updates 6/29/13 and some reconsidering of Twilight's portrayal In TMWTN · 5:39am Jun 29th, 2013
Today, in a search for some inspiration/procrastination material, I looked up some pony videos. I stumbled across this video, The Best of Twilight Sparkle, or something to that effect. As would be expected, it was a series of clips from all three seasons of Twilight living, learning, being adorkable, and being an all around cute little pony learning about friendship.
It struck me how different the Twilight in "Man With Two Names" acts from the Twilight Sparkle we all know and love. I realize that I'm not being completely true to her character. Her core trait is a thirst for knowledge, and her lack of curiosity in the human is striking. It seems to add a whole layer of vitriol to her actions which I meant to be her genuinely trying to do what she thought best for everypony (but not necessarily everyone).
I feel dishonest in my portrayal of Twilight. I took this adorable pony learning about friendship and turned her into a racist fiend. The story keeps on getting darker and darker than I mean it to. For a few minutes I wasn't able to write anymore of the current chapter. It was terrible to know how casually I created a world of racism and hatred out of what I originally intended to be a comedy piece about some human schmuck that couldn't catch a break.
It's not that the overall direction of the story changed; I had the arc of the story, from beginning to end planned out since chapter two was published, and I'm not going to change it (although, I originally planned for seven chapters. Now the storyboard calls for 17. There's quite of bit of in between stuff that got added.) It's just that it got a whole lot more soul crushing than I ever originally conceived.
MINOR SPOILER
I planned a chapter where her curiosity outweighs her prejudice. Just to be a little more true to the cute lavender pony that we know and love. It won't change the overall story, but it will give Jerry a bit of a break
It's not that I'm complaining, or think the story is taking a turn for the worse, it's just that stories, independent of your intentions, take up a life of their own, and lead you somewhere other than where you expected. I think that in this case, it's actually good, because it's challenging me as a writer, and making me write something that is a bit more deep and meaningful than what I originally intended.
UPDATES
Working hard on chapter 9. It's about halfway written. I've also been working on the other chapters to come. I hit a major breakthrough in some of the latter chapters, and I'm kind of excited about that.
In unrelated to writing news, I finally got a job for the summer! I'm going to be working at a summer school as a teacher's aide! wooooooo employment
You know, there is sometimes a story that catches my attention too much and I worry for the characters inside as if they were real. I worried for your OC and for that world, but in a mostly bad way. i was excited to see Spike and the OC maybe change things, but if you are going to rewrite it then I think I can live with that and am excited to see it!
Are you rewriting? Cause I vote yes if so. I obsessed a bit too much on this story in my head after I finished reading...
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I don't think I'm going to rewrite anything until the fic is completed. At this point, I'm just trying to get all of the chapters published before I go back to college.
Well if the story plays out the same either way then I guess that is cool. If no then wouldn't that mean you are literally writing an alternative universe? Normally I would not bother much but the OCs plight really got to me in a depressing way... 1176239
Oh god. You get to help teach summer school? Man, I do NOT envy you. I get to work at a local used bookstore, and you'd be surprised how many people who read are also morons. I know people who go to summer school, and you have my deepest condolences.
Well this sounds promising.
I just went and re-read the first two chapters and it struck me how different their overall tone was compared to the later ones. They manage a neat balance between the conflicts and prejuidices surrounding our resident human, how ponies learn to look past these and some light comedy played on the whole matter. What followed seemed rather lacking in anything but the speciesism, which you yourself addressed in the most recent two chapters.
Putting ponies that haven't really got to know Jeremiah in situations where they cannot avoid him nor beat him up as a solution might be the way to go.
Concerning purplesmart I was very much surprised when she didn't make a research project out of the human when her books didn't provide a decent answer. I cannot imagine her settling for naught but hear-say when a near-unknown species is living literally down the street. Fear never seemed to be much of an issue with her, either.
Or she's just waiting for the princess' go ahead on the matter but that doesn't make sense when she is already suggesting to throw him out of town. Heck, did Twilight ever even ask for where he came from other than "out of the Everfree"?
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when I rewrite it, I'm going to start with chapter five, because I feel like the whole "got beat up thing" was unnecessarily cruel and that marks the turning point in the story to sadsville. I'll probably rewrite it so he just gets chased off the farm, instead of getting the ever loving shit beat out of him. That will make the story a lot less sad.
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Yeah, that sounds about alright.
I'm perfectly fine with him being shunned and avoided by the pony population but beaten to a pulp was just over the top.
Congrats on your new job I know the feeling.
Writing a good story is more important than keeping everything completely in canon.
Problem is, until Twilight considers something important, she does ignore it. She's had Spike for years and hasn't assembled a library of data on him: dragon healthcare, dragon society, dragon psychology. She had access to the Royal Archives at the highest level, to the extent that sneaking in like a ninja at 0-dark-30 elicits no suspicion from the guards who haven't seen her in months. So it's deliberate that she knows next to nothing about Spike's species.
So if Twilight doesn't care about a subject, it will be ignored. Likewise, in Feeling Pinkie Keen, even a piano being dropped on her head doesn't dissuade her from her insistence that the Pinky Sense can't exist. PInky, by quantifying her twitches into predictions is a vastly better scientist than Twilight. Spike, by also observing and quantifying is a better scientist than Twilight.
Twilight is an excellent priest, worshiping/honoring her god and keeping with traditions. Move far enough outside those traditions and what she's learned, and it utterly destroys her carefully constructed world-view. She reacts badly to those deviations from orthodoxy.
It's not hard to believe that she would react negatively to a massive disruption to her worldview and ignore obvious clues a more open-minded person would accept.