Story notes for A Rose Grows in Trottingham · 1:53pm Feb 20th, 2020
For those of you who have read my most recent story, A Rose Grows in Trottingham, you will probably find the style to be very different than some of my other work on this site. This blog post will help explain how this story came to be.
First, this story was created for the Season 10 Bingo contest. Given a randomly generated prompt card containing five MLP-related things, I had to create a story containing all these five things. This was my prompt:
How did you end up creating the final story from your prompt?
It didn't take long for me to get the idea of using the location "Trottingham" as a way to bring all three pony characters together. Spoiled Rich is a wealthy aristocrat, Roseluck is a florist, and Rainbow Dash is a rough and tough working class pony.
Although I am American, as a child I was exposed to British classic literature (Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen) and TV shows (Are You Being Served, Upstairs Downstairs). This is how I got the idea of creating a pony story based in an Britain-like AU.
I created a fictional British-like village called "Trottingham" with a cold northern climate that has no trees and many windstorms. Not unlike this:
"Changelings" are a part of mythology in northern England and Scotland, which makes it easy to incorporate the changeling hive into Trottingham. The changeling hive looks oddly like medieval castle ruins, so I made the "hive" be a ruined castle, sort of like this:
The story was initially written as a sort of "custody battle" between Roseluck and Spoiled Rich, each of them fighting to own the rose bush, and ending with Spoiled Rich being mauled to death by changelings. Rainbow Dash was originally a "barmare" at the local pub that Roseluck talked with every night.
I was dissatisfied with this plot, and felt like it was all over the place. It was only a few days ago that I came up with the idea of Spoiled Rich being at death's door, and Roseluck acting as sort of a caretaker for her as her mind degenerates and she eventually dies. This was the story that I published.
Why is the story written in "fancy language"? 
I don't normally write in "fancy."
I intentionally tried to mimic the writing style of 19th century England, so that the reader is immersed in the setting. This was not easy, and took a lot of "muscle memory" to get used to.
But roses grow very well in northern England and Scotland.
Yes, I am aware. "Trottingham" is not exactly analogous to a British village. Although in the story Roseluck struggles to grow her rose bush in Trottingham weather, roses actually grow very well in northern England and Scotland.
What is Rainbow Dash's accent?
Given her rough and tough army background, she speaks in a "working class" accent. I'm not an expert on the (many) British accents, but I modeled her accent off of a Cockney accent. Which is actually native to southern England, but...yeah. An example of a Cockney accent.
I want to thank Shrink Laureate for hosting the Bingo Contest and giving me the chance to create this rather unconventional story. I encourage you all to check out the story--it was a great mental exercise. And I'm honestly quite proud with how it turned out in the end.
