Double Feature: The Making Of “Sunny’s Promise” & “Worthless” · 6:07pm Oct 19th, 2022
Hello everypony!
Yes, I am back! I bet you all were wondering where I have been all this time. Long story short, I’ve been busy with life and lacked the time or energy to continue making stories. I’m in college at this point and the work just keeps piling up. But fear not! For I was able to book a vacation to Europe and I figured since I had a cool private seat on the airplane, I’d get back to work. What followed was a Misty-centric story titled “Worthless” and an unrelated Izzy story which will be coming out soon.
However, I realized that I haven’t made a blog post explaining the making of my last story before this one, titled “Sunny’s Promise.” So I decided to do a double feature “Making Of,” talking about both “Sunny’s Promise” and “Worthless.” Let’s get to it!
SUNNY’S PROMISE
So…where to begin with this one? Okay, right off the bat, this story didn’t get the same traction as the other stories ended up getting and I think that’s down to how different it is from the others, or people just probably weren’t interested. Perhaps I had oversaturated them with my stuff? I don’t know. I took many month-long breaks. But as for the creative process, I wanted to separate this one from the others by really making it feel less like the one-shot introspective other stories and more like a genuine Admiral Producer story, meaning a down-to earth, slow-paced narrative with deep character motivations and goals, plus some OCs thrown in for good measure. After watching the Make Your Mark special again and reading a couple of fanfictions, I put a poll out on General asking what would you all like to see in a Sunny-focused story. And well, a lot of you had so many great ideas! I was going the “Sparkle’s Seven” route kinda, asking what would you all like to see with these characters and then combining it all together. Obviously, I couldn’t include every single suggestion and some inclusions fell to the sidelines in the overarching plot. But the idea with Zipp and the Wonderbolts really intrigued me. So I decided to go that direction for the story.
For this, I wanted to have it focused on both Sunny and Zipp as I think they have a good dynamic as seen from the special and “Portrait For A Princess” to a degree. Keep in mind, this story was written before Chapter 2 even aired, so any continuity errors should just be accepted as being part of an alternate universe. That’s what all my stories are in to a degree. Sunny Starscout is my favorite character in G5 and always has been, so I wanted to do a story focused on her justice, such as what her friends mean to her, the insecurities she’s dealing with following Argyle’s death, and so forth. I wanted Sunny’s greatest fear to be that her friends don’t really value or care about her and that they’re only hanging around with her because she’s the only one stopping Maretime Bay from giving into their unconscious biases and lynching all of them for shits and giggles. Well, her and Hitch, but you get the idea. The scene with Sunny asking her father for help at night with the soft wind blowing in Part 1 is my favorite part as it showcases Sunny in a way we don’t often see her. She’s scared and vulnerable, and she wants to help Zipp realize her dream of bringing back the Wonderbolts, but deep down, she’s afraid that she may not succeed and that idea terrifies her. She values her friends as they’re the only family she really has now. She practically relies on them for comfort and support and without that, she feels like she’s nothing.
This story is a direct sequel to “Divine Flight” and the beginning part actually takes place during the events of that story. The next day, we have the introduction of the schoolhouse where Zipp will be teaching flight and here come my OCs! Sunshine Wings and Rainbow Tails. The way I envision them is just imagine Sunshine being a recolor of Glory or Peach Fizz, but a goldish yellow and a pegasus, and Rainbow Tails literally being that Rainbow Harmony filly from the MLP: FIM Season 8 finale “School Raze,” but G5-designed.
So Zipp wants to bring back the Wonderbolts. That’s the name of the game here and Sunny promises that she’ll help make that happen no matter what. Hitch is rendered useless (sorry, I had no use for him other than that brief interaction with Sunny) and we meet Sunshine Wings and Rainbow Tails, who both idolize and fangirl over Zipp like Scootaloo with Rainbow Dash in G4. They’re eager to learn, but Sunshine has a flying disability. Unlike Scootaloo though, she can fly, it’s just that she can’t fly very well. The endurance and stamina isn’t there, but nonetheless, she’s passionate. Rainbow Tails, I don’t know as she doesn’t get much characterization other than being the best friend to Sunshine. Perhaps I should’ve given her more time to shine, but the focus here was always intended to be on Sunshine’s relationship with Zipp.
Then we have a reference to Disney’s Mulan with a Wonderbolts parody of “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You,” my favorite Disney song. Zipp trains the fillies for three days and they don’t seem to be getting far. This understandably makes both Sunny and Zipp stressed with it all boiling over the night before the show when Zipp storms out of the front office, determined to gather the Junior Wonderbolts for one last night of training. Sunny warns her against this as the students need to sleep, which results in a full out argument with Zipp questioning Sunny’s friendship. This was especially hard to write as I wanted to make it feel as raw and real as possible. This was in reference to the heart-wrenching scene in Moana where Maui leaves. Sunny here is at one of her most vulnerable. She thinks she’s failed Zipp and that she’s not worthy to be her friend. But right as she’s about to give up hope, her friends arrive, along with Sunshine Wings, who tells Sunny how she inspired her to pursue her dreams because she never gave up when times got tough (to her knowledge anyway) and that she is an inspiration to all ponies. Sunny’s friends also join in and express how grateful they are to have met her and give her a huge group hug. I wrote this part to the background music of “Infinite Potential” from Doctor Who and I think it fits, especially the peak melody part hitting with Sunshine telling Sunny “We’re all your friends, Ms. Sunny. And we love you.”
Now finally accepting her friends as her true family, Sunny gets inspired to pull things together and just imagine a reprise of “Be A Bolt” playing during that montage as Sunny helps train the students for the big show the very next day. Then we finally have the show itself and let me tell you, this was hard to write. I had to pull out every trick I saw the Wonderbolts do in FIM and even research a couple of stuff, but it finally paid off. I wrote that part to Henry Cavill’s Superman theme in the DCEU and I think it really fits, especially with the main triumphant melody playing during the reentry stunt. So everything works out, we have one final emotional bit with Sunny’s friends reassuring her that they are there for her, Zipp gets a permanent job at the schoolhouse to train the newly restored Wonderbolts and all arcs are wrapped up.
I really intended this to be the finale to what I call the Mane Five Saga, which started with “I’m Looking Out For You.” Basically the way these stories are structured is that they’re all in their own little “franchises,” so to speak. We have the Mane Five Saga which started with “I’m Looking Out For You” and ending with “Sunny’s Promise.” Making a Sunny story and doing it justice was a big priority for me as again, Sunny is my favorite character and ‘Best Pony’ in my opinion. I just love everything about her character and it’s sad to see when the show staff seems to forget that she’s the main character. Obviously the episodes where she has a lot to do or is the main focus are the really good ones, but we need more of that. Sunny was terribly underutilized in the special, and that’s one of the only things about it I hate. Otherwise, it’s fine in my opinion. So yeah, I really had fun making this story and personalizing it. It seems to be the only story with no dislikes, but maybe that’s because it didn’t get the same traction as the others do. I don’t know. Maybe it was a flaw in the marketing campaign. But really, you all should check it out, I spent a lot of time on it.
WORTHLESS
So, we finally end the Mane Five Saga and we at last begin the Misty Saga! Right off the bat as you can see, I’m pushing more boundaries with my stories. This story is the only one-shot so far to have graphic use of violence and some mild profanity. This isn’t a new thing for me, I mean the first two stories “Guardians of Harmony” and especially “Trials of the Force” had that in spades, but it’s never really crossed over to the one-shots. I think I’m more comfortable now with my established audience that I can start pushing boundaries again and really leaning into my dark and gritty sensibilities.
So what we have here is a potential ending for Season 1 of Make Your Mark and a form of resolution for the character of Misty and her loyalty to the villain Opaline. Basically the main idea here is that Misty finally kidnaps Sparky and takes him to Opaline, where she expects the shadow alicorn to finally be proud of her and give her a cutie mark as she always wanted in the show. Only to find out…Opaline never intended to do that in the first place. Yeah, it’s cliche, but I think it works here. The relationship between Opaline and Misty is obviously abusive and toxic and I cannot commend the writing staff enough for daring to put this kind of dynamic in G5. It’s one of the reasons I love Chapter 2 so much as it’s not afraid to tackle real serious issues that FIM did not tackle in its first season due to it still trying to find its footing. Obviously in the actual show, this revelation will definitely be much more toned down for young audiences, but the point still stands. Misty is a character with so much potential and I wanted to write some sort of a resolution to this story arc of hers and how I think this plotline would play out. Misty is understandably devastated and when Opaline taunts her about her blind naïveté, that’s when the usually timid unicorn snaps and goes all out on the pony she came to call her mother for lying and deceiving her for all these years. It’s was extremely difficult to write as once again, I wanted to capture the raw emotion that was being conveyed here.
Then Opaline gets physically abusive and here’s where the teen rating comes in. As I mentioned in my author’s note, there’s no way she would NOT do this to Misty in my opinion, so a sugarcoated version is anyone’s guess. Misty is beaten until she’s all bloodied and bruised and she barely manages to escape, leaving Sparky behind in the process. Some doctors from Maretime Bay find her later and ask Sprout to bring the unconscious unicorn to the Crystal Brighthouse, which is in a state of panic after Hitch noticed that Sparky is gone. So they take Misty in after Hitch not-so-subtly roasts Sprout (couldn’t resist) and she wakes up, confessing everything and how sorry she is for everything. Now I had two options for this part, either have everypony forgive her like it’s no big deal and they form a plan, or have Izzy, the pony who never stopped encouraging Misty and always believed in her, to be heartbroken and need some time alone, with the others not fully trusting her yet, but giving her a chance anyway to redeem herself. Obviously, Option B is more realistic, so I went with it as it presented a stronger resolution emotionally. I have a feeling the show staff would’ve went for Option A though because (FOR KIDS-TM).
After being allowed to stay, Misty vows to help the Mane 5 save Sparky and take down Opaline, finally finding her true family in Sunny and her friends. She knows she messed up and the others don’t fully trust her and probably never will, but she’s willing to make things right no matter the cost and the fanfic ends with: “She was Misty Brightdawn. She was somepony. And she was going to save Equestria or die trying.”
So, that was the darkest of these yet, minus the unfinished multi-chaptered ones. This one is my new favorite out of the now seven other ones because of how hard it was to write effectively. Here we have a conflict between an abusive mother and an abused child who now realizes that she’s been manipulated and deceived for years by the parent she thought loved her. I don’t consider myself a master at writing these sort of dynamics and I probably never will be. But I can certainly learn to be better at it, that’s for sure. You can consider “Worthless” a testing ground for the Equestrian Civil War series. I’m trying to see if I can write this sort of dynamic and character arc for the main character, as well as do it justice. Obviously judging by the response, I’ve succeeded and that gives me so much hope for the future of the Nightwingverse.
Thank you all so much for your positive responses to this story and I assure you that more juicy stuff is coming in the future, including two sequels. Stay tuned!
With that concludes my double-feature “Making Of” episode and up next is the Making Of “Izzy Moonbow In The Multiverse of Randomness.” I probably won’t have much to say with that one. Anyways, until next time, see y’all later!
-Admiral Producer
If there’s one thing I’ll say I hate about the Worthless story, it’s probably the fact that now I can’t get that dang song from Brave Little Toaster out of my head!
Which one?