Story Ideas #1: My World Is Empty Without You

First of all, yes, I am still here. I never left the show behind, and I’m still reading fanfiction.

What happened was that I lost the drive to turn any of my ideas into actual stories. I’d like to turn that around, to reward all of you who have been following me for the past two years without one story or even blog to tide you over.

So these are the ideas I’ve come up with. Some of them are absolutely not the kinds of stories I would ever write, in which case if one of you want to use them, go right ahead.

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So a few of you may have noticed that I started a series called “Thought Experiments” in 2012, that was supposed to investigate the dreams of each of the Bearers through the eyes of (my incredibly idiosyncratic version of) Vinyl Scratch. “The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville” covered Twilight [spoilers!], “Masquerade” covered Pinkie Pie, “Accelerando” covered Rainbow Dash (and Applejack, through a loophole), and “The Mistress of Dreams” covered Rarity. That last story was from 2014. I really should have written Fluttershy’s story by now.

My stumbling block was an inability to write in Fluttershy’s voice. I could write her speech, but I believed that her internal world was far more interesting than what she allowed to come out of her mouth. If only somebody would write a story, or even a chapter, from the POV of Fluttershy circa Season One, that I could use as a guide. Or a story doing the same for Equestria Girls Fluttershy, since they are practically the same character.

And then I read “Sucker for a Cute Face”, by Eyeswirl the Weirded, and I really didn’t have an excuse after that.

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All of the stories in this series revolve around the song that Vinyl uses to dive into each pony’s dreams. Fluttershy’s song is “My World Is Empty Without You”, by the Supremes, and I’ve linked to a particularly haunting remix of that song.

With that out of the way, this is what this story needs to do:

• Remind the reader about the rules of this odd offshoot of Season 1/2:

  • Vinyl Scratch as an insecure DJ who tries to hide her blindness from everyone, and her multiple personality disorder.
  • Vinyl’s growing ability to manipulate dreams using music to focus her imagination.
  • Equestria existing as a pocket universe linked to our universe at a remote point only recently discovered by a space-cruising humanity.
  • The mysterious Dragon Emperor, who has used his mind control powers to trap the Bearers and Vinyl in their own nightmares, in hopes that one of these nightmares will kill them all for real.
  • Spike is an autonomous entity that pops up in every dream; not Spike himself, but rather Twilight's conception of him; Twilight's arc in the series in her realizing how she takes the real Spike for granted, and resolving to do something about that as soon as she can return to the waking world.
  • Rarity has managed to use lucid dreaming to break out of the cycle of nightmares, and so can act to help the others from the waking world.
  • Pinkie Pie on the other hand has gotten herself trapped in a dream within the dreams, so the others have to figure out how to free her before she can use her formidable imagination against the Emperor.
  • Also, she has a backstory too ridiculous for me to mention here.
  • Oh, and I somehow need to bring up the character of Oars in Wells, who I have done such a poor job of documenting in this series that absolutely no one suspected that he would be coming back in this story.
• Most of this story is Fluttershy’s dream, narrated by Fluttershy, but with quite obvious manipulation by the Dragon Emperor in the guise of Angel Bunny. I won’t go into details on the dream, as it needs a lot of work. Suffice it to say, it revolves around Fluttershy being the true identity of A.K. Yearling, and her decision to kill Daring Do and her companions off in her next story. Which of course means that the group of dreamers have to survive a very concerted effort to destroy them.
• After the dream, our protagonists will finally be able to face off against the Dragon Emperor, first in the world of dream and then again in the real world. The challenge here will be to keep from repeating myself. Open threads reaching all the way back to “Javelin” will finally be resolved, and Equestria’s pocket universe will be saved from utter destruction.
• And then there will be an epilogue that deals with Spike and Twilight defining their relationship, and Pinkie Pie’s future now that her big secret is out in the open.

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To be brutally honest, the only reason I would write this is out of a sense of completionism. What I have right now is a mess, and it would take way too much work to turn it into something worthy of “The Perfect Little Village of Ponyville”.

On the other hand, it is my belief that as we get further and further away from the series finale, there will appear communities of fans that pick out their own little subsets of the series to get lost in. If there indeed is a mini-fandom one day who are devoted to the period in time when it seemed like Celestia and Luna were the goddesses who created the ponies, then that is the group I would write this story for.

But in the meantime, let me move on to my next blog entry, where I tell you about the story I probably am going to write.

Comments

[Hope]

You say, into the void, that you need a voice for Fluttershy. Well now, ain't it grand you've got a friend in me?

[FanOfMostEverything]

I do hope you revisit this series. It's an amazing psychological thrill ride and a fascinating headcanon time capsule.

[DannyJ]

On the other hand, it is my belief that as we get further and further away from the series finale, there will appear communities of fans that pick out their own little subsets of the series to get lost in.

I'm already there, personally.

[Prime 2.0]

I'd love to see this series get completed, personally.