Behind the Story: Me and Poppy

I feel like I screwed something up because that like/view ratio isn’t the greatest. However, I very much liked the story, and I’m prepared to talk about it.

This story concept actually started a while ago. The story is based on Me and Bobby McGee as performed by Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band, which is of the greatest songs I’ve ever heard. So, in my usual fashion, I decided to write a story about it.

I started writing this maybe a year to a year and a half ago, and then it got shelved to never be returned to again. I wanted to write a story about two inseparable outlaws, those being Full Tilt and Poppy. However, Full Tilt had a crush on Poppy and never got to share it before her and Poppy separated forever.

In fact, the story was always meant to begin with a heist and end with Full Tilt in front of Poppy’s grave, cursing herself for never letting her feelings be known (though in the final version, she commemorates her instead).

The story, while inspired by the song, really only takes a couple cues from it in terms of the writing, with the hitchhike scene really being the only thing taken from the song, as well as the general storyline.

I wrote Celestia’s Lullaby myself, which funnily enough my have drawn some cues from Goodnight, Irene, which appears later in the story regardless. I wanted to make it have unique lyrics like any good Folk song. I had this idea of three verses, The Princesses young, the Princesses after the death of their mother, and the Princesses after Celestia sends Luna to the moon. I felt there was a linear progression there, and so, I wrote it. I’m proud of how that song came out, while not the greatest, probably some of the better lyrics I could write.

For a little bit more trivia about the song, “I too do miss her” is referring to the mother, and “The sky that had kissed her” is the father.

Goodnight, Irene was easy to translate, as Irene and Poppy have the same amount of syllables, but man, I did not know that the song ended with the guy literally being like, “I’m gonna overdose on painkillers if Irene leaves me,” which is a big yikes and something he might want to talk to someone about.

I wanted to end with a bit of an ending that sort of emphasized the emptiness of Poppy’s grave. So, I had the guitar echoing out into the distance no further response. Maybe Full Tilt did take the hemlock and die, but maybe she didn’t, her fate is completely up to you.

I was very happy with how this story came out, and it’s a shame that I seem to be alone in that assessment.

As for influences, several. Me and Bobby McGee is one of them. I’ve also been reading Tangled Up in Blues for my YouTube channel, and it’s evident in some of my descriptions I used in the story, which are a bit better than my usual fare. Finally, The Parable of the Toymaker, which came out after I had started writing Me and Poppy (been working on this story for most of February), was also a huge influence. While it did come out after I started writing the final draft of this story, it still influenced the way the ending was going to be written.

There was no real personal stock in this story. I wrote it because Me and Bobby McGee is a classic that deserves to be loved.

So, that’s really all there is to it.

And until next time; be awesome!
-Dashie