The 'Ling From Another World - Afterword (spoilers, natch) · 12:25am Nov 3rd, 2018
This is shaping up to be my longest blog post ever...for some reason I feel the need to break down this entire story. Don't know why. But that's what blogs are for!
So, here's something interesting. The original four chapters of Boast Busted were written between February 27th and March 2nd of 2012 - four days, though I got started a little earlier before posting the first chapter so call it maybe six days - and total a little more than 15,000 words. The fifth chapter, added months later once the fandom learned about Cadance and Shining Armor (and, incidentally, changelings) brings the total to about 18,000 words. The 'Ling from Another World is roughly the same length as this, and was written over only a little longer a period, from October 22nd through November 2nd: eleven days.
I touched on this in my author's notes for 'Ling, but to repeat myself, I think recently I've been too concerned with trying to write big, long stories. Those are always great - I hope certain authors in the Lunaverse don't take this as anything remotely resembling an indictment because it isn't intended as one - but the amount of fun I had writing 'Ling, coupled with its similar length to Boast Busted - the fic that started the Lunaverse - has reminded me that I don't need to pound away at a keyboard until I'm being crushed under the weight of War and Peace. A short story can launch an entire shared universe.
I'm going to try and keep that in mind, going forward.
Anyway. Like I said, this was fun! I enjoyed writing The 'Ling from Another World, not only for the chance to make a good stab at horror - a genre I've never really done before, though I flirted with it with The Return of Tambelon here and there - but for the balancing act I had to play, of making the changeling in it, who we now know is Ocellus, legitimately scary and threatening to the foals (and to the reader through the foals) while never letting the readers forget that the changeling isn't malevolent or evil. I also enjoyed it for a chance to really put the foals through the ringer and see where that took them and how they dealt with it.
When I started writing 'Ling I imagined Dinky as the main character throughout, to the point where I was considering not even changing from her point of view. I thought this would help build up the tension since then the only pony we knew wouldn't be a changeling would be Dinky. However, Dinky gets a lot of exposure in the Lunaverse already; she's sort of our seventh main character, the way Spike is the seventh one in the show. Plus once I started writing for Dinky I realized I had a chance to shine a light on some of her more negative traits. You'll note she's developed a little bit of a temper; this is something I plan on developing further whenever I get back to Treasure Hunt (side note, 'Ling takes place after that story, so Dinky does have her cutie mark in this - but to avoid confusing readers I neglected to mention that). Finally, since I knew I wanted Snails to be the one to connect to Ocellus, I decided to switch between the four foals throughout the story so that the epilogue being from Snails' perspective wouldn't feel like a weird turn.
The pony that surprised me most was Twist. Somehow when writing this, Twist became something of the main character, at least for the first four chapters. I wasn't planning on her being a lover of mysteries, but, well, one of the foals needed to be able to do some logical deductions. One of the great things about the movie The Thing is that nobody is stupid in it (MacReady: "I know I'm still human...and if you were all these Things then you'd just attack me. So I know some of you are still human, too."). I didn't really stick to that in this story, since after all our characters are foals with foal-level reasoning, but generally speaking I wanted the foals to usually have good reasons for what they do, and good reasons for their dumb decisions, too. Twist became the one who was trying to figure out Ocellus beyond "scary monster, run away". She didn't really care why the changeling was hunting them (accepting that it probably boiled down to "food"), but she was the one who wanted to figure out ways of detecting it. She was our MacReady. When she has a hot piece of metal and asks for some of your blood, give it to her, or she'll probably torch ya.
And yes, I originally chose Twist because of her lisp; I thought I could have Ocellus have trouble duplicating it so that a clever reader could notice. However I eventually decided on a "less is more" approach; Ocellus was already duplicating Pipsqueak and Dinky, I didn't want to just run down the list. The lisp makes for a great sort-of red herring, though.
Pipsqueak got to play the role of the young guy in way over his head. If there had been more changelings and the foals had a spaceship, he'd be the one talking about Bug Hunts and Game Overs. That being said he did show his bravery throughout - bravery in the sense of "I'm scared out of my mind but I'm going to act anyway because I have to". He knew going into Green Grape's shack was stupid since there was a 100% chance that it was Ocellus' lair (and it was), but at the same time he wanted to rescue his friends. Note that when they were trying to bug out (heh) of the shack, as well, once Twist and he had kicked down the wall the first thing he did wasn't jump out, but instead he grabbed Dinky and dragged her out with him. You'll also note that whenever he thinks about the other foals as a group, Dinky is the first one he thinks about. I think Pipsqueak is still a mite too young to really understand or pick up on Dinky's burgeoning affection for him, but at the same time he on some level already reciprocates it.
Next, Snails. Since the start of the Lunaverse and making Snails a recurring character by making him Raindrops' little brother - all thanks to a 4chan post, by the way, proof that even in the worst places you can find some good - I've been determined to write Snails a certain way...which, to be blunt, is kind of mentally slow. In a lot of works, especially fan works, you'll see a recurring theme of mentally slow people be given some kind of autism superpower, like the ability to count cards or be phenomenal at chess or be unstoppable as long as you're wielding two scimitars or be an ideal target for a Super-Predator's weird spinal fluid harvesting or something. But the reality is a lot of people, most people, who are mentally slow aren't like that, they don't have magic superpower minds. Snails knows a lot about creepy crawlies not because of autism superpowers but because he personally really likes them, and has put a lot of work - more work than somepony else would have to - into learning about them. Well, that and because he's a magical unicorn who can just talk to animals and ask them about stuff directly, but my point is that I want Snails to show that just because you're slow and don't have Rain Man abilities doesn't mean you can't meaningfully contribute or live a good, full life doing whatever you enjoy.
Of course, in avoiding one cliché Snails has sort of fallen into another; he's the simple but fundamentally good person in the group. "Tell me about the rabbits", that sort of thing. Still, I don't think that's a bad cliché to fall into. Tropes are tools, after all, there to be used, and ultimately Snails' good heart is what allows 'Ling to have a happy ending for everyone involved.
Finally, Ocellus herself. First up, who wants to see what I imagine her filly form to look like? I actually didn't have anything in particular in mind when I wrote it beyond keeping Ocellus' reformed color scheme, hence why the tribe isn't mentioned in 'Ling itself. But here we go!
If you don't let out an "aww" or something similar, then I did something wrong.
Of course, Ocellus can change tribe on a whim, as well as colors, apparent age, and so on. But we can consider this to be her "default" pony form. She's a little shorter than Snails in this form, but Snails is tall for a foal so in this form she's probably a little bit taller than Dinky or Twist.
Changelings are a slow and creeping menace in the Lunaverse; I'd argue that they should have been in the show as well, but then again MLP just isn't that kind of show for a variety of reasons related to running time, target audience, episodic nature, and so on. But the Lunaverse can be that kind of universe, where we slowly build them up until their big reveal. Changelings have appeared previously, and briefly, in Just Us Little Ponies, Lords and Ladies, and The Glass Kingdom, but this is the first story where one of them takes front and center stage. In a way the goal of The 'Ling from Another World was to, in a single fic, show off what I want changelings to be like in the Lunaverse entire: hungry, terrifying, threatening, and their very presence induces paranoia and fear; but at the same time not fundamentally evil, having basically good reasons (from their perspective) for what they're doing, and with the possibility of changing into something better there.
The idea of making the changeling drone menacing the foals Ocellus was an instant one; there was never a version of this story where it wasn't Ocellus, and I never considered adding Thorax (though you'll note that Ocellus does name-drop Pharynx). She seemed like a natural "first contact" with the rest of the Lunaverse, and being something of the equivalent of a foal herself (I reckon she's about 14 to the foals' 10-12), she seemed like a good foe for the foals. By making her a drone, as well, we avoid the issue of the "hey, about that huge changeling swarm that's invading us right now, why didn't you mention this?" problem. Chrysalis doesn't tell all her changelings everything, especially not her worker drones who probably aren't going to be part of invasion front anyway; their job is to acquire more minerals and Vespane gas.
In a rough draft version of this story, Snails, on seeing Ocellus dying, doesn't immediately give her his love; instead he takes her to Fluttershy for help. Fluttershy helps at first (thinking Ocellus is just another injured Everfree monster - no different from a manticore) until Ocellus talks. Fluttershy's image of Ocellus switches from "animal" to "person" and she has a minor freak-out, which is the "poison" that causes Ocellus to start passing beyond the mortal coil; it's then that Snails gives Ocellus his love, and Fluttershy joins in too (as do a bunch of her animal friends), and Ocellus is saved.
However this was dropped for several reasons:
1) It's a bit late to be introducing a whole new slew of characters in the form of Fluttershy, Angel Bunny, Harry the Bear, and so on.
2) It takes away from Snails a little bit if his love isn't enough to save Ocellus.
3) Snails can be trusted to keep Ocellus' changeling nature a secret as best he can, because he's a foal, and foals make stupid decisions (even very smart foals) and will legitimately think the conflict of "either I keep this secret and keep my friend, or tell this secret and lose my friend" is valid even when the secret is "hey, I'm a synaphage shapeshifter". While we the audience know Ocellus doesn't mean Snails any harm, Snails shouldn't be certain of that (though he is) and should tell others (though he won't, at least not intentionally). Fluttershy, however, regardless of her agoraphobia and nervous tics, is an adult, with adult friends and an adult understanding of the world. While there is some precedent in Friendship is Magic for the idea that Fluttershy will keep a promise even if it's not in her best interest to do so - "Keep Calm and Flutter On" - I hate that episode. When faced with an emotion-eating shapeshifting alien from another world, I can't see Fluttershy as keeping Ocellus a secret, out of a desire to make sure that Snails isn't hurt by Ocellus if nothing else. She'd tell somepony - either Ditzy, or Carrot Top, or Rainbow Dash - and of those, only Carrot Top might keep the secret. Ditzy wouldn't, and Rainbow Dash (especially Lunaverse Rainbow Dash) would not only not keep it, but I can seriously see myself re-writing The Mob Song from Beauty & the Beast with Rainbow Dash playing the part of Gason.
So if changelings are to stay hidden from the larger Lunaverse, Snails needs to be the only foal who knows Ocellus' secret, at least for now.
Whoo. Okay, I think that's everything. If you actually read all of this, kudos! Reward yourself with a cookie.
And thanks for reading The 'Ling from Another World!
That's one of the reasons I love Charles Boyle so much in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He's just a decent guy whose quirks dont' make him a super detective; he just works hard.
Nice overview here. Good to see your thoughts. And yeah. We don't need a door-stopper every chapter. ;)
Thanks for the thoughts. :)