Bonus Features: With Love, the Royal Family (Commentary + Soundtrack) · 4:36pm Jun 3rd, 2020
Let's have some fun because why not?
If these little bonus feature posts aren't your thing, no problem, we'll see you tomorrow for chapter 2's release! I thought it would be fun for us since so much of the reason Empathy even exists is because of Bevin and I dorking out back and forth, so here's a taste of what that's kinda like!
We kind of really got into answering our first question:
MARVEL: Okay, might as well start with
Q: How in the Fuck did this Illustrated Fanfic Happen???
It's as good a place to start as any. We met in mid to late August 2019, and around then, I decided to write you a gift-fic because I super appreciated you as a friend. I knew you liked Flash and Timber as characters and you liking them so much made me appreciate them even more so why not put them together in one fic? I hadn't seen them interact much anywhere before.I actually got super into it. I wrote Exes Club exploring how Flash and Timber might interact and surprised you and Bookish with it for shits and giggles. Of course I added in Sciset (I'm physically incapable of not shipping Sciset, it seems), and had too much fun with the idea of sharing powers, but in the end, it was all written out of love just to show you I really fucking appreciated you!
BEVIN: B'awwww, and may I say, I had no clue this was happening until there was suddenly a fic in front of me! I'm not caught totally flat-footed that much, but this time I genuinely had no clue you'd been working on this and it was such a sweet thing to even do.
So yeah, then on on top of it you wrote about these two dorks who just did not get the time or space to grow into the characters they had to potential to be, and after three years of working on ways to give them little moments to shine in the series and trying so hard to make them as interesting and as good as possible, it was impossible for me to not get attached to them. Seeing anything that gave them any bit of focus or that treated them well has always made me super happy, so reading that fic was like Christmas morning for me! Everything I love and have been yearning for is in one place? For me?? I just couldn't get over it.
And then there was that crack in the sky. And I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's such a cool visual, this ominous, omnipresent thing that Should Not Be There, just looming overhead all the time.
MARVEL: Oh yeah, I thought the crack in the sky was such a cool way to carry over consequences. We're used to seeing our favourite cartoons reset, but one thing I loved in EQG was that, at its best, the ongoing continuity could be used to show there were consequences for things. Sci-Twi found out about magic by noticing the climax of Rainbow Rocks and Midnight Sparkle had a lasting psychological impact from Friendship Games to Legend of Everfree. I love the sense that things matter.
And the crack in the sky just continuing to hang there at the end of Exes Club, well. It weighs on people the longer it's there and not going away. And that, plus the idea that these characters could share their magic + get new powers representing their relationshipsâ âwell, that had me thinking.
Then you came back and started wondering aloud about things, which quickly turned into mutual geeking out as we rolled the ball back and forth on what these powers could be, what we'd like to see next from these dorks. And I think the most important thing to emphasize is how goddamn fun it was to toss ideas back and forth!
At first, it was Flash and Timber's story, learning how to use their new powers, but as it went I quickly realized what we were actually telling was Sunset Shimmer's story when you showed me some ideas/drawings you'd had from way back when you were working on the show itself. It was so her and so fitting for what I thought the character deserved that I quickly realized I needed this story to be real. In and around that point, I asked if you wanted to do some art for it.
BEVIN: Yeah, that was basically a no-brainer on my part for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was just how much fun we were having tossing ideas at each other already. But on top of that was this pile of ideas I'd gotten back when I was working on the show that I'd really wanted to do something with but just couldn't figure it out on my own. And I realized I needed some closure on the show, and the general three years of my life I'd spent on it. And you seemed to like so many of the ideas I had (honestly just telling other people about them was the most closure I figured I'd ever get with them) that it felt like a really fun way to close that chapter of my life.
Plus, there was just so much that the series could have been and it felt like we were both really committed to exploring at least one version of what that might have looked like. Things that EG was uniquely set up to explore in regards to friendship that were more geared to a high school setting with teenagers with superhero powers and its own cast of supporting characters and mythology. How do the things that set it apart from FiM set it up to tell stories and ideas we hadn't seen yet? You were so on-board that train already and it was really exciting to find someone who could tackle the story and writing elements in ways I could never dream of in a million years. Considering the tremendous amount of work you were doing in sorting all of this into a cohesive narrative (which you were doing basically on your own), it seemed like doing some art pieces was the least I could do to feel like I was contributing to this.
MARVEL: Dude, the art is so integral!!! And after the way you bounced great ideas my way, I couldn't not write the thing! It really didn't feel like work because after every chapter's draft was written, I got to give it to you and we could dork out some more about these characters! That's what sustained me, having someone who got what I loved about Equestria Girls and, as time went went from a friend I really adored to one of the best friends I've ever had.
And that's the story I think people won't know unless we say it: Empathy for the Devil ended up representing our friendship in a lot of ways. In terms of the ideas, it's stuff we both thought was really cool and would give us closure for a series that sadly never got it thanks to Harold [READ: Hasbro]. But even in terms of the collaboration, it started out so simple: you were going to do an illustration per chapter and I was going to write 7 or so chapters.
But as we became closer as friends and as people (supporting each other through things like grief and unemployment), the collaboration intensified and just about doubled. You suggested we do title cards for every chapter and you learned how to paint digitally to shade them gorgeously! And you went from picking one moment per chapter to at least two and having to let go of others!
On my end, I think I've mentioned on the blog before that I re-outlined the story to be a 14 chapter (later 15 when one chapter was split in half) story and ended up writing 100,000 words for the first time in my life just so I could show those words to you.
For some extra fun, here's the playlist I'll be adding to after every chapter! Chapter 1's just got a few fun mood-setters with some foreshadowing hidden somewhere in there:
- Lavender Bones - "I can cover it up, I can cover it up"
- Everybody Wants to Rule the World - Sunset's theme
- Surrender - "Mommy's alright, daddy's alright, they just seem a little weird"
- The Wire - "Always keep your heart locked tight, don't let your mind retire"
Some of the song choices will be mine (some, because I wrote the story while listening to them, others just fit), some are Bevin's. We share songs back and forth and how they might relate to the characters all the time!
So if there's anything you can take away from this, it's that we really fucking love each other as friends and we're giant mega dorks.
-Marvel
P.S. Holy crap, the reception to chapter 1 was so positive and I don't know what to do with myself now... you're all absolute sweethearts
Hmm...
But yeah, this is one heck of a collab. Not everyone gets to work with an actual storyboard artist from the show. Getting a friendship out of the deal is perfectly on theme for the franchise. And if Bookish is involved, I know it'll be good. As I said before, eagerly looking forward to seeing just what you guys have in store.
I love this these little behind the scenes type of things.
I'm really in love with the idea that this is meant to give us some closure on the story of EqG. Very much looking forward to seeing where this goes.
5274986
Storyboard revisionist is actually the most accurate term (I need to get better at remembering the specific terminology), but yeah, it's wild and Bevin's such a gem of an artist!
I also think it's worth saying that there are so, so many talented fandom authors who deserve that honour above me if this was just based on writing ability. So. Many. (And I'd include you in that, for my money)
That's part of why I always want it to be clear that this was done out of friendship and mutual passion, rather than me pretending I'm somehow the best or whatever (my ego's the size of a whale but I'm not Trixie levels of conceited (yet))
But yeah, so glad you're on board for the ride
5275064
Oh yay, I'm glad you like behind-the-scenes stuff, because it's stupid fun for us to talk about.
And in terms of giving some people closure, if it does, that would be the absolute coolest. The fans deserve closure, regardless of where it comes from.
In the same breath, it's kind of great that this is a fan-work because it means that everybody and anybody's version of how Equestria Girls ends is correct. Empathy (and anything I write) will never be written as the Most Right Interpretation of Events For All Time Amen⢠even with Bevin's beautiful artwork on it. In fact, there are some choices in the story that I think can and should still be up for debate in the fandom (I'm thinking of one thing in particular, and I've seen other writers tackle the subject matter and loved how they did it, and only decided to go the way I did because I haven't seen it done before and it lead to interesting existential questions for the character).
There are so many awesome stories out there, and I'm glad that's going to continue regardless of Empathy. But if even one person ends up feeling a sense of closure because of the silly horse words I write, that's magical.