ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Wow ... So, this Is actually the very first time I've written a blog - ever.

Well, I figured the best way to start would be to talk (write) about something I want to talk (write) about.
Namely: the One year Anniversary for Sweetie Belle ...

Wow … Has It really been one year since I finished my story about Sweetie Belle – a heart's warming tale? … It has, hasn't it?

Well, since its the holiday season, I wanted to give all my readers a little something to reassure them that I am still here. More specifically, I wanted to tell you a story.
It wont be a new fanfiction, Or even a chapter to my ongoing one.

Instead I wanted to share my thoughts about the story that became my first contribution to the Brony fandom, and how and why it came to be. (If anyone is interested in that sort of thing.)
(And be warned, there will be spoilers below, in case you haven't read the story yet.)

The Story Behind The story of Sweetie Bot.

Where do I begin? Well … it all begins with my desire to read some Sweetie Bot stories.
I just know that one day I got a massive fascination for Sweetie bot (for the philosophy of what makes a robot alive in general), and wanted to read some good stories with her. Unfortunately. Most if not all of the stories I found was … not up to my standards (Aka the all fu***ng su**ed, were incredibly short, and for the most part incomplete.)

(I'm sorry if I have offended anyone. I'm just not easy to please.)
There were no epic stories to be found in the Sweetie bot group on fimfiction. I wanted to fix that.
I already felt like the fandom had given me so much to enjoy that I wanted to give something back. This was the way to do it.
So why Sweetie bot? why choose to write Sweetie Bot? Well – simply because there were not so many Sweetie bot stories to begin with. I wanted to fix that. They do say you should make your story stand out in some way. So writing a story about something that had not already been explored to death seemed like a good idea.
Another way to stick out was to deliberately be grim and gritty. I remember thinking about “Cupcakes” and how much attention that got for being a “legendary badfick” So I thought I was gonna fool the reader in with a jolly innocent title – Like “A hearts warming tale” and see what happens.
(The Title wasn't random, A main focus of the story was on Sweeties Heart – And whether or not robots can feel real emotions. The fact that the heart drive is slowly deteriorating was gonna be a ticking clock that was always counting down in the background. (I was thinking about ending every chapter with a message about the Heart Drive's integrity) Plus that the whole story takes place close to hearts warming eve – Then I learned that Hearths and Hearts are not the same thing.)
A great lot of them also seemed to be about how sad Sweetie would be about finding out she was a robot. So I was just like “Ok your mother****ers, I'm gonna make the saddest, darkest and most depressing story that I possibly dare to make it.”
And I did (sigh).
- Note: It still did not become as dark as I possibly could have made it: I did have a few rules to follow: The first and foremost being ”No one is allowed to die.” Not the heroes, not the villains, not the bystanders or any small critters. (And all those who think you need to kill of a character to evoke a response from the readers should know just how far I was able to take this rule.)
The second rule was: No swearing, - ( This might be a Grimdark tale. But everyone should be able to read it, darn it!) And nothing sexual of explicit. (I might bathe in blood and gore, but I have standards!)

A Grimdark Inspiration.

Truth is – I actually started writing about Sweetie bot while waiting for Somber to finish the final book about Project Horizons. A fallout Equestria story that had previously been occupying my life. And the main heroine: Blackjack (a Cyber pony), inspired the design of Sweetie Belle in a lot of ways. From the cyber-disks who act a lot like the memory orbs from fallout equestria – To Sweetie being powered by eating crystals. The horrors of being trapped in a body you feel increasingly alienated by. And the grimdark tone in general. (Not to mention that its about a mare who dies, yet comes back for more.)

Its almost like Sweetie bot could fit into the grimdark world of a Pre-apocalyptic Equestria, that had yet to become consumed by the great war. (I'm not saying that it intentionally takes place in the same world as Fallout Equestria – that was not my intention – I'm just saying that the possibility was pretty hilarious.)

For the longest time I just wanted to point these similarities out – but I could not do so until my story was complete, for the fear that it might somehow spoil something.

Did I go to far with Sweetie Belle?

One of my main worries was that I might have pushed Sweetie belle too far. It would have been bad enough to just have her figure out that she was a robot and puzzling together the tragic truth behind her origin WITHOUT having her walk through hell to do it.
Like you mentioned previously – It could have been the fear and distrust of the everypony that drove her to utter the 'classical' phrase “If the world isn't going to love me. Ill teach it to fear me instead” (first uttered in 'Friendship is witchcraft' – A line that I just had to include – Along with “my primary function is failure”)
As it was now - its just the insane villains that stand for the alienation. And she starts hating the world because of them (for a brief time at least.)

One ingredient in the story was That Sweetie goes through all of the 5 stages of grief – And her thoughts about causing fear was a part of the RAGE phase. (because the logic goes: If they see nothing but a murderbot – why not be a murderbot?)
I personally think I did the denial phase best, in the very beginning of the story. Before everything when literally out the window.
Of course I went too far, as over the top as I choose to be. I can only hope that I didn't push Sweetie over the edge – Just right up to it.
(One thing that would have made her fall over the edge would be If she had killed another pony, or creature – Something that would have been irredeemable.) Of course I still had to have her blast and battle some other things like robots and clay-golems. Because if she was gonna have blasters she was bloody well gonna use them.

Madness.

The main reason the villains went mad was supposed to be because the crystal recording devices slowly rotted their brains. The character of Shockwave was a normal respected doctor before being recruited to the Sweetie Belle project, and he ended up as a broken religious zealot. Most of the staff might have been good ponies at one point or another (except Neurosa, who was mad from the start.) The only one to be sort of spared the madness was the hobo - Bucking Bronco
About the blue crystals. I also realized I completely fucked up at one point in the story - When I wrote that the crystal transplanted into sweeties mind grew until it absorbed her undeveloped brain. It seemed like a nice symbolize then – until I got to chapter 25 and realized that It made no sense for the scientists to put something that could grow and take over their brains in their heads! The 'crystalization' was supposed to happened so slowly that nopony noticed it. Which is why the crystal should not have been able to grow to swallow sweeties brain. And the scientists only thought that the devises absorbed brainwaves, not that it transmitted its own signal (A signal that hid in, and could only travel with the help of: electricity) Which is What Twilight discovers when she asks Madam Macadame to transmute something for her.
Sigh … I became a big plothole. But since I had already posted my stupid mistake I decided to just roll with the punches to not confuse anyone who had already read that part.

One thing I did change as I was writhing the story though, was that I originally thought Sweetie Belles parents would have deliberately deleted all memories of her time in the laboratory in order to spare her the trauma/ to spare her the feeling that she was different. But thanks to ac comment I realized – Especially with how bad I paint out the whole “deleting memories” thing. That it would’ve been unforgivable of them to do something like that to their own daughter. '
So the whole blame of the attempted memory wipe was shifted onto Neurosa – who wanted to delete all memories of her family to see if Sweetie could start to view her as a mother instead. And she tricked Rarity – who wanted to forget everything about that place, into helping her.
About the parents: I was thinking about making the parents into Scientists, but eventually decided against it, and just let them be ordinary ponies. - I didn't even gime them names, because I did not know what kind of Fan made names that suited them the best. (Apparently the father is called MAGNUM – but the mother had a river of alternative names that I didn't know how to choose from) As It stands – BETTY BOUFANT is the only mane I can remember (from the gameloft app game) (– I might go back and give them real names at some point. )

5 nights at Freddie's?

Funny enough. The chapter “Two days at Teddies” wasn't originally planned. The only thing Sweetie was supposed to do in the town of Ravenloft was to find Madame Macadame. But I still started toying with the idea. And as I drew closer and closer to Halloween that year I finally decided to make something out of those Idea's. I had also realized that I wanted one more antagonistic pony for the villains party – else they would be outnumbered in the final showdown.

Sweeties inside story.

The parts of the story that were the most fun to write were the inner workings of Sweetie's Cybernetic body. And what had gone into the making of her major systems.
I did not just want to make a story about Sweetie bot. I wanted to re-invent her. Literary tear her apart and put her back together again, just to see what it is that makes her tick. Part of the reason she takes so much damage was so that we got to see all her major system. (literally see her insides.) But the real reason was that she throughout her journey was gonna looses everything that she thinks makes her a pony – Everything from her skin – her senses – To even her voice.
Did I go too far with it – Of course I did. I knew I had gone too far with it already by the hospital fire in chapter Inferno. Jet I kept going because I had started this story, And Gold Darn It I was gonna finish it.
It was also partly an experiment on my part. I wanted to see if a Good ending feels all the Sweeter the more bitter the story is to swallow. (The more bitter the story – the Sweeter the end – Sweet as Sweetie Belle in this case.)
I was not just gonna explore the inner workings of Sweeties body. I also wanted to give her a proper origin story. She was not gonna be a bot just because – No. I wanted something more. I wanted her to be related to the Belle family. Not just in the sense that they adopter/bought or found her, but REALLY related to them in some way. And the only way my twisted mind came up with was to let her be stillborn (of to a flying fu***ng start with this joyride, ain't we? I thought to myself) that had then been experimented on in an attempt to give her life.
I could only ever do my best and hope that people wold like it. Regardless of how horrible it was.
Hell, even I don't want to consider this story too “cannon.” Just the general Ideas and concepts of how and why Sweetie Bot came to be.
What I mean is: A lot of things happened that screwed up the “continuity” of this story. I actually started writhing it back when Twilight still had a library to live in. (Before Tirek's vandalizing of iconic landmarks.) I left it intentionally vague if Twilight was an Alicorn at the time of this story or not. Nopony ever calls her Princess up front. And any such conversations were to occur of screen. (Example: The initial meeting with Rarity's parents about her royal-hood would have happened off screen as they walked to the boutique)
“To think – that your daughter is best friend with a princess”
“Please, just call me Twilight”
And Twilight then wears a raincoat for most of the story, meaning none of the new ponies would see her wings. (if she had any) – then she did ask Dr Cardiac to leave the room before she removed her coat when they investigated the bunker underneath the blown up roadhouse.
And finally – her awe when Sweetie describes her visit to the “Astral Plane.” (Did Twilight know what Sweetie was talking about out of experience, or not?)
(Well – I might have though of Twilight as an alicorn all the time. But I wanted to leave it up to the readers own interpenetration.)
Finally, before I finished this story – another episode aired called “Crusaders of the lost mark.”
In which the Cmc of the show actually got their Cutie Marks.
It made me wonder if I was gonna give Sweetie bot her own mark, or leave that open for interpenetration. I was always a bit skeptic to what people would think of me giving her a mark, (since noboddy else depicts Sweetie Bot with a mark.) But seriously – After everything I put her through, how could I not? It makes the story come full circle – from “Mark of errors” to “mark of life.”
This whole story started with an attempt to get her mark. And it was gonna end with her getting it.
I toyed with the idea that Sweetie Bot could have gotten a shield themed background to her 'Cog-n-Heart themed' mark. And, In retrospect, I realized that all three fillies could have received their shield themed cutie marks in the heat of the battle – as they would have fought to defend each other.
I wanted a lot of things really. I was thinking About having Scootaloo and Applebloom chase after Sweetie Belle – And having the two of them arrive at the factory just before the final showdown, And have Scootaloo declaring she was sorry right in the middle of the factory – with the evidence that Sweetie was made to make orphans go un-adopted. And then have the three defend each other during the showdown.
Unfortunately: this would mean I would have to add Scoot's and Apple's personal stories and struggles to the main story in order to make such an achievement mean something. And that would make this beast three times as long. Something I did not have the energy for.
I even wanted to have the fan made Oc: Nyx in the story, as a outside perspective on the meanings of being an artificial construct. (This Idea would later be spun into the side story “Artificial Daughters Distress”)
But all that would have made things convoluted. And probably made the story go in a whole Other Direction then I had originally visioned. If I added everything I could ever come up with, I would still have been wringing it forever. I had to stop myself at some point, since this story really was suppose to be about Sweetie Belle.
(sigh of relief)
Time to spend all that creativity on making another, happier story.
And don't worry folks. I will continue The story of Sweetie – the magical little bot, sometime next year.

In the meantime. I want to wish you all a merry Christmas, A good Yule. A happy Hanukkah. A happy Hearth's Warming Eve. And a happy new year.