So I guess I should talk about Eyeball now... · 1:28am May 10th, 2017
...or its revised form, specifically, which I refer to as "Sunset Shimmer is Lonely and Depressed and Sometimes There's an Eyeball."
Incidentally, I finally published the original story to FiMfic, as a bonus chapter, if anybody's interested in reading through it and comparing.
It's probably very apparent to anyone who's read both that the revision took a very different tone from the original. When I posted it for the Writeoff, it was a straight-up comedy, with a much faster pace and a far greater density of jokes and gags. Nearly everything was played for laughs, including Sunset's speech to the Eyeball during the squeegee scene. Not the speech itself, but the situation, the fact that she was confiding in the Eyeball, of all things. While rubbing it down with a squeegee. It was absurd.
Somewhere along the line, though, I guess I changed my mind about what I wanted the story to be.
When I planned out the revisions, I decided that I wanted to give Twilight a character arc, since, in the original, she just sort of changed her mind about Sunset's jealousy in time for the final scene. Given the focus on her in the first two scenes of the story, I felt it'd work better if she were a protagonist with a role that was more or less equal to Sunset's, so I wrote the additional scenes of her interacting with BiTwi, and coming to empathize with Sunset's feelings. As a result, though, the focus was taken off of the Eyeball and Sunset, so I wrote the second chapter to keep the focus more or less even between she and Twilight.
But when I finished writing that scene, I realized how compelling I thought Sunset's talk therapy sessions were. So I rewrote parts of the scene with her and the Eyeball in chapter three to reflect that change in tone and characterization. As a result, the whole story changed, from a comedy, to... well, not to a straight-up drama, but a dramady. As CoffeeMinion noted, the jokes are still there; this is still very much a comic tale, but the emphasis shifted away from comedy to character. To dealing with Sunset, and Twilight, and even the Eyeball, and this whole complex soup of human emotion.
Sunset Shimmer was lonely, and she had her feelings hurt, and the Eyeball just brought that, and a bunch of other baggage, out into the open.
And, it turned out, Sunset dealing with her emotional baggage was the story I really wanted to tell.
Most everything else (like the Glimglam v. Shimsham drama) was just kinda my way of toying with different tropes that find their way into EqG crossover fics. BiTwi's crush on Twilight, besides being a callback to her characterization Equestria Gear Solid, was based on an exchange that Editor Man and I had when I was working on the story the first time. I'd written a bit of a conversation where they debate what to call one another, and he suggested I cut it, since that's kind of a clicheic conversation for them to have. He talked me through the way the two are usually portrayed in stories where they meet, and noted half-jokingly that they "usually end up fucking each other's brains out." So I thought it'd be funny if SciTwi were attracted to Twilight in a purely one-sided way, with Twilight being completely repulsed by the idea.
It's been suggested that I maybe took that part of the joke a little too far?
And, on that note, the name "Bespectacled Twilight" was intentionally conceived to be cumbersome and annoying to read, in contrast to the cutesier naming conventions that tend to get applied to she and Twilight. Because I'm an asshole.
I played a couple of things straight, though. Sunset has a motorcycle because she has a motorcycle in every EqG story; Sunset lives alone in an apartment, despite being, for all intents and purposes, an undocumented immigrant with no social security number, birth certificate, or tax information on file, because... she just does (I headcanon it as her being an emancipated minor, and mooching off of Flash during their relationship to buy most of her stuff, finding low-wage work after their break-up to maintain a semblance of a comfortable lifestyle). Et cetera.
Thanks again to everyone who read and enjoyed the story; check underneath the break for some assorted trivia:
-This is the third incarnation of Killjoy that's appeared in my work, and probably my least favorite iteration of her. PGS!Killjoy is a well-meaning, if slightly bumbling, guardsmare, and EGS!Killjoy is a complete sociopath, but so is everyone else in that story. Eyeball!Killjoy is just, well. A bitch.
"Language!" Twilight snapped.
alright, alright, geez
Also:
Sunset tugged off her helmet, and shook her head, tossing her thick hair about her shoulders. She glared at the girl on the front steps.
"No loitering."
In response, the girl leaned back against the stairs, and spread her arms across the step behind her, splaying her legs. She smirked at Sunset and waggled her eyebrows.
"I can't believe Killjoy is a manspreader."-Editor Man, 2017
I asked Editor Man whether this version of Killjoy is a worse person than the one in EGS. He considers them one and the same, so the question was moot.
-Killjoy is not the only reference to PGS in Eyeball, nor even the most significant one. Find all of them, and win yourself a prize. The prize is a jar of pickled pig's feet.
-The Eyeball's spouse is supposed to be the sock puppet from Make New Friends, But Keep Discord. Normally, I wouldn't give that away, but I didn't really nail the character's appearance in my description of him, because I foolishly didn't rewatch that scene as a reference. I guess you could say he was walking around without the hat and bowtie because he was too anxious to dress up. And he shaved his mustache, or something.
-The Eyeball has a more-or-less fleshed-out backstory and role in this larger cosmology that I'm building around this story, and others that share its continuity. I don't think I'll ever deal with it directly, but the Eyeball will probably appear in future stories that I write, and I'll find other ways to make its presence known. The most I'll say is that Discord is the one who introduced the Eyeball and the puppet, and probably served as Best Abomination at their wedding.
-And, on a final note, I almost cut the final scene from the Eyeball's perspective, because I felt it was too weird and alien in an already weird and alien story. I'm very glad I didn't, because people seemed to particularly enjoy it. And I think it serves as a nice capstone to the overall theme and message of the story, too. 
Relevant Skype log, since Posh established a precedent for sharing our private communications with the good people of FimFiction:
I thought that was Señor Huevos. I look forward to seeing how he and his beautiful wife figure into this larger cosmology.
4526694
This is a one hundred percent accurate summation of every interaction we have.
Aha, I thought that was the puppet guy but the description didn't leave me 100% sure. Though wouldn't it deserve an M-rating for the way they... ah... greet each other there? I mean, I get that they've been apart for a while but it's pretty much welcome home, sailor!
Naw, I liked most of the expanded content. I'm obviously a pretty big burrito-and-bipolar-verse fan so I'm down with seeing that sort of thing pop up here. I also thought the bit at the end was a good and valuable capstone for the whole thing. Really the only bit that felt out of place in the Expanded Edition(TM) was BiTwi's severely inappropriate advances on PriTwi. As I mentioned at some point somewhere, the comic timing of those got thrown off by having soooo much more space to live in. And the problem is that that sort of thing can go from creepy-but-funny to actually-kinda-creepy in a heartbeat if the joke doesn't stick its landing.
But hey, I think I can still find it in me to give this... maybe... an 8/10.
Posh, you are nothing, if not incredibly thorough.
4526910 There is so much I forgot to mention in this blog, dude.
Like, you have no idea.
4526778 I actually just intended for them to hug, rather than engage in eldritch copulation.
I'm not sure how a disembodied eyeball and a sapient sock puppet would even go about making love... Less timid minds than I will likely come up with a method.