Golden Drive Commentary (Chapter 2)

Welcome to Chapter 2 of the Golden Drive commentary. Let’s begin with something I like to point out…

I wanted to present the concept of alternate universe counterparts. If you noticed in some of the chapters, Kelly compares the people she meets to characters from Drive, such as Wind Rider to Jun. I guess this is to illustrate how parallels worked, much like how the AR Worlds in Decade have obvious parallels, such as Onodera’s Yashiro to Godai’s Ichijou. This might also be in part due to Turnabout Storm, a crossover of Phoenix Wright and MLP which had a similar premise. To draw an example, Phoenix meets a unicorn who reminds him of his old mentor Mia.

Part of the reason I have Kelly and Applejack have a conflict was because I sort of had a gut feeling like, if Applejack knew someone knew what would be the cause of her family’s suffering, she wouldn’t just sit there and take the crap, rather she’d wring the information out of them.

The Wind Rider subplot was something I thought would be a cool thing to put in and that it’d help further the idea that there’s alternate universe counterparts, even if they don’t share the same name or appearance. In this case, Wind Rider is the AU Nira while Soarin’ would be the AU Eisuke.

This is also to kick off the subplot of Jetstorm Silverbolt, whose name comes from two Transformers, Jetstorm and Silverbolt. You might get the connection, since at one point, Jetstorm was Silverbolt’s brainwashed alter ego in the show Beast Machines.

Popular Science for Kids and Whoops are references to the shows Popular Mechanics for Kids and Uh-Oh respectively. Popular Mechanics for Kids has a segment where a host would do weird and crazy experiments, and often than not get into hijinx in the process. This was basically the inspiration for Silverbolt’s backstory.

I wanted to write up a reason why Celestia was able to accept Twilight and Sunset into her school without prior transcripts or anything. I figured Celestia would be a nice enough woman to let strangers into her school.

I thought of the AU idea and thought “screw it, Flash Sentry needs love” and practically made him the AU of Shinnosuke, hoping to give him some bigger role in the EQG movies as the fic goes on. I also wrote up the idea that Flash is Soarin’s son because they both have similar hair colors.

Also, the foreshadowing that Silverbolt was using Dust is mentioned by Flash. The idea of him being from Remnant came about when I was thinking of how Ross would enroll into CHS. I had the idea of him using the Beacon uniform and giving Kelly the notion that Silverbolt would be familiar with this uniform. While it didn’t make sense, I did have the idea mold in my head for a bit before realizing that I could definitely make Silverbolt from Remnant. Also, Silverbolt.

The idea of this conflict between Banno and Kelly was basically me trying to invert the conflict that Eiji and Ankh first had. Although Kelly is in full control of transforming like Eiji, it’s Banno who’s dangling the “transform to save people” carrot instead of her.

I sort of wanted to give the Roidmudes’ human forms a sort of naming scheme that matches roads, so Sunny Glenway is the name of an actual road. 006’s human form name in the EQGverse would be Don Valley Mills.

I guess the idea for the Gold Switch might be from the fact that, while Banno did possess a fully conscious person, he never transformed into Gold Drive while possessing said person. It had me thinking of what’d happen if that’d be the case. I also wanted to present it as a further mystery. Gold Switch was clearly not what Banno intended when he first made the Driver, but considering how convenient it was to get Kelly out of a hole, it sent suggestions to two likely options:

Either Banno built the Driver but ended up creating a glitch thanks to Tridoron’s switching mechanic that led to Gold Switch or whoever built Banno inserted Gold Switch as a countermeasure to prevent him from going rampant. As the story unfolded, it became clear which option was the true one.

And we close out this chapter with Ross being summoned, perhaps bringing up the other reason I brought RWBY into the mix:

Literal Grim Reaper.