Fireside Chat #1: The Crystal Human Chapters One and Two · 9:06pm Aug 16th, 2023
Stealing FDR's bit cause I feel like it.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the post-chapter release blog post! I'll be doing this after every chapter to explain little things, clear up some confusion on other things, and maybe eat a watermelon while I type these up. Without further ado, let's talk about the shitty MLP fanfiction written by your favorite tax evader. (Hey, that's me!)
Chapter One: Scrapped Ideas, Early Drafts, and Placeholder Names
So I've been planning to write an HiE fic for a while now, and let me tell you that the original draft for what would eventually become "The Crystal Human" was very different. So different, in fact, its a completely different story.
"The Crystal Human" originally started off as a fic called "Her Beloved Son", which would have been a fic about a 19 year old who got sent to Equestria and turned into a Unicorn. He slipped on an ice patch while shoveling his driveway and woke up in Celestia's bedroom. And, to quote the long description I wrote for this way back in March 2023, "Oh, and now he’s fourteen years younger, for some reason." It would be a long chapter based story about this colt, who named himself "Solar Flare", living in Canterlot palace and slowly growing to accept Celestia as his mother.
I was also planning a sort of Hamilton/Burr relationship between Solar and Blueblood, but I never got far enough for that to materialize in any sort of written word.
In short, it would effectively be a poorly written version of "A Fateful Flurry" by Flygon, (Check out that story btw. It's really good.) just without the cloning and Cadence being a cousin rather than a mother to the protagonist. And a lot more "Hamilton" references.
This was the idea that made it the furthest, as I actually wrote a four-part prologue before losing interest and deciding to scrap it later on. I would later try again with the same idea, this time keeping the protagonist a human while still keeping the deaging, but that went nowhere. Never even made a roadmap for it.
The second iteration of a HiE story would actually take place in a different Equestria: The Equestria Girls Equestria, to be specific. The character, known as "Frantic Melody", would show up sometime before the first movie and would do... something. Idk. That idea didn't make it very far through the idea phase and I didn't leave behind any notes on this one (sadly), nor did I write anything with the idea. I know there would be a subplot of Frantic learning about the Mirror Portal and thinking it was his ticket home, but that's about all I can remember.
The third iteration would be a human ending up in the Crystal Empire after Flurry Heart took the throne from Cadence. This one would be a romance, and the only one in this idea bin. I scrapped that because I have no clue how to write a romance story.
The fourth iteration would become the first draft of "The Crystal Human", originally titled "Jesus Fucking Christ It's Cold Outside" (yes, really). This first draft was only roughly 1,100 words and would've been the beginning of a mature rated edgefest of a story, filled to the brim with blood and gore and swearing galore. After reading the first draft though, I was unsatisfied. So I went back, deleted everything and started over again. That redo ended up becoming the first draft of Chapter One. I then expanded it, edited it, and added some small little details I thought would be neat. It was at this point I switched out the original title for "The Crystal Human".
"The Crystal Human" was originally meant to be a place holder until I came up with something better. Obviously, that never happened, and I stuck with the name we have now.
There are still some lingering story elements from "My Beloved Son" in "The Crystal Human". They both got sent to Equestria after slipping on a patch of ice and knocking themselves out, for example.
Right, that's it for Chapter One: A general timeline of how we got here. From the very first early drafts of an HiE self-insert story, to what we have today. Now we can talk about the story itself in the next portion.
Chapter Two: Shining Beats Up A Human, and A Discussion on the Similarities Between Dutch and Indonesian.
Ok, bear with me here-
So now we get to the Second Chapter which, despite popular belief, did not come about in a single draft. (I love you, Hemingway.) Instead, it was five, written over the course of several hours.
The first draft, titled "Introductions", did not include a language barrier. English and Equish were the same exact language. I did away with this idea rather quickly cause I thought it was boring, and the second draft (titled "Miscommunication") would make English and Equish two different languages. However, I was gonna steal an idea from OverUnderCookened's story "Hold It Together" and have the magic of Harmony itself automatically translate everything except what you explicitly did not want others to hear. I ended scrapping this as well cause what's the point of adding a language barrier if the world itself just works around it?
That last sentence is going to sound very hypocritical in a few chapters.
The third draft, the first one titled "Language Barriers", would include a scene of Shining beating our resident human up and locking him in a guest bedroom until his sister got there to help him deal with it, due to Shining thinking that Jack was a threat to both him and Cadence. Shining didn't even give Jack a chance in this case. I cut this out cause I thought it would be out of character for Shining. Sure, he can beat you into a pulp at anytime, but he's also a kind stallion and wouldn't beat you up unless he had a good reason. Simply existing in the wrong place at the wrong time is not a good enough reason for him.
Or well, that's my interpretation of his character from what little we saw of him in the show, at least.
The fourth and fifth draft are nearly identical, the main difference being that Cadence can read some of the words on the piece of paper Jack wrote his inventory lists on in the final draft, while in the fourth draft she couldn't read a word of it. Now why is this? Well, it's simple.
You see, I recently saw this video of a Dutch Speaker and an Indonesian speaker talking about some similar words between the two languages and it got me thinking "What if I were to do something similar?"
So, while English and Equish are overall still just as unintelligible to each other as Dutch and Indonesian are, they two do have some words in common ("knife", "jacket", "shelter", "run", etc.). I plan on explaining this later on, but for now it will remain a mystery.
"It's a surprise tool that will help us later ", as the mouse would say.
So uh... yeah, that's it. I promise the rest of these "Fireside Chats" won't be as long. All the next ones should only cover one chapter at a time, after all.
Thank you for reading, and have a good day.
An interesting insight. Now I'm going to write a really long comment that responds to everything in the above blog or something. Don't ask me why.
How was the watermelon? How would you rank watermelons on the tier list of foods?
I would probably have read that, but it sounds like it would have been difficult to write satisfactorily. I've read a few similar stories, which weren't all that memorable. Assuming the princesses weren't immediately overbearing or forcing 'royal family' stuff out of nowhere instantly, then I think it would have been fine.
I'll have to look up "Hamilton/Burr relationship" now.
Sounds an interesting concept, but I'm not sure that I would end up reading it if I came across it in the wild as I don't read purely EQG stories much. I like the idea of earth-human in false-human world discovers a portal to another world and is like "I hope it leads home" but just becomes four legged horse-like thing.
I'm kinda glad you didn't go with that one. Needless gore and violence doesn't really fit the pony aesthetic all too well. I also feel like a lot of new writers choose really edgy and trigger-happy human characters to be "cool" or "manly" and it's somewhat a cliche. Not that those characters cannot make a good story, but violence for the sake of violence doesn't get me interested in a story.
I personally am not good at naming my stories, I name them all like this, very descriptive. A story that tells me exactly what it is in the title is quicker to catch my attention than a story with a cool but vague title.
Language barrier is an uncommon trope, and generally brings interest to the story. It also means you don't have to write so much inter-character dialogue. I also liked the story "Hold It Together" by the way.
I've seen this trope used a lot for Rainbow Dash (basically always derived from his behaviour in the first episode) where new writers use the first few episodes as a basis or something. It might be funny, but it's overdone. I like that you kept Shining a reasonable character, it makes him much more likeable and fits the Equestrian trope of 'friendship is magic.' A royal guard captain of Canterlot will likely have a lot of experience with lots of other races in the form of visitors to the capital, which you did show in the story as he (or Cadence?) could spot the differences between the human and a Minotaur, right down to the fingers.
This is true with a lot of languages actually. I've had experience with learning French and German at school, and there's lots of identical or similar words between French, German and English. The term is "cognates" and "near-cognates" if I remember correctly. It's a thoughtful inclusion to your story's mechanics.
I think I forgot to comment on your claims to not be a good writer. Anyway, it's not true. Everyone starts somewhere, and you've shown an interest in keeping characters in-character and bringing in thoughtful inspirations from experience. I did not detect any of the most common cliches in your story, even though I can see echoes of them in the scrapped drafts. You've investigated the pitfalls and found them unsuitable. Nobody has to be a perfect writer, and your writing quality is above the average for this site from what I've seen.
Anyway, ever heard of the saying "the author is the harshest critic" or something along those lines? The author is the person most likely to worry about their own work and have a negative-bias towards their own work which they don't develop towards other people's works. Negative-bias, the phenomena of picking up on the small negatives, while overlooking the wider positives. The audience just wants something to read, the writer is the person who gets up close and personal with the work.
I once wrote a story, it has about 600 likes to 30 dislikes right now. Despite the overwhelming positive reviews, I've found myself lingering on those few negative comments, and its completely drained my motivation and I keep finding myself focusing on its faults and my faults as a writer despite them being superficial.
What I'm saying it, you're not a bad writer. It's normal for negative thoughts to overwhelm when looking back at your own work, but trust me when I say it's almost never as bad as it seems on surface level. It doesn't have to be perfect, and you will improve and grow as an author as you continue to write. Everyone starts somewhere, and it takes time to build experience.
Okay, I wrote something, it has a lot of words. I have no idea how long I was here for. I'm just procrastinating on pressing post now. Why do I always feel this urge to delete everything I just wrote and not post the comment? I'll just post it.
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I meant to respond to this a lot longer ago, but hey. Better late than never.Thank you for the kind words. I really do appreciate it. I guess I'm just letting my anxiety get the best of me lmao. So, thanks again.