Arc 3 FotW rambles (what could have been; chapter 16 spoilers) · 9:45pm Dec 27th, 2021
So like… We’ve reached the end of one arc and started another, so I can finally talk about my original plans for this arc. Originally, Petal, Lockpick, and Banter were all going to die. The point of the arc was “Iron tries to leave behind her murderous ways, but when her friends die she snaps and goes full raider.” Kind of like a redemption arc that failed. After their deaths, she would go rambo on the mercs that caused that situation, and wouldn’t stop there; she’d murder innocents and spend her time high on Psycho.
Eventually, she’d amass a bit of a raider army, but would end up toppled by Candy and Platinum Down. Candy wouldn't kill her, instead telling her something along the lines of "you're dead to me; if you keep up this shit, though, I'll make sure to kill you for real; do something good with your life from now on", and she would meet Star Seeds who would then convince her that if she works for him, she can do good. Iron, being too autistic to understand that working for Star Seeds wouldn't be "something good" and would eventually have to confront Candy again.
I still like this idea for Iron’s character arc, and am kinda sad to have missed out on it. Because come on, raider Iron sounds cool as fuck. Especially since she would have had her brain degraded by drugs.
So, what gives? Two reasons.
The first was that introducing L, P, and B as proper characters with the sole goal to kill them off felt shallow, no matter how I thought about it. I just couldn’t find a way to fix that flaw in the story. Maybe it would have been fine, but I couldn’t convince myself that it would. In general, I don’t like killing off characters as a plot device; I prefer it when a character death (seemingly) completely derails my plot. And while technically it would have thrown Iron into a completely different direction, it still felt like I was introducing them solely as a plot device.
Admittedly, now that I put it this way, the idea of a redemption arc that backfires would have been fun. However, I’m more than happy with this current iteration of Iron, simply because she’s so much more emotionally complex than the one that was going to go full raider. Original Iron basically hadn’t emotionally progressed at all since Cascade left her, and that would have been such a huge flaw in my story.
Second… I struggled to connect the dots in a way that would be satisfying. I needed their deaths to be Iron’s fault, but I also needed them to be partly accidental, and I needed a third party to have caused it. In short, I couldn’t find a satisfying way to execute it that would make sense. Essentially, I was trying hard to marry thematics and plot.
I could find tonnes of ways that made sense, and tonnes of ways that would be thematically satisfying, but they just. Wouldn’t. Overlap. No matter how cool my plan, there was always a tiny flaw somewhere that ended up ruining the whole idea. It was like trying to contort a square shape to fit into a circle hole, all while trying to change the hole to accommodate a triangle.
Also I’m salty because in the original plan there was a really cool fight scene that I really enjoyed writing. If there's any interest in it, I could link it after this chapter. Though keep in mind my original plan for Iron had her becoming a canterlot ghoul by that point.
That fight in and of itself is half the reason I tried to fit a square into a circle so badly.
Hope for raider Iron will never die!
Love to see a failed redemption arc, or even a corruption one (bastardization I think it’s called) but yeah, you are the god and we are all but simple beggars craving horsewords.
Good stuff, keep it up.
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Thanks!
I'm actually planning on doing stuff with raider Iron. An alternate timeline, to be exact. So far, there's a story with a 90% complete rough draft that I'm planning to eventually put aside the time to finish.
that would've been so beautiful