Director's cut: Why Don't I Have Wings Like You?

This is going to be a long one. This may be my longest "director's cut" yet, or at least one of the longest.

Before I get too far, I am shocked that I haven't seen stories have fun with how Sci-Twi wasn't an alicorn in Equestria by now. I'm surprised how I didn't think about it until a few weeks ago myself, given how I had been trying to think of a story with both Princess Twilight & Sci-Twi. Or Sci-Twi in general really. I guess it took the news of a contest, FanOfMostEverything's "Most Delightful Ponidox",  for this story idea to finally come to me. 

Now, for my thoughts about the story and any changes made.

First, I needed some ridiculous reason for why Sci-Twi wasn't an alicorn, so that's where the interdimensional creature came in.

To have the Twilights stand out from each other more, I used the fact that Sci-Twi is a teenager to characterize her to be more of the "young and eager" type. This is why she was more gung ho into learning why she didn't have wings than Princess Twilight was, as well as being more stubborn. She even had a borderline temper tantrum by stomping her hooves while she said she wasn't giving up! Princess Twilight did really want to learn why Sci-Twi was a unicorn, but wasn't as gung ho about it. The fact that Sci-Twi might feel inferior to her princess self was another thing I did to have the two Twilights act a little different.

I remembered Sci-Twi tried to make puns in Equestria Girls (looking adorkable in the process) but I can't remember Princess Twilight really doing it, unless she was nervous or something. Thus I made sure to have Sci-Twi try to make a pun or do some kind of word play at least once. This is where her making the joke of "Twience" came in, and "Twience" was inspired by the title of one of the EQG shorts, "Mad Twience".

I also wanted to have some fun with the fact that Sci-Twi shouldn't be too used to a pony's body yet. I thought about how hooves shouldn't be that effective to scratch with -- compared to fingernails at least -- so this was where the idea of Sci-Twi trying to scratch herself, but struggle to do so with hooves, came from.

On a different note, the names of the spells Princess Twilight cast wasn't arbitrary. Take the "Spictia" from "Neutralizo Spictia" spell. Spictia? Spicy? Need I say more? It just didn't do the "neutralizing" (Neutralizo) part well on a pony.

As for Kramaits Warpia, Kramaits = karma and warpia = warp, and the spell warped Sci-Twi's body. Spike himself already said what the "karma" part of the spell did.

Polariza Embracits, of course, has a hidden meaning too. Polariza = polarizing & Embracite = embrace. Twilight becoming an ailcorn is polarizing since fans are mixed about it, and even trying to make Sci-Twi an alicorn is embracing the fact. This is why that spell successfully turned Sci-Twi into an alicorn. It wasn't this spell that made Sci-Twi turn into Flash Sentry (Princess Twilight cast something else by mistake) but since he is a polarizing character himself, it was fitting to have an attempt of the Polariza Embracits spell bring him in one way or another. It was also something I threw in to have something really unexpected happen at this point in the story.

EDIT: One thing I was wondering about was to have Sci-Twi be able to read the words of the Equestrian language or not. If I'm right, Princess Twilight had no problems reading the words of the human language right away in the first EQG movie. Yet Equestrian words, from Sunset's words in "Rainbow Rocks" are different. Even if it was just "plot convenience" that Princess Twilight could read a language she had never seen, it was something for me to think about.

I was going to have Sci-Twi simply say she learned how to read Equestrian from Sunset, but I wasn't sure if it would even be needed. Usually, when I'm in doubt of putting something in my stories, I put it in to be on the safe side, but this time, I didn't.

Now to the noteworthy cuts & edits this story had. There might be more in this story than any other story I’ve written so far.

First, a cut very early in the story. When Sci-Twi almost called alicorns “winged unicorns”, she originally didn't catch herself. This was because, before this cut, she didn’t know ponies in Equestria use the term “alicorn”. From what I can tell, in real life, winged unicorns/pegacorns are also called alicorns but less frequently, save for bronies that learned the term from MLP:FIM. This was also going to play into the fact that I don’t think Princess Twilight had ever told the human mane 6 that she was an alicorn, but just that her real form was a pony and that she was a princess. This would have made Princess Twilight start asking if humans had different names for other ponies, like unicorns, before stopping herself. I liked this, but I felt that it might have dragged things on a bit, so I cut it.

The second change/edit was to Sunset joking about the Twilights freeing some great beast. This was something I added in editing. In the first draft, she didn’t make any jokes like this.

The next notable change is to which Twilight found the information about magic blocking transformations. It was initially Sci-Twi, but I found that I could slightly shorten this part of the scene by having Princess Twilight find it, so I did.

The fourth change was about Sci-Twi trying to scratch her back. When she stood on her hind legs so she could scratch her back against the crystals, she originally kept her balance for a short time. This was when Princess Twilight asked what was wrong, and Sci-Twi answered that her back wouldn’t stop itching and she didn’t scratch herself with hooves. Then, her hooves lost their grip and she fell down. 

However, I changed it to have Sci-Twi lose her balance right away to shorten things a bit.

The 5th notable change is possibly the biggest one. The magical mishap that turned Sci-Twi into a ball was an addition early on in editing. One of the things this story’s contest encouraged was for the alternate characters (in this story’s case, the Twilights obviously) to bounce off each other. That made me think of the idea to have them literally bounce off each other. I highly doubt the Twilights think this change is funny.

The 6th change was to what Sci-Twi, in Flash Sentry’s body, said to Princess Twilight when she told her to change her back. It was just “Never before in my life have I felt so awkward. Change me back, Princess Twilight, now!”

Later, I thought to have her say something else that might make Princess Twilight blush, since she was blushing even in the story’s first draft. I first changed it to “Never before in my life have I felt so awkward. Change me back, Princess Twilight, before I start thinking about muscles or how cute you are!” Later still, I thought that might have been a tad too weird, so I changed it again to be “the butts of girls”. If I didn’t change it, it would have also negated the joke at the end of the story, when it was implied that Sci-Twi didn’t know about Princess Twilight’s crush on Flash.

Now, #7. Sci-Twi holding her new wings after Spike yanked on Princess Twilight’s was an add-on during editing. I didn’t say it in the story, but if it wasn't clear enough, it was because she didn’t want Spike to try to yank hers off.

#8, and is another addition. The part where Princess Twilight told Sci-Twi that she can just call her “Twilight” wasn’t there at first. It was something I thought to add in late in editing.

The final edit worth mentioning was to Spike. He had his wings early on in editing, but I later remembered that he didn’t have them in the EQG special “Spring Breakdown”. I could have said in the author’s note that this story took place at a point after Spike got his wings, but later chose to just edit out the wings.

There were a few other changes that are kinda noteworthy, and if this story didn’t have so many, I would probably mention a couple of them. However, compared to the changes I already said, they are pretty small, so I’ll leave them out. This is long enough as it is.