A HERO RINSES · 7:49am Aug 19th, 2019
Overheardseen at Coffee HQ...
Ia! Ia! Inkscape fhtagn!
Clearly I shouldn't stay up late goofing around with hypothetical potential future cover art, because then this kind of travesty can happen. Not the artist's work--IMO it's a thing of beauty, and you should check it out. I mean that it's self-evident that my time would be better spent continuing my BronyCon recap, or sleeping, or editing, or... stuff, rather than throwing every title I can think of at a wall and seeing what sticks.
But this is that rare kind of evening when the cool air and quiet darkness get my heart and mind revving as one, and my thoughts turn back to the stories yet untold.
One in particular.
Let me get real with you guys for a minute. To Serve In Hell wore its Batman influences on its sleeve. Yet in the end, it was probably more like... Diet Batman? I mean, the interplay of "detective" Rarity and laughing-mad Cheese Sandwich was overtly lifted from the Batman-Joker dynamic, plus or minus how Rarity got suckered into almost ruining everything. Cheese's origin as the big-bad was purloined from The Killing Joke's concept of "one bad day," and his "something something watch the world burn" endgame was... let's say shades of The Dark Knight's Joker. Kind of. If you squint.
I didn't want to hew as closely to the Batman stuff as I started trying to hash out Sunset Rising (a.k.a., "Hell 2"). Part of that came from my desire to make the story stand on its own without needing to read Hell 1; part of it was a matter of practicality (i.e., Cheese is dead). But the other core reason is that sequels can be a turn-off unto themselves. Who's got time to read 100K words of a story before the new one if they haven't already? Probably not me, and probably not a lot of others.
Going with something new meant going with new characters. That part's fun, though. That lets the story be more about the world than just the fixed cast from last time. It also lets me tee things up like this:
In a timeline borne of Starlight's meddling, the cruel reign of Nightmare Moon was shattered by a new Princess rising to power. But the exiled Sunset Shimmer has waited her whole life to sit upon the throne, and now she is determined to wrest it from the upstart pretender by any means necessary.
Boom, there you go; you didn't have to read 100K words to find out that Nightmare Moon won for a while, eventually lost to someone who isn't Celestia, and now Sunset is back making trouble. And now I'm free from the implicit obligation to write another 100K words of off-and-on trying to justify Sassy Saddles' existence! (I maintain that she worked for Hell 1 in the end, but we're all probably happier if she rides off into the sunset.)
But jettisoning everyone risks leaving out the Batman connection, which I'm finding doesn't work as I try to develop the concept.
There's just something about the concept of literally going to war with the darkness that drags my head back to Batman. Comics-wise, Batman has always stood out to me as the one "superhero" who is brave and crazy and effective enough to actually put a dent in true darkness without extreme technology or fantastic superpowers (beyond standard-issue plot armor). Maybe it's because of my own feeling that fighting darkness without also involves fighting it within. But that doesn't mean I want to write the same kind of Batmannish stuff that I did in Hell 1; it's downright scary being inside the Joker's head, no matter what name he goes by. And nobody needs to read a bunch more of Rarity running around being chased by a Joker-ish figure while she tries to summon her courage to fight.
By the end of Hell 1, Rarity has found that courage, even though the cost was enough to break her. And the more I keep looking at Hell 2, the more I feel like leaving her broken is the wrong choice. After all, if Sunset is coming back with a plot to rally the Nightmare's forces against Canterlot, somepony's gonna have to stop her. Somepony who will expect it to be an unfair fight. Somepony who can face the darkness reflected in Sunset and match it, even though they don't relish it. Somepony who can piece together clues that point toward a more complex plot, but who also understands the danger of putting those pieces together in the wrong shape.
A lot of this is still concept work, but it got me excited enough to ramble on this long... 
Rarity's breaking is almost required for her to serve as a Waynian (Waynish?) crusader. The key psychological difference between Superman and Batman is that Clark Kent sometimes puts on a cape and calls himself Superman, while Batman sometimes takes off a cape and calls himself Bruce Wayne. That mental scar is as much a part of the Batman condition as the cowl and the gobs of money.
Rarity may still be broken by the end of Hell 2. The key is taking the cracks and turning them into psychological kintsugi.
Hrmmm... When you said Batman, keeping it Dark, and mental struggles, I came up with this.
i.gifer.com/21CJ.gif
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Rarity’s end-state after Hell 2 is another part of what got me thinking along these lines. Suffice it to say that the climax might borrow a bit from Best Sequel (i.e., Wrath of Khan), and it wouldn’t do for Rarity to leapfrog the rest of the story’s cast and make a run for the proverbial engine room without adequate setup.
(inb4 Rarity sticks a hoof on Redheart’s face and tells her to “Remember”)
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The psychedelia is strong with this one!
Well, if the first one was gritty modern Nolan Batman, then obviously the sequel has to be goofy 60's Batman. You've even got the perfect cover art ready to go!
See, that's the opposite of how I read Batman! For me, he's always been purely about revenge, about punishing criminals. He's not about "fighting the darkness", he's about making the Bad Men hurt like they hurt his parents, because he's an emotionally stunted 10-year-old who can't get over their death.
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Trite as the sentiment may be, I think one of the great things about Batman is that there’s so much room to interpret his character in a variety of directions. He can be anywhere on the spectrum of grim-‘n’-gritty, goofy, or psychologically damaged. He can be a Dark Knight, a detective, or a GODDAMN BATMAN. His motivations can be born out of noble yearnings, base fear, or revenge. And while some interpretations are more beloved than others, almost any of them can be made to work.
I can see how he remains emotionally stunted in most interpretations, though I think that’s where the good ones put him up against obstacles that let him either grow or at least explore what’s happening on the inside. In some ways, Batman’s greatest enemy is Batman. Playing with that can add depth even though the necessity of maintaining the character means he can never fully grow beyond his struggles. That’s where it’s nice in my case to just be drawing inspiration from Batman; I can use similar themes, while potentially allowing for genuine growth or change.
And for me, the best Batman will always be the ‘90s Animated Series Batman. I thought he struck a good balance of trauma and nobility, and I loved how well it fit when Ra’s al Ghul called him “Detective.”
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Wrath of Kahn?
...
Even though he’s dead...
He has hurt them
And he wishes to go on... hurting them
So he’s going to bury them alive
Buried alive........
CHEEEESE!!
CHEEEEEESE!!!
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I agree with this, hence my image.
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This is the quality content I come here for.
...btw, where’s that image from?
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I strive to provide only the memey-est quality content possible.
The image? It’s from the internet.
It’s Liam Neason in Darkman.
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I... I thought I knew the meaning of ham.
I was so very, very wrong
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Any time someone refuses to accept something from me, I usually resort to “take the f’ing elephant!”
Rarity as BatPony? Ooo, I wonder what ToucanLDM could do with that? And yes, rinses, because one must maintain one's fashionable cleanliness darling. Careful, or you're going to end up publishing several volumes. Hmm, who do you see as Robin?
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Possibly Scootaloo, though as more of a Carrie Kelly-style self-made Robin rather than a from-the-ground-up sidekick.
At this rate, however, it’s anyone’s guess if it’ll work out how I’m thinking. I need to start getting serious about planning this out if I’m going to use NaNoWriMo as a springboard for making it happen.
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I suppose I should ask the obvious question, will you be expanding Limestone's roll in this? Lol...
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Possibly. Now, you might rightly ask how that’s even possible considering what happened to her. But FoME gave me the idea that Petunia Paleo’s cutie mark might let her talk to the dead...