The Story Post #6 - Private Iceland and Barricade · 6:08am Mar 17th, 2016
I almost completely forgot it's Thursday and thus Story Post time. 
I'm cheating since this technically covers two stories (three if we count Tango in regards to Barricade) but I've only tagged Possession because that's where majority of their character development has happened so far.
So let me talk a little about my Grumpy Pony and my Pony Jerk (yes those are the nicknames I use for Private Iceland and Barricade)
As usual, this goes into spoiler territory so keep in mind:
I've already touched on the origins of Private Iceland in another blog. It also fleetingly mentions that Barricade originated later in an RP.
Private and Barricade are not really a new thing for me in my writing, if anything it is a bit of a quirky trademark. I always have twins in my set of characters, no matter what universe I'm writing in and as I developed Private in an RP I realized this guy needed someone who could read him like an open book, knows that every little change in facial expression means something, someone who Private actually could if it came down to it, show actual true emotions at. I considered having it being Dew Doe, but she already had another role plus she didn't have the luxury of having grown up with him so there are still things about Private she can miss.
Enter Barricade.
Barricade actually solved a lot of problems for me regarding Private. He could openly inform people what Private was like, or if Private grunted, he could translate it. That of course doesn't mean Barricade has some upper hoof on his brother, he keeps forgetting that he doesn't like seeing his twin upset and Private can shut up him if he gets really angry and has had enough of Barricade's jerky behavior. Surprisingly enough, if Private talks. Barricade listens. Well most of the time anyway.
I haven't really based Private or Barricade on anyone in particular. Though Barricade's warped view on how the world should work, "that he can get away with being openly a thug and still have normal relationship with his family" is based off on few people I've known in the past. Though quite honestly, Barricade is much nicer than most of them and his less than stellar interactions with Foxy and Derpy (the mothers of his daughters) comes from one of my sister's ex-boyfriends.
If you read the Time Keeper you'll note that it's stated that Private and his friends have a long history of interfering with Barricade and that Barricade was trying to get them to finally stop it. This was intentional, I wondered if I could get away with showing characters who already have a long history of being enemies and are strictly speaking on the end run of that. Don't really think I managed it as well as I would have liked, which is why I'm pretty much just showing Barricade in Possession on a road of fixing that stupid mistake he made in the Time Keeper.
He still has a long way to go and has many bridges to rebuild, maybe he'll finish that in another story.
I'm just going to say this, King Sombra has managed to show him that being thought of as a villain is not as glamorous as he thought and in the end you will have four Princesses on your ass if you go bad enough. Or the Elements of Harmony, or to lesser extend the Royal Guards, eh you know what I mean. 
As for Private, well he is quite honestly supposed to be an every-pony who is constantly being thrown into situations he has absolutely no interest in being. If 13 uninvited dwarves were to show up on his doorstep to recruit him for an adventure, he would shove them all out with his magic, shut and lock the door and dig himself a bunker to get away. Of course his cruel author keeps throwing him anyway into situations he doesn't like soooo... 
