The Buttery Snake Show: Penumbra · 2:36am Oct 7th, 2019
The lights went up over a cobweb-covered stage. Someone poked the host with a stick, waking him up. Then the blog post began.
“Huh? What? How?” Buttery Snake looked around bleary eyed, then squeaked in terror as he saw that his guest was lurking in the overstuffed floral chair beside him. That his guest had, in fact, never left.
“What in the name of Celestia’s huggable butt are you still doing here?!”
“Stealing space and oxygen,” replied Unwhole Hole, the fellow who was, at the time, also writing the blog post.
“No. Seriously. I shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here! What happened to pursuing a career as a novelist?” Buttery Snake checked the lists, which had begun to moulder in his absence. “Why is there another fanfiction here?”
Unwhole Hole sighed. “I tried. It didn’t work.”
“They rejected it?”
Unwhole Hole sighed, even harder. “I never finished it.”
“Oh. So you’re pretty useless then.”
“And you’re a character I’m writing. How can you possibly insult me if I’m writing you?”
“Because I’m your insecurities. And also a green-colored pony, in case anyone forgot. And they did forget, because the story I’m from isn’t very good.”
“Stop making me insecure!”
“No. Why don’t you stop talking to yourself like a weirdo?”
“Because no one stops me from making bad decisions.”
Buttery Snake shuffled his papers. They were, of course, blank. “At least you can admit it.” He cleared his throat. “Now, let’s see here...If I recall, you had been working on a science-fiction epic.”
“Which turned out to be too epic.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning the hardest part about trying to write publishable novels is the word limit. You can’t generally see it in paper novels, but they are actually ridiculously short. The general absolute top is one hundred fifty thousand words.”
“You have stories like that.”
“Yes. Horror stories. But that only works because in fanfiction, you already know most of the characters. I can start in the middle without needing to develop them, which saves a ridiculous amount of space. Like, if you know Sweetie Belle is running from a vampire, you care. If old Bob Johnson is running from a vampire, you ask yourself who in the name of Luna’s dysplasic hips is Bob Johnson?”
“You are.”
“I know. But that’s not the point. When I passed the word limit, I sort of gave up on that story. It was too vast to edit down. Sure, I can rewrite it, but it needs a full conversion from square one. I liked the world, but the characters need work. They didn’t have the chemistry I needed.”
“And your other attempts?”
“I tried a comedy, but quickly learned that comedy is super hard when you don’t have a source to parody. Previously I always made pony-based characters funny by having them act out of character for their world or to point out weird absurdities of it. So I needed to do heavier worldbuilding on that one to actually create something compelling.”
“And now?”
“I’m still working on a different science-fiction story, this one patterned more after a young-adult system. I’m having a ball writing it, but the world limit is becoming a severe problem.”
“You mean the one based entirely on a Judas Priest song?”
Unwhole Hole sighed so hard he pulled a muscle. “Yes. That one.”
“Well. Um...yeah.” Buttery Snake shrugged. “At least you’re back here for a while. The response seems to have been overall very positive to your last story.”
“Yes. It was. And I would like to thank all of the readers for reading it, as well as a special thanks to those kind enough to take time out of every day to write a comment (you know who you are, fellows) and for your lovely words. The encouragement was truly very helpful, and I am so very glad you liked the story.”
“He really enjoyed reading your comments. You should have seen him.”
“And thank you Alamais for pointing out a major copy-paste error in one of the later chapters. I still have no idea how that happened. Probably because the keys on my laptop don’t exactly work so great anymore.”
“Does your keyboard even have letters on the keys anymore?”
“I’m missing the ‘L’.”
Buttery leaned back so far he fell of his chair. This did not bother him especially much. “Yeah. That last story was pretty long.”
“I never intended it to be. It was supposed to be a short diversion to get me back into the spirit of writing while I came up with my next non-fanfiction story. Then it got out of hand.”
“You think?”
“The battle part at the end was especially a problem. I had intended since the start to write something I really wanted to see, which was a giant epic battle explaining the fall of the Crystal Empire. I feel like that is a very interesting thing that I don’t see much.”
“And?”
“And it grew way out of scale, even after the story was already fifty chapters long. My situation was not good trying to finish that. I stopped cleaning my house for about a month. I still have flies.”
“Eew.”
“Yeah. Scale creep. But I had the idea for that story for a long time, so I guess it was worth it.”
“Any notes from the experience?”
“It was actually pretty fun. The idea was to write a darker teen-grade story, which forced it into that perfect space between over the top adult-grade violence and the normal cuteness of the series that allows for the most fun subtleties. And then there’s the plalylist.”
“Huh? That sounds super stupid.”
“Not really. Part of my writing process relies heavily on the music I listen to. There was literally the plot summary for a Rainbow song as a chapter, because nothing beats Ronnie James Dio. But in this story, many of the characters were based at least partially on a certain set of songs.”
Buttery Snake cringed wildly. Unwhole Hole, finding this amusing, continued.
“I guess this is just interesting trivia. Other people perhaps don’t care, so you can skip past this part.
“Twilight Luciferian was based (very roughly) on ‘My Funeral Dreams’ by Candlemass (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnYoEnuEn3Q), and the song also implies the direction he may go in future stories.
“Gxurab Al’Hrabanez (Flock) is actually based on a character from a story I wrote in college school, who was a Russian wizard in a semi-steampunk universe. Later, I found ‘Ravenlord’ by Mystic Prophecy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIR0fegM-AE) which informed the character later on.
“Eternity Gaze was partially based on my personal interpretation of ‘Telekinetic’ by God Module (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iuLahwjVBw)
“Only half-way through writing did I realize that Zither Heartstrings matches almost perfectly with the song ‘Human Metal’ by Rage (although I suppose it should be ‘Pony Metal’ in this case) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK2Us9vXgPw). This actually significantly informed the character’s backstory, which was added only in the final chapters. His original ending was actually somewhat different.
“The Questlords of Inverness are, of course, based on ‘Questlords of Inverness, Ride to the Galactic Fortress!’ by Gloryhammer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1JdqE0CX-Y). It is one of the few bands I have seen live. The song specifically focuses on ‘unicorn defenders’ donning their power-armor to fight against an evil galactic wizard. I do not know if that was meant to be ‘defenders of unicorns’, but I took it literally.
“Holder Heartfelt is based on a pun, and also on the song ‘Black Blade’ by Blue Oyster Cult, which is itself based on the Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock (I looked it up, the band was big fans of the books) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p1yaNC1mNg). Also one of the creepiest album covers I have ever seen.
“Nightmare Moon’s lover, Specter, is based on several sources, but namely ‘Lady Moon’ by Axxis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7jqhiQYtaE), a song which I could not help but associate with Nightmare Moon. I associate it specifically with Specter’s execution after the Nightmare War.
“And I think that about covers it.”
“That was the most cringeworthy thing I’ve ever seen. Also, you listen to too much metal.”
“There is no such thing as too much metal.”
“Tell that to my mercury poisoning.”
“How to you lick a planet?”
Buttery Snake just stared. Clearly, Unwhole Hole was an idiot. “And the biggest question that everyone is asking. Is there any hope of a equal?”
Unwhole Hole paused for a long time. Being largely incapable of thinking except about heavy metal, this took some time.
“I have an idea. Now, I’m not sure if this will ever come to fruition. I need to figure out the project I’m working on first, but it’s limited to 150K words so it won’t take all that long.”
“And…?”
“Focusing on this universe, I was thinking a view of how Shining Armor and Cadence first met.”
“Oh.” Buttery Snake seemed immensely disappointing.
“What do you mean ‘oh’?”
“I mean...well...IDW already did that. And that’s a boring slice of life sort of thing.”
“Yes. I know. It would be a change of pace.”
“And boring.”
“Yes. That’s the idea. But I would make a few changes to premise.”
“As in?”
“Shining Armor is, of course, an idiot. Because it’s funny. He kind of has a bland personality otherwise.”
“That’s a given.”
“I am not a gibbon. I somewhat resemble a lemur though. Literally, I have the weirdest shaped head. But no. The idea would be to additionally cast Cadence with a distinctly Penumbra-like personality, enhanced by becoming extremely jaded from over a thousand years as the supreme commander of Equestria’s military and her borderline genocidal attempts to exterminate the changelings. The idea being that the marriage is more or less arranged by the Steward of Equestria, Twilight Velvet. Possibly in the name of a certain Twilight progenitor.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to work that. Stupid Shining and cruel Cadence? I don’t know if you can manage those character arcs.”
“Like I said, nobody stops me from making bad decisions. I’m 200K away from three million words. I really do hope to reach that mark at some point, but I need to see how things go. My job terminates in a year. So this period may be a bit busy.”
“Ah. Your life goal to live in the swamp.”
“It is pronounced ‘swamp’, with an ‘am’ in the middle, not an ‘om’.”
“Then stop playing Skyrim and get to work! Is there anything you can say about the current project?”
“Alien planet. Fast cars. Cannibalism. That’s about it.”
Buttery Snake sighed. “Why do you always put cannibalism in everything?”
“I can’t help it if people look so tasty.”
“You don’t even eat meat.”
“Only because I can’t afford it. You don’t have any, do you?”
“And on that note, that concludes our broadcast. Stay tuned, because we have no idea when this guy is actually doing anything useful. Beware the churpo, and farewell for now.”
That was when the blog post ended.
Sounds delicious.
The list of songs and how they influenced the characters was actually a really interesting read and listen. Also I do kinda feel bad I didn't leave more comments, but I quickly find I run out of ways to say "that was really swell and I liked it". Anywho, keep up the good stuff, for I will patiently await the next installment: pony related or otherwise.
Heh, sorry to hear you hit a barrier in your noveling. If your story is too long for a novel, don't you just1 break it up into a trilogy?
Of course, then you need to figure out how to keep your "here are my characters and setting, are they not lovely?" first book interesting... And I suppose it's harder to sell to anyone even then. I dunno, I'm usually of the "more words = better than" school of thought, just because I read fast and so with shorter novels it sometimes feels like it ends barely before it's begun. Part of how I found your fics was because I routinely sort searches by word count, just looking for something that'll give me a solid amount of time in its world. 
I kinda wondered if the battle for the empire got away from you, but as a reader it never got boring. I think partially that was because even in the thick of things you were still worldbuilding, with the purebloods, all of the Tia and Lulu interactions filling out that weird relationship, and even little things like the naming of the Steward.
"I'll give you the POKE!" shall be forever floating around in my brain.
And I hope you don't think you're alone in finding creative inspiration in music. Love me some epic metal, too.
The Shiny & Candy idea is interesting because I can forsee a lot of different things pulling on Candy, from her past and the present, all of it messing with her at the same time as she falls for the Idiot.
And also because I love kind-of-a-moron interpretations of Shiny.Good luck with your new novel though! I think I said it before, but I believe there are several people2 about who'd be happy to read (and even pre/proofread) such a thing. Plenty of us enjoy a good story, smol horses or no.
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While for me it wasn't for writing, I definitely know the feeling and how demotivating it can be. I hope you can salvage it.
TwiWhite lives.
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Given you universe takes place approximately in canon-ish, and the s9 finale, I guess Ocellus and this event (Spoilers) counts as Cadance's (un)happy compromise? I wonder what led her to genocidal rage? Was it the wedding, or before that?
Good luck!