• Member Since 22nd Jan, 2014
  • offline last seen Monday

nightwalker


Exspecto meus bellum cum morte. "Look inside my soul, and see the face of madness." -- St. Benedict

More Blog Posts21

  • 367 weeks
    Nuit Blanche - Afterwards


    But it did make the popular read list, so at least I've
    got that going for me, which is nice.

    Nuit Blanche!

    A story so good it leaves the reader speechless!

    ...

    That's my belief and I'm sticking to it.

    Read More

    3 comments · 661 views
  • 369 weeks
    New Story - Nuit Blanche

    So this is what it feels to be productive!

    Wow, it's been a long time...

    But, anyway! New Story! :yay:

    Read More

    4 comments · 511 views
  • 371 weeks
    Actually, I'm Dead - Concluded

    I think one of the most satisfying thing as a writer is when you can finally write the words "The End" on a piece. After twenty(!) months of work, Wave Blaster and I were finally able to wrap up what turned into the novel-length story Actually, I'm Dead.

    Read More

    0 comments · 421 views
  • 386 weeks
    Story Stuff and Nightmare Night

    Happy Halloween / Nightmare Night everypony!

    Read More

    2 comments · 718 views
  • 387 weeks
    News and New Digs

    At the start of August, I moved away from my long-time home of London, Ontario and am now in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Stitchwolf got a job here that started as contract and finally became permanent, so I was able to finally follow him.

    Read More

    4 comments · 438 views
Mar
2nd
2017

New Story - Nuit Blanche · 3:01pm Mar 2nd, 2017

So this is what it feels to be productive!

Wow, it's been a long time...

But, anyway! New Story! :yay:

The short version, it's an Octavia and Vinyl Scratch (scratchtavia/octiscratch) story. It's the classic setup; they start not knowing each other, meet, and it ends where one would expect (hence the rating :twilightblush:). It's the getting there, it's the way they interact and get to know each other, what they do and talk about during the festival, the impressions they have of the ponies around them, that's really the reason to read it. They're certainly their recognizable archetypes, by no means extreme portrayals, and I hope that I've given them each a good, personal spin.

If you think this is something you'd like to read, please click the link to the side and read on (and leave positive feedback, naturally :scootangel:!) If you've already read it and want some more insight into the story (or don't care about spoilers) click the button and continue here.


The genesis of this one was rather interesting for me. As mentioned, I had moved to Winnipeg last year, 2016. Turns out the city has a rather active cultural scene, with a large number of festivals and attractions all around. Nuit Blanche is one of them (website event list for 2016 still intact and viewable as of 02/26/17), and since part of it was literally just down the block from where I lived, Stitchwolf and I checked it out. It was very neat, we had a good time with wandering though it and looking over the various things. Thinking about it, what it celebrated and the time of day that it was celebrated, I thought it would translate over here pretty well.

I've read a few stories like that before, notably Vacation by ScratchnTavi. I assure you, the use of the same main characters was coincidental. While Scratchtavia is one of my preferred ships and it was nice to write them, it was the music played during the event that determined who would end up in the story. Those two were the only logical choice.

That whole echoing of reality is really what drives a lot of events behind this story, with a healthy dose of embellishment and, well, ponies. I think we can all agree the latter makes almost everything better.

So here's a bit of a checklist of what was real:
Vendor's market with exhibits around the vendors. The magic graffiti wasn't real, nor was there an equivalent, but the short-term photographs was a variant on an exhibit at Nuit Blanche Toronto where you could pose in front of a mural and it would work as a silhouette.
We got a free bag emblemized with the fest logo, the white owl you see as story art.
Blacksmiths were real, and probably our favourite part of that area of the festival. Really cool to see that done live. They were also making intricate fence posts. No wood carvers, alas. No horse shoes either, but did have things like coat hooks and bottle openers.
Gourmet chocolates were had, though changed here to ones that I more favour.
The crêpe place is actually in another part of town several miles away, but their whole thing is crêpes on the go. Good stuff.
The doughnut place is real, they did partner with a pointillist artist (though her work was more minimal and black & white), and the doughnut our protagonists have was the one they featured that night. It was that good, too. For anyone who's had it, it tasted like a coffee crisp. I really hope they bring it back some time. I'll have to talk to the owners about it.
Trixie was a total embellishment, unfortunately there was no one like her. With all my work on Actually, I'm Dead I just couldn't not have her in this. Her tricks were inspired by the street magic of Chris Ramsay.
The bubble wrap joke is a nod to voice actress Tabitha St. Germain.
The Head in the Clouds installation was real, though far less impressive; it was an enclosed alleyway with balloons, LED lights, and music. A nice idea, but weak execution.
The light harnesses were based on the Kaleidoscope Peloton, a mobile exhibit that involved cyclists with LEDs on their bikes to create a kaleidoscope effect. That scene featured a Cloud Kicker and Blossomforth cameo for those that might not be sure who the two pegasi were.
The barber shop quartet thing actually happened, courtesy of the The Winnipeg Golden Chordsmen. I do not remember what I heard them sing to the one older couple, but the couple did appreciate it. The group would go around and break into song now and again. Very well done all around, excellent singers.

We were far from the only ones to sign

As to the song used here, it's Tonight, Tonight, which is based on the song Tonight from the 1956 musical West Side Story. I debated its use as, if you look at the lyrics, it is a bit of an odd choice given Luna and her history. I had been considering having Octavia and Vinyl get into a discussion at some point afterwards about lyrics in popular songs having some truly dark content, or their meaning being wholly overlooked, just because the song has a catchy tune. Real life examples being Born in the USA, Electric Avenue, and Pumped Up Kicks. I couldn't find a good fit for it in the story and so left that out.
Stitch and I did have a pool game under all blacklight (though we didn't play as well), but it was at a design studio and not an artist's studio. The music was psychedelic 60s to fit the theme of the studio, and alas no body painting. Had a lovely florescent blue punch, though . They had us sign the window on the way out, as well.
A brief aside about the musical choice in the story. As mentioned in the A/N, the song Empire of the Clouds is real and preformed by heavy metal group Iron Maiden on their 2015 The Book of Souls album. It is an absolutely magnificent classic prog-rock inspired piece of music; it is long, it tells a complex story, it has a wide variety of instruments, and is just grand in nature. For those who've read one of my favourite authors here, A Hoof-ful of Dust, you'll note his gimmick is titling his stories after songs. Since first hearing Empire, I have wanted to do something like that myself, probably set way back during the 3-Tribes period in MLP, centring around the pegasi in some fashion. I just haven't found a good hook yet. I also want to do a piece for Meatloaf's Seize the Night and haven't for many of the same reasons.
Stormrider, in the tradition of all good tribute bands, is named after another Iron Maiden song.
We didn't get a chance to check out The New Horrorism alas, but what you read of their description here is how it appeared in the guide and on the website. I mean, how can you not laugh at "transcendental mime"?
The public sofas were real and comfy.
The restaurant mural was not nearly as complex; it was a stylized cherry tree, complete with blossoms, on the neighbourhood sushi-burrito place. Here I decided to model the mural after Silfoe's absolutely gorgeous piece Peace at Last, which in the story her ponysona is painting as our leads watch.

After that, though, it's pure fiction. Neither Stitch nor I got in with the DJ, nor did we do any grinding on stage in public. Well okay, I do abhor getting out of bed in the morning, but that's as far as it went.

Jazz Fusion / Jazzie is an OC for the story. I wanted a good contrast for Octavia, and settled on what you see for both her play style and physical appearance. Yes, she does have a bit (maybe more than a bit) of Pinkie to her, hence the curly hair. This Octavia can appreciate that there's more to classical to the world, even while acknowledging that it's her comfort zone. I wanted to build more rounded characters, to try for something else than those others that you sometimes read where they're fixated only on one type of music to the exclusion of all else

Vinyl is rather the same, in that she not only acknowledges but appreciates other types and sub-types of music. Sure, she still loves her dubstep, but she started with a more traditional classical background before branching out. Even now she appreciates the softer, or more atmospheric, or simpler forms of electronic music. I think it's closer to the truth of the characters, especially if you look at how they interacted in Slice of Life.

Oh, and as I said in the A/N, almost all that Vinyl says about music type is research, other people's opinion, and a little of my own preference in some combination. I am by no means a huge electronic music fanatic, and only have the most cursory knowledge of the stuff Vinyl talks about, so if you are into that scene or industry and think I'm talking out my ass, I apologize for that and would be interested in hearing why and how.

Another relationship that I wanted to explore that I don't think gets enough attention, or at least I haven't seen enough myself, is Celestia and Luna in the more immediate aftermath of Luna's return. The biggest thing would undoubtedly be the culture shock for Luna; literally one day it was 1000 years ago, with the language, music and customs of that time, and then the next she's in modern-day Equestria. We did certainly see that on display when she came back during Luna Eclipsed. There'd be equal culture shock for the regular ponies, as Celestia seems to have let her sister's story become myth and legend, and suddenly they're faced with that myth as reality.

As to Celestia herself, I viewed Luna's return as a kind of catharsis for her, that her biggest life's regret has been corrected and she's finally reunited with her sister. That return I felt would mark a change in her, where she can finally stop being the sole sovereign over her ponies and start relaxing and being her true self. That relaxing I think would also help Luna readjust, as Luna would still only know Celestia as an older sister and not what she'd changed herself into during the last 1000 years. There would, naturally, have to be moderation and care taken in how she acts so as to not totally dominate her younger sister as had happened before while still dealing with the fact that she was the only legitimate power for 1000 years and there wasn't any other option. Right now she'd be still riding the wave of good feels from getting Luna back and wanting to do everything she can to show off modern Equestria and make her sister feel as at home as she can.

There's a nod to another story in this one, but I can't manage to find the title; the nod is the griffon blacksmiths and how they use their wings to fan the flames of their forges. The story in question centred around Gilda being from a family of smiths and running away to Equestria when she realized that following her calling (there was a whole coming-of-age ceremony / scene that marked this as her destiny) would mean losing her feathers due to the hot working conditions of the forge and thus losing her ability to race or even fly. It was an unfinished story but rather good from what was there, I just cannot seem to find it again. Any help would be appreciated.

That about covers characters and themes, so that brings us to this story's creation. Now if you're wondering why a story set in fall, based on events that happened October 2016 is coming out at the end of February 2017 start of March 2017 (like WTF happened? This was awaiting approval for >15 hours before I yanked and resubmitted thinking that the AWS outage may have affected it somehow, then it only took 30! more to go through), it's cause... well, I kinda fell out of love with it while writing it. When I got back, I spent a day or so putting words to the events I wanted to highlight and a lot of the jokes I wanted to tell. I mean, the outline alone was 2500 words and covered the whole piece, beginning to end, and included whole sections of dialogue that wound up being used. I did manage to bang out about 6K words in the first week or so after that, then stopped, came back, fiddled some more, added Trixie, and then... just kind of left it there. Again, not loving how it was turning out.

What made me come back and finish it was finishing Actually, I'm Dead. That was really, really good, I liked how that felt. So I looked at what I had myself. That consisted of two stories I'd been working on since 2015 that I've procrastinated the few missing scenes to pieces, and this one. Well, this one was shorter and had a full outline. Okay, so it was running long compared to other stories of its type (it'd been a while since I read Vacation, I forgot that was 6K) where the designed shipped couple meets for the first time, but f:yay:k it, I was going to finish this thing! So I went back, re-read it, decided pacing wasn't as bad as I remembered, and enough interesting stuff was happening and being said. Worked in a few more jokes, had the remainder of the mane six make their own cameos (because why would Rarity be there alone?), sent it off to the pre-readers, and was relieved they didn't hate it.

And so here we are, first story or 2017 and third full story under my own name. I thank any of you who've stuck with me so far, in addition to making it through this (2300 word) blog post and hopefully the story as well! I hope that you all liked it, and if things go well, you'll be seeing more of me this year!

Report nightwalker · 511 views · Story: Nuit Blanche ·
Comments ( 4 )

Hopefully, you'll see some work from me, too.

A most enjoyable read. Whether the real-life experience or your skill with description, this has undoubtedly been one of the more grounded stories I've read here. Likely both, yes. I could very much imagine the festival, even though I've not had the pleasure of experiencing Nuit Blanche myself. I'm going to have to look that up and see if it's geographically feasible for me to attend one. Sounds like a great scene.

I also very much enjoyed how you wrote Octavia and Vinyl. Their interaction seemed rather natural, not rushed or painfully drawn out. Definitely well worth the time taken to read this one.

4668839
Thank you very, very much for the kind words! I’m glad that the descriptions of the fest and the atmosphere came through, and that you appreciated the takes on the characters. That you took the time to say as much here means a great deal to me.

Login or register to comment