Interview with 24th Pegasus

Interview with 24 Pegusus 

by Nailah

“Alright, now tell me my dear friend, what inspired your username?

Response: There isn’t a whole lot of story behind the username. I come from a large Italian-American family, and when your grandmother has 25 grandchildren and countless more great-grandchildren, it becomes important to figure out who was born in what order. I was 24 and my younger brother was the 25th and last, so 24 has always been an important number to me. When thinking of some way to use that when joining fimfiction back in 2012, I decided to go with ‘The 24th Pegasus’ since pegasi were obviously the best of the three pony races that existed at the time.

“What drew you into Mlp?

Response: It was mostly the art style. The first time I encountered G4 was through peoples’ sprays while playing Team Fortress 2; since 2012 was pretty much the birth of horseshow popularity, content related to it was everywhere. My brother and I decided to watch it to see what it was about, and we made our way through the two seasons that were out at the time in about a week. The art style got me to bite the hook, but it was the great characters and great worldbuilding that really set it for me. And when you want to write stories, those are perhaps the two most important things for an author.

“Who is your favorite pony and why?

Response: I’ve got a picture of Somnambula as my avatar; that should make the ‘who’ pretty clear. Or at least, one of them. Somnambula is a character whose design and story and how she fits into the history of Equestria and the show really caught my interest (seriously, an underappreciated detail of her history is that Pony Egypt was a thing and it was ruled by a ruling class of pegasi, not earth ponies or unicorns like we see pretty much everywhere else in the show. That opens up so much potential to work with in stories). Realistically, when it comes to main characters, my favorite would be Rarity. She’s intelligent but also clueless; she’s dramatic but compassionate; she hates dirt and mud but is probably the pony most likely to resort to physical violence and getting her hooves dirty out of all of her friends, barring Rainbow Dash. She feels like the most ‘complete’ out of all of the main cast, and she practically fits perfectly into whatever story is going on around her. She makes the ponies she interact with shine brighter and draws out the best in them, which in turn shows the world the best she has to offer. There are very few episodes with Rarity as a focal character in them that I actually dislike, and most of my favorite episodes feature her prominently. Something about her just makes everything come together for me.

“Favorite episode and why?”

Response: ‘The Perfect Pear’ has that title by the balls apples. It answered one of the most important questions the fandom has held practically since the show started (look, it might not have said AJ’s parents are dead, but they’re totally 100% dead) and did its own country take on Romeo and Juliet, since that’s basically what the episode was. But two things really make that episode stand out to me: the song, which is phenomenal and emotional, and the final shots with the apple and pear tree together, which was just... wow. That episode got me really close to tears; the only other episode that came close to doing that was the final episode of the show, ‘The Last Problem’, and that relied a lot on knowing that this whole wild ride was coming to an end and the book was finally closing.

But if I had to give the episode that’s at a close second, that’d go to ‘Rarity Investigates!’ I’m a hardcore Raridash shipper, and that episode gave me the validation I’d longed for and more.

“What inspires you to write?”

Response: Nobody else will write the stories that are in my head, so I have to do the job myself. I write for myself because I want to bring my ideas to life, to make what I want to read real, and nobody else can do that for me. That I’ve picked up so many followers and fans along the way who want to read what I want to read as well is just an added bonus.

“Tell us about your favorite story, and why it inspires you to write. It doesn't have to be mlp specifically!”

Response: This may surprise some people, but I am a terrible reader. Terrible as in, I don’t really read books. In the course of 2019 so far, I’ve only read 3 physical books from cover to cover and am working my way through a fourth (GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire series), and I’ve only added about 25 stories on fimfic to my library that I’ve actually read. But I am a sucker for tragedies, for realism; the stories that don’t always feel storybook. My stories have a tendency to be brutal and I’ve been likened to GRRM before in how I’m willing to cut characters down as their stories conclude. I like stories where the good guys lose, but the bad guys don’t necessarily win either. I like stories about sacrifice, about doing the hard things, about making everything that has happened to the characters and the world around them have meaning when all is said and done. My novels are all about that; not everyone gets a happy ending, and those that do have had to claw tooth and nail for it. I’m not saying that fairy tale stories where everything works out in the end are bad, but I think stories are better when the blood, sweat, and tears match the payoff at the end. You know what I’m saying?

Probably not; that was rambly. I’ll just summarize it by saying I like stories that beat the tar out of their main characters over and over again and make them struggle for their happy ending. Those are the stories I like to read, and those are the stories I write.

That and history. History is the greatest story ever told. Nothing else holds a candle to this epic yarn of humanity we’ve weaved over the past several thousand years. You can learn a lot from reading history books, and some of the things that happen are so unbelievable they put fiction to shame, even though they’re true.

“Give us the background of the author! Tell us all about you. Well in a short summary.

Response: I started writing pony stories in high school in 2012. Now I’m finishing my master’s degree in biomedical engineering and I’m still writing ponies. I once had the #1 rated story on all of fimfiction for a single day, and I made sure to take screenshots of that for my own petty vanity. If that isn’t a life well spent, then I don’t know what is. Actually there’s probably a lot more I could have done all the time I spent sitting at a keyboard writing these stories out... but I wouldn’t change that for anything. I’m happy to be here writing stories for you all to enjoy, and I’m happy you readers do enjoy them.

“Is there anything else you'd like to say?

Response: If you want to talk to me more personally or just talk with other fans of my works, I have a discord server that you can find here. That’s where I spend most of my time when I’m not wasting my life playing Paradox strategy games. Thank you for having me, Nailah, and thank you everybody else for reading. I plan on being here for a long time; the end of the show isn’t going to stop all the story ideas I have floating around in the soup can I call my skull.

Ante Legionem nihil erat, et nihil erit post Legionem.

24

Thank you for allowing me the pleasure of interviewing you, you have truly been a pleasure to talk too. I hope you continue being awesome.

-Nailah.

Link to Fimfiction page: https://www.fimfiction.net/user/60513/The+24th+Pegasus