Teatime Is A Wrap. · 6:38pm Jun 4th, 2017
After seven months and 100,00 words, Teatime is complete. Thank you to everyone who read and commented on it. Now that it’s done, I want to vent some. There are some spoilers below. If you haven’t finished the story, I suggest you read this when you’re done.
In late January 2016, I published the last of my first cycle of stories on FIMFiction, The Last Days Of The Kingdom of Equestria. It was the most widely read of my my first stories.
Feeling like my writing was improving, I decided to try to focus my efforts on creating my own non-pony fiction, with a goal of self publishing a book. I had helped a friend self publish several novels, so I knew the mechanics. Now I just had to write something that was worthy of being put between covers for the world to see.
Fast forward ten months to November 2016. Inspiration had not hit. I had made a couple of aborted starts at novels, but none of them had gone beyond notes and a couple of skeletal chapters.
And I kept getting inspiration for pony stories.
So I decided that I would learn more from leveraging my interest and working on a story I thought I could finish. I figured I would learn more from actually writing something that inspired me, than I would from banging my head against my keyboard trying to create something just to put it on Amazon.
I swap story ideas with the author who I had helped self publish. She’s not into MLP, but was willing to listen to story ideas and provide feedback. When I mentioned I was interested in the relationship between Twilight and Celestia, she was adamant that any romance between mentor and student made her profoundly uncomfortable. The power dynamic between a teacher and student was not a basis for a healthy relationship. I realized that the mentor / mentee dynamic could also be an impediment to a fully realized friendship as well.
I took that as a challenge. How would I evolve the relationship between Twilight and Celestia for them to have a more healthy relationship, whether friendship or romantic?
I decided I wanted to tell a slow burn story, combining moments of Drama with Slice of Life. I was heavily influenced by kudzuhaiku’s Weedverse, which focuses on stories of character growth, Distaff Pope’s The Diamond In the Stars, a wonderful story of a romantic friendship, and Cynewulf’s Ageless, or Celestia Plays Dice With the Universe, which is specifically about Twilight and Celestia’s evolving relationship.
In my training, a story begins with the statement of a problem and is over when that problem is resolved. Teatime starts with Twilight telling Spike that she wants a closer relationship with Celestia. And it ends when the two of them move their relationship to a new level.
While writing the first half of the story, I didn’t know if I wanted there to be a romance or not. I wanted there to be lots of intimacy, mostly emotional and some physical. But in the first half of the story, I didn’t want it to go beyond the bounds of what true friends might do for each other. I didn’t add the Romance tag to the story until Twilight, the POV character, had her first in-story romantic thoughts. This was to mirror in the reader, the uncertainty I had while writing the story.
I did consider making the story a romance early on. If I was going to go the romance route, I knew somepony was going to ask, “Are you courting me?” and the other would answer, ““No… Yes… Not at first…”. Initially, Celestia was going to ask Twilight. Then I decided it worked better the other way around. Thus Twilight’s cluelessness about Celestia's growing interest became a pat of the story.
And, even as I was writing the final chapters, I outlined in my head a version where Twilight says no, she doesn’t want Celestia to court her… yet. Maybe in the future when she was more mature. But that felt like cowardice. Twilight had already turned down coming back as her future self. It didn’t feel right for her to back down twice. And I believe that for Twilight ”...none of her best choices had ever come from giving in to fear.”
Looking back over the story, there are times I wanted to rip 50,000 words out of it. Drop all the politics, and the Starlight sub-plots. I could hear some readers thinking, "Just, get Sun-Horse and Book-Horse together why don’t ya? It’s not that hard to write, 'and then they bang'." But upon reflection, all those words feel necessary. Much of the story is about establishing that Twilight has grown to be on more equal terms with Celestia. Showing that she is a capable ruler and effective mentor is critical for that.
And I have a weird fascination with Equestrian politics. I also seem to like Celestia and Twilight flying together. That came up in the story a lot.
There are many other things that I could go into. Some scenes I envisioned as parts of different kinds of movies (Twilight vs. Starlight is very anime in my head, while Twilight emerging from the magic pool is pure soft focus from a romance flick.) But I think I’ve rambled on long enough.
Some appreciation. Thank you to the MLP staff for creating such wonderful characters and background. Thank you to my author friend for great feedback and encouragement during the writing. Thank you to Distaff Pope for feedback on the first couple of chapters. Thank you to kudzuhaiku and Cynewulf for amplifying the signal so more people could hear about the story. And thanks again to everyone who read and commented on the story. You have all made writing and posting Teatime a very special experience.
Congratulations on finishing your story! It was a very enjoyable read, and I do agree that all these subplots were very important in fleshing out Twilight's character, as well as her ability to rule.
It really helps that I like Twilight acting as a competent ruler.
I think your story is a very well done TwiLestia story. There is character growth. We see them develop slowly... It is a good 'slow burn' as you put it.
My only complaint, I felt like Twilight's reaction to not spending enough time with her friends when Starlight called her out on it was a bit... muted? I don't know, felt like it was a little glossed over. But then again, it is something Twilight would handle fairly easily I am sure.
Very well done, and to be honest... I thought the politics were an interesting part of it. They helped fill the moments with something interesting and flesh out the world more.
Even though the story has run its course, I feel sad that it's over.
I've been eager for you to finish so I can read it all in one sitting.
Will there be a sequel!?
as do I! In fact the daily court routines were some of my favourite parts!
This story was a lovely experience that never got stale for me. I loved the development and subplots (such as Starlight's plight with celestia midway through).
Thank you for the lovely reading material, I look forward to whatever you have store in the future!
4563795 Also wondering (and hoping) for this
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Good to find other political junkies!
I've been thinking and researching about political elements that ended up in Teatime for a while. Some of those thoughts ended up in a few blog posts:
Some ideas for Royal Etiquette
Twilight Sparkle’s Princess Checklist
Who Are All These Ponies In The Castle?
You just have to be crazy to want to be a Princess of Equestria
The Challenge of Celestia as Protagonist
Also, I appreciate the encouragement. I haven't decided what my next project will be.