Commentary: Even with these unreliable wings, covered in images that tend to stay... · 8:59pm Jun 20th, 2019
Commentary for Chapter 1: Hustle of Moonkind: The Wayward Butterfly.
Fun fact: this chapter was originally going to be called “Analytic”.
The thrilling backstory behind why I chose a Beautifly as my main character... is because the almost-every-language-but-not-English theme song for Digimon Adventure is called “Butterfly”. However, I quickly realised that this would open up a lot of possibilities to explore the ramifications of transformation. In most human-to-Pokémon transformation fanfics, the only issues the transformees have are these:
- Falling over.
- Not knowing how to use moves.
Part of this is because most transformees become mammalian Pokémon, which aren’t that different from humans, but going from human to insect is a lot more drastic. Two specific examples that are referenced in this first chapter:
- A butterfly’s vision is 100x worse than a human’s. On the plus side, they have 360-degree vision.
- Insects breathe through holes in their sides, called spiracles.
While A New World, a New Way is the obvious inspiration for this fanfic as a whole, my focus on the transformation was inspired by Starscribe’s works, specifically The Last Pony on Earth and Through the Aurora. Both of these are slow-burn fanfics about humans who are transformed into My Little Pony species, take a while to come to terms with it, are alone at first, and survive using their intelligence. I like little tidbits about their biology that Starscribe puts in, like pegasi being lighter, hippogriffs being good swimmers, and both being able to tolerate high altitudes. I think the most realistic transformation process in any Pokémon fanfic I know of is Different Eyes, where the protagonist is a Purrloin who chooses to become anthropomorphic and needs assistance with everything afterwards. I haven't read much of it, though, so I'm only going off what the author has said. It's almost much harder sci-fi than anything I've ever come up with.
The falling scene is probably my favourite thing I've ever written.
(Also, I know about Beautifly’s PokéDex entries. A pet peeve of mine is when people act like Pokémon acting like wild animals is the darkest thing ever.)
I originally considered having April land in Ponyville and be researched by Twilight Sparkle, but it didn't feel right. I then realised what made the original idea work: ordinaryness. April wasn't a famous trainer or anything, and the Biyomon was just some civillian. It was very much a Pokémon Mystery Dungeon tale: a silent, observant human-turned-Pokémon falls out of the sky, lands on a beach, and meets an enthusiastic 'mon who thinks that the human can help them achieve their goal. Because of this, having April end up meeting some really important characters at first felt... hollow.
Instead, I watched some episodes for ideas. At first, I considered April becoming a beacon of hope and symbol of rebellion in Our Town and started to rewatch "The Cutie Map", but then I felt the urge to watch "Trade Ya!" after I imagined a butterfly collector trying to trade April. In that episode, there's a pony (who looks like Kratos from God of War) who trades magical beasts, which I can't help but feel was a bit... unethical. Because of this, I got the idea for him to trade Pokémon by capitalising on their mysteriousness, but I didn't want him to be a complete strawman, so I added his point about how it might be dangerous to let the "Moonkind" wander freely. Unfortunately, I think it felt a bit rushed, since Cadence lets them go anyway. (Also, this was sort-of inspired by a scene in A Brave New World where a character says that ponies are treating Pokémon as slaves in Rainbow Falls, or something. It's been a while since I read it.)
Cadence is officiating because Twilight said that Cadence was officiating last year in "Trade Ya!", and season 4 begins a year after season 1.
Spoiler alert: the cyan thing is Sassaflash. She's already on the character list on the Archive of Our Own version, but she doesn't have a tag on this website. I chose her because I wanted a pegasus to be a main character for something that happens later, and I chose the first background pegasus to appear in "Trade Ya!"
Finally, the Budew. I've been replaying Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia v e r y s l o w l y, and a few months ago, I suddenly wished that someone would write about the minor characters from that game. They're a lot more charming than I remember. Crawford is a ranger who visits the school, but has to leave early to rescue a Mantine. His partner is a Budew. I like Budew.
