I Should Stop Watching.... Commentary: Chapter 2 · 8:00pm Feb 5th, 2017
This entry contains spoilers for I Should Stop Watching..., and contains sexually suggestive material. Be warned...
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This chapter was almost complete along with the first. I had stopped roughly where Twilight leaves the room, and at that point I had stopped because I wasn’t sure how to write Fluttershy at that point in the story. In the original draft, this second chapter didn’t even exist. The entire story was going to be Fluttershy’s thought process upon catching her friends in the act. There would be less story, but there would be a story. I had wanted it to be about the dissonance that came with her supposedly normal and perfect friends engaging in a perverse sexual kink, and then the story would end on the point where she gets caught peeping. It wasn’t to sequel-bate; that’s just where it was supposed to end.
I scrapped that draft and added the second chapter based entirely on Fluttershy getting caught and being talked into joining them. I wasn’t sure at the time whether I wanted her to go for it because of rational or sexual reasons, but in the end it didn’t matter. I went at scripting this half from a different direction and everything solved itself. Fluttershy gets caught, Twilight goes into full friendship mode to help ease the damage, her friends explain what led up to their angry romps, and Fluttershy is talked into joining them for some loving.
I wrote Fluttershy as being from a very conservative family, so her kneejerk reaction is that of disgust when she understands what they’re doing. She goes along with them anyway partially because Twilight promises to explain things, and partially because she’s been shocked to such an extent that she’s not quite sure what to do. In addition to this, I didn’t want to fall into the “she secretly likes it” trap. You know the drill: conservative prude sees something they don’t like, adopts it, and is no longer conservative prude because of it. Not only is it a massive cop-out to solve dramatic tension, is is completely and utterly false. You can still see an act or a fetish, be aroused by it, and still repulsed. Biological and mental responses to not run parallel to each other. I often see the explanation for these in character along the lines of “follow your heart”, but that’s got things switched around. What’s making a character aroused is not what’s secretl lurking in their mind: it’s completely a biological response. Is it natural? Yes. Does that mean you like it? No.
This little nugget is used in more detail at the end of the story, but I didn’t want Fluttershy to just fully embrace Twilight and Rainbow Dash’s BDSM lifestyle. Were these two ponies complete strangers, I have no doubt she’d be completely disgusted by them altogether. But because they are her friends, there is a certain amount of leeway to give, which snowballs into Fluttershy accepting a portion of the BDSM lifestyle for herself. The key point is that she is still completely turned off by the more vigorous and violent aspects, which Twilight and RD practice.
That is perfectly fine.
I’m speaking not only from a story perspective, but as an advisor to you, the reader. Perhaps you like only a small fraction of a fetish and not the whole nine yards. That’s fine. Practice whatever you like as long as it makes you comfortable. There’s no point in engaging in some play if you’re not having fun, especially if a partner is involved. I’ve seen people who like soft vore as a fetish, but are radically opposed to hard vore. I’ve seen stories about incestual lesbians, but people spouting radical hatred if a futanari or hermaphrodite shows up. Or there’s even someone like Fluttershy in my story who finds the helplessness and trust aspects very appealing, but doesn’t like the violence Twily and Dash practice in the slightest. You may like only part of a fetish, or even none at all. Everyone is okay with that, but please do not chastise another for their choices either.
I must digress, as now I should talk about the actual characters involved. The first one I’ll touch on is Rainbow Dash. I find Rainbow to be one of the easiest characters in the fandom to write wrong. The most common mistakes stem from two facets of her character: her laziness, and her arrogance. For starters, these are defects, not signs of villainous behavior. We all have them. In terms of laziness, people often use that as a means to make Rainbow apathetic about events around her. A friend is in danger, or a stranger, or an enemy, and she is portrayed as someone who just doesn’t care. She doesn’t clean up after herself and this causes tension, she neglects friends, and all she cares about is herself.
Yes, laziness can be a villainous trait, but not all lazy people are villains. She’s laid back. She’s careless. However, when problems occur, that’s when it is her time to step up. This is common advice to players in a D&D campaign who wish to play villain or antihero characters. They can, but when the chips are down, that’s when they put aside their differences in order to help. Just look at the sheer desperation Rainbow had when trying to stop Tank from hibernating. Lazy, relaxed, and utterly terrified that one of her friends was going to disappear on her. The episode was wrought with themes about handling death, making her action all the more pitiful and relatable.
Then there is arrogance. Writers can (and really shouldn’t) use this trait as an excuse for a character to be an asshole. You often see a justification like “I tell it what it is.” or “If I don’t act like I am, wouldn’t that be even more dishonest?” and “Being nothing but honest is so you don’t hurt the poor pony’s feelings all the time is just a snobbish way of acting superior.” You get the idea. It’s also dead wrong. In simpler terms, it’s just an excuse. The desire to be abrasive and crude and not consider other’s feelings at all may very well be honest to what a character is feeling, but it’s still asshole behavior. It’s lacking basic empathy, kindness, and cooperation that allows humans to function as a society. Characters and real life people may be arrogant, but that’s no excuse for them to be a massive, unrepentant jackass. They’re a rebel, their honest with themselves, they don’t care what others think of them, and don’t care about others. Fine, now put down the controller and get out of my house, asshole. Those people aren’t your friends in real life, so there’s no excuse to write characters like that, especially Rainbow when she’s gone through such extremes to help friends and strangers. She has the element of loyalty for a reason.
These two writing traps for Rainbow are part of the reason I had Twilight take center stage above her, but I tried my best to portray Rainbow in a positive light. In the first chapter, she puts on a show for Fluttershy because the mare was peeping on Rainbow’s private time with Twilight. Rainbow didn’t know Fluttershy had mixed feelings about her kink, and since was Fluttershy was watching in the first place, Rainbow thought it was okay to engage in some exhibition because she found it hot. After Fluttershy called them both perverts, that’s when Rainbow went silent because she accepted Twilight was better at explaining the situation than she was. I used a meta rationalizing for this. Twilight is methodical and careful. Rainbow Dash is honest and emotional. The best pony to explain the situation to both the audience and Fluttershy was Twilight, and I relegated Rainbow to using humor to lighten the mood.
I am unreasonably smug about calling the chest the Lunchbox of Friendship for some reason.
I was trying to be careful with Rainbow because I haven’t really written anything about her. She’s made appearances in my Minecraft story At the End, but that’s about it. I had written her as someone who saw a friend not appreciate an interest of hers at all and immediately went into damage control mode in order to salvage it. After Twilight’s explanation and Fluttershy is at least accepting of Rainbow and Twilight’s relationship, that was her turn to thank Fluttershy for understanding and have a little talk of their own now that tensions have calmed. This is where Rainbow’s inexperience in the matter came back. She struggled to come up with words when she feared their friendship was on shaky grounds.
The kiss Rainbow gives her went through a few drafts before I settled on this one. I wanted Rainbow to give Fluttershy a kiss without any romantic attachment behind it. Kisses are the tried and true bridge to romantic evenings, but I didn’t want that. I wanted to go against type, at least for us filthy Americans. Fluttershy didn’t see Rainbow and Twilight as in a relationship, and especially in a violently sexual one. She also didn’t see Rainbow as anything more than a friend, which was what Rainbow as trying to enforce anyway. It aligned up pretty well and I was happy with it.
Now there’s Twilight. Despite Twilight having a larger role, I didn’t need to write as much about her as a character due to the sheer number of stories that feature her. She is the most popular character to write for a reason and is known far and wide as the bookish one; she’s easier to write because of the directions her character can take. I again tried to play against type and make Twilight a little more aggressive than normal. This partially stemmed from her BDSM play with Rainbow, and partly because Twilight has grown into her role as a princess.
In terms of their fetish play, Rainbow had been egging her on to express any frustrations and fears she may be feeling, along with any anger she might be feeling towards Rainbow. The two of them used it as a means to deal with normally complex issues in one great, big burst of emotion. They both have annoying character flaws expressed both in the show and in fanfics. Personally, I find it annoying that Twilight is constantly portrayed as a Little Miss Perfect Mary Sue, which was why Rainbow called her out on it in the first chapter. As for Rainbow Dash, we I touched upon her laziness.
One thing I feel the show really lacks (at least I think; I still haven’t finished season five), is that Twilight may have the role of princess, but she has neither the mannerisms nor the responsibilities of one. I wanted to express that growth without actually calling attention to it. She takes command of the situation, sends the three of them to the showers to both clean up, and give Fluttershy a chance to settle down and take in the situation. She offers tea, sits at a distance in order to not crowd Fluttershy, explains her and Rainbow’s past and current relationship, and then comes up with the idea to ease Fluttershy into some mild BDSM aspects.
I wanted to show her as a pony that has grown over the years, and that was one of the themes of this story: change. Twilight has changed from a bookish antisocial to a princess, Fluttershy as an idealistic girl to an adult accepting interests she doesn’t appreciate, and Rainbow as the catalyst that helps them both.
The actual story behind Twilight and Rainbow getting into BDSM was a little rough because I didn’t want it to get boring. I actually didn’t have an idea what to write when I started.
That’s when a poltergeist thrust the words “Lunchbox of Friendship” into my mind. I focused more on the fallout of the Plunderseed incident. I thought to myself, what would happen afterwards? Talks with Discord? No, the story was too emotional and dramatic for a character like him. He was out. This was just after ponies started looking up to Twilight as a princess (actually just one guard), so there might be something of Twilight’s role as an authority figure. I pocketed that idea; I was getting somewhere.
This is where I got the idea of Twilight growing up and taking on the mantle. I liked the idea of her taking on some authority, and power play is an entire subgenre of BDSM. So I had post-plunderseeds and Twilight becoming a princess. What would advance that? Celestia, of course, and the plot immediately fell into place.
I liked the idea of portraying Twilight as emotionally vulnerable, and I used Rainbow’s loyalty in order to solve that. She’s not the best at expressing emotions or words, and so used actions in its place. Celestia reduced Twilight’s workload and it hurt her because it made her feel like a failure. Rainbow wanted to show her she was loved, and used some commitmentless sex in order to do it.
Friendship with benefits is magic.
It is at this point I had to decide whether I wanted to turn this relationship of theirs into a romantic one or not. I immediately decided no. For one, it would be more interesting if they weren’t romantically inclined as it would force me to get creative to rationalize the sex, and for two, it didn’t start as romantic so having a familiar relationship turn romantic during the course of an expository backstory when it was one of the most important turning points in the story felt like incredibly cheap. That is a really long sentence there. Anyway, it progressed much like you see in the story: RD said Twi could come to her if she was feeling depressed or down and they’d have a little romp, they got a little kinkier overtime and discovered BDSM afterwards, and then things escalated to where they were staging things in order to have makeup sex afterwards.
I set it up as Rainbow and Twilight were actually fighting, but that’s how it would look to an observer. They didn’t mean for their friends to catch them in the act, but sometimes that’s how the cards play out. You can engage in exhibitionism for only so long until you get caught. It may have felt like a false flag, that these two genuinely hated each other, but that was part of the ritual for them. Bystanders were only getting half the story.
It is a time-honored technique in writing, but now it seems to be a lost art. Here’s the gist of it: don’t reveal to the audience anything your character doesn’t know. From a meta perspective, letting readers in on outside knowledge can be incredibly infuriating because that can let them guess where the story is going to go. They read about this character walking around doing whatever, and then the decision comes, and it goes exactly as the audience expected because they have inside knowledge you’ve let slip. You’ve made a crucial decision or plot twist boring. If you decide to do a double false flag, that comes with its own problems. You’re trying to deliberately mislead your readers but then the switch comes! Aha! You didn’t expect that, reader! No, they didn’t, but then you’ve made the original false flag entirely pointless. It’s become not about telling a story, but manipulating what your audience is thinking. I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s not actually a story.
Don’t let your readers know where the story is going to go. Let your characters make observations and guesses. Perhaps they are right, perhaps they are wrong, but don’t manipulate the audience for a cheap ‘Fooled you!’ moment. At worst they hate you for it and bemoan your writing style. At best it’s like a firecracker. It’s there and in a flash it’s over. It exists and accomplishes almost nothing. Reward readers for thinking and coming up with the correct conclusion on their own.
This is what I was doing with Fluttershy once she peeped. He caught some contextual clues that things weren’t all what they appeared to be: Twilight wasn’t using her magic, Rainbow is much stronger than Twilight and thus shouldn’t have gotten pinned, etc.
I put the most time of all into the sex itself, and despite that, I don’t think there’s much I can say about it. We’ll see in a moment if that proves to be true.
I set up the sex on a slow crescendo, a three-stage piece.
The first part started with Rainbow’s kiss. Fluttershy was interested in finding out more about Rainbow and Twilight’s relationship because she admired that it required a large amount of trust to work. Fluttershy wanted to know more, but was fearful that her relationship with her two friends would change. Again, Rainbow let actions speak louder than words and let a kiss from her decide Rainbow’s feelings. Fluttershy always saw her as a friend, but would a kiss change that? A kiss is only as important as the feelings put behind them, and Rainbow had no romantic feelings behind it.
The first stage was about warming Fluttershy up towards the BDSM lifestyle. It’s at this point I’m going to have to take a moment and talk about BDSM before finishing up that first point.
Twilight wanted to ease Fluttershy into things, so the first thing she suggest is a blindfolded massage. Even Rainbow is a little incredulous. You see, the BDSM values one thing pretty highly: creativity. Yes, there currently is mainstream appeal in BDSM with whips and gags and all of that, but the subculture actively encourages its members to be adventurous and explore their interests. Is such a massage a first step for initiates? Nope! Because there is no real first step. It’s a pretty extreme thing, and people approach it in very different ways. Twilight grabbed those three things—a piece of cloth, the equivalent of the Kama Sutra, and Smartypants—because she improvised. There is no specific set of things to practice if you want to enjoy some BDSM fun time.
In this instance, it wasn’t about the sex. Fluttershy was interested more in the trust and power exchange, so that’s what was fulfilled. There’s an odd feeling of satisfaction when having your given up to another and still trusting that things will turn out alright. Of course, this is not for everyone. Some people find a lack of control excruciating, and that’s fine. Tailor things to your interest. Want to feel the thrill of running an adrenaline pumping? I’ve heard of a group where a guy was mock hunted down. Have a weak heart and constitution and occasionally afraid of your own shadow? How about just a blindfold and a stuffed animal to keep you company?
Smartypants was important because I wanted to get things creative. You don’t understand how important that is in the subculture, so I seriously wanted to use Smartypants over an ordinary safe word to make things stop. It was something specifically tailored to Fluttershy because I didn’t feel like she had the fortitude and clear head capable of remembering a safe word if she got too flustered or uncomfortable. Just holding or dropping a doll is much easier to remember then a word or phrase, and both I and my envisioned Twilight believe it would be easier for Fluttershy to remember an action then a safeword in the heat of the moment.
This wasn’t supposed to lead into sex. Well, it was most certainly going to, but I didn’t want to start with that right off the bat. That’s also how adult films tend to work: they start off with a very loose script and things just kind of happen along the way. Same thing here. It wasn’t supposed to go farther than a massage, but at Fluttershy’s growing arousal and insistence, Twilight and Rainbow Dash made it go a little further. I also used the blindfold to practice a literary technique: hiding information. Characters should not know things ahead of the audience. You may guess from a meta perspective who was doing what to Fluttershy, but no names should be given, because this story was from Fluttershy’s POV, and Fluttershy was blindfolded and didn’t know who was who. It’s the little things that make a story interesting and believable.
Almost to the seventh page and only now I am talking about the actual sex. I think this might be the longest commentary I’ve ever done. I didn’t want to wing this. I could, but I didn’t want to, so research was in order. I specifically wanted blindfolded massage sex, and guess what, that’s something that actually exists. I found several videos to use as a reference when things started getting a little steamy. I still have the links if you’re interested...
Ahem.
There’s not much to talk about in terms of the actual sex other than the behind the scenes portion of things. I’ve already gone very in depth in this chapter’s creation. I wanted something soft and sensual. Tribadism, although very underutilized, didn’t seem right, so I settled on some simple oral. All I had to worry about was being gentle because this was all done at Fluttershy’s request. Speaking of request, I’d like to make a note of Twilight actually asking Fluttershy, “You have to ask for it.” That wasn’t to make Fluttershy beg, it was to clarify what Fluttershy wanted. Twilight’s mindset was of one not wanting to harm her friend in an emotionally-charged environment. As per Twilight’s rules, communication is key.
From the beginning, this wasn’t about romantic love. This was about a more familiar love expressed in a slightly different way, but things took an interesting turn that even I didn’t see coming until after the story was published. The three of them relax, Fluttershy accepts Twilight’s and Rainbow’s lifestyle, and she eventually goes home. The next scene with Fluttershy, however, was added last because it didn’t feel right to end it after the sex. Something still felt missing. Rainbow was getting clingy the night before, but I passed that off as her not getting her own turn, and as Twilight put it, “You’re clingy after sex.”, a clear contrast to Rainbow’s normally brash and headstrong nature. Rainbow visits the next day and offers Fluttershy and offers to let her share her and Twilight’s bed again.
She declines.
My kneejerk response was to have her agree, but then I started thinking about things. Fluttershy grew up in a conservative household. Things are certainly different with her, and she was the meat in a pony man-sandwich, but when I got to think about it, Fluttershy falling for one of Dash’s kisses felt a little dishonest. I’ve always imagined their relationship as sisterly more than anything, but a second reading of it on more own time made me feel like Rainbow was falling for Fluttershy. On a deeper level than she did for Twilight. Rainbow’s kiss at the end of the sex was supposed to be just something in the heat of the moment, but then I started thinking that something might have happened without me consciously realizing it.
Fluttershy must of course let Rainbow down gently. She liked their fun time on a physical and emotional level, but it’s the kind of thing that requires baby steps for her. Fluttershy offering a kiss of her own was supposed to be a gentler reflection of Twilight and Rainbow’s relationship, that being platonic affection, along with her saying, “I love you to, Rainbow Dash.”. Now, however, I realize that it may be leading Rainbow into pursuing a relationship with Fluttershy at a later date.
It’s strange the things that come up on you. I’m all for multiple interpretations of a story, and I’m all for Rainbow unwittingly developing romantic feelings for Fluttershy. This story was my second favorite to write, just barely missing the top spot to SINless Desire.
Well, that’s about everything. See you next time.
Cheers.
Is it me, or is this as long as the story itself...?
Anyway, nice bit of commentary. Certain has shit to keep in mind when writing.
~Skeeter The Lurker
4410488
Not quite. Just shy of 4,000 words here. I still write commentaries on everything I write, so I'd have roughly 50,000 words of commentary in total.