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Titanium Dragon


TD writes and reviews pony fanfiction, and has a serious RariJack addiction. Send help and/or ponies.

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Jul
11th
2016

BronyCon 2016 – VIP Writer Panel Notes · 5:32am Jul 11th, 2016

As almost all the community panels I attended were from people on FIMFiction, I trust they will post some of their notes or thoughts on those panels. If not, then I’ll have to steal all their ideas and seem super smart.

And I have some thoughts myself that I’m going to write up as proper articles about some stuff regardless.

That being said, we can hardly expect the VIPs to post here on FIMFiction. Not even GM Berrow, even if she did pose with the rest of the fanfiction writers at the end of the con. :duck:

As such, I’ve transcribed my notes from the VIP writers panels here. If you missed out, you can see some things which were covered here.

If there's anything in here which doesn't make sense, let me know; I'm pretty tired as I'm transcribing these, and am about to crash out so I can sleep and then get up in the morning and go catch the train to catch the plane to fly back to Oregon to grab my car to drive home.

Joy.


The Production panel on Friday featured GM Berrow, Dave Polksy, and MA Larson. They exuded a great deal of charisma, but some of it was kind of meh while other bits were great.

• Larson was originally better at math and science than writing, but Larson, while he loves geometry and math, had more fun with writing.

• Dave Polsky actually majored in math and worked on Wall Street, then social services, then telephone sales, before finally ending up in writing thanks to his past contacts presenting him with opportunity to do so.

• Restrictions breed creativity – that is to say, knowing what your restrictions are can help direct you down the way you are going to go and gives you a problem to solve.

• Scripts are ~1 page/minute; animation is a bit faster, clocking in at 30 pages for a 22 minute episode (really 21 but shh).

• Polsky sees writing as assembling a puzzle.

• Favorite character? Larson: Discord. Polsky: Pinkie Pie. GM Berrow: Rarity.

• “How do you keep characters fresh and exciting?” When this question was asked, the panel noted that established characters are often easier to keep fresh and exciting – the more well-defined they are, the more interesting they become. They have more hooks and more potential axes of interaction. Undefined, new characters lack hooks and are harder to get people invested in and are harder to write because they give less direction – again, restrictions breed creativity.

• Lauren Faust apparently strongly resisted MLP being a “normal” kids show.

• Larson wanted to work with Lauren but didn’t want to do MLP

• Larson didn’t know it was going to be good until the season 2 writer’s summit, at which point he saw some of the finished product and realized just how good it was.

• Larson wrote the series finale – in season 3. Magical Mystery Cure was the end of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Then they got renewed. Oh well.

• Larson loves disappointing Twilight, such as her appearance at the start of the Griffonstone episode.

• Slice of Life was the hardest episode for Larson to write due to it being attached to non-characters (other than Derpy).

• Polsky found Rarity Takes Manehattan to be the hardest to write because he had to make Rarity unlikable but still have the audience root for her.

• “Who is the main character and what do they want?” is a critical question to answer.

• Pear Steve is a legend with the writing staff – he was jokingly proposed as an arch-nemesis for Applejack, and apparently they reference him internally at times.


Saturday started with one of the most interesting panels of the Con – M.A. Larson going over the script of The Cutie Mark Chronicles. Larson possesses a considerable amount of charisma, and his talks are not only funny, but interesting. He definitely showed a bit of bitterness over how the show has apparently been over-noted these days, feeling that it was squeezing the humor out of some episodes and some of the spontaneity out of stuff.

Seeing the sorts of things they discussed was interesting. Apparently the Sonic Rainboom was something he, Lauren, and someone else (Rob?) made up collaboratively as part of the Sonic Rainboom episode and became, well, a huge deal (obviously). Scootaloo’s personality was heavily reinforced by the episode, and it is interesting to what extent Scootaloo’s idol worship was established by this episode, which isn’t traditionally thought of as being an episode about the CMC even though it does do a fair bit to flesh out their personalities.

Scripts use a lot of shorthand as well, referencing other works to try and establish visuals with less wasted space.

Some points of interest from Larson:

• Applejack as a filly was originally conceived as being more Rarity-ish, but Mitch changed it.

• The younger Big Mac was described in the script as a “younger, more hearthrobby Big MacIntosh.”

• “I’m so hungry I could eat a…” was actually a censor decoy, but they left it in the episode

• Fluttershy’s “So Many Wonders” song was written by MA Larson and then turned straight into a song from his writing. It was the first song he ever wrote, and it shows. He winced at how bad it was.

• The episode originally had a second song in it, the fillies in the fruit costumes singing, but it was also dire and was cut for time.

• Larson made up what the Summer Sun Celebration actually looked like, but he originally had Celestia strain considerably; it was Rob who came up with the idea of it looking effortless and sort of anime.

• Lauren Faust didn’t like the inclusion of trains in the show, but they’re very useful narratively.

• Larson had a “Winter is coming.” GoT reference in Pinkie Pie’s family.

• Rob came up with Pinkie Pie’s name seeming too informal for her overly serious family; Lauren suggested a long list of possible longer names, from which Larson chose Pinkamena and added Diane, a reference to his aunt.

• “And that’s how Equestria was made” was a joke he just came up with on the spot and he thought it was awesome. He was right.

• “I just hope everypon is ready. I just saw Pinkie eating her script” was a bit cut from Rarity’s part.

• Larson apparently often went over time, forcing Lauren Faust to enforce a strict 30 page limit on his scripts.

• Episode 100 (Slice of Life) originally ended with Twilight and her friends remarking how lucky they were to live in Ponyville, with the final shot ending with a swarm of changelings descending on the town.

• Larson didn’t like the idea of Episode 100 and thought it was a terrible idea to actually give the background characters actual character, because he saw them as the fandom’s characters. He had three meetings with Hasbro trying to tell them “no”.

• Eventually, he decided to make it a Brony episode, instead of something normal just using the background ponies, and went full-on ridiculous, trying to throw in every reference possible (and encouraging the animation team to do the same – which they did, things like the shark and the horse mask were made up by them).

• Larson pitched an episode about big Mac trying out to be a guard for Twilight because it had been his lifelong dream. And he sucked at it. But Twilight gave him the job anyway because he was her best friend’s brother and couldn’t bear to disappoint him.

• There was a faux-prohibition Fillydelphia episode which got rejected. Flam got elected mayor and outlaws cider. Applejack becomes a cider bootlegger while Rarity flirts with Flim to get info to help Applejack.


The best VA panel was one where the VAs – including the whole of the Mane 6 – went up on stage and read Tabitha St. Germain’s Luna fanfic. Well, fanscript, more specifically – a fake episode, written by her, and (voice) acted out by the cast.

The audience loved it, and judging by some of the corpsing by the actors, so did they.

Sadly, I only got to see about half of it, but if it was recorded and put up on YouTube, I think a lot of folks will get a kick out of it.

Comments ( 14 )

fanscript, more specifically – a fake episode,

Considering how some fics get called as thematically appropriate enough to be they're own episode...

I'm very glad that the writers agree some things are best left for us fans to explore. I've been afraid that they'll stomp over so many headcanons about where alicorns come from, the real history of Discord, and other things that can be so much more interesting when they're not neatly packaged into twenty-minute episodes. Now I can relax a bit.

Link to Princess Luna's command performance Rarity's secret plans Tabitha St. Germain's fanfic episode? Please?

Also, featured fic starring Pear Steve in five... four... three...

Hey, I was at the panel where Larson talked about The Cutie Mark Chronicles! Wish I had known you were there, totally would've caught you!

That Cutie Mark Chronicles panel is so great. I've heard it before at another con, but it was definitely worth hearing twice.

And lest anyone forget: applebonking.

if it was recorded and put up on YouTube, I think a lot of folks will get a kick out of it.

I hope it does, because those of us unable to attend most cons are always missing cool things like that due to legal reasons. Maybe we'll get lucky this time.

I missed this, so thank you for the reporting!

Now if somepony had only attended the game coding panel...

That Larson panel was simply the best. I wish all the panels were as structured. I almost skipped the VAs reading Tabitha's script. I'm sure glad that I didn't. That ended up being one of the best things that happened during the whole con!

There was a faux-prohibition Fillydelphia episode which got rejected. Flam got elected mayor and outlaws cider. Applejack becomes a cider bootlegger while Rarity flirts with Flim to get info to help Applejack.

I... I'm not sure there's something I want more in life than this.
Also, officially super sorry I missed Larson's panel.

4084218
Sadly, every other VA panel I went to was pretty terrible. That one was fun, though.

Clearly we need to allow people to post scripts to FIMFiction so that Tabitha can post her story. :duck:

Huh, it seems Larson's switched favorite characters, It used to be Rarity.

I was at the Larson panel, but I honestly knew most of the stuff he talked about there already, expect he expanded a bit on what was purely his ideas and stuff than I had known. And also I hadn't head of the Big Mac episode idea (the Fillydelphia one he's talked about quite a few times in the past)

4085271

I kinda liked the first group VA panel too if only for Tabitha and Ingrid treating it totally non-seriously and basically cracking jokes the entire time.

Tara Strongs though, that one was really boring and I left like halfway into it for some other panel.

4091162
I think Rarity is his favorite pony, while Discord is his favorite character.

4091170

Yeah I suppose at previous panels he was probably asked "Who's your favorite pony" or "who's the best Mane 6" or something.

Always amused me that I don't think he ever got to write an episode about his favorite of the main cast.

Also Id pay a fan animator to fully animate the Tabitha episode, like literally thousands of dollars if I could. Like just throw money at Jan or Silly Filly Studios or something.

4091175
I think Jan is tired of getting C&Ds from Hasbro. :trixieshiftright:

Someone actually making a fan episode like that, complete with the VAs, would uh... well, I'm not saying Hasbro would be angry, but let's just say that their legal department would be working overtime. :trixieshiftleft:

It was certainly fun to listen to, though. They were clearly having fun, even if they were corpsing half the time. And BlackGryph0n's portrayal of the dentist was glorious.

As far as Rarity goes, his love of Rarity was even noted in the con book.

He pitched at least one heavily Rarity episode that got rejected (the cider prohibition thing), and he was one of the writers on Rarity Investigates. Rarity also featured reasonably prominently in Secret of my Excess.

4091206

Yeah... your right it probably wouldn't end well.

Ah man, BlackGryphon, some of my group spent like an hour going on about they felt he was overexposed at the con, I don't really care one way or another, but I do agree he did a good job on that panel.

Larson's involvement with Rarity Investigates is interesting, it's really just basically he pitched the original idea of "Rarity+Rainbow Dash mystery episode Episode, Dash is framed, Rarity has to clear her name" but the final product is much more Meghan+Lewis and Songco than him, his pitch was more of I believe it was a Legally Blond parody than a Noir parody. Regardless that episode ended up being really funny so whatever.

He also wrote Sonic Rainboom I think? And Rarity is a major character in that one too.

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