Spilling Beans

so, it's been roughly, what, 6 months since I last let known what my plans were. feel like enough time has past to let some of my beans be spilled. so, be warned that this might be a long long blog full of possible blocks of text. if that's not your kind of thing, you are welcomed to leave. however, if it is your kind of thing, hopefully read past the break, if I ever figure out how to do it.

sorry, couldn't resist.

anyway, this blog is to let you know what my initial plans for Greyscale and friends would have been. you see, at the beginning, I never ever thought of writing about what essentially is my ponysona, as confirmed by a friendly cyclops, and I never really thought about shipping him with any of the mane 6. you see, stories about OCs and mane 6 ships aren't ever my thing, since they always feel forced upon. here's this character and as soon as he/she sees one of the mane 6, head over heels in love, and vice versa. that kind of stuff isn't how romance works. sure, there are outliers out there, in fiction and life, where that example has worked and lead to success, but my point still stands. now, it might seem like I'm rambling on, trust me, I do that for fun at times, but it's just to let you know how I feel about that stuff.

so, let's shift to how the stories happened, to as best as my memory can remember: got dared into making a story and a friend kept bugging me how well Grey and Twilight would be together. yes, I know, something that simple lead to like 34.5k words of fiction. didn't even know it was that much in all honesty, and there's some more k's worth of words out there with ideas, concepts, scrapped works, and works from a friend out there somewhere. never in my dreams would I have thought I'd even casually written that many words for a character that didn't have to deal with some coursework or homework or something.

originally, the idea I had for the stories were "how can I add him and a few other OCs into the show in a way that wouldn't really take away from the show's episodic storylines?" my answer to that was A Series of Firsts. yes, it was badly written; yes, had a filler chapter that really wasn't needed; yes, it felt a bit off; and yes, I was proud of it. before I did that story for Grey, only had 2 vague "insert reader here" perspective story, a concept that I knew was above my pay grade, a random story about a background pony, and a weird story about another OC that I thought was good at the times. honestly surprised how well, in my opinion, A Series of Firsts came out to be with what I had under my writing belt, and thinking back I know that I could have done some things different, but I still stand by with what I did. it showed me that I was able to think of a way to make a background OC pony have a life without forcing things through circumstances and dues ex machinas.

after it seemed like people liked it, only have 2 downvotes as of this blog post, it made me feel that there could be more to this character of mine. so, going with the idea I had, I decided to work around a few specific stories from season 1, as well as planning on using a few other episodes from later seasons, as a way to show actual time progression in stories. you see, you don't always need to write the day to day things one might do. it just ends up flooding the story in my opinion. so, enter Of Wages and Things and Hibernation Preparation, or as most of you would better understand the Running of the Leaves episode and a logical story of what Fluttershy would do before hibernation season for her friends.

each did well, only 1 downvote each, which spurred me into thinking of showing a new light to Grey. that led to Prerecorded Performance. just a quick little thing: I have a jukebox mind. by that, I mean that if I have heard a song before, I might be able to remember its rhythm, beat, lyrics, yadda yadda, to the point that even just a pure violin chorus cover of a song would not escape me, had to listen to a few of those songs while waiting for my brother's graduation, 7/8 songs I knew just by matching the rhythm and pacing, last song I was too soft to figure out. using that weird thing I got, am able to sing along to songs while driving or at the gym pretty well. can even bring out some songs I haven't heard in a bit from somewhere in my mind and remember enough to entertain myself for a bit. I decided to give him that quirk of mine but increase it a bit. unlike him, I have never sang karaoke before; too shy and stage fright to do that. all that swagger and finesse he had in that story was the version of me I feel like I get while singing music. the hard part to that story was trying to figure out a sort of loop hole to fimfic's music policy, which I think I did well enough at with how the story came to be.

next came Time for That Feeling, in which I gave Grey yet another one of my quirks: when I'm sick, I'm seriously sick. I'm serious with that statement; I don't get sick all that often, especially as a kid, and whenever I did/do get sick it feels like all the time not sick gets compressed into the sick time. last year, while I was working at a restaurant, came in a bit early for my shift, had to do some errands and was going to be in the area anyway, and hang out trying to get some shuteye if I could. apparently my body decided that that was a good time to commence the sickness: vertigo-isc dizziness, super upset stomach, difficulty thinking straight, constant coughing, and just all around discomfort. was able to function enough for the shift, with taking as many precautions for my health and the restaurant's everything, and was able to successfully get home before was hit with a worse wave. just crashed at like 4 pm, woke up at like 8 pm feeling like crap, and decided to call in sick since I seriously was. I played around with that and tried my best to kind of push it onto Grey in that story, though am not sure how romance elements got in there. they just seemed to pop in out of nowhere.

Some Kind of Night ended up being the season 1 finale, a la Grand Galloping Gala episode, but with a twist: I used that event as a pretext as to why Grey would be hoping for in going. looking back, I feel like I could have done that story and season a bit better, since it felt like that was the definitive "I love her" story with the impact not being as natural as it could have been. that story also showed off what his primary job is: a bookkeeper. in case you might not know what that might be, like everyone else in my life, it's basically a "lesser" form of an accountant. decided to show off a few of the general bookkeeping practices in that story, even though they felt a bit "why am I stating this this way?" to me. and the coup de grace of that story, which would have established a trend for something, was Grey asking Princess Celestia a silly random question that would feel natural to him.

with the "season" 2 opener, Late Night Meeting, I wanted to show that in this season Grey would start to have a little more drive to get closer to Twilight. but since I had to show time progression, I decided to use the debut episodes of Discord, though more so the aftereffects of them. in my headcanon, not everyone would have been able to actively recall what they did during that time of Discord being Discord. played with that with Pop Tart and Grey, with each mentioning a vague feeling of what happened or a physical aftermath respectively. it also would have allowed me a chance to start turning the Tony Stark levels of playboy that is Pop Tart from one path to another. the end served its purpose as driving force to have Grey actually ask Twilight out, which would have been a good transition to the next story, It's About Time.

with that one, I wanted to do a 2 parter, the first part setting the groundwork for the second part. the first part would be the world getting in the way of Grey asking Twilight out while the second part would have been the actual "date". the quotations are used since it wouldn't be a date, per-say, since he'd have worded it in a way to hopefully not making it sound like anything other than going to canterlot for a book signing and touring. wanted to do a segment where the two would end up at Juke's Box, a karaoke bar club thing from an earlier story, and show that it isn't always the way I originally wrote it to be with it leading to Grey showcasing some more singing and leading to the pair having a "surprise" duet together. would have ended with Grey walking Twilight home and her asking him if they were on a date, with her hinting at being okay with having some more sometimes.

La Sombra de Abuela, as it's respective blog would have told you, was a random story idea I got while being at Mexico a few years ago, and allowed me to show a side of Grey that not many of his friends would have known, plus give a bonding moment between him and Twilight. love how the story ended up, even if it's cheesy as be. sometimes cheese is good if it's done right.

I had plans of doing a few stories in between It's About Time and La Sombra de Abuela, with a halloween story showing off Grey and friends cosplaying as Dresden characters, a christmas story showing off his Manehattan friends and his immediate family, a story set before valentines that was basically Grey babysitting his year old niece and showing off my weird affinity with toddlers and babies, a valentines day story where Twilight and Grey would awkward double date with Pop Tart and another background pone, and the Canterlot Invasion. would seen him interacting with Princess Luna, with him asking her a silly question like he did her sister, and one of her canon personal guards, getting to know a bit more about him, his family, and his friends at Manehattan, how'd be based off aspects of my family and friends, him having a heart to heart moment with Ditzy, and him acting out what my idols.

"season" 3, with how short the actual show season was, would see the stories revolving around the episodes to be condensed from the time span of mid June to late August, with a few stories afterwards the whole Twilight ascending thing. would have debuted a character I had in mind for a long time, a young changeling colt, who'd Grey pretty much adopt.

my plans were to only keep actively try to write around episodes up until Tirek's battle, with the scattering of a few stories afterwards, with just mentions of previous show events and the like. the stories would have lead up to Grey, smooth as silk, asking Twilight to marry him, at which point all of the things they'd been through together would have made for a natural feeling proposer and yes. with have been a few stories sprinkled around about Icy Mist and his relationship with Fluttershy, courtesy of Icy's creator, and maybe a story or two about Pop and his dealings if I ever managed to ask his creator if he'd like to do said stories with me editing them into the style similar to my writing style.

so, yeah, that was all of my plans for Greyscale and friends. in the end, my zeal ended up being the reason why I stopped. I kept putting more and more onto my plate with me seemingly only barely able to get rid of anything each time. if you have any question, guess feel free with asking them below if you'd like. this doesn't mean that my time with Grey is done, it just means that all of it is in the air right now and I'm not sure which side it will land of as of right now.