Twilight Falls, Sunset Dawns - Author Notes · 12:44pm Apr 3rd, 2015
Well, here we are. Ten months and 16 chapters later, my biggest pony fic to date is complete, and there's some stuff to cover.
I'd like to begin these notes with a huge thank you to my five pre-readers - RT Stephens, Dawnrunner, Albinocorn, Winter Solstice, and NightWolf289. You guys are awesome, and let me tell the rest of you, without their help cleaning up my poor grammar and sentence structure, this story would not be what it ended up becoming, so give them a round of applause. Then a round of applause to FallingRain22 for her cover art and comic tie-in, she did these for no money, something a poor beggar like me really appreciates, and it made a powerful image to represent the story.
While I'm thanking folks, more thanks to Prak and BronyWriter of the Royal Guard, Cromegas_Flare of the Pleasant Commentators and Review Group, and Tired Old Man from WRITE, for their in-depth analysis and reviews of the story. You guys were tough but fair and helped me to rethink numerous elements of my fic and work to improve it overall, and I thank you for your time with your reviews. For that matter, thanks to everyone who ever commented ever, even if you didn't care for the fic, waiting eagerly for comments every Friday I updated made my day.
So, the actual point of the blog post - Author's Notes. Some minor ones were sprinkled through the story, but here's some major ones I left out.
* First off, the ending. I realized after Chapter 14 was posted and I looked back at all the feedback, that the ending would be polarizing. However, it was not made up at the last minute or anything. I’ve had this precise ending planned since I started it all. The plan all along was for the story to end with Sunset becoming Twilight’s student. If I pulled it off well or not, well, that’s up to the individual reader at this point.
* Rosen Cross’s role in the fic has a complex history. In an earlier outline of the story, Twilight would interact with numerous figures from Sunset’s past and learn how each of them knew her differently and influenced her. I don’t recall when Rosen came into the picture, but I liked his dynamic with Twilight as it was much more personal than her interactions with a different cast member or two each chapter would be. Numerous ideas for Rosen were thought up, including him being the leader of some secret society, being a descendant of Star Swirl, or being his reincarnation, but they were discarded for various reasons, largely because Rosen was not the focus of the story, Sunset and Twilight were. The one idea I did want to run with, but couldn’t find a way to work into the story organically, was that Rosen was in love with Celestia but never told her because of their social stations. This is why he is so viciously hateful of Sunset, because she hurt Celestia, and he thought of her as the daughter he and Celestia could never truly have together. When a commenter compared Rosen to Severus Snape, they were quite on the money.
*Sunset’s full backstory was planned. She was an orphan who was found by Celestia during a parade when she sensed Sunset’s magical potential, and took her as a student. This was left out, as I didn’t want readers to feel emotionally manipulated into sympathizing with Sunset, and making her an orphan felt like it would be crossing into that. It was also pointed out by pre-readers this backstory was not relevant to the main story.
* Similarly, another detail not worked into the story was the history of Rosen’s home. It’s an alternate lab used by Star Swirl in ancient times, and has been passed down through the years from Archmage to Archmage. As Rosen says in chapter 3, when a new Archmage takes his place, they will take over the lab. I had planned for perhaps some sort of secret passage to exist to connect it to Star Swirl’s lab in the castle as seen in the comics, but I abandoned that idea.
* So, what was up with Sunset’s mental problems? A lot of readers offered several varying opinions, which I liked and wanted, I intended to allow for different interpretations. The central concept I stuck to, however, is that Sunset has Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Disorder. She thought her destiny was to be a princess and possibly restore the Elements of Harmony, and when those two goals were jeopardized by Twilight’s arrival, her issues started to grow. She remained a high-functioning sufferer by projecting blame for her failures onto Twilight, Celestia, and Rosen, convincing herself it was their fault. Over the course of the later chapters, Sunset begins to realize the fault is hers after all, resulting in denial and overcompensating, and then an identity crisis edging on depression as those coping mechanisms break down and actual CMFID sets in.
* Other than the reference to iocane powder in Chapter 11 (which is a shout-out of another sort), all the materials mentioned in reference to alchemy are real, incorporated into the story with a combination of Wikipedia research and consultation from friends, and their appearances were also intended to be accurate.
* Chapter 4’s flashback to Sunset’s falling out with the Humane Five was originally longer, and escalated into a physical confrontation between Sunset and Rainbow Dash. I toned it down because I wanted neither party to come out looking bad, it would be easy to demonize the Humane Five to make Sunset more sympathetic, but that wasn’t my intent. It was just meant to be seen as misunderstandings and miscommunication, and there was no way to escalate the scene to physical violence without someone being an instigator and thus the bad guy. Sunset is an unreliable narrator, so leaving the exact circumstances of the falling out after the flashback to her to explain allowed me to accomplish this ambiguity easier.
* Chapter 7 was written before even chapter 5 was posted, as it was a pivotal chapter and I wanted to fine tune it to perfection before it went live. For the same reason, the final chapters were written in bits and pieces many months ahead of time, and I then wrote between the separate scenes I had to make them into proper chapters. Content often shifted between Chapters 13 and 14 to balance their length and focus, and Chapters 11 and 12 were planned as one chapter before I realized that lone chapter would be too long.
* Chapter 10, the story that gave me such writer’s block I made a blog post about it, went through a lot of changes. The initial plan was for Sunset to faint in public and wake up in a hospital, but I realized it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to be partying the next day, and there was no way the knowledge of what happened to her could be kept secret after so many ponies saw her. This was dealt with by shifting the scene to Zecora’s hut. The dream sequence was also going to happen under different circumstances – Sunset was going to stumble into poison joke and experience a physical transformation. I talked over with my pre-readers various ideas for what/who she would transform into and if I should even reveal it or let readers speculate, but decided to drop it. When the chapter was originally conceived as Sunset in a hospital, the same character and plot development as in the final version of the chapter were to be accomplished by her talking to a psychiatrist.
* The name of the spell stone, “Waljiru” is derived from “wal jijjiiruu,” the word for ‘exchange’ in the Oromo language, the same language where Zecora’s name is taken. I simplified the word into “Waljiru” for simplicity of spelling and pronunciation. Given it’s a Zebra word in the fic, not Oromo, it’s also partially to cover my ass for almost certainly butchering the Oromo language via the on-line translation websites I consulted. In earlier versions of the chapter, it was the “Camibare” Stone, and was changed to an African-inspired name to tie in better with its origins.
* I admittedly forgot about Owlowiscious after the mention in Chapter 1. I believe it was a pre-reader who questioned this, which led into his return in Chapter 9 and then his role in Twilight’s infiltration in Chapter 13.
* Ho boy, was Luna ever a touchy topic. After Chapter 8 there was a lot of debate in the comments over if she knew about the body swap or not. I admit, I had not always had it planned out either way. The idea of Luna knowing was certainly there, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to run with it. As commenters noted, either Luna was an idiot for not picking up on Sunset’s obvious hints, or she was cruel for letting Sunset run amok in Twilight’s body. In hindsight I sort of wrote myself into a corner because both views are right in their own regard. I decided to go with “yes, she knows” because Luna being a secretive mentor fit better than her being too dumb to catch Sunset in her lies, especially since Celestia has often acted the same way with Twilight. The scene of her in Chapter 12 was done on feedback from a reviewer who suggested such a scene to make Luna’s knowledge more obvious and provide more foreshadowing of such.
* Speaking of Luna, everyone began picking up on the hints of her role in things, but no one asked about Zecora despite the constant references to zebra magic. Also, her rhymes were a pain in the flank to write. I almost wrote her out of chapters 13/14 and let Twilight find out about the stone from her books, but that would lead to the logical question of how Sunset couldn’t find anything over several days when Twilight found the answer in hours at most. Then I took into account the foreshadowing spent for Zecora’s role, and she got to stay.
* The relationships between Sunset, Twilight and Celestia were heavily influenced by the idea of a sibling rivalry. Sunset sees Twilight as the new arrival that stole her mother’s attention from her and ruined the “perfect” family dynamic they had, and feels she has lived her life in Twilight’s shadow.
* The very last part of the story when Twilight talks about Sunset’s cutie mark. I almost added a comparison to a phoenix, with how Sunset is constantly knocked down in life but stands back up, to give a wink as her new Rainbow Rocks song that came out earlier in the week. But I decided the symbolism was stretched too much for what would just be a little nod to the song, and left it out.
There is plenty more I could discuss, particularly concerning thematic and character elements and symbolisms, etc, but I want to leave some things up for interpretation. However, if anyone has questions concerning the fic, feel free to ask and I'll answer as best I can.
The last point is I had a fleeting, barely-formed idea for a sequel. A few years later, Rosen begins searching for an heir to his position as Royal Archmage, and a tournament is arranged. A much better adjusted Sunset enters, and the other contestants would include Trixie, Shining Armor, and possibly an antagonist. Discord may also be featured as a supporting character. The fic would explore the backstories of Sunset, Shining Armor, Trixie, and Rosen, and focus on how they play off of each other. Keep in mind this is just a very rough concept - at this moment I have no plans to pen it and no ideas for it beyond what I just described. Buuut if I start getting some really cool ideas to fill the chapters and there's interest, who knows, maybe in the future.
For now, I have another fic ready to go! Fans of Trixie and the Cutie Mark Crusaders, tune in as our three favorite fillies get into all sorts of magical hijinks with the greatest and most powerful unicorn in all of Equestria!
It was a pleasure to help! It was a good story and gave me plenty to think about in terms of character psychology and the notion of what we want isn't always for the best.
Laters!
Woot
Isn't he already kinda busy being a prince of the Crystal Empire?
Also, yes, there is interest in a sequel, at least from me.
2941299 Nah, we all know males hold no real political power in Equestria.
2941322
... I almost added a comparison to a phoenix...
You do realize that Sunset Shimmer's color scheme is almost stripe for strip identical to Philomena, whose name actually translates out as "Powerful Love." I liked the comparison and used it on Flash Sunset, but I think I bobbled the ending chapters on mine something fierce. There are other parallels too, her crash and subsequent rebirth, and of course the wings of fire they give her on one of the recent promos for the EqG movies.
Overall, it was a great story, with a lot of contrasting emotional work of the key characters, and I could tell you put a lot of work into fitting them together in a way that felt natural, without anyone being evil just for the heck of it.