Day 0: The Has-Been and the Never-Was · 1:13am Sep 18th, 2020
All right, let's get started! The "volunteer" for our week-long experiment is just one of many flash-in-the-pan concepts that I get with depressing regularity, seeing as the majority of them never get beyond the planning stage. Well, let's see if we can change that.
Tonight's test case is a (potentially) comedic slice-of-life with a dark edge, a melting-pot Manehattan, nightmare-busters, and a better version of you. So who better to guide us through it than Laughter and Honesty? Oh, and one bad seed.
Meet the Cast... Honesty and Laughter? Forget About It!
If you're going to have comedy, you might as well have the characters for it.
Applejack and Pinkie Pie, for instance. As straight mare and wild kook, respectively.
Lots of comedies love a double act, partly because you get two types of comedy for free, and partly because of the social aspect, which makes it more alive. Someone cracking a joke is just a comedian. Someone cracking a joke and hearing someone groan at it is a person.
In fact, so much of a fic - in my view - rides on the cast that, even when only one or two characters are actually present, there's something reassuring about having a whole ecosystem of characters behind what they say and do.
After all, our major obsessions as humans - morality, culture, friends and enemies, where we fit in, the fact that we have to judge people by what we see than by what, below the surface, is really there - are sooner or later about other humans.
Even when we're ostensibly interested in other things - introspective things, introverted things, quiet things and private things and things distant and cold - there's a temptation to anthropomorphize them, and sometimes a hidden debt to the workings of the people around us, many of whom we might not think of or even see (someone who lives alone and reads books, for instance, usually needs someone else to build the house and write the books). "Social" doesn't necessarily mean "everyone in a crowd right here, right now".
Unfortunately, I bugger myself sometimes by following that idea a bit too devotedly.
It means a lot of the planning is spent finding the right background cast, or looking up character lists here, or on the mlp fandom wiki. Not an unpleasant task, but one oh so very prone to distraction.
Plus, I take an interest in the Time Action Glory Challenge, so I sometimes favour an overlooked or rarely used character over what the story might strictly demand. For instance, once I pick Applejack, I'm tempted to pick associated characters like Coloratura and Bright Mac despite them having no apparent role in the fic as-is. It keeps options open, but also litters the path with - you guessed it - distractions. And competing project ideas, and blind alleys, and shoehorned elements I don't really need if I'm being strict about this.
Final Cast List
At the moment, my main cast list is Applejack - who's probably the core of the fic at the moment, because I personally find her the most relatable (and, if I'm honest, because I project a few of my own ideas onto her canon portrayal, e.g. that she's probably, as a farmer and community figure and heavily implied orphan, the most casually familiar with dark subject matter) - with Pinkie as the counterbalance (and the anchor for the comedy), and...
Babs Seed, due to the family connection. Apple Bloom, as the most obvious mediator between Applejack and Babs. Aunt and Uncle Orange, because Babs Seed lives in Manehattan and sometimes it's convenient to lump characters together as a family. And Countess Coloratura, because I'm still working on my simple-minded impulses and making up an excuse to put her in it despite my knowing diddly-squat about the experiences of the singing industry.
Still working on this, because once you go digging up characters based on association, story usefulness, or just because you like them and want an excuse to put them in, you end up working on this for a while! 
Welcome to... Manehattan, Manehattan! (It's a Heck of a Town!)
I've been reading a bit of Discworld lately, so the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork has been on my mind. Couple that with the Coloratura and Babs Seed inclusions in the cast list prior, and that connects enough dots to tangle me up with Manehattan.
One of the benefits of using Manehattan is that, unlike Ponyville, the place hasn't been repeatedly used in the show all that often, so it doesn't feel as "done to death". Plus, as an urban space, it has an attraction to me, an urban-loving soul myself (the countryside's fine to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there). And, well, there's a real-life Manhattan. Just get a map and make pony puns out of some of the names, ha!
The thing about Ankh-Morpork, and which I think could translate well into Manehattan as a sort of spiritual cousin, is that both are sort of big, ambitious places that aren't necessarily friendly to the average newcomer, and which in context are a bit bonkers. Ankh-Morpork is full of cynical and literal-minded street people, contains weird stuff designed by incredibly deranged morons like "Bloody Stupid Johnson", and is run basically by a deadly parody of Machiavelli.
Meanwhile, Manehattan is, well, essentially a human city with a no-nonsense ethic, randomly dropped into the magical happy land of Equestria for no apparent reason other than to hammer home the "Equestria is the US with horse puns" angle (and probably initially just because Applejack needed somewhere to re-enact My Fair Lady).
Its elite are so out-of-touch (or in serious denial) that they have no idea what a rooster is. Every time the optimistic Main Six go there, they usually end up meeting someone who'd unapologetically give them a hard time (Suri, Mr Stripes, ponies crossing the road, and that street rat who wanted "Dat Cannon" from Pinkie).
It's at an awkward crossroads where the real-life grit and business ambition of its almost-namesake meets the cotton candy world of a land ruled by a peaceful sun goddess whose mission is apparently to make friendship an official state religion. 
I kind of have a soft spot for it. Plus, it seems like a good place to meld "dark" and "comedy".
At the moment, I'm trying to think of a way to make fun of the fact that Albany is actually the capital of New York state. I was thinking of having a major hub "village" outside Manehattan called "White Horsey" (there isn't an "albino" horse, as far as I can tell, and I was trying to go for an equine coat colour pun like "Appleloosa": White Horse is as close as I've gotten yet).
I especially like the fact that, in real-world New York, there used to be a place there called... Fort Orange. 
Getting the Cast There
The only major downside is that you don't readily get the cast of Ponyville in Manehattan. If I wanted, say, Applejack and Pinkie Pie following a story there, I'd need a plausible reason for them to travel that far in the first place.
Either they go there for a casual reason and then the plot starts while they happen to be around (good for making the world feel lived-in and bigger, potentially bad for pacing and how credible their timing is), or they go there because of the plot (good for getting to the point and tying things together neatly, potentially bad for making the story feel kind of small and more obviously artificial).
The latter's the more obvious way to go, but the actual urgent chunk of the plot is something I wanted to save for later as a twist, so it can't motivate the journey at the beginning.
Hm... best bet (I think) I've got at the moment is to have a symptom show up early - urgent enough to justify the train journey, not enough on its own to reveal what the deeper problem is - but keep the bigger twist for later. Depends how dark I want to go...
Theme: The Psychology of Unhealthy Relations
The seed of this whole project actually started in this category, with a thought experiment.
Following up from that blog post about genres I hadn't dabbled in much, one of those genres was dark, which feels like a genre that shouldn't really fit into the world of Equestria except in very short bursts. Possibly for that point in two-parters when all hope seems lost, and even then it's toned down by the fact that we know the good guys will win eventually.
The toning down I don't object to. The dark bit isn't really the point or focus of those episodes. It's mostly for drama, and the real point or focus will be something else. Only I didn't want an adventure, per se, and I still have a slice-of-life bent, so the thought experiment was:
Can I write a convincing dark element, make it the point/focus of the fic, and not break the spirit of the show?
Say, with an unhealthy, even abusive, relationship?
Needless to say... Hoo boy.
For one thing, what particular kind of dark?
I'm still not hugely comfortable wielding romance, but most of the obvious answers landed there: an abusive boyfriend or girlfriend who nevertheless inspired the sort of love and loyalty from their victim that makes bystanders wonder what the hell they've been drinking. I don't think physical abuse fits the tone of the show (sexual abuse definitely doesn't), so something more psychological, emotional, or neglectful would be the way to go.
Odds were it wouldn't be a romance, but it was easier to think about the elements involved in one of those, so some other seemingly close bond would have to do. Friends or "friends" would be the obvious way to go (it's one of the points of the show, after all, to contrast real friends from false "friends").
And the problem remained that, standing stark and unmodified, that dark storyline really doesn't gel with the sweeter, goofier elements of the show. You can't just have an abusive spouse or parent in Ponyville and expect it to fly. Neither could I bury it under all those elements and try to downplay it, because that would defeat the point of the experiment in the first place: to make it convincing.
This was one reason I settled on the Manehattan setting. Unlike Ponyville, which has been portrayed enough times to seem pretty idyllic and good-natured, a big urban setting with some more corrupt segments would be a better avenue.
We have seen Manehattan a few times, but it has enough "Big City" trappings that you could reasonably treat it in a similar way to how, say, a cartoon might treat a crime-hotspot like Gotham, neither stinting on the fact it has dodgy places nor pushing the family-unfriendly aspects to their limit.
Even in My Little Pony itself, we know of at least two successful jerks from that place (Suri Polomare and Svengallop), both of whom follow philosophies that could easily find a niche in a big and imperfect city.
To make something dark "convincing" in fluffy old Equestria needs more than a natural habitat, though: it needs feeding with the right ingredients. Characters, for instance. "Dark" characters could obviously be villains (Suri and Sven would qualify), but then a straightforward villain can make a conflict too easy: the plot boils down to a simplistic "defeat the villain" scenario.
As with the type of abuse that would fly (not physical), so with the type of conflict resolution it'd need.
And generally, I find a good focus character is one who is in conflict with themselves, and not totally for black-and-white moral reasons. Perhaps a character who has real flaws or real grievances, and hasn't figured out the best way to handle them, how to balance them, or even understands why they should balance them and not just take a simpler way out?
Say, someone like an ex-bully?
Hence: Babs Seed.
A Bad Seed Grows in the Dark
One way to not break the spirit of the show is to see what the show has done already in that direction. If I were to write a mystery, for instance, I might take cues from "Rarity Investigates!" or "MMMystery on the Friendship Express". Even episodes I don't like, such as "Lesson Zero", can have useful elements. They might give me ideas - for instance, about how to portray a collapsing psyche with terrifying imagery.
Characters like Babs Seed work well in that respect because they're introduced with a flaw or dark side that can be used to seed (pardon the pun) a much broader dark story. In this case, Babs is both victim and perpetrator, someone trying to atone for their thuggish moments even as they suffer at the hooves of someone else's.
But no dark story should be pure dark, else it can be boring or off-putting. So just as important to the story of how Babs Seed handled bullying when she visited her cousin in "One Bad Seed" are scenes like those in "Apple Family Reunion" where she's just a happy kid hanging out with her friend Apple Bloom (or wanting to, anyway).
Again, acknowledging the dark element without betraying the spirit of the show. Balance: a key concept in writing, or so I believe.
So we've got Babs, and she has some potentially unhealthy sources of conflict with herself and who she is, but despite my wariness about having a simple villain before, it can help to have a character who's a catalyst for that kind of thing. Someone to play emotional mind games against her even as they enable the unhealthy abuse by convincing Babs they're friend, not foe.
And an even more fascinating wrinkle, subversion, or complication (however you want to think of it) is that the abuser might not intend or even realize they're doing it. (Please note that this isn't an attempt to justify their behaviour: it's just a more interesting way of explaining and exploring its causes and how it fits the overall picture than "they're bad people, boo!").
All that's left to determine is who. A school friend, for instance?
At the moment, I'm not sure. I have a couple of suspicions, but I'd rather check a few things first before I can feel strongly about either.
And Today's Topic is... Magical Pony Silver Luna Scouts!
And now for something completely different: Magical Girl genre parodies!
In Manehattan.
With Applejack and Pinkie Pie.
For a fic about mentally abusing a young ex-bully.
OK, I swear that's not as random as it looks at first glance. I swear I can tie it in with the other stuff mentioned already.
I'll start with the easy stuff: In Manehattan.
Magical Girl shows - specifically Magical Warrior Girl shows - tend to be set in cities, at least before the otherworldly stuff shows up. And Manehattan is probably like New York in fiction: practically anything can and does happen there.
So far, so easy.
Next: With Applejack and Pinkie Pie.
When you think about it, both of them are part of My Little Pony's answer to the Sailor Senshi: a group of six seemingly ordinary ponies who make up part of a task force led by a magic-wielding hero who delivers friendship and love to those around her, and defeats evil to protect it.
It's easy to forget when the show is mostly slice-of-life, but G4 started off with effectively a revival of the Magical Warrior Girl genre, something I gather hasn't been all that active (at least in Western markets: I don't know about Japan) for a while. Honestly, it's an angle of approach that I wouldn't mind seeing more of, and not in the sense of watching Twilight progress to effectively Sailor Equestria.
Just as in more traditional superhero stories, the contrast between the ideal hero and the modest alter ego is ripe for fanfic exploration (cue comments about how I'm late to that party, but bear with my slowpoke approach for a moment). Applejack and Pinkie Pie can't naturally fly, nor do they use magic casually unless you think Pinkie's abilities count, so they're probably as down-to-earth as that side of the equation gets.
Especially in a slice-of-life story, someone like Babs Seed might have an interesting reaction to knowing two seemingly ordinary earth ponies - one of whom is a cousin - are part-time saviours of the world. Would she admire them for being heroes, and see them as role models? Would she resent them or feel inadequate because she herself will likely be better remembered as a victim or as a bully, neither of which she'd consider worth praising? Would she feel a strangely comforting connection just hanging out with heroes and shooting the breeze with them? Would she respond well to the positivity Pinkie brings, in a scenario where Applejack's honesty isn't going to be an easy pill to swallow to cure a darker illness?
Would I want to dive in and just do all this at once? You betcha.
A Moon Has Two Sides: The Dark Side, and the Reflected Light
And lastly, the hardest part: For a fic about mentally abusing a young ex-bully.
Well, I've already covered how it might apply to Babs' healthy relationship with her family and heroes, but what about the unhealthy side of it?
I think it's no surprise I kinda want a happy ending, or at least a bittersweet one that's less bitter and more sweet. The abuse and the unhappiness Babs feels are both, in a sense, the "villains" here. Dark villains, villains that make us uncomfortable or despair. Is this really going to work?
Well, there is the theme of a dark relationship being a nightmare, and we have nightmare-busters as heroes in the show. The moon connection is a nice nod to Princess Luna - hence my idea of a historical group of heroes called the Silver Luna Scouts, because why not? Fighting against the darker side of the moon, of the night, of reality.
Which is why one of my favourite quotations comes from G. K. Chesterton. There have been paraphrased versions here and there. According to Wikiquote, the original was phrased thus:
Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.
Barring the more spiritual angle of the latter part (I'm not particularly religious myself), that's what I think the Magical Girl Warrior angle would achieve. The force of light, the essential cousin of St. George, the vanquisher of evil as it manifests in the form of an apparently everyday person donning the frills and gemstones of power to blast away the bogey, the dragon, the terrors, the enemies... the darkness.
Now, I'm not saying Applejack and Pinkie will literally pony up and blow away the abuser with rainbow lasers. I'm saying the point of the story will be Babs figuring out how to make the metaphor work for her, helped not just by real heroes she knows, but by her own tough Manehattan soul and transforming a former bullying thug into a noble fighter, even if only metaphorically.
That's where the Magical Warrior Girl genre would fit in. If there are conventions and traditions of "Magical Warrior Girls", they'd give not only a shape to the points we've discussed so far, but a direction, a playground, a contrast, and a binding element all at once.
Furthermore, it reinforces the answer to the question "Can we do a dark story in Equestria without betraying it?", because it provides and strengthens the ideal and the struggle. It gives Applejack and Pinkie more of a purpose in the story, without committing to any one way of realizing it. And it lends itself well to the comedy, because "Magical Warrior Girl" shows can be corny, ridiculous, and fare about as well in Manehattan's grittiness as Sailor Moon would if confronted by a gang of unlicensed thieves from the Shades.
And that's why, somewhere in this story, I'm having a Manehattan fashion exhibition for the historical Silver Luna Scouts! Because damn am I gonna have fun with that. 
Anyway, that's where I'm at for now. A lot of random ideas jumbled together and finding (or still to find) unexpected connections. Like I said, the planning stage is usually my favourite.
Tomorrow, I'll report in and see if I can get some actual written passages done too. Or perhaps just snippets. Something to indicate this is all making the transition from concept to creation.
Hoping this goes well... 
Impossible Numbers, out.
It starts going downhill after she transforms and starts speechifying at them. She was expecting the shock of the knives in the hands, but not the brick wall across the tracks of the words from their mouths. They begin by dissecting her idea of just what is "justice" anyway, what with the economy being what it is these days, before drifting into the branching streams of employment, man's inhumanity to man, the price of a decent beer these days, you want to talk about murder, it's a liberty so it is, and what's the moon got to do with it anyway? It'd be one thing if they were just mouthy, but this is like being attacked by a roving band of opinion wielding philosophers!*
*The comparison is more fitting than you may think at first, especially if you consider foot traffic congestion in the streets of Ephebe, the frequency of their greatest thinkers to spring from their baths shouting "Eureka!" and the rising price of cotton, to say nothing of fine linen. Even as bathhouse across the nation implement towel rationing, through the implementation of several uncomplicated and heavily armed men who's personal philosophy is Spears, Spears, and More Spears, the more forward thinking city leaders are worrying about what will happen when they run out of bubble bath. You can get some vicious bastards in the queue to the Jacuzzi.
Palebany? As Binky demonstrates, you can also call them pale horses.
In any case, fascinating conceptual outline. Looking forward to seeing where you go with it.
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I am ineffably cheered up by the idea of Ankh-Morpork criminals pausing to discuss the issue of vigilantism, especially when the conversation steers towards how bloody lucky you are that Commander Vimes of the Watch hasn't caught you doing it.
Thief: "Civil peacekeeping authority lies in the official institutions acting under the appointed government power, not in cheap jewellery and frilly school costumes!"
Sailor Moon: "Wha!? What do you care? You're a criminal!"
Thief: "Morally unqualified I may be, but at least one of us did our homework."
Sailor Moon: "Oo-ooh! Why do people always go on about my homework!?"
Although, given how narrativium on the Discworld loves noble royals and using the criminal underbelly as a free demo for their power set, this conversation with random thieves and a magic-wielding princess would probably end with the thieves collectively going: "Oh shit!"
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I suppose since Manehattan is just a placename with a horse pun stuck in it, something like Palebany could work, but I admit I find myself preferring a meaning-focused bit of wordplay rather than straight-up portmanteaus.
Plus, "pale" doesn't seem clear enough to me. Hmmm... Greybany? Graybany? White horses are technically "grey/gray", aren't they? Or I could bite the bullet and go with "albino" in some form. They're anthropomorphic ponies, after all, and the allusion would be clearer.
Glad to hear it! I'm hoping the answer is "somewhere publishable", but thanks for the vote of confidence. It's likely the project will change shape a lot before it finishes (if it finishes).