Deleted Scenes: Point insertion · 12:49am Jun 4th, 2015
You should probably read the actual chapter before reading this post.
The following cut was my very first draft of the start of the chapter:
"Are you sure you'll be fine, Spike?"
"For the fifth time, yes, Twilight!" exasperatedly answered the aforementioned dragon, tiredly rubbing his face. "We already re-shelved this week, I did every single one of my chores and all the books are in the library right now because barely anypony ever comes in here for those anyway! The real question is, are YOU going to be alright?"
"Who, me? Of course I'm going to be alright! Why wouldn't I be alright? Princess Celestia just asked me to immediately prepare myself for a trip to her castle for something so important it couldn't wait until tomorrow! What's wrong with that!?" she rapidly spoke while filling her saddlebags with books, notes, quills, ink pots, miscellaneous scrolls and more books, all the while pacing back and forth as her mane slowly lost its composure to reflect the unicorn's own panicking state.
"Relax, Twilight!" he groaned. "You're overreacting again, just like you do every time you're about to get a test or when you're worried about being 'tardy'!"
She completely froze, her pupils shrinking down to tiny pinpricks before Spike could realize his mistake.
"That... THAT'S IT! The Princess is about to give me a TEST on everything I've learned about friendship during my time in Ponyville and she's going to question me on my knowledge of my friends and each of their elements and--"
Spike faceclawed.
I wasn't entirely sure how to continue from there and, since I got stuck for a day or two on that part alone, I just scrapped it and started over. Besides, Twilight overreacting "just like that" is a little too cliché in my personal opinion, so I rewrote it in a way that it still happened but, instead of having the cause of the panic be the letter she got from Celestia, it was rather from Spike and his tendency to be oblivious to certain things.
Next, I'm not entirely certain where exactly this part was situated at, but it was sometime near where Celestia ended up saying that they "should all take a rest for the night" after Yearling explained most of what she knew of Artemis.
Twilight gasped. She would have WEEKS to be able to learn more about her favorite author! But... but they couldn't go to sleep right now! She had so many questions! Maybe she could quickly ask--
"Could you at least tell us how you got the inspiration for coming up with Ahuizotl both as a character and as the main antagonist of the series!?" asked Twilight with a hopeful grin.
Celestia's eyes widened in anticipation. "Indeed, how did you come up with such an interesting villain? I must admit I've never seen a creature such as he during my thousands of years of existence!"
"I, um, eheh" nervously began Dar- Yearling as a bead of sweat rolled down her face, "well, you tend to see and experience a lot of things while traveling the world, which is kind of what I do to... umm... get inspiration! Yes. That was how I came up to him. I-I mean, with him." She grinned a little too widely.
Cadance smirked. "I think she just said you don't spend enough time outside, Aunty."
That scene was cut out because, in a way, I felt that it just didn't flow properly with the rest of the chapter. It might just be me, though...
No matter which story we talk about, there are "moods" present in it that change as the chapter goes on. There's times where I want the focus to be on comedy/happy times, other times on fluff, a few times on sad feels, etc..
In a way, I was setting up that part of the chapter to gently switch into 'sad feels', thus having a sort-of comedic section right in the middle of it kind of would've broken the smooth transition.
Also Cadance's last line there felt kind of OOC. Or maybe not. I don't know...
In a similar vein to the second deleted scene, I imagine there is potential for some very amusing scenes where Artemis makes random outbursts while
Daring DoYearling is under questioning that would point that she is more than she tries to appear to be.I assume Celestia is fully aware of what
Daring DoYearling does, she was hired after all for that purpose. I don't think she can resist commenting on it. Like Artemis saying 'Bad!' and pointing at an image of Ahuizotl, and her inquiring when Yearling had time to teach Artemis that. Or read her own stories to Artemis.3121667 I was going to make it so that Celestia knew that Yearling was good at exploring tombs and random locations in the middle of nowhere, thus where Yearling got her inspiration for her stories, but Celestia didn't actually know that the stories the author wrote actually had some truth in them. Setting up the story so that the readers could understand Celestia's lack of knowledge on that matter was a bit difficult to execute, which is also why I had removed the related scene in this blog post.
Luckily, Cadance and Twilight have no knowledge of Yearling's actual background