Status on Joe Sequel · 10:44pm Aug 31st, 2013
This is where I should have put some of the stuff I had as comments to myself at the story. So some of this is repeated information.
Up to fifty-thousand words of almost useable story, that I’d prefer to read and tweak a few more times but could post. Though that does only mean I have covered the first day after the end of Joe. As I said in the story comment when you have a Princess Summit, six other Ponies, a Dragon, and a Human all going about their business the little vignettes for them all did add up.
I also said in the story comment that I thought taking things as far as a week after where I had Equestria Girls would not worsen things. This is something I have reconsidered as I had intended Joe to return to Ponyville two days before the others so he could get back to work at Fluttershy’s cottage. The thought has occurred however that I could use that gap for the Season 4 opening threat, depending on whether it could placed after Equestria Girls rather than before. I think I remember reading that Magical Mystery Cure and the Season 4 opener would, in effect, be a three-part episode and that was why I had the vague comments in Joe about them saving Equestria from ‘something’.
As unlikely as it seems from the spoilers (that I neither sought out nor took care to avoid) that it would work for Joe to be dealing with their luggage at the Ponyville station while they are diverted to deal with that threat I have decided to leave that day’s plan unexpanded. So the amount I’d be willing to post shrinks to Joe’s day and a half in the Crystal Empire and what they all do during the afternoon of that second day.
Of course willing to post and able to type in advance are different things. My feeling is that things should change a lot for Twilight Sparkle when she becomes both Alicorn and Princess but that it is almost certain that she’ll continue with her happy life in Ponyville. And that even if she doesn’t that won’t affect things like Joe talking to the Cutie Mark Crusaders and admitting that he was close to a breakdown when he was brought to Equestria. It tipped the balance but he was only a few months away from people saying ‘Did you hear about Joe? He quit and went to grow cabbages in Norfolk…’ so working at Sweet Apple Acres was very close to being the sort of low-stress physical job he’d have taken anyway.
Most episodes seem to take place within a day or two and the plan for Joe 2 has that much slack so I can write quite a lot of the skeleton. But I do want to see if I get any ideas for more subplots from the episodes. Not the main plots of them, side comments and the like. The whole Microlight subplot in Joe came from the mention of Skydiving in Just for Sidekicks and the reasonable question of ‘how do humans skydive’ leading to talk of human flying machines. So little things like that where it seems something could be made.
My main problem with Joe 2 is whether I am going to let Joe be heroic. I have some historical speculation and if I let Joe discover something then as well as adding to that speculation it also gives him a Chekhov’s Gun. So extend the speculation into a threat and fire that gun? Given how the Ponies of Ponyville treat the Mane 6 it does seem like I’d not be completely discarding the idea of the Ponyfolk being unimpressed by the human. And given that they’d already realised the falseness of…
“Nice and peaceful?” scoffed Rainbow Dash. “They… we… thought you were just barely smarter than the pets and probably needed to sit down three or four times every time you walked from your hut to Ponyville.”
…thanks to his new part-time job and Rainbow Dash’s efforts it seems only a small extra step. Though as Joe would end up in the hospital and that would be a good ending it would mean Joe 3. Wherein Joe strives to regain his quiet life and likely realises that he wasn’t completely pleased that had been so easy as he had been at least a little awesome.
Or to summarise. Working on sequel to Joe. Not working as fast. Considering letting Joe have a one-time bout of awesome.
Progress has been slow as I dithered. But the separate document with Joe’s bout of awesome has been integrated into the main one and the ideas for the consequences of him doing this have been put in their own one. It is a case of:
Okay, so Joe does that… find something or not?
What would be a good thing to find?
Hmm… if things were like that then why the change?
Right, so if things changed then how would those Ponies react?
Okay… theory on why that is why it is. And finding the something means Joe has the Chekhov’s Gun, fire it?
Ah! Used an analogy, but that doesn’t answer why that is still as it is…
But this reason for it still being thus would explain a need for that assistance and why the Chekhov’s Gun needs to be fired.
And using what Joe found to solve that problem could be what causes the other… though not his fault this time.
Too heroic? Dither. Dither. Blog Post. Dither.
Hmm… maybe the reason for why that is thus was only half-true… good reason, plausible, but more to it?
That would fit the cosmology ideas and why the risk would be taken… decide later whether to have that on top of everything else, make notes at that point in plan.
Reply to own blog post.
So at the moment Joe 2: Dash It All is in danger of having chunks of speculation mixed in with the painting of fences and doing of shopping. As well as weeding his vegetable patch and taking walks in the hills he might get heroic after quoting Shakespeare…
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage
…and commenting that let’s see if he can emulate an angry stripy kitty. Which does drift the story further away from the original idea. Got some replies on Joe that he should have been more assertive (to rephrase them politely) but the point was that he was supposed to be fairly normal and background. Still, as I said in the blog post, making him ‘average with one awesome’ is not too much worse than ‘average’.
One correction to the blog post though. If Joe does have to deal with the luggage he will have to deal with the Ponyville stationmaster who cheated Spike out of a gem and seems an unhelpful crook. And if Joe has to deal with him then I’d rewrite the problems Applejack and Pinkie Pie have with the stationmaster in the Crystal Empire to make it a genuine misunderstanding. That part of Just for Sidekicks annoyed me enough that although it was averted in Joe I still wanted a stationmaster git to have some sort of smackdown, but if Joe has to deal with the original then can make it him rather than displaced aggression.
Onwards with what is becoming more unique with the addition of more of my historical and cosmological speculation and more generic with Joe doing some of the usual cliches since those flow from his past actions. Let's see if I can break 100k by the end of the weekend including all the 'sometime in week 3 or 4' notes and sections of rough plan.