Next! · 8:27pm May 3rd, 2016
If you haven't been paying attention, I just finished Let Me Tell You About My Character.
It was, ultimately, an exercise in nerd jokes, but I think it came together fairly well. It was fun to write, at least.
See, as a writer, I've always appreciated a big dramatic climax. You know, the kind of last-episode, grand-finale, pull-out-all-the-stops sort of stuff that has you going 'whoa.' Unfortunately, getting to this point takes a lot of hard work to make you care about the characters, not to mention hanging lampshades and putting Chekhov's guns on the mantle and all of that.
So I cheated.
It's already kind of cheating to write fanfic to begin with (honestly, I'll get around to writing something original and not-terrible one of these days, though the instant gratification from posting silly pony fanfic is entirely too entertaining). But, with Let Me Tell You About My Character, I got to DOUBLE CHEAT, in that the fictional world of ChronoQuest (which in turn was in the fictional world of pony fic) already had a bunch of stuff going on that I could just allude to (and have Twilight flip out about) and take it from there.
As a bonus, the whole multi-level thing between the IC and OOC action proved to be kind of fun and metatextual, which was honestly a bit of a happy accident. It really just came down to working out the drama of the game, and balancing how heavily the various characters got invested into it.
There were a few ideas I wound up cutting out, just 'cause I couldn't think of a good place to work them in. Having Rainbow Dash brag about magical pony world-saving, only for people to think she's talking about an RPG is one. I also vaguely thought about working in some more Rarijack gags, because dammit if that 'ship ain't canon. Then again, the EqG-verse is slightly different from the ponyverse, so ... hm.
Seems like every time I wrap up a 'fic, I always tell myself "oh, I have no idea what I'm gonna write next," and then I invariably get an idea from somewhere or another. The turnaround this time around is probably a record, as it's like ... an hour or so later, and I just got hit by an idea for something new.
Honestly, I'm kind of surprised I didn't start playing around in the Equestria Girls sandbox a bit earlier, as it seems to have opened up a whole bunch of options for new story ideas. I think it's the hands, honestly. Hands go a long, long way. Maybe I've said all I meant to say when it comes to quadrupedal pony people? Or really, a lot of my writing stems from mashing ponies up with stuff you wouldn't see in the TV show (alcohol, lesbian weddings, giant dinosaur robots), and maybe it's easier to mash those up with the Equestria Girls? Or maybe, given that I've worked in pony-verse stuff like Nightmare Moon and Discord, it gives me the chance to mash up pony with ... more pony, albeit with a slightly skewed take on things.
So yeah. We'll see how this next project of mine goes. It's probably going to be significantly more R-rated than most of my previous stuff, so ... uh, I guess you can figure out if that's something you'd like to see or not.
Either way, thanks for reading!
I generally don't read that kind of thing, but if you do start writing it good luck to you!
I'm exceedingly curious about what you have planned for next!
And yeah, I really like these EqG romps you write. I've mentioned it before, but your characterization is both hilarious and very true to the characters (with the added element of hands and most of them being less mature than the pony versions, especially Rainbow Dash).