Distaff's Lab · 4:47am Jan 5th, 2016
So, if, for some unfathomable reason, you make a habit of reading my blog posts, you'll remember that exactly a month ago, I wrote a blog post about how much I loved the Krampus film. Now, here we are, a month later, and my belated Christmas story is out. It features Krampus. I suppose there's something very telling about my creative process there.
Oh! And if you didn't know, my latest story is out. It's A Krampus Carol, and it's the latest update in Octavia's story. You should probably go read that before continuing this blog post, because I'm going to be spoiling the heck out of it. Think of this blog post as the kind of director's commentary, where I try to describe something that could be loosely defined as my creative process. It's something I've been considering for a while, and this seems like as good a time as any.
Anyways, I'm going to be doing this a little... Odd. I'm going to try to transcribe my thought processes pretty directly, and my thought processes tend to sound a lot like conversations between poorly defined characters. For that reason, you should read below the page break as a dialog with no tags, with paragraph breaks marking a change in speaker. Warning: If you want to believe in some sort of creative lightning bolt type of inspiration, you probably shouldn't read ahead.
You've been warned.
Hmm. It's almost Christmas, and I'm not doing anything special with my stories.
You didn't do anything special for Halloween, either, and the last two years, you did special Nightmare Night stories.
True, but I did release Your Own Worst Enemy on Halloween, and the first chapter of that was kind of intense. Anyways, we should definitely do a Hearth's Warming story this year as an apology for skimping on Halloween.
Okay, fine, but it's December 14, and you don't have an idea for a story. You've got eleven days to plot and write this, and then, you have to hope one of your editors can get it done by Christmas.
Not necessarily. We could release it during the twelve days of Christmas, so that gives us until early January. That's not so unreasonable for our editors.
Alright, so the Christmas story, it's going to be set in the Orchestra-verse, right?
Yes, I was thinking we could do something with Sweetie, I have some ideas on how she spends her Hearth's Warming. It could be nice and fluffy.
Problem, genius, Sweetie's next Hearth's Warming will take place during Your Own Worst Enemy, and certain major plot twists would be spoiled if you set it then or any Hearth's Warming after Your Own Worst Enemy, and I don't think you want to set this story during the time skip, either. We've seen enough of drugged out Sweetie to last a lifetime.
Okay, well... Oh! Of course, we can focus it on Octavia. We've been wanting to pick up her story for a while, and this will give us a good opportunity to look in on her, Vinyl, Racket, and the rest.
That's not a terrible idea, but you need more to the story than just "Octavia and Vinyl at Hearth's Warming."
Krampus!
(Heavy sighing) You're really going to do this? After writing a blog post where you practically drop down on your knees to fellate the film, you're going to do a Krampus story?
Yes. Look, we know Racket is going to be an unruly hellion, maybe to get her to be quiet, Vinyl tells her a story about Krampus to try and keep her on the straight and narrow until Hearth's Warming. That would be like something Vinyl would do, especially if her parents did it to her.
Right, and then Octavia could be conflicted about lying to Racket?
Ooh, yeah! Especially if Vinyl's pregnant with their next kid, then Octavia could be exhausted from dealing with Racket so much and be more inclined to go along with the lie, but Vinyl would want to take it too far and have someone show up actually dressed as Krampus, and Octavia would be absolutely against that.
But Vinyl would do it anyways?
Of course, and it would be the least convincing Krampus impersonation ever. Something Racket could see through right away, so she starts acting out again, and that's when the real Krampus shows up and Octavia fights him.
Hold it! We are not doing another thing where Octavia fights monsters. Besides, this is Equestria, Krampus should be... softer and less a monster. We're going to use a more traditional folk Krampus, not the Krampus in the film (although we can certainly take visual cues from him).
Yeah, that's fair. Okay, so instead of fighting him, he and Octavia will have... a talk? That's not really a climax.
Have you read your stories? They're basically all structured around conversations for some reason. Almost like you have a perpetual conversation with yourself in your head. Besides, it would be truer to the spirit of the Orchestra-verse and the show if they talked things out instead of doing a fight.
So, it's going to be like one of those kids shows, where the monster under the bed turns out to be not that bad. I can dig it, but we need an emotional core to wrap this story around. Right now, we just have a main plot with some possible fluff to explore.
Well, we kind of have something with revelation going on. Krampus is revealed to be a pretty okay Hearth's Warming monster, and we do need to reveal the real meaning of Racket's name at some point. It's a Hearth's Warming story, so the mood should be kind of reflective, anyways.
Okay, we have something here, but it still doesn't feel finished. We need imagery and metaphor and we should probably flesh out Krampus's character a little more. If he's not going to be mean, what's he going to be.
Well, you know what this kind of reminds me of? Death from the Discworld series in general, but Hogfather in particular. He has a scary reputation, but in reality is a pretty decent guy.
That's definitely something we can use. So, in MLP, Krampus is like Death.
Ooh! What if Krampus IS Death? You know, he spends the rest of the year reaping, but then on Hearth's Warming Eve, he gets to go around giving coal. It's like his one night off a year.
That's not... a terrible idea, but we shouldn't state it explicitly, just hint at it a little. Oh, and make his eyes glow blue as a tip of the hat to Discworld. Also, if he is Death, he might have an interest in Octavia considering she kind of managed to cheat him a whole bunch during Nightmare Night.
Well, technically, she didn't cheat him so much as Discord had enough thought to make sure nopony got killed because of his prank.
Then he had the night off, even better. We can say he saw her at the Nightmare Night party. Also, you said something earlier about coal. Let's go back to that image, because I thin it's a useful image/metaphor. Think about it, it's considered to be a bad gift, but when it comes to staying warm in the cold, I'd rather have a lump of coal with me than a game. The coal can keep you alive and warm.
And the holiday is called Hearth's Warming Eve. Maybe coal isn't given as punishment, but to remind ponies of the real spirit of the season. Coal can be seen as representative of the holiday. It gives of itself to keep those around it warm. And with Krampus going around giving coal, that kind of ties him in as the keeper of the holiday spirit.
So, since we're tackling the Hearth's Warming cosmology, where does that put Santa Hooves? People are going to want to know.
Well, if Octavia and Vinyl aren't going to believe Krampus is real, then they really shouldn't believe Santa Hooves is real either, and if Krampus is real, then it also feels like Santa Hooves should be real.
But that puts us in the same situation as all those bad Christmas films where adults don't believe in Santa even though he's leaving gifts under the tree. Please tell me we aren't going to do that bullshit in our story.
Absolutely not, so... Okay! Hear me out, but what if he's real in a metaphorical way. Like that conversation at the end of Hogfather where Death talks about why you need to believe in things to make them real. If that's the case, then Santa Hooves could be more like a feeling, something intangible that drives ponies to be compassionate.
The fire in your hearth.
Yes. There. I think that's it. We've got a story structured around these reveals. Getting coal isn't a punishment, Krampus is a generally amiable fellow, and Racket isn't a musician, and it's all got this reflective feeling to it. We've got a plot, we've got a general emotional center, we have a story.
You know, if anyone ever figures out how you come up with your story ideas, they're going to think you're the biggest hack in the universe.
Yeah, that would probably be bad.
And there it is. And that's why I titled this post "Distaff's Lab," because if what I do is creative, it's creation in the same way that Frankenstein created his monster. Sorting through heaps of old ideas, ripped from once living stories, and now hastily sewn together with several other ideas and concepts found interesting. That's why I try to read so much and so widely, because I need all the ideas I can get to serve as fodder. I know this probably isn't the best thing to admit, but I've always said that if you could take one of my stories apart and put them under a microscope, you'd see the DNA of a dozen different stories in there.
So yeah, I hope you enjoyed the trip to the lab where I Frankenstein all my stories together, and I hope you can still enjoy the rest of my stories now that you've seen a glmpse at how they're made. Hopefully, someone found this a little interesting.
