Interview: The Mixed-Up Life of Brad · 11:51pm Jun 17th, 2013
The Mixed-Up Life of Brad started off as a tongue-in-cheek jab at EqG pre-release speculation and grew into a serious love story with likeable characters, excellent conflict, and original worldbuilding. It's also the first Equestria Girls fic to be posted on EqD, and I'm proud to have recommended it.
In this interview, D G D Davidson and I talk about the politics behind the posting of the story as well as his inspiration for writing it.
Amacita: What inspired you to write The Mixed-Up Life of Brad? And just how much was it intended to troll everyone?
DGD Davidson: That's a bit difficult to answer. It arose out of a conjunction of a few different events. "Friendship Is Witchcraft" had just came out with its infamous episode depicting Twilight infatuated with her own brother, and then the preview for "Equestria Girls" came out, and it had this mysterious blue-haired dude in it, whom everyone began calling Brad after the character in the YouTube parody series.
DGD Davidson: I was trying to write a little love story based on the picture book "Under the Sparkling Sea," and I couldn't make it work. It bogged down. Then I got the idea of writing a story about a stoical reporter trying to uncover the truth about why Twilight Sparkle came back from the human world pregnant, and that became my somewhat controversial short story, "Human Shining Armor Gets Twilight Sparkle Pregnant" (a reader tells me all my titles look like scandalous broadsheets).
DGD Davidson: At that point, I looked over my work and realized I had all these grim morality tales with misleadingly salacious titles, but I hadn't written an honest love story. I tried to return to the one based on "Under the Sparkling Sea," and I still couldn't make it work, so, since I still had Brad on the brain after "Human Shining Armor," I started on a Brad x Twilight story that I originally meant to be a tongue-in-cheek lark, but which became more serious as it developed in my mind.
Amacita: That's what I loved about it. The cover art said "trollfic," the first chapter said "tongue-in-cheek," and the rest said "real love story." The real-love-story part was the reason I was able to recommend it for posting.
DGD Davidson: A lot of my work has misleading covers.
DGD Davidson: My most popular story is "A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies," which also has intentionally misleading cover art, title, and description. It’s also on EqD, by the way.
Amacita: There were a lot politics behind the decision to post The Mixed-Up Life of Brad. One pre-reader even quit because of it. Not because of Brad, specifically, but because of the decision to accept EqG fics at all.
DGD Davidson: I honestly did not know, when I wrote the story, that it might upset anyone. And when I sent it to EqD, I thought it might get rejected for reasons of style or something like that, but it did not occur to me that posting EqG stories . . . I kind of want to call it G4.5 to be consistent . . . was an issue. I saw it as little different from, say, the stories about Shining Armor or Sombra that came out before we'd seen the canonical characters.
Amacita: There were basically three arguments against posting EqG fics.
Amacita: 1. EqG fics will be 99% crap because it’s anthro/humanized HiE and because EqG looks like it will betray everything that we love about Friendship is Magic (based on pre-release speculation).
Amacita: 2. They're side stories to one particular work, so they should be lumped into a side story post like TCB or FoE.
Amacita: 3. They’re anthro ponies, so they're banned under our pre-existing policies.
DGD Davidson: I guess they are technically anthro ponies, aren’t they? That hadn't occurred to me when I submitted. I just thought of Equestria Girls as another piece of canon.
Amacita: We banned anthro ponies by decree of Seth based on anticipated backlash.
Amacita: Decree of Seth, by the way, is also the same reason we're accepting EqG fics now.
DGD Davidson: Works for me.
Amacita: That’s enough about politics. Let’s talk worldbuilding for a while.
Amacita: You pay a lot of attention to the expanded universe stuff, don't you? The comics, G.M. Berrow's novelette, and Under the Sparkling Sea.
DGD Davidson: Yes. I have all those, and I get the comics as they come out. I'm trying to incorporate all of the expanded universe into what I call the "Chronoverse," after the story "Chronomistress," in which I first introduce the Sacred Order of Timekeepers, which I created as an alternative to all the Doctor Who crossover stuff. The Timekeepers keep reappearing in my work, and they'll show up in "Life of Brad" as well.
Amacita: So the Chronoverse allows you to explore time travel themes without using the Doctor? Is that it?
DGD Davidson: Well, it's not time travel. The Timekeepers are responsible for making sure the sun and moon are raised on time, and that the seasons are changed on schedule. They are time study ponies, clockmakers, scientists, and scholars. And they enhance their abilities with a drug called chronoserum.
DGD Davidson: And they worship Chronos the Devourer, who is chained in Tartarus.
Amacita: You know what? That sounds a lot cooler than Doctor Whooves.
DGD Davidson: I know nothing about Doctor Who, so I couldn't say myself, but readers who've read "Chronomistress" have expressed appreciation for it.
Amacita: Where did you come up with the idea for the language of smells? And why would you want to work that into a story?
DGD Davidson: When I decided to write My Little Pony fan fiction, I began reading up on horses. I especially had to research for "A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies," which attempts to be accurate in its depictions of horse care. In the course of that, I came across information on horses' sense of smell, on the vomeronasal organ, and so forth. It also happens I'm in the middle of John C. Wright's novel "The Hermetic Millennia," which is full of a lot of very weird future races, including a race of genetically modified nymphs who can control people by manipulating their pheromones. All of that together inspired what I have going on in "Life of Brad."
Amacita: With the Life of Brad, do you have any sort of theme in mind?
DGD Davidson: There are two types of stories of human/pony romance I know of. On the one hand, there's the story in which the lovers' biggest obstacle is somebody who finds their relationship disgusting, and that somebody is usually depicted as a raging, angry sort with no particular reasons or motives behind his opinion. I was reading one such story, the title of which I won't give here, which seemed to be well-informed and well-researched on many subjects, but when it came to the central conceit of the relationship between the human and pony central characters, it became sophomoric and stupid. The matter was literally resolved by a shouting match in which the fellow in favor of human-pony romance won for no other reason than because he could swear more fluently. That this is a subject about which people might form reasonable opinions built from facts and logic, and that they might discuss it rationally, appeared not even to have occurred to the author.
DGD Davidson: On the other hand, there are the kinds of stories I've written before, in which I have basically taken it for granted that a guy who falls in love with a talking horse must be suffering from some kind of emotional trouble he hasn't dealt with.
DGD Davidson: We already have too many of the first kind of story, and I've already written too many of the second kind of story, so I wanted to do something different with this one.
Amacita: And that something is?
DGD Davidson: Brad met Twilight when they were both human. All he knows is that he wants to be with Twlight. The full implications of what that means only come to him gradually. The primary obstacle they face is not any internal psychological problems, nor is it some enemy without. Their primary problem is the simple fact that they are now different species, and they have to figure out what that means for them and the relationship they thought they were building.
DGD Davidson: Though that is not to say that they won't face various other troubles. I'm trying to steer clear of some of the common themes of HiEs, such as the idea that ponies might think of humans as monsters, for example. As I see it, Equestria's population already includes enough exotic creatures that a human might get stared at, but probably wouldn't suffer particularly simply for being human. Instead, I came up with the idea that it would be Twilight who'd get in trouble for bringing Brad to Equestria, not because he's a human but because this technically violates international child-trafficking laws.
Amacita: I really liked that idea.
Amacita: And the difference between Brad and Twilight's relationship and the first type of HiE story you mentioned is that with Brad and Twilight, it's not a sense of disgust so much as they don't know how this is going to work.
DGD Davidson: Yes, I think that's right, although some sense of disgust might come into play as well. I think it's already been hinted that Brad no longer finds Twilight physically attractive.
Amacita: What's your opinion on HiE?
DGD Davidson: I don't have any strong opinion. I've written a few of them. I was a fan of G1 before I was a fan of G4, and I always thought it was strange that G4 didn't have any human characters in it.
Amacita: What did you like about the humans in G1?
DGD Davidson: I watched it when I was a young kid, and I think I had a bit of a crush on Megan back then. I rewatched G1 recently, and though Megan could use some more development and perhaps a few character flaws to round her out, I was impressed by her nonetheless. She combines a certain nurturing characteristic with a lot of fortitude. There are also hints of a short temper, which makes her a bit more rounded than she could have been.
Amacita: Are there any other themes that you wish HiEs would explore more? Or any that you're particularly tired of?
DGD Davidson: It's hard for me to say. I can't claim to have read a great many of them. I admit I'm not terribly fond of the body-switching conceit, which is one of the reasons I was skeptical about "Equestria Girls," though I notice that, now that it's out, the buzz has instantly flopped from negative to positive. I think that, at the very least, if a human is going to turn pony or vice versa, the writer is obliged to spend some times thinking about what that might really mean, and to go deeper than merely discussing the loss or gain of opposable thumbs. I also admit I don't care for the idea of a Brony getting turned into a pony and being thrilled by it. I find the idea of being transformed into a horse horrific, and even if others think over the matter carefully and come to the opposite opinion, I don't think it's a subject a writer should treat lightly.
Amacita: And that ties back to the whole sense of smell thing. There's far more differences than just hands and thumbs.
DGD Davidson: Yes, and in the future I think I'd like to spend more time reflecting on possible psychological differences as well.
Amacita: Psychological differences?
DGD Davidson: I tried to touch on that a little in "Human Shining Armor," though I spent only a little time with it. The protagonist of that story, Quill Pen, finds that his human form has appetites very different from those of his pony form.
Amacita: So eating meat, then?
DGD Davidson: The story is sort of a "humans are jerks" story because it has a certain allegorical purpose. Quill Pen finds both his sexual and gastronomical appetites more unruly when he is human.
Amacita: I'll have to read it.
DGD Davidson: I sent it to EqD some time back, but I think it might have got deleted from the queue on the basis of the title, which it probably deserves.
Amacita: It's still on there. The title seemed to hint at incest, but as you said before, sometimes titles are misleading, especially your titles. We wouldn’t ban it before reading it to make sure.
Amacita: What was your experience like working with me and EqD?
DGD Davidson: I have always enjoyed working with Equestria Daily. I've now had stories rejected outright, stories sent back for rewrites, and stories accepted immediately, and I've always found the pre-readers polite and professional.
Amacita: Well, that's good to hear :)
Amacita: Anyway, is there anything you'd like to add before we finish?
DGD Davidson: Just thank you for the interview, and for the hard work you did to get this story posted. And thank you, too, to all the readers who've given "Life of Brad" a shot.
Amacita: Thanks for the interview.
Amacita: And by the way, the pre-readers think you should change DGD to stand for Douglas Gunther Deathstryke Davidson.
DGD Davidson: I'll consider it.
Good interview. I haven't read "The Mixed up Life of Brad", but if it's getting this much hype, perhaps I should. :)
I've been reading and enjoying it, and was quite pleased to see it posted to EQD.
And a prereader quit over the decision to accept Equestria Girls stories? Huh.
Ug, I wish I could find more time to write. I have several story ideas, and I even have a HiE idea that might pass as original, based on what you said in this interview. I just haven't really found the time to explore it.
1150896
Twilight and Brad spend most of the first chapter playing kissy-face. It was highly entertaining to write, but it sounds like it was a good think I switched gears in chapter 2.
Thanks for going out on a limb and recommending this fic in spite of all the controversy, Amacita. I had no idea there was such a hubbub over DGD's story.
I just finished the story and I enjoyed it,. It was a lot of pun to read!
Congratulations on the inclusion of your story into Equestria Daily! I know you put work into making that happen.
That being said, I can't help but bring up the fact that the next installment is curiously missing, when you left your poor readers (read: me) with such a cliffhanger as the actual trial. I must admit, I'm very eager to see what happens next.
Not that I'm rushing you or anything.
P.S. Hurry up, you jerk.
1151525
Thanks for the compliment, but I think you have me confused with DG "Deathstryke" Davidson.
1151848
Yep...
Somehow, I ended up here instead of on his blog.
Not that this isn't a very nice blog or anything...
...
Nope. Not awkward at all.
Someone actually quit? That's surprising, I assume it was an anonymous PR? I only heard mention of one PR stepping down and they gave the impression it was life issues rather than due to a dislike of EQG fics.
I'm just inquisitive and really enjoying these blog posts. I hope you'll keep them up.
1153553
It was a combination of things, but the decision to post Equestria Girls was the last straw. Another pre-reader also decided the same day to take an indefinite hiatus for (I think) real-life-related reasons.
1153623 That makes sense. I was thinking it was likely something like that but wanted to confirm it. Thankya kindly