Why I wrote Equestria Girls:A Fairly Odd Friendship · 5:38am Jan 15th, 2021
Prologue
It had been a long, long time since I had watched Fairly Odd Parents. The last time I took a serious interest in the show had been around the late 2000s, just around the time Poof entered the scene.
This was around the time my interest in cartoons started to wane as I entered my teens, and when I stopped watching cable and network TV altogether. Eventually, FOP and me parted ways.
About a couple of years ago, I rediscovered the Fairly Oddparents since they put some episodes on YouTube for free.
And soon, I fell in love with the show again.
But I was also bitterly disappointed with the direction of FOP: the repeated cancelations, the increasingly dumb jokes, Flanderization, the lack of genuine emotional attachments, reliance on shock value over well-crafted comedy, the removal of good characters and their replacement with characters created for the sake of publicity.
And the live-action movies just make me shudder. I mean, there were a million ways they could've done it better.
While people call Channel Chasers the true finale, I honestly felt the show had been good up until 2006.
And then reading about how Butch Hartman had tanked his own reputation after building a strong Internet following made me even more upset.
Regaining My Love For Animation
My initial departure from cartoons was because I felt like that I had outgrown them. Around my teen years, I started to enjoy more "gritty" things like the Sopranos and Breaking Bad.
The stuff I had enjoyed as a kid...didn't really resonsate with me anymore.
But then came MLP and Gravity Falls.
Both shows made me regain my love for animation, because both shows were more sophisticated than the average cartoon.
It was from watching Twilight Sparkle lose her marbles over a friendship report, and Grunkle Stan suddenly remark on the pointlessness of existence, I realized that cartoons don't have to be cheap, childish nonsense.
And FOP didn't have to decline as badly as it did.
As a burgeoning fanfic writer, I suddenly felt I had the duty to....correct this injustice as I saw it.
But I didn't have any ideas for the different direction the Fairly Oddparents could've gone in.
Until...
Carly
Carly had been a one-gag character for an episode involving Mark Chang.
But this deviantart artist named ZArtist2017 came up with a couple of pictures of Carly and Timmy.
The image is just so...adorable. But it made me speculate on an interesting idea: what if Timmy had gained a genuinely loving babysitter?
But this picture it was really got the gears in my brain turning.
I think the implication is that Carly could be aware of Cosmo and Wanda's existance or not.
It was then that I developed the basic premise for A Fairly Odd Friendship. Instead of a bunch of greedy villains learning about Timmy, what if a genuinely benign group of people had gained some insights into Timmy's life, how miserable he was, and his unusual command of powerful magic.
My initial premise was Carly, while still a nice person, was the member of a magical spy agency that somehow connected Timmy to a lot of unusual things. While Carly would start out as a spy, she would become genuinely protective and caring of Timmy after seeing how much pain and suffering he goes through.
But then I realized to do this, I would have to construct a whole bunch of OCs, and I figured it would difficult.
So that's when my next idea came up: a crossover.
Another group of people from another franchise would learn about Timmy's life and investigate/help him.
Crossover Ideas
There were a lot of franchises I considered for the crossover:
Totally Spies was my first idea. The premise would be that the Spies would mistake Mr. Turner for being a master thief (because of Timmy wishing for things out of thin air). Alex would infiltrate Mr. Turner's house by pretending to be a babysitter, and form a bond with Timmy.
Kids Next Door was my next option. The idea is that Sector V would witness Timmy being severely bullied by Vicky. And as kids devoted to fighting adult tyranny, Timmy would be a kid who would be in most need of their services. Timmy, admiring the mission of the Kids Next Door, would join the organization and use Cosmo and Wanda's magic to defeat bad guys.
But both franchises don't work because both the Spies and Sector V couldn't encounter Cosmo and Wanda because they were a non-magical faction.
My next idea was Teen Titans. Again, Timmy's use of magic would draw the attention of the Titans. The idea of an outsider thinking that Timmy came across a dangerous magical artifact emerged, with one of the Titans going uncover to remove "the Stone" from Timmy.
The idea is that either Raven or Starfire would be his babysitter.
But while I loved Teen Titans as a kid, I didn't know if I could properly re-create the tone of the show while mixing it with FOP.
But eventually...I came across the franchise that would work.
Equestria Girls
There were several ideas why Equestria Girls was the final choice.
1. The EG girls are all magical beings. So I figured they would have no issue with seeing Cosmo and Wanda.
2. The kids from Canterlot High were a group of people who encountered magic, so I think they would come to relate to Timmy in a roundabout way.
3. I wanted to revive an idea that had been erased from Friendship Games: Sunset feeling lost and alone in her human life. I was annoyed at how that had been cut out. I honestly felt Sunset learning to become a caretaker to fill the void in her heart would've been an interesting angle to explore.
4. Sunset's past misdeeds are necessary for the progression of the plot.
And Timmy, a lonely bullied kid, would be a perfect fit for ol'Bacon Horse.
And the rest, they say, is history.
I love this whole blog.
At least now I know why you wrote the story which is a great one by the way
Interesting, FOP with Kim Possible could have been another idea, considering the spy thing, but again, Kim not being magical would have made things difficult, regardless, at the end, all turn out very well, though still, kim possible making an apperance could be interesting, but that just me XD.
I stopped watch Fairly Odd Parents after the Wishology Trilogy simply on the thought that the show had reached its peak. Whatever they did afterwards would never top this, and would lead to a decline.
You didn't need to explain why you wanted to make this great crossover. I think we could all see you did it because the show deserves better than what it has become.
Thank you for explaining your idea about what make you do this fiction... It makes me love even more the fiction...
Maybe in the future I will explain the concepts of why I created my little Sirens. Thank you for giving me a smile this morning.
Smart thinking.
Bravo! Bravo!
5436315
Well the issue with Kim Possible is, aside from not having magic, that while she is an epic protagonist, she doesn't have the bad past that Sunset does, that I felt was crucial to the story.
5436380
I felt that the writers of the show could've saved it by simply doing something...different.
Not "different" in the sense of adding new characters, indulging in gimmicks and shock value, and casting Drake Bell as Timmy Turner.
But simply writing a more unique plot with the characters they already had.
5436537
I agree with that, but don't forget it's just a cartoon. And sometimes cartoons are just about the life of the characters that it's about, they don't always need an overall plot to good.
5436537
I think part of the FoP flaw was in its format.
While a lot the good recent cartoons out there follow a serialized format. Part of the appeal of Gravity Falls is the details that connect the overall plot. In contrast, each episode of FoP was a standalone episode, which was standard practice for Nicktoons at the time. This pretty much meant that Timmy was never really given a chance to grow as a character.
The length of the series also impacts the writing. Whenever the writers ran out of ideas, they would introduce new characters, such as Poof, Sparky, and Chloe to add a new dynamic to the series.
Anyways, I haven't read your story yet, but I may give it a shot this weekend. It looks like you put a lot of thought into it.
5436677
I understand that Butch Hartman never really intended for the show to have a storyline.
But again, I felt there was a missed opportunity to make the show grow beyond a silly cartoon with some heart.
Hence, this story.