The Unrestricted Bulletproof Heart Q&A · 8:59pm Dec 13th, 2021
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for something I’ve been wanting to do for months:
Welcome to the Bulletproof Heart Q&A.
Sunburnt Equestria has been on my mind for years now, and I really wanted to make a full series out of the idea. But eventually I realized that if I’m going to do this, I need to do it as original fiction so that it can potentially reach the audience it deserves. With that in mind, I essentially cancelled the six book FIMFiction series so I could pivot it in the direction I needed it to go.
But that didn’t mean I was done with Sunburnt Equestria and Bulletproof Rarity. I have 300,000+ words of unreleased material written for her, all of which was intended to be part of Book II. The most recent release, Sunset at Little Longhorn, was originally the first chapter of that book. I hope over time to release the rest of that material as well in the form of more short stories.
In truth, I can’t guarantee how much more of Bulletproof Rarity we will see. There might be a dozen more stories. There might not be any more at all. The future is as uncertain as it can be right now.
But I don’t want to deprive any of you of my intentions. If the stories end up not released, I would like you all to know… Well. Whatever it is you want to know. To this end I am using this blog as an unfiltered, nothing-held-back Q&A for the Bulletproof Heart universe. If there’s something you want to know and I have an answer, I will tell you. Nothing off limits. Past, present, and future. All characters major and minor. Spoilers galore.
I mean the spoilers part. Because I do not know what I will and won’t release, I am going to be open about things I planned to have happen. I may release short stories that cover the events spoiled here. I may not. That’s the risk I offer to you folks. Most questions I will respond to in the comments. If a specific topic comes up repeatedly, I’ll instead a section for it in this blog.
Regarding the intended original fiction variant, it is my expectation that it and the FIMFiction version will be different enough that the answers in this blog won’t spoil the original version too much. There will be similarities, but I expect some deviations in terms of events.
I love Bulletproof Heart. Both the world and the character. I don’t want all my plans for them to go unseen.
So ask away, folks. Anything. Everything. If I have the answer, you’ll get it. Now for the obligatory
SPOILER WARNING
UPDATE: I have now created a small "Encyclopedia" for BPH. There's not much to it yet, mostly related to the different races of Equestria, but it can help to resolve some questions I have received. If there's a particular topic you'd like to see included, ask and I'll consider adding it to the encyclopedia.
Without further ado: The Bulletproof Heart Encyclopedia
The only question I want answered is, When will the original fiction be released and where can I buy it?
5616706
Alas, I have not begun it, entirely because I want to finish another large project first and that project isn't coming quickly. But it's next on my list, so... hopefully not in a hundred years?
Not a question but...
looks at your story count
heh... 69
I've seen a few others take their fanfics and turn them into original fiction. The results are mixed, sadly, as often the changes made to the characters and settings in removing the 'fan' from the 'fic' remove some of the enchantment that was intrinsic to the story.
When it's done well, the results are often fantastic. 
That said, I have no doubt that your adaptations will be wonderful. You're one of the most talented writers on this site. And I am looking forward to your works, both original and fanfiction. Thanks!
Seeing this in the New Stories lineup was a treat. Thanks for releasing it and good luck shifting to original works. I'll be keeping my eye out for you.
As for the Q&A, were you ever going to get the Mane 6 together? With each popping up and the plot thread of a missing Twilight brightly spotlighted it seemed like you might have been planning something there.
Another, the alicorn sisters seemed to be long gone. Were they ever going to be more than background lore? And Mooney isn't Luna, right? I seem to remember being unsure when I originally read it.
5616745
Ah, the first official spoiler question (there's you're warning, folks). I'm not surprised it involves the Mane 6 and the princesses. Let us begin with the princesses, because that will matter for the Mane 6.
As noted in the original story (well, the author's notes), Celestia and Luna fought Discord 1,000 years ago. Discord teleported Celestia away, and she hasn't appeared since. So yes, Celestia is "gone", although I emphasize that "gone" and "dead" are not the same thing. She's still alive. She's just so far away that there's no telling when, or even if, she'll get back. And bear in mind this isn't a matter of being on the other side of the planet; we're talking distances of galactic proportions. This is why Sunburnt Equestria is sunburnt to begin with; she's not there to control the sun.
To be clear: I had no intention of Celestia ever returning and making an appearance in BPH, outside of perhaps flashbacks. Which should be enough of a hint to tell you...
Luna is still around. Specifically, she's living an isolated life in a cave system hidden somewhere in a place called Whitetail Pass. She cursed the pass so that anyone going in will get hopelessly lost before ultimately stepping out of one of its exits, having no idea how they found their way out or that they bypassed Luna's home. This doesn't mean that she's not been discovered on occasion, though, with less than half-a-dozen ponies managing to intrude on her solitude. The most recent one has become her attendant and student of magic and is known as Twilight Sparkle.
This brings us to the question of the Mane 6 getting together. The answer is a definite yes, and in fact the topic becomes a central point of the books starting in Book II. Rarity was going to attempt to use Whitetail Pass to escape some persistent pursuers of the Bad Apple variety. This would lead to Luna detecting the Element of Generosity and effectively "summoning" Rarity so as to investigate. In turn, Luna would realize that the Elements are "waking up", which is always a precursor to them being needed for some coming conflict. She would thus send Rarity and Twilight out to find the remaining Elements (Twi and Luna already had Magic). Which, of course, means their Bearers would also be needed. This overarching quest would make up the core of the series from then on.
And all that should be enough to clarify that, no, Moonlight Raven is not Luna.
I don’t have much to say about BPH’s departure from ponyfiction, because it just makes me sad, though I won’t begrudge you doing whatever you think is best for your story. So instead I’ll ask:
Originally, I seem to recall your plan was for BPH to be a trilogy (this may be something my brain has made up entirely, but I could’ve sworn). Then you said that you would release Book 2, Famous Last Words, both as a ponyfic on FimFic and later as a original-ized fic that’s the more definitive version, from which further sequels would follow. Then you announced you were splitting FLW in two (I forget their respective planned titles). And now you say the FimFic series was going to be a sexology? I’ll admit I’m getting a little confused … though that may just be that I missed something across all the blog posts.
So, my Q: Are you confirming that your previous plan of releasing a pony-version sequel here and a non-pony original-ized version elsewhere is kaput, and that future full-length BPH sequels will only ever be non-pony?
Another Q, ’cause it just occurred to me: When you continue with the de-ponified BPH, will you be rewriting and re-releasing Book 1 as well? I assume so, as that makes way more sense than expecting readers to go from Pony Book 1 to Non-Pony Book 2 & beyond, but I thought I’d ask.
Finally, regarding my other comment on Sunset at Little Longhorn: I’m not asking for spoilers on how Rarity & AJ’s relationship develops over time; rather, what I wanna know is how much will they & their relationship change in the transition from pony to original fiction? Will their characters and their history together be relatively the same, and will whatever plans you had for them in the long-term continue along the same path?
Edited about a hundred times for phrasing, clarity and other reasons
Here's a question (not entirely related to the content of the story, but I digress): how did you get so dang good at portraying characters and their ordeals to make them feel not only like living people with compelling tales and organic conversations and chemistry, but made them better than real people? Because even just the character interactions have something more magical to them than anything I've experienced in real life.
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For starers, there will be no full-length FIMFiction BPH stories. Those are over with, I am sad to say. Short stories (Err, "medium" stories? Depending on who you ask.) may come out sporadically, largely since I already have a lot of written material. I do still plan to release original fiction variants. Eventually.
The series was originally planned to be a trilogy. Over time, however, I realized that the stories actually would come out to no less than six story arcs, each of which would be substantial on their own. With this in mind, I decided to split it into six books, largely divided up by antagonist. This is still the idea for the original fiction variant.
Book I is so standalone from everything canon MLP that it shouldn't be too hard to alter to an original fiction, although I do plan to change the world background to distance it from MLP and the magic system is going to get a complete overhaul.
Ignoring names and a few superfluous details, once again for distancing purposes, I have no intention of changing Rarity and Applejack at all for the original fiction versions. They'll be the same characters, they'll still both be female, and a relationship is guaranteed. That being said, events set after Book I will probably differ from anything I might release in BPH short stories.
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I'm flattered you think so! It's honestly hard to describe how I came about my, er, methods, for lack of a better term. I could note that I started writing at a very young age, which might have helped now when I'm in my thirties in terms of sheer experience. Conveying a character's emotions is, to me, the single most important aspect of a story, which is why I grind so hard on the topic in my reviews.
I'd like to say that's the answer: it's not as much about what people are saying and doing as the how and why they are doing it. It's not enough to think about them as mere "characters" in a book I am writing. Rarity isn't some hero written for fun, and Sunset isn't a character built for a specific purpose; they are my friends. I care about them. I know that's really vague and probably not too helpful for someone wanting to do the same thing.
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So any BPH short fics published on FimFic won’t be canonical (in non-pony form) to the non-pony continuation? For instance, there’s no non-pony equivalent to the events in SaLH that take place in the non-pony canon?
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I can't say with any certainty right now. A lot of things will need to be altered from how I originally planned them, mostly due to an entirely different direction I elected to take some things and the new six-story format. If I told you yes, absolutely, the events of SaLL don't happen in the original fiction I'd be lying through my teeth because I don't actually know.
Before I get any questions, I do wanna say I'm really happy to see you get more of this published. It's honestly refreshing seeing how far and unique Anthro and Human stories can go while still retaining the characters to a T. You should be proud of what you've put out on the table, friend.
Good luck with the original fiction version!
Its always sad to see a fic be buried, either due to too much ambition, or lack of time to explore all possibilities with it. (TvE most prominently), but we all have to know our limits and sadly, horsewords will ever limit one's audience and scope. I wish you the best of luck with any and all Original Works you work on and am always available should you need a wall for idea bouncing!
Still, I'm glad to have been a contributor to your works and look forward to re-reading any finalized versions of the other 'Tales from Sunburnt Equestria' you have the time and desire to publish. See ya around Horse Cowboy.
So. Not so much a question as some protracted postulation I want to put forth.
Coming into any future BPH content, the topic that I was most curious to learn more about was what's the DEEEEAL with the Countess and the Razzle Dazzles.
They don't come up very much in the actual text. I want to say it might even only be once, when Fluttershy is relating how they killed her husband and drove her into isolation, but there may have been another mention. It was too specific for me to think that it was just a throwaway line, I expected more would come up about them further down the line, but it did seem like an innocuous thing, just some other gang of many. The most obvious conclusion to come to was that they're Coloratura and the Dazzlings, and it seemed to me like a natural fit for a bunch of musical divas to have some kind of beef with Fluttershy, being a renowned singer in this setting.
The author's notes, however, suggest a lot more going on behind the scenes. The Countess's crew is known as one of the most notorious gangs in Equestria after the Bad Apples and even predate them. They were also involved with the Battle of Ponyville and seemed to be gunning hard for the Rainbow Gang. In fact, the Countess acted as an adoptive mother for Velveteen Caress and presumably encouraged her racist beliefs, beliefs which would then be passed on to Blackjack when they got hitched. The Countess, in effect, can largely be called responsible for the creation of the Bad Apples and by extension the continued chaos present in Equestria.
And then something occurred to me: sirens are known for sowing discord among people and turning them against each other. The Dazzlings are almost the perfect masterminds for all this. I don't remember where exactly it was said, but I believe the country that it sounded like the sirens would have come from (Siren's Pass? Finland?) was ruined as a result of the environmental upheaval when Luna was unable to control the sun. Maybe all this is their revenge on Equestria. It was in their best interest to cause strife among the city-states, to put new dangers into the world by inspiring more to do evil, and to destroy those who would attempt to shine a light of hope in the world--like the Rainbow Gang. They very well might have even caused more damage even before the Apple family conflict started if they've been around for decades, if not centuries. I'd have to imagine that they'd have their eyes upon Rarity too sooner or later.
That still leaves me uncertain of exactly who the Countess might be. She seems to be fairly old, perhaps at least as old as Granny Smith would have been, so it feels odd she would be Coloratura, but I guess she could just be aged up. We know she's probably an earth pony if she was content with fostering Velveteen's racism. It seems plausible to me, though, that if the Countess is not a siren herself (or maybe a retooled seapony, although I think BPH might have been conceived and written too early for that to be feasible) then she herself may actually just be a pawn for the Dazzlings, the ones really pulling the strings (it just now occurred to me while writing this the potential ironic significance of the Countess taking Tough Nut's marionette--a puppet taking a puppet).
Or maybe the Countess is just Discord in drag, who knows.
So yeah, that's my BPH fan theory.
Completely unrelatedly, would Rarity have eventually become an alicorn so she could finally show that gravity don't mean too much to her?
I loved this story (have one of the physical copies even) and have always been happy when you would drop notes on it's progress. I still look forward to whatever comes from it in the future. Do please post updates here on fimfic as that's where I'll see them eventually.
If we might not end up seeing everything in the sunburnt lands then I feel we might see even less outside the setting proper. But there were hints as to gryphon lands where they breed pony chattel, and the like. So;
Q) Can we have an opening of a wikipedia entry on the different regions around what would be Equestria proper? The present fate of the other species (yak, crystal, changeling, zebra, gryphons, etc)? If I wanted to do an rpg here what would each place and creature description be to base these things on?
And thank you for all you've given us in your works. They have been wonderfully inspiring.
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First and foremost:
There are no Magical Mystery Cures in Bulletproof Heart. Unlike Hasbro, I'm not compelled by the toy market to make nonsensical changes to my characters.
Besides, Rarity don't need no wings. Gravity's got nothing on her in the first place.
Now, the question of the Dazzlings: I had no plans for them. They are not integral parts of anything. I do love them dearly and I would be far from opposed to featuring them in the series. Considering I have an (so far unrealized) idea of Aria being a monster hunting gunslinger in her own entirely separate AU, I would absolutely love to have her and Rarity go at it. But in terms of the overarching story of BPH, no, they have no planned presence.
That being said, I will let drop this fun little tidbit: Finland was indeed a real place that was destroyed due to the change in the world environment, and it was indeed a Siren city. It was not situated at Siren's Pass, though it was nearby. Last but not least, the Ruby Heart was indeed a product of Siren gunsmithing and enchanting, which means it is old.
Related: Seaponies are still around. I even have a location pinpointed for them, although I was having trouble finding a way to introduce them to the story.
Now, on to the Bandit Countess: yes, it is an aged up Coloratura. She was going to make a brief appearance in Book II at an auction, an event that I may yet publish in a short someday as it's all written already and just needs adjusting to account for the format. Coloratura was set to be the main villain of one of the books, allowing Fluttershy a proper chance at revenge, but that's a scene that I don't know will ever be published.
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Whew. That's a big one. Good news: I made a glossary for the BPH AU early on for my own uses. Bad news: it is indeed for my use as the author and isn't properly formatted for the kind of thing you're looking for. It also lacks a lot of the info you're asking for, as I made no attempt to describe the world beyond Equestria proper.
That being said, I would not be opposed to modifying it into something functional for that purpose. It would take time, and have to be secondary to my actual writing projects, but the idea alone sounds like a lot of fun. Give me a little while and perhaps I can produce something basic for you. I still can't guarantee information about the lands beyond Equestria as that is beyond whatever scope I intend to utilize in the stories proper, but perhaps a few quick summaries of potential places would work.
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Was a tall order, didn't figure to get all of it but was curious for any that existed. If you ever put those notes into even rough bullet point lists or something I'd love to read them.
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One of my oldest little obsessions, rarely acknowledged or utilized due to its inherent uselessness, has been reignited.
You clearly have no idea what you've tapped into.
Does Moonlight Raven ever leave her house?
It was stated that the Singing Azure disappeared into the wilds and his fate was unknown. Do we ever get actual confirmation as to what happens to him
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Moonlight Raven does get out, but she's always extremely cautious when she does, going to great lengths to disguise the fact and her identity. In Book II I had a scene in which she contacts Rarity and Applejack to have them meet her at the small town where she first met Parish Nandermane. There she gave them some important information about coming issues across Equestria, including the revelation that her own information network was systematically being dismantled. She then announced that she was going to stop putting so much effort into hiding and, should the Bad Apples come for her, merely allow them to do what they wish. Rarity suggests she go to Whitetail Pass, a place she'll surely never be found. It had been my intention at that time for Raven and Luna to meet and bond, which would lead to her appearing again in a later scene. Alas, I never got that far.
The Singing Azure, AKA Noteworthy, tried to go into hiding. To this end he wound up at the town of Hollow Shades. There he encountered the Curse of Eternal Entertainment that had led the town to being abandoned and avoided. This would be the death of him, although I was never clear on the exact how of it. The reveal would have come in Book 5, when Pinkie and the rest of the Mane 6 visit the town in search of the Element of Joy (Laughter), the final Element they needed to complete the set at the time.
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For my dnd games, The level of backstory that exists only for myself in my campaigns is usually greater than the story for the players. It helps me know just how someone or the world will react even if those motivations are something that will never be known to players
If yours is anything like mine then it surely explains why I love your character portrayals so much.
Are open to suggestiions?
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There's a lot I already know and no "suggestions" will change them. You can feel free to bring up any ideas you have, but if they would interfere with anything I've already decided then it stands no chance.
This all comes with the caveat of "assuming I write more" in the first place. I'm not opposed to people writing out their own stories in the BPH universe, with the understanding that nothing is canon unless I say otherwise.
I was thinking about these Elements like one Rarity wears. I just think it would be cool to have them be more than just gems and their bringing Applejack, Rarity, Twilght and the mares together to bring down the Bad Apples.
Maybe a return of the Princesses but that seems unlikely.
Or maybe shift the story's focus and focus the Bad Apple and How they deal with Rarity's reputation.
Just a thought.
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There's a lot of mystery behind the Elements. As Spike mentions and Luna would later tell Rarity in an as-yet unreleased scene from Book II, the Elements have a certain intelligence and sapience, although they don't operate in the same way we think of intelligent beings operating. They have intentions, they make things happen, but their ways are alien to us. I've had readers remark on this and ask about whether the Elements are actively manipulating things, and the answer is a firm "no", but they do try to influence and help. A major aspect of Books II and III would have been the revelation of how the Element of Generosity has a subtle impact on Rarity's mind, and when separated from it she becomes much more paranoid and anxious. There would have been a whole sub-plot where she has to find the confidence and self-respect within herself without the Element there to assist her.
The point here is that there is more going on with the Elements than being mere jewelry to get the Mane 6 together, you just haven't had the chance to witness that in-story yet.
Well, no, actually you have. I left plenty of clues in Bulletproof Heart. But I wasn't explicit about what was happening because I only wanted the hints to be there for the later reveal, so I can understand that people missed it.
How about focus on the Bad Apples and how their dealing Rarity's reputation?
I can see many Bad Apples becoming Terrified of Her, if they haven't already
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That's actually the case. The disaster at Elysium Oasis was a major blow to the Gang and nothing they ever imagined could happen to them. For the regular grunts, it made the Bulletproof Heart a name to be feared. For the higher ups, it was a warning that the traditional methods of dealing with problem ponies weren't going to work on her.
As a direct result of this, the second book would have featured very little of the Gang, who at that point were giving her a wide berth to avoid further antagonizing her. This also served a story purpose, as it would have let Rarity focus on issues unrelated to the Gang for a while. The only exception to this would be the particular members of the Gang who either don't recognize Rarity or have it out for her, specifically one Cayenne Pepper, who would make sporadic appearances regardless of the rest of the Gang's willingness to get involved.
Eventually the Gang would return from the background to once again serve as Rarity's most prominent foe, both in terms of individual plotlines and as the premier bad guys of the series. But for a book or two, they'd be walking on tip-toes until they could come up with a different way of approaching the "Bulletproof Heart Problem."
I'm glad its being addressed.
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Here, you can be my guinea pig for this little experiment. I gave myself a week and wrote one entry a day, just to see if it would work. Dunno if I'll keep working on it, but you put the worm in my head and I had to at least give it a go.
Most of it is just surface-level stuff, nothing too deep. Essentially, if I haven't already developed it prior to this point then it's not in the glossary, which means some topics don't have a lot of information.
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Hehe, so excited!
Okay, started reading and this is fantastic. Even more than I hoped for, you have detailed relations between the groups, history and culture notes, c some plot points. This is great! Thank you. Been thinking about playing an adaptation of Weird West for awhile and I think I could do a lot with this info to make s very fun game to explore.
Thank you for taking the time to write these out.
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Who knows, maybe I'll expand it every now and then. I only focused on the races this time, but I'm considering adding notes on places, items of cultural significance, and even specific characters.
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Would you ever consider making/commissioning a visual map of Sunburnt Equestria?
I recently re-read BPH and got turned around a time or three (I'm fairly hopeless in directional navigation IRL).
As an extension of this, I did some simple maths to get a sense of time, like in the text of BPH it will say it was a 7 week journey to Mooisville from the Pie Farm, but the book takes place over a year and some change, but the dates in the chapter titles were less than helpful. Just curious about the structural details if you will.
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I have indeed considered it. The map I made on my own is hardly adequate and definitely has scaling issues. Plus the program I used to make it is buggy as all get out and really difficult to work with, and since I went overboard and made the map far bigger than it needed to be the bugs are much more rampant and consequential than they would be otherwise. So yes, commissioning someone to make a proper, scaled map of Sunburnt Equestria is something I'd like to do someday, though I don't know if I ever will.
Regarding timing, I have a program I use specifically for determining when events happened in Sunburnt Equestria, one advanced enough I was even able to create the custom calendar used and track events using it. Even better, it lets me assign characters to events and assign them birth dates, so I know exactly how old any given character is for any given event, provided I've included them in the timeline. I went through a lot of effort to get the timing of events at different locations down precisely, at least to the day, so that the dates in the original story would be accurate.
I haven't been doing the same for the sequels, mostly because I wanted to keep things vague enough for now to allow myself some breathing room. The one big downside I came to realize is that, with how large the world is and how long it takes to get anywhere, I neglected that the characters age. So being vague about such things in the latest stories allows me to follow the "serialized cartoon" gimmick of not worrying about such things, at least for now.
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While I'm no cartographer, but while it's still relatively fresh in my mind, I wouldn't be against lending you a hand in the visual regard.
As to the dates, Mostly just trying to wrap my head around how SBE's year is broken down.
Yeah it is a eye-opener that 150 some years ago IRL just getting to the next big towns over from me in either direction (between 30/40 miles) would take somewhere between 6 and 24 hours. visiting Gma @ Xmas would be just under a weeks journey easy.
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And I sure as heck wouldn't mind the help, if you're offering it so freely.
Meant to respond to this yesterday, but didn't want to do it without the info set before me. Now I've got it, so: The first thing to establish about Sunburnt Equestria's calendar is that it has the same number of days as our own Gregorian calendar, without leap years. The period in which Rarity & Co. live is labelled as the "Burning Age", or B.A., counting up from the "Day of Burning" when Celestia and Discord disappeared and only Luna was left to handle the sun.
The year is divided into four seasons: Rising Heat (Spring), the Burning Season (Summer), Falling Heat (Fall), and the Warm Season (Winter). There are no months, but there are weeks just like our own. If you ever see the word "month" in a BPH story, flag it because it's in error.
The seasons are divided into "short" and "long" seasons. The Burning and Warm seasons are "short" and last 61 days each. Rising Heat and Falling Heat are "long" seasons and last for 121 and 123 days respectively. The 1st of Rising Heat is the start of the new year.
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I figured the seasonal correlation, but the numbers in the chapters sometimes had me doing the old finger count to try and make sense of things
As to the map, if you give me some specs/points of reference I'll see what I can come up with. Maybe use Spurhoof or Mooisville as the unofficial "center/starting point" if that makes sense.
5745736
Hmm. Reference points, you say? I would assume we're talking about distances and the like, which is itself tricky as I never created concrete distances, only travel times. One of the reasons I never made an effort to do this myself is the amount of research required. How far can people travel? On foot vs. on horseback? Can we equate lizard travel to horse travel? Do all three lizard types travel at the same rate? Does traveling via caravan slow you down? How is Rarity traveling from one place to another at any given time? I would need to re-read specific moments in the story on the hunt for specific details and correlate them with actual numbers. And none of this is getting done right now, because I'm heading off to visit my parents for the weekend in about 8 minutes and won't have the time while I'm there.
All of this is to say that what you're suggesting we attempt together would not be a simple or quick affair. Just want to make sure you're aware of such.
And yes, I acknowledge that I'm going way overboard with all this.
5745739
I fully accept that this endeavor might be something that either takes a long time to bear fruit or simply ends up being a study in frustration/pipe dreaming. But while my "lightbulb" is still active, I relish the challenge, I said on a FB post about books the other day that if world-building was a drug, I would be a unrepentant addict.
As to speeds, I looked up the average speed of wagon travel vs. pony express yesterday. A full wagon on the Oregon Trail could make around 2 mph, a top-notch pony could get upwards of 10 mph on average. Different wagons also had different speeds, like some of the stagecoaches of the Wild West movies could get in around 5 mph.
As to lizards vs. horses I've viewed them kind of like horse/oxen-sized Gila monsters/Iguanas:
IRL Gila monster: 1.5-15 mph (depending on the source)
IRL Iguana: can do bursts of upwards 27.78 mph as the record
IRL Horses: average around 30 mph, but some records of 50-55 for short distance "sprints".
IRL Oxen: average 6 mph trot, but could get upwards of 10 mph or so.
So if we correlate this, the 7 week journey with Roma and her unsavory crew, we'll say 12-16 hours of travel a day with the remaining 8-12 for meals/rest/mid-day siesta. If we use the Gila/Ox as the base for the Thick-scales: maybe 8-10 mph but that might drop to 4-6 with the laden wagons. So 12*4=48 miles and then 48*49= 2,352 miles but for the sake of simplicity we could round that to 2k mi or 2.5 k mi.
For Rarity on her own with Ophelia we could say 12-18 hours a day on average @ 20-25 mph for a daily distance of 240-450 miles.
During the Hoofington bit where she was seeing naught but red she went around 3 solid days without a wink of sleep and so we could guess up to around 1,800 miles if she had been going in a straight line.