Evening the Odds - The Original Vision · 6:34am May 1st, 2020
So, if you haven't read Evening the Odds yet, it goes without saying that this blog post has spoilers for that story. To be fair, it's not really a story-heavy fic, largely serving as a vehicle for incestuous smut. But there's a lot of things I wanted to have in Evening the Odds that ended up cut for time - it was a contest fic on a deadline, after all.
There's a lot of things that are hinted at in the text that were originally going to be elaborated upon. This is where the Prologue falls woefully short of its original intent, and there's a strong argument that could be made for axing it entirely. I left it in anyway.
TL;DR This blog is about all the stuff that wasn't in the story. Expect NSFW.
Originally, the purpose of the temple's construction was to be revealed via a more in-depth epilogue that was going to be more strongly paired to the prologue, as well as more conversations with Jack that would serve as a bit of filler between the questions - of which I planned several that did not get written.
The core bits of that extended lore would have revealed the following:
* The Temple of Carnal Self-Knowledge was built by working slaves under the orders of a millennia-gone king.
* The purpose of the temple was a testing ground for his potential harem - mares would compete viciously with one another for the opportunity to even enter the temple, as the king's chosen harem was treated as nearly equal to royalty themselves.
* The three automatons were normally each assigned to one of the concubines-to-be, and were responsible for answering any questions they might have. If a given concubine was killed, it was the responsibility of the assigned automaton to gather up the corpse and burn it on the pyre in the first room. This is slightly hinted at with Hondo's observation of bones in the fire pit, but I confess not enough context remained for that to be relevant in the finished work.
* The mare in the prologue had managed to work her way into the king's good graces without ever joining his harem. She eventually led him to fall in love with her, and she had secretly learned from the mares in his harem what the challenges of the temple contained. When he asked her to prove her love to him, she volunteered to enter the temple with him, alone. He agreed with her request, not knowing that she was pregnant and intending to use that fact against him.
* Her motivation from the beginning was to kill the king inside his own temple - her eldest sister was a candidate who had been slain years before.
* The final room indicates that she had a prolonged sexual relationship with the king where she was never actually consenting to the acts, but only allowing him to use her because it served her interests to not anger him - she needed to be close to him, after all. This is shown in the story, but without the extra context. I'm not sure how many people noticed that detail while reading.
There was also going to be five additional question chambers that were going to be written out in-depth. Only one of those five remains in the story in any form (though one is referenced) - the second chamber was converted into a short piece just to carry the transition between the first and last chambers. Yes, over half of the temple was cut.
The second chamber was originally going to end with a bad answer because Hondo couldn't remember a drunken fling he'd had with a mare in college and threw off the count. Hondo has already gone down on Cookie before, so that's not a solution this time - and she's not okay with him going down on their daughters. Cookie also decides that she cannot force her daughters to perform a sex act on her, and isn't okay with forcing them to perform on each other, so she asks Sweetie and Rarity to decide between themselves who Cookie herself will go down on. Sweetie volunteers, since she enjoys the lesbian experience, but gets completely bored as her mom sucks at cunnilingus just as bad as she does at fellatio. Sweetie flips on her mom and eats her mom out until orgasm - the door opens and they move on. This was scrapped because I didn't have time to flesh it out, but it would have been the next thing done if I'd had time.
A threesome chamber was to reveal Rarity had a desperate attempt at getting Blueblood's attention by roping Fluttershy into a threesome with him. This is the only chamber I scrapped for reasons not related to diminishing time availability. I wasn't really happy with how it was turning out even in my outline, and I didn't want to write a threesome between the family themselves because I felt it would complicate and/or diminish the impact of other chambers' drama. I set it aside as a 'maybe' that rapidly turned into a 'no'.
A chamber involving watersports was going to tie them up because of a time in college when Cookie was way too drunk and peed on an asshole jock pegasus who wouldn't leave her alone. Unbeknownst to her, he got off on it. It also would have revealed that watersports is a common part of Cookie and Hondo's sex life. This chamber was actually going to be the second chamber originally, and Hondo would have been too dense (or not paying attention enough to the blowjob count in the first chamber) to realize that the questions, taken literally, specify experiences with different ponies. Cookie would recognize this error in his judgment and offer to pee on him if he would just lay down below the raised platform. She then was to convince Rarity to do the deed without his knowledge, because she and Sweetie Belle had emptied their bladders already before entering the temple. I thought it would be fun to write that chamber from Rarity's perspective as a humiliation piece, but ultimately decided it was a lower priority than other chambers because watersports really is a mood killer for a lot of readers - myself included. It was intended to be its own, skippable, chapter with tagged warnings for the chapter itself - but as a lower priority, it was cut for time.
Another chamber was going to be about 'how many ponies have brought you to orgasm', and the error here was going to be that none of the family counted themselves, but Sweetie hasn't ever masturbated due to Scootaloo's constant availability - meaning that the error is off by three. It was originally going to be this chamber that revealed Cookie's illicit relationship with her brother, and the bickering over that would prevent them from even noticing that self-pleasure was part of the reveal. Sweetie Belle would be the only one to notice this, and she would quietly try to get herself off without the rest of the family noticing since they would be too busy arguing. This one was the high priority chamber that I wanted to write after the cunnilingus one was fleshed out more.
A chamber on anal was to be the question right before the end that revealed Rarity was actually more prudish about something than her mom. It wasn't to end with any sexy-time shenanigans - their prediction would be correct - but it was instead intended as a comic break from a constant barrage of sex before getting to the main event with Hondo and Sweetie in the last question chamber.
I appreciate you listing the expanded lore for the temple; I had been curious.
5275406
No problem. I always hate how adventure stories often have some ridiculous temple in the middle of nowhere with no explanation at all for its existence. I didn't really get a chance to address that in the story due to time limitations, though.
Maybe you could write it over, but with the new chapters? Maybe label which chapters were edited/added after the contest?
A shame this was cut. It would've been hot.
A shame that this was cut as well. I would've loved it if we could've gotten a scene where Cookie eats out Rarity while Sweetie eats out Cookie while Hondo watches and gets off on it. Or maybe have Cookie get off on watching her daughters pleasure their father, as well as each other.
Makes me wonder if there was a chamber on rimming too.
A shame, as the four of them all getting together to have a foursome would've been the perfect ending to this story.
5709552
Absolutely agreed. This still remains one of my favorite stories that I've written.
5709554 Hopefully one day you can add those ideas in as new chapters. Or better yet, rewrite the story as you originally intended, ending with all four of them having sex with each other. I would really love to read about these four having an orgy!