HOW TO WRITE STARSWIRL THE BEARDED (because he has a beard). · 5:53am Feb 21st, 2019
"Oh Tumbleweed!" you cry.
"Let us present you with a CHALLENGEMENT. As, sure, you are BEST AT PONIES, but this is only because you are something of a hack, glomming onto the well-established canon that Lauren Faust and Co. brought to what would've been an otherwise forgotten toy-commercial cartoon. So, with this in mind, give no thought to the MAIN (or mane, if we are to use a pun) characters, and tell us, how do you write characters who are in that weird place where they're kinda-sorta more established than 'typical' fanon characters like Lyra or Octavia or whoever, but also kind of more boring?"
"Also Tumbleweed we're a little confrontational about this and we're not quite sure why. But seriously, what's up? Tell us how to write Starswirl the Bearded or something."
WELL LET ME TELL YOU.
Step 1:
Drink drinks. BEARD drinks. Which is either whiskey or at least fancy beer.
I'm not gonna say I have the BEST beard of everyone on FiMfiction, but ... well, it's at least in an upper percentile.
Step 2:
WATCH THIS:
Step 3:
If you do not have a beard by this point, you should turn back before it is too late.
If you DO have a beard by now, you will know what to do.
In the same bearded vein:
I've had a beard for a couple years now. Need to keep it short for my oval face, but I think it looks good.
The nice thing about Starswirl stories is that you have the perfect excuse to banish your writer's block to another dimension.
Why does writing with you always involve alcohol?
I so want to write a spot where Twilight gets to talk with her hero Starswirl, only on close examination, he's got... things stuck in his beard. Creeply little flecks of salad, bits of broccoli, leafs of lettuce, crumbs from croutons, etc... When he is sleeping in the castle guest bedroom, she sneaks back into his room with a tiny pair of scissors to trim the worst bits out, only to find worse deeper in his beard the more she trims, and trims, and trims, until in the morning, he's bare-chinned, and more than a little irritated.
Oh Tumbleweed!
I cry, mostly when Starswirl the Bearded becomes Starswirl the Convenient. I get that establishing badass/and or "scientifically" important wizards for Equestria's development might be a tad hard and that Starswirl checks all the right boxes. At some point though, it's just Starswirl who did everything ever, and somehow he's still a sorta obscure figure in equestrian history.
Someday you'll have to write your finale story about a human author who's kidnapped, tied up in someone's basement and forced to instruct their kidnappers in how to properly characterize ponies.
5017643
Bits of broccoli, crouton crumbs, whole croutons, a deck of playing cards, a scale model of Canterlot, Pinkie Pie, the Breezie nation of Beardia...
I once typoed “Starswill the Bearded”. I suppose that goes with drinks.
That said… What would be your advice for writing all the characters you so far described in one story? I mean, many of those drinks don’t go together, let alone the quantity would reach into hazardous…