Pinkie's Fun Palace: Director's commentary · 9:56pm May 24th
NOTE: ONLY READ IF YOU'VE FINISHED READING THE FIC, AS THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR MOST OF IT.
Uh, hello? Hello, hello? My name is Text (Not giving away my real name due to privacy), and if you're reading this, chances are, you probably want to hear (Or i guess in this case, read) me talk about what inspired me to write this fic, or maybe you want to learn about all the scrapped ideas i had for it, or maybe you want to know how it felt to write this fic. Well, this is what this blogpost is all about. Without further ado, I present to you all, the official Director's Commentary for Pinkie's Fun Palace!
PART 1: What were you thinking?! (Or, how i came up with this idea.)
This all started in november 2023. I had just recently gotten back into MLP, and on a whim, i decided to look up old MLP creepypastas/Grimdark Fanfics, for old times' sake. Long story short, Scribbler's Narration of Rocket to Insanity became my favorite MLP horror story, and it got me inspired. "What if i made my own MLP horror story?" and then i thought, "And what if it was based on Five Nights at Freddy's?"
Now, truth be told, I am not the first one to come up with the idea of "MLP mixed with FNaF". You can find a bunch of old animations on youtube that cobine the two series. And while this fic is partially based on those old animations, it wasn't always like that.
The original idea for Pinkie's Fun Palace was originally known as "Six Nights with Starlight". The basic plot summary of this story was that an evil entity captures the Mane Six, Spike, Starlight Glimmer, and a few other characters. The entity would then corrupt the Mane Six into evil, psychotic versions of themselves, all based on old MLP grimdarks (For Example: Pinkie Pie would become a cannibalistic killer, similar to how she's portrayed in "Cupcakes", Rainbow Dash would become an evil scientist, similar to how she's portrayed in "Rainbow Factory", you get the deal), and Starlight would have to survive their onslaught as they tried to capture her, eventually leading to a final confrontation with the entity. This idea was scrapped because i realized that it was quickly becoming "A bit too edgy" (And because i couldn't figure out a name i liked for the entity), so i scrapped it. Will this version of the fic ever see the light of day? I don't know. For now, it remains a scrapped idea, but i might revisit it at some point.
Eventually, i decided to go with plan B, which was to make a "retold" version of those old FNaF x MLP SFM animations. Those animations were mostly just "The FNaF lore but replace the characters with Ponies", and i thought that was a bit generic, so i decided to make my own lore for the fic, combining the two universes in a different way that what was done before. Some ideas came to me while i was writing the fic, and i'll tell which were when we get there, but for now, let's talk about this fics first iteration.
The original plan for the fic was for it to be a comic series. This was something i had decided since the "Six Nights with Starlight" days. I managed to complete the Prologue and the First Chapter, which i posted on r/mylittlenosleep on reddit, but had to stop at the second one due to a realization. Writing something and drawing it at the same time was really difficult for me. So i had to put the comic idea on halt, and focus on writing the story first. I might eventually continue to illustrate the story, but for now, that's uncertain.
Now that we have that out of the way, let's talk about...
PART 2: Behind the Scenes stuff
Here's some fun trivia from Behind the Scenes:
As you probably know by now, the main antagonist of the story is none other than William Afton, the main antagonist of the FNaF series, who possess Pinkie's body, and forces her to kill her friends. But did you know he almost wasn't? In the beginning stages of me planning the fic out, i wasn't sure who the villain would be. Then, when i brought the idea of Afton possessing Pinkie foward to a friend of mine, who i'll keep anonymous, he thought it was a cool idea, so that's what was eventually decided on.
Guarding Grape's name wasn't actually created by me, but by a reddit user. When i unveiled the first version of his design, he still didn't have a name, so i just called him "The Nightguard". I asked in the post what i should name him, and someone suggested i called him Guarding Grape, so that's what i went with.
Certain scenes didn't exist in the first draft of the story. For example, the nightmare sequence with Pinkie Pie and the Monstrous versions of her friends, which was based on FNaF 4, didn't actually exist in the first draft, but i wanted to give Pinkie a reason to finally gain enough courage to fight back against Afton, so i added it in.
Spooky Scary, the owner of the shop Grape visits, was also not on the first draft. But because i wanted to expand on the scene where Grape buys a spirit box, he was added in. His name, as some might have noticed, is a reference to the song "Spooky Scary Skeletons". This is also why his coat in the story is described to look like a skeleton.
Here's a morbid fact, originally, the Animatronics that the Mane Six (minus Pinkie) end up possessing were going to have a much more gruesome origin. Their costumes would actually have been the Mane Six's actual skinned hides that Pinkie was forced to remove, and turn into costumes for the Animatronics by Afton. This was also the reason the Animatronics were possessed in the first place. As you can guess, this was scrapped for being too dark/edgy.
Afton's design was going to look a lot more like his sprite in FNaF 3 then he ended up looking in the fic.
I listened to a few FNaF songs while writing this fic, such as the OG FNaF 1 song by The Living Tombstone, and "We Want Out" by Dagames. The ladder of which might have somewhat influenced certain aspects of this fic.
The flashback sequences that show the night of the murder were going to be styled after the FNaF 4 minigames, back when the fic was going to be a comic.
And that's all the facts i could remember for the production of this fic. Now for...
PART 3: What i learned...
This section will be brief, as i don't have much to say regarding this topic. This was my first ever Fanfiction, and for my first one, i think i did a pretty solid job! Are there parts of it i wish could be written a bit better? Yeah. Should i have actually bothered to watch all the nine seasons of the show before writing it, instead of writing the characters from what i remember of them? Probably. Is this the best MLP mixed with FNaF fanfiction of al time? Probably not, but i'm happy with how it turned out. It certainly has been an experience writing this fic, and i hope that i can make more in the future. Now, atleast one of you is probably wondering this...
Part 4: Will there be a Sequel?
If you've noticed, when i put the "To be Continued" in the last chapter, i added a question mark to the end of it. So some might be thinking, will there be a sequel, or not?
The short answer is "maybe". The long answer...
While i want to make a sequel for this fic, i feel like the ideas i have for the sequel might be... a little too ambitious for me. With that said, here's a few ideas i have for a sequel (marked as spoilers in case you'd rather not know):
*Afton would continue to kill ponies, turning some of them into Animatronics similar to the Funtime Animatronics from FNaF Sister Location. The reason for why he'd do this would be revealed as the story unfolded;
*Grape would eventually form a group to track down and finally defeat Afton. This group would consist of Him, Spooky, the friends and families of the Mane Six (Such as Spike, Starlight, the CMCs, Sunset Shimmer from EQG, Etc.), the ghosts (The Mane Six, Golden Freddy and The Puppet), and Spooky's old ghost hunting buddies. Some of the "Funtime Ponies" would eventually join Grape after being freed from Afton's control;
*Cozy Glow, who in the lore of this fic, is the only main villain that isn't dead, reformed, or imprisoned, would eventually become an accomplice/apprentice to Afton, eventually becoming a character similar to Scrap Baby.
Those are all the ideas that i could think of for now. If anyone wants me to make this sequel, i might make it, but for now, that's pretty much it.
Part 5: Conclusion
I'd like to thank everyone who stuck around to see this fanfic to the end. I think it's cool to know that people actually like what i make. It means a lot, even if doesn't seem like it. Special Thanks to OP Omni God-Emperor Doom, for commenting on pretty much all the chapters. It means a lot to me. I would also like to thank reddit users u/GalaxyQueen281, for making fanart of the fic when i was still making it in comic format, and u/Nebulon-B_FrigateFTW, for suggesting Grape's name.
And that's it for the Pinkie's Fun Palace Director's Commentary! I hope you all had fun reading it!
See you later folks!
Signed, EnvironmentalText850
I really must thanked ya for the compliment.
I will soon respond about the rest of it, when I have the time.
5782737
So any updates on how the comments are going?
5784172
Still too busy, or have forgot.
5784251
Don't worry, you can take as much time as you need to finish them. I can wait. (Sorry for the late reply)
5784251
So, how are you doing? Still too busy or not?
5786165
Yeah, still busy.
5786199
Alright then. Can you tell me what it is? You know, to ease my anxiousness.
5786216
Reading and Commenting other stories, YouTube, Gaming, Real Life, etc....
5786233
How do you not know what you're working on?
5786294
I was half tired when I wrote this, I thought you meant how long until I finally commented back on your story and directors commentary?
And I edited what I was actually doing.
5786295
Ah i see. Well good luck with what you're doing.