Behind the Story: A Little Odd

Nobody’s read this thing, but at least it seems like it has gone over well.

Anyways, I decided that now was a good time to write this so I don’t forget to do it later.

Anyways, A Little Odd went in a completely different direction than originally intended, and I’m prepared to talk about it.

So, as mentioned in the author’s note, the idea of Stage Dive came from a conversation I had with Emotion Nexus on a Discord server. I talked about how I thought it would be cool to have an OC who was a changeling rock star. They were sent out on a mission to collect love from ponies, because ponies adored rock stars, and deliver it to the hive. However, the changeling instead stuck as a pony because they enjoyed it so much.

So, Nexie just happened to have an OC that was exactly like that and gave me Stage Dive.

So, I was originally going to write a trans(ish) story this month, but that seemed better suited for June, which is right around the corner. So, after putting that in the filing cabinet for later, I was officially stuck with absolutely no ideas for what to write.

A Raining. sequel briefly came to mind, but Raining. is a very good story and any sequel I make would have to live up to it. However, if a Raining. sequel is going to be developed, expect it to be a journal about episodes of gender dysphoria because goddamn is it kicking my ass recently.

Anyways, I threw that aside as well, but I still needed a story. So, I decided to utilize Stage Dive.

A Little Odd was originally going to be a story about Stage Dive’s backstory, told from the perspective of Stage Dive encountering a fan with a backstage pass. The fan would ask Stage Dive questions, and those questions would eventually lead to the big reveal that Stage Dive was a changeling all along!

So, I wrote all that, it was 1.3k words (approximately) of precisely that. Then I realized that I felt the story was missing an element that would make the story actually be worth writing. It wasn’t fluff, so I couldn’t just leave it without any substance, because it wasn’t trying to be substanceless.

That’s when I got an idea.

What follows is the most Dashie04 sentence you will probably ever read.

I decided that I was going to write a story about a changeling musician and make the entire thing a nonbinary metaphor.

So, I decided to take a crack at Stage Dive never feeling right as a pony or changeling. The flashbacks would show their discontent with either way of life, and the fan’s questions would just so happen to be the right ones to reveal Stage Dive as they are, a changeling, but not entirely one. This would be stumbled upon by the fan revealing (by accident) that some songs that Stage Dive wrote were actually about the dysphoria. That was suggested in QnS, which I thought sounded like some very Against Me! stuff, which worked because Stage Dive is based on Laura Jane Grace.

However, I didn’t quite want to make it a Very Special Episode, so I decided that there should be some story, too.

After that, I drew the cover art, and realized that trying to hide Stage Dive was a changeling would be remarkably stupid with that cover art. So, I made it more obvious from the beginning.

What followed was a lot of tweaking. One of the first difficult parts was deciding whether I should end it triumphantly or with the fan saying “I don’t hate you I just hate your lifestyle,” and Stage Dive having a sort of response that would indicate this response normally happens.

I eventually decided to end it on a triumphant note with a final flashback that implied that Stage Dive had been trying to break out of their shell for a majority of their life.

Then, after some grammar tweaks, and me correcting pronouns (misgendering the characters you’re writing, how embarrassing), I decided that it needed more substance still.

So, I eventually came up with the idea that this was before a show, and Stage Dive was getting ready to perform. Therefore, I could introduce them as a changeling, have them become a pony, and then reveal at the end that Stage Dive’s pony disguise isn’t perfect, because they’re somewhere in between.

As a little aside, trying to get the ending right made me realize how much I love my endings just dying out and leaving certain things up for interpretation. I paged back through my stories and realized that it was oh too common. Me and Poppy: “The final chord petered out into the night”, A Single Seed: “He collapsed into his bed and fell asleep”, Zephyrina/Zipp: “Pipp nodded, then waved with a wing and left the room”. It’s something I use a lot. Naturally, the current ending of A Little Odd is no different, “Stage Dive put their disguise back up, but kept their fangs glistening”.

That really covers the production part of this story. The titles were little music references I thought were clever. A Little Odd, like an odd time signature, and the chapter title was 5/4 because 5/4 is an odd time signature. If you give a Dashie a musical inch, she’ll take a mile.

Influences for this story included my usual influences, Against Me! (specifically Transgender Dysphoria Blues), and it probably shares some beats with Anyone You Expect Me to Be and Changing Your Tune.

Otherwise, that’s the story of how A Little Odd was developed.

Until next time; be awesome!
-Dashie