Muffins at the End of the Universe, a writer's companion, volume two

One of the things I was unsure about with Trixie Times Two was Derpy's inclusion. She didn't really do a lot plot wise or character wise and I feel on reflection like there was no need for her to even be there. I figured if I'm going to keep her in this series, her character needs to be explored a lot more. But what is her character? Being obsessed with muffins to me is not a character trait; it's just a quirk. The main thing I got from her portrayal in Slice of Life, is her bond with Doctor Whooves, and so their mutual respect and loyalty became a central theme when writing The Enemy Within. It created an opportunity to expand on the Doctor's character some more as well.

The idea to make Derpy an alicorn actually originated from a piece of dialogue I wrote between Twilight and Trixie about how even Derpy can fly better than Twilight, to which she responds that Derpy would not be able to perform magic as well as she can if she was given a horn. I was initially dubious about going ahead with the story, given that "alicorn" seems to be something of a dirty word around the fandom, but then I was never going for featurebox material with this series anyway. The haters will hate and if I really cared it would be missing the whole point of Muffins at the End of the Universe. For what it matters you can hardly say she is overpowered since she spends the entire story unable to control her magic, and it's not meant to be taken too seriously anyway; she is fighting a giant muffin monster after all...

Of course another of the elements that came together to form The Enemy Within was my love of Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep, so when I saw an opportunity to weave the Tantabus into the story I couldn't resist. Fangirling about something is not always a good thing when writing however. I find it's better to write fanfiction as though you are not a fan, and avoid shoehorning loads of references into every scene. For example I deliberately made a point of not having Derpy say "I just don't know what went wrong" in the first chapter, because every time someone writes that it just makes me cringe. Similarly with the Tantabus, I tried to just explain what it is and what it does briefly and then get on with the story.