Choice cuts: an introduction · 3:11am Feb 22nd, 2021
When I first watched “Forgotten Friendship” I enjoyed it, but found it . . . scattered. What story, exactly, were they trying to tell? Only later did I learn, in part thanks to Scampy, what we saw on the screen must have been watered down enormously, not to mention shifted greatly in emphasis. As far as I can reconstruct, the original story must have been much darker, Sunset confronted far more directly with the consequences of her bullying days in the person of a morbidly depressed girl fairly openly contemplating suicide.
Obviously that won’t fly for a franchise devoted to selling dolls to teen girls, though I give kudos to the show staff for even attempting to assault that mountain. I suspect the script—or at least the outline—went through several revisions, each leaching more color away until what remained was patchy and unfocused. The final confrontation suffers most from this process, much of its point and impact lost in softening from an examination of bullying and trauma to a happy ending reminiscent of an old after-school special. That’s a shame, but it is what it is.
Fan fiction, though, can address questions left to lie by corporate interests unwilling to allow any sort of darkness to cross their sunny franchise’s path. Most of Scampy’s oeuvre consists of varying attempts to bracket that darkness. Most of mine, well, doesn’t. But when Scampy encountered my story Amphorae, she fell in character-love with Rose Brass and fairly quickly lobbied long and hard for a sequel bringing together Rose and Wallflower. Sunset being the only direct point of contact between them, her involvement was essentially mandatory.
So it was we began collaborating on Three-act Play. By now our one-on-one Discord chat runs to tens of thousands of words, not all of them relevant. Even disregarding cat shenanigans, moods of the day, and other personal subjects, not everything we discussed has made it into the story as written. Character motivations, roads not taken, external events, and other meta-story topics abound. With Scampy’s permission I propose to present, in a series of journal posts, some of the more illuminating asides. Call them choice cuts.
Oooh, this is the series of behind-the-scenes glimpses you mentioned! I can tell this is gonna be a fun series of forays into Three-Act's writing process.
One thing I'm noticing that I'm enjoying not just with your storywriting, but your thought process in general (from comments/chats as well), is how analytical you are. Your observations on Forgotten Friendship and what was left on the cutting room floor (and what we got as a result), while influenced by Scampy's input, nonetheless show you've given it some deep thought. And that's what we're all here for, right? Overthinking some gay cartoon?
But I digress.
RE: Amphorae, I was wondering how you and Scampy met. Can't say I blame her for falling in character-love with Rose. She's one of the better OCs I've read in a while.
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I’ve always been the sort to analyze the heck out of a setting; world-building probably is my favorite thing in the world. If you rummage back through my journal posts you’ll find more information on how Scampy discovered Amphorae and collected me.