Bonus Features: Somewhere Only He Knows · 6:40pm Jun 5th, 2020
Chapter 2 is out and that means it's time for some bonus content!
Q: How much does Bevin know?
MARVEL: This is a really fun question for me. I think most people, if they think about it, would assume Bevin knows the whole story front to back, everything that's going to happen. Total. Lie.I decided very early on that I wouldn't spoil anything (or very little) that Bevin didn't already know, so these past few months, Bevin's been getting each chapter as soon as a draft is finished blind and that's how she finds out about things. It's only after she reads a full chapter that she picks out the moments she wants to illustrate for.
There's practical reasons somewhere to be found (i.e. if a moment I outlined and told Bevin to illustrate didn't end up working, and needed me to change it, it would waste so much of her time needlessly), but honestly, the main reason I don't spoil things for you, B, is that I wanted to see your reactions and hear your thoughts. You were always the first person to read each and every chapter, and because you got what I was going for with the story overall, I knew I could trust your reactions. I can't please everybody, but if I could have fun myself and make you have fun, I'd be okay if the rest of the world never liked the thing.
... But for real, it's been such an evil joy of mine to have the information of what's going to happen next and where some characters are going with their arcs and just. Not Tell you
BEVIN: Hahahaha! Oh man, okay, yeah, this is so different than how I'm used to working, but honestly I really appreciate the practicality of it in terms of being your guinea pig beta reader. 'Cause yeah, basically, from my perspective I just threw a bunch of my old ideas at you and then we'd sit in chat and spitball "what ifs" at each other and just dork around and have fun. And then you'd go off somewhere and do your mysterious writer thing and come back a few weeks later with a chapter that I'd read and basically feel like
That's honestly my feeling every time you give me a new chapter. How you got this story from the random smattering of ideas and dumb jokes and goofing off we did is unreal to me, I do not know how you did it. But yeah, I'm just beside myself constantly with how well you wove these ideas together into this cohesive story with so much going on and all these fantastic character and story arcs that all fit together and at the same time is such an utter joy to read. It's just so fun!
I don't know how you do it, but I'm pretty sure you're a wizard or something.
MARVEL: Writers are wizards confirmed.
I'm a dork for outlining. I've said it before, but that's really how the wizardry happens: I take the goofs, jokes, and ideas we've brainstormed that I love, and then I structure the story around them. I get ideas building off the ideas we had together. And in the process of expanding on those ideas, and getting excited about things, that's when I start to brainstorm the ideas that I N E E D to build towards. You've read the later chapters I'm talking about, you know what got me excited.
And then I build an outline towards that roughly in a 3 act structure. I learned how to do that over the years by reading Story Physics by Larry Brooks, The Kick-Ass Writer by Chuck Wendig, (and you also can't go wrong with On Writing by Stephen King, of course, but he's not a structure guy), but I think if you know the hero's journey and can fill in some blanks, boom, you can structure a story.
And if my stuff is cohesive, it's because of I'm such a geek for storytelling that set-ups and payoffs (both big and small) are my favourite, so I take a special joy in dropping hints early on and letting the smart readers either figure it out themselves or be blindsided but be able to see in hindsight the puzzle pieces were there (not because they weren't smart, but because storytelling is like magic: it's all about misdirection).
Hell, I'm such a structure nerd that most chapters have their own mini three act structure (especially the later ones where I had way more to juggle and pay off).
But in terms of the set-up chapters like chapter 2, where we're still in act 1 and very much setting up where the characters are in this story, and the character dynamics are a whole other playground!
How Much Does Friendship Mean to us in This Story?
BEVIN: Everything. Well, for me, anyway, it's the center of everything. I love stories about friendship more than anything, and one of the biggest draws for this series as a whole is that it centers around it as its fundamental, foundational block. Not a lot of stories or franchises do that, so it's pretty great when something like this comes along that puts so much effort and thought into the importance of, and the exploration of what friendship is.Fandom is all about exploring the stuff that's meaningful or interesting or entertaining to the fanbase, so being able to take this and run in other directions like to romance or action or deep philosophical ponderings on the nature of the universe or whatever tickles anyone's fancy, is absolutely wonderful and essential. And really, that's all the two of us are doing with this, too, we're definitely stepping outside the boundaries of what canon would have been able to do or would even want to do.
But for me, that friendship thing is still priority number one, and that's always the thing I'm hyper-focused on in a macro and micro scale. And one of my biggest bugaboos about EG's potential overall and one of the ideas I was most excited about was the introduction of new characters into the core group. Not just Flash and Timber, but Sunset herself is this major upset to the dynamic of the core 6 from the Pony universe. So the idea of integrating these new characters into the already established group, with their own personalities and relationships, and seeing what that does to the group and how they'd all play off of each other, was just really fun and exciting to contemplate. And then you came along and dropped the fun hammer on it about a thousand times over!
MARVEL: Hehehehe! Oh man, I'm so with you! I've always loved stories where the friendships fucking matter (I doubt I'd be an EG fan if I didn't), and you're right, Sunset changes things. Some folks in the fandom kind of assumed she was the only thing that set EG apart from MLP for a while there, and I love exploring this group and how much they mean to each other. Because they really would rush blindly into magical battle for each other, so we damned well better understand why.
The friendships matter just as much as the romances! They're all important!!!
Just take a look at Timber and Twilight. They're not together anymore and they clearly don't know how to navigate that. In Exes Club, we saw them be there for each other in a crisis, but how are they supposed to interact with each other now? They've both moved on, but because Timber's dating Flash now, who's friends with Sunset and the girls, Twi and Timber are confronted by the fact that they have to re-learn how to be around each other. That's one hell of a friendship problem.
Dramatics aside, it's just so genuinely goddamn fun to write these characters with their personalities bouncing off of each other, oh my god. I'm a big Albinocorn fan, so the feel of how Albino writes their dialogue in stuff like Sunlight or of course Long Road to Friendship and Spectacular Seven is a big aspiration (without ripping him off of course). And in that vein, one thing I really love to do is to just let them go off on dumb tangents??
That's how teenagers talk to their friends. That's how I did, anyway, we'd end up talking about the dumbest shit and it was fucking great. And with the Rainbooms + the boys, it's only natural that 9 different people are going to be thinking in different ways, which inevitably leads to their dialogue just kind of piling up as a series of non-sequiturs (like so).
I don't let them go on for too long before someone steers the group back on topic, but that's how you end up with the Mane 6 debating if Sunset's a space alien or not or asides about Rarity's ability to speak French
BEVIN: Hahaha! Oh man, the way you write everyone's dialogue is just crystal clear in each of their voices! It's incredible, I still can't get over it. And you're right, they're each so different and distinct from each other, and that's what makes this group dynamic work so well and is so much fun. Honestly, some of my favorite scenes in this story are just when the group is together and bouncing off each other in their own unique way; the banter and silliness and sometimes butting of heads is pitch perfect to each of them and so much fun to read. There is no question in my mind that these people are friends, and also why they're friends.
So yeah, throwing in a couple of wildcards and seeing what happens is just so much fun. Especially when you get magic involved with emotional baggage and new types of friendship problems!
MARVEL: Cheers to the wildcards 🍻
Soundtrack additions for chapter 2:
- I'm Still Here by John Rzeznik - "And what do you think you'd ever say? I won't listen anyway // you don't know me//and I'll never be what you want me to be" (Sunset angsting away)
- Somewhere Only We Know by Keane - "This could be the end of everything// so why don't we go somewhere only we know?"
- Where I Can't Follow by Amy Kuney - "Oh, it takes you to another place//Oh, it takes you far away from me//Why do you go where I can't follow?"
This is a pretty brooding selection of songs for a mostly pretty brooding chapter. Sunset will do that. Brooding away, feeling guilty and beating herself up even when she doesn't need to anymore.
But I'll see you tomorrow for some fun! I'll be there with bells on...
- Marvel
P.S. Featured twice in as many chapters... you guys are the actual best! By the way, does me posting the chapter early in the day (usually around 9AM EST) work well for people? I know as a rule of thumb it's best to post later in the day when there are more users coming onto the site, but if it got featured twice I can probably just release it whenever is best for everybody
Love this. Super excited for you guys.
I've always been a sucker for friendships, from the banter and stupid jokes to down talk and helping each other through issues. Despite not wanting much of a big group of friends in the past and present, I think I've sort of lived through the Mane 7 and their dumbassery, lol. And definitely with you on teenage dialogue. It's the funniest and sickest shit I've seen and encountered and I wanna see more of it in fanfic.
I'm definitely curious on how you're gonna tackle the friendship problem between Timber and Twilight though, because they're in a very interesting scenario! I've barely seen anyone do something other than break them up and never let Timber see the light of day ever again haha.
Me: reading blog about the writing process, the author's thoughts on how the dynamics of the group work, and how much fun they had putting everthing together.
First thought: What family of plants does that flower in the cat-gif belong to? The problem with being a botanist: it just never turns off.
I think the whole Twilight & Timber interacting thing is an interesting little bit of drama just waiting to play out. As Smallcyrstals said, often, in fan-works, he just sorta vanishes. I like the idea of them having to work out how to reconcile their friendship with one another after they stopped dating.
Also, I can't speak for anyone else, but early morning is okay for me. Then again, I am so horrifically diurnal that I wake up at sunrise regardless of when I went to bed.
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Thanks so much! Can't wait to keep working together
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Their dumbassery gives me life.
Oh my god, yeah, it's startlingly rare for Timber to be explored as a character, especially if the writer decides to break Timber and Twi up. It bums Bevin out that Timber doesn't get a lot of love or inclusion, and I don't know, especially after writing the guy, I love him to pieces and can't imagine things without him now (you'll see why more and more as we go along, I think).
He's a good guy! I know he "got in the way" of people's ships, but that doesn't have to be the case in fanfiction! We can make our own rules and we don't have to just characterize him as an asshole! I'll always stand up for him now. He deserves a chance, if nothing else.
Oh whoa, that's dope! I can never remember the names of plants, so botanists like you are always handy to have around. I assume there's gotta be some catnip laced in his lil' flower hat, but this is why we have the Wallflower Blushes of the world. To categorize kitty hats ::salutes::
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I'll be honest, I only low-key shipped SciSet at the end of FG, but it wasn't crystallized for me until LoE, mostly because Sunset just felt like she cared more about Twi and was actually looking out for her. And, frankly, they just feel like they have ridiculous levels of chemistry.
That said, I think I could have gotten behind SciSpruce a bit more in canon if it was given more time to develop before they "got together". As it was executed, I just felt like it was… rushed. I think like if we'd had a chance to get to know Timber first, had his flirting with Twi toned down by about 70% until he got to know her, and saw their friendship develop a little, I could have shipped them. Just my 2¢.
Well, from the look of the flower, I'd say it's probably a petunia of some sort. TBH, I'd categorize Wallflower more as a horticulturalist than a botanist. Horticulture is the raising and care of plants, while botany is the classification and study of them. Ironically, despite studying plants, I'm actually pretty bad at keeping them alive.
As an aside, if you ever go out hiking and you've got a botanist along, chances are you'd be walking at "the speed of botany", which is roughly 3 hrs/mile. Seriously, we tend to stop every 5 ft. to look at some little thing growing on the side of the trail. Get two or more of us together, and we usually take an hour to lose sight of the parking lot.
Was... was she not already aware of that?
And yeah, writing banter is always a joy. It helps that I was raised by a pack of smartasses.
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The production team at DHX was really conscious of how Timber could come off really poorly if they weren't careful and tried hard to play off a lot of his lines like joking about himself instead of being serious, and playing the flirting off like mutual banter between him and Twi.
And I totally agree, it's really gotta be hard to work with overly flirty dialogue when the guy just met her!
Also 1) Whoa, I learned a thing!! 2) The speed of botany sounds kind of delightful and now I want a Fast and the Furious movie botany style. It's just dorking out over plants for 2 and a half hours
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I had a feeling. I have several opinions as to why the execution of SciSpruce in canon fell flat for me (mostly as a consequence of the script), but there's really no need because I think its all been said before. Given what I understand of the process DHX went through (get script from off site, do what they can with it), I think they did the best with what they had to work with.
Oh yea, botanists tend to nerd out hard when we're on hikes. Especially if we're actively searching for something specific and we find it.