Private just isn't getting a break.

Poor guy, tormented by Sombra in two stories. Eh what can I say, I just love torturing the poor pony. I've been typing up the next chapter in the Tyrant and suddenly started to reflect on my little grumpy horse. If you're interested, I'm gonna reflect some more right after the break.

Image by Taco Bandit

Private Iceland does not have the dubious honor of being my first original character. Considering that I've been writing for well over 20 years by now, he is somewhere in bottom 2000 of my long list of characters I've created over the years. Heck he isn't even my first Pony character, Snow Heart and Silver Axe from In the Broad Daylight are the first.

Private Iceland was originally created as a joke. I was fooling around and created what I called, Private Iceland Pony and jokingly called him my ponysona, and non seriously would tell people that "yeah, sure that's my pony sona" when people asked. That was back in 2012, only few short months later, I dropped the Pony from his name and just made him a regular character and started saying, "nope that's not my ponysona, I don't have one."

I quite honestly never really got into this whole ponysona thing. Though I've somewhat reluctantly given another character that I barely use, that title now, so if you really want to know, his name is Copper Bright, is a brownish little Earth Pony with a speech balloon for a cutie mark. But I'm digressing, back to the grump.

Frankly, I originally wanted Private more to be the "Kermit the Frog" of my cast of pony characters, he was sort of in charge trying to keep the rest of this crazy gang I was slowly creating in check. Of course a Kermit needs his Miss Piggy and Private got Dew Doe, though I didn't quite go that much Miss Piggy with her at all, just had her being attracted to Private but being usually content on just being near him, occasionally annoying him with the attention, but deep down he secretly enjoyed it.

Of course I ended up dropping the Kermit idea too. Then in a character development RP I play with few friends of mine, I started playing Private to finally try and figure this guy out. I wound up with a silent reclusive grump who is not terribly open to other ponies except selected few, has a twin brother he doesn't really like and eccentric parents. He has a love of history and works in a museum in Fillydelphia.

Now the thing with his name, I was actually going to change it a long time ago. I mean, Private Iceland, it just sounds odd even for MLP. However I just got too used to it and it became stuck to him. Though I started a trend with him that he prefers just to be called Private. My official story how he got his name is that his parent's named him after the ancient name of the Frozen North, "The Ice Lands" shortening it to Ice-Lands and then Iceland and added Private because he was their Private Ice-Lands. Probably the only reason Private hasn't legally changed his name is because he doesn't want to hurt their feelings.

Figuring out Private's talent was easy, it just stuck to me right away for some reason, he loves history and that's where his talent lies, thus he got a book as a cutie mark. At least I think that's a book.

Having Private being a twin came much later in his development, however I just hadn't made Pony twins yet and decided he would get a twin brother. This is a small habit of mine actually. I organize my characters in sets depending on what storyworld they belong in and I tend to have in each set at least one pair of twins. Call this a quirk if you like, but it's something I just like to do. So Private got a twin brother, Barricade. Now usually my twin characters are closely bonded and all that, but for Private and Barricade I decided to mix it up a little and have them estranged, gave more opportunity for conflict.

So how did I end up loving to torture the poor guy? I honestly don't know, I just love writing this guy in situation's he's not comfortable in. Private is the type who just wants to sit quietly in a corner and read his history books, but life just won't let him. No wonder he's grumpy.

Unless you know how to get him to dance, by waving Pancakes just out of his reach.

The first time I actually used Private (and his two roommates, Dew Doe and Foxy Stripes) was in this kind of pixel form in a two page comic I made:

This is very obviously one of his earliest incarnations as he still refers to himself as my unofficial ponysona, that dropped just few short days after I had posted the comic. However, I haven't changed this in this comic since it's a nice part of his history. I'm also making all kinds of fun of things in the first comic, beginners mistakes in Sprite comics, beginners mistake in Pony fanfiction. You can also see him in a more Kermit like role there but it's fading already because at this point I was also playing him in the RP I mentioned and his more grumpy persona was starting to take over.

Shortly after that I started my proper Pony Pixel Comics where his grumpy persona had all but taken over. That version of the comic has been cancelled and I'm in the process of rebooting it, but the archive for the entire thing can be found here:

http://askre5.deviantart.com/gallery/42108173/Old-Pony-Pixel-Comics

Here are some of my favorite Private strips from the old comic. I do apologize for the length, they were created originally for more easy scrolling on DA.

I do not regret this joke

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Private thinks he's fooling everyone

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I have no idea where Pivate's pancake addiction came from.

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For Dew and Private, this is Tuesday

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Private is not as sneaky as he thinks he is

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Face to face with his evil mirror self, Private couldn't care less.

I've also for fun made comics using the Pony Creator, but I think I'll spare everyone that one considering the reputation Pony Creator has, those were mostly done just for my RP friends anyway to give them an idea how my pony characters looked like.

But that's Private Iceland, I will admit that he is one of my favorite characters I've created, I just have too much fun with him sometimes. Though he would probably disagree since it isn't always fun for him.

Now if you'll excuse me, I best get back to having Sombra torment him some more.

Until later