)he another friend, or just some random person you found in the comments section?
p2. Also, while I feel this should be obvious (but I want to double check), was the Baltimare strike, as mentioned in Rarity's letters, a direct result of Acrue's departure?

Thanks for the info you've provided so far. I'm getting a better understanding of this story, and it's making me appreciate it all the more.

4997734

7. What made you guys (>> bats, >> bookplayer, and >> Jake R) decide on the triad romance? You said that pretty much everything was "off-the-cuff," so how did you come to such a big plot development?

I'm gonna mostly pin that one on bats. My (personal, shipper) feeling is that in canon AJ acts especially warm and protective towards Twilight, so when Jake's Dash was being... let's go with irreverent towards AJ, and to AJ with regards to Twilight, it made sense to me to read a crush into AJ's defense of Twilight. In the mean time Twilight and Dash had been flirting (I'll let Jake or bats cover that.) So the drunken switch kind of dropped that bomb in bats lap, with Twilight having the choice of what to do.

In the aftermath of that, I think the letters between AJ and Dash are some of the best AppleDash ever written. Just getting them back to being friends required a lot of honesty and emotion, so that kind of naturally moved to the next level.

At that point we had three ships ready to sail, and as Jake said I think we all got tired of dancing around it, but we all three liked all three ships. So that's when we decided to write the first collab fic and get them together. (Despite the fact that Jake had been telling Tchernobog over and over in the comments thread that it wasn't going to be a triad.)

8. How did Steel Resolve end up becoming the new Rarity? Was (s)he another friend, or just some random person you found in the comments section?
p2. Also, while I feel this should be obvious (but I want to double check), was the Baltimare strike, as mentioned in Rarity's letters, a direct result of Acrue's departure?

As Jake said, Steel was another author we knew who wrote a great Rarity, and I'm pretty sure the strike was added to excuse the space between Rarity's letters before AcreuBall left.

4997734

In doing some of the covering 4997796 mentioned in regards to the flirting with Twilight and Dash, I tend to write Twilight—both in general, but also specifically for The Mailbox—in a way where she can be teased and embarrassed pretty easily, which Jake's Dash picked up on and set to work doing. It just sort of happened that way that our Twilight and Dash developed a pretty quick and easy rapport that involved a lot of teasing flirtiness. Considering I had quite the background in writing TwiDash stories before we started the project, it seems kind of natural that my Twilight would fall into that sort of rapport, and it had just ended up clicking well when Jake and I were writing against each other.

It's worth saying, tying back in with stuff said earlier, that I was very hesitant to push for any specific ship. All three of us of the original six writers were the most hardcore ship writers, and we made the conscious decision to not be bringing a bunch of ulterior-ship-motive baggage to the table and just see what happened. And it just so happened that the rapport between all three, both individually and together, felt pretty good and was a heck of a lot of fun for us to write.

With hindsight looking back on the project, I'm not 100% sure that going with a triad was the best decision, but at the same time I'm not sure it was a bad decision. It just sort of happened that we wrote ourselves into a situation where all three characters had a chance to hack it out together, and when it came time to pull whatever shipping trigger we wanted, we went with this one. Just sort of a perfect storm situation.

Okay, the review is finally up. Click here to read it.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to answer my questions and help me put this thing together. You guys are awesome (even if I already knew that from reading this story ).