http://don-komandorr.deviantart.com/art/Twilight-s-victory-207023696
I thought I might as well order my author's notes and place them in the stories they refer to, this seems the best way of doing it until Knighty instigates a proper "author's notes" function, hop to it Knighty!
Rather terrifyingly it's almost a year since I first wrote this story though it still feels like yesterday, I'm not sure where all the time has gone! The main inspiration of course is the Hasbro Dewdrop Dazzle toy which had just been announced when I wrote it. For some reason, despite literally having all the colour schemes of all the background characters on the show, Hasbro decided that they wanted to realise original toys (thus with zero advertising behind them) and crudely recoloured some of the show artwork for the packaging. Dewdrop was a horrendous teal, yellow and pink Twilight recolour, and was just so bafflingly awful that I felt I had to do something. Anyone who's read any of my Transformer comics know I like to concentrate on the 'underdog' characters because sometimes they can be the most interesting.
The story is also very loosely inspired by the Father Ted episode 'Entertaining Father Stone'. Father Ted is an excellent surreal 90's Irish comedy about three priests living on a remote island, and well worth checking out if you've not seen it. In this episode, Father Ted's 'friend' Father Stone turns up to stay. Father Stone is the most boring priest in the world and sucks all the fun out of every room. He sits on the sofa not saying a word for months and months, until Ted prays to God and Father Stone is hit by lightning, causing lots of guilt. In the Father Ted episode though, Father Stone ends up staying with Ted forever (and ever and ever and ever). As you can tell by the description, the link is only very tenuous, but it's there, and there's a little Father Ted reference as a wink at the start, see if you can spot it!
Dewdrop Dazzle turns up and immediately Twilight's life starts to fall apart as slowly but surely Dewdrop turns up the crazy meter until she is cutting her hair to match Twilight's, using her toothbrush and taking over the library from under her hooves. All for the best of intentions of course! One thing that annoys me in fiction is when the antagonist doesn't really have any motivations apart from being a jerk. No-one really wakes up and decides to be evil (which is a theme mentioned in this story), people do bad things for good reasons. Dewdrop honestly thinks Twilight is amazing (don't we all) and wants to do everything in her power to emulate her hero. Twilight meanwhile feels threatened by Dewdrop literally taking over her life but rather than being able to come out and say it in a confrontational manner, acts ever more passive-aggressively until tragedy strikes. We all shake our heads, but we've all been there.
Dewdrop starts out as very much the antagonist, the 'villain' of the piece. I enjoyed writing her a lot, and found that while I had intended on making fun of her for her 'Hasbro recolour status' I actually ended up liking her. Poor, silly little Dewdrop. At some point in our lives, we've all been Dewdrop - we've got too into something or someone and been completely carried away; we've built someone up to be wonderful and amazing and perfect and then got our hearts crushed when it turns out they're just as fallible as us.
Is Dewdrop the villain or the victim of the story? The part which I feel works really well is that the reader is complicit in Twilight's actions. We see the entire story from her point of view: Dewdrop comes into her life, and it is a constant escalation of crazy with only one possible solution! What really interested me was that as I was uploading chapters, on 1 and 2, the comments from people were all full of vitrol for Dewdrop and begging Twilight to 'sort her out' or kill her! When chapter 3 rolled around, the very same people who were really pushing for a sticky end to Dewdrop suddenly found themselves wanting her to be okay. It was like the readers had egged Twilight on until she had gone too far and what happened to Dewdrop was thusly their fault.
Originally there was a few days before chapter 3 and 4. While I like the cliff-hanger on 3 (even though it's a bit cheating!) it did lose me a few readers - one person commented on Equestria Daily that they were so mortified at what had happened to Dewdrop that they'd never read another chapter! I wonder if it was all in one chunk they'd have been happier, or does the pause offered by the end of the chapter help what happened to sink in? All I ask of my readers is to trust me as a writer that things will wrap themselves up satisfyingly in the end!
What was the lesson in the end? On the surface the lesson is Dewdrop's to learn, even if she doesn't really. She seems to learn the lesson 'don't try to copy Twilight Sparkle' instead of 'don't try to copy everyone else'. Is the lesson Twilight's, as she finds that being non-confrontational actually made things a heck of a lot worse (though by the way she lectures Dewdrop, has she really learnt anything?) Or is the lesson ours, as we (myself included in the experience) learn to not judge a character by their providence, but by what lies deeper.
Someone mentioned to me that I 'have created a new subgenre of stories where Twilight gets her life nearly ruined by a possibly evil Mary-Sue'. That's only half true, but if you enjoyed this story, you'll definitely enjoy The Star In Yellow ( http://www.fimfiction.net/story/5713/The-Star-In-Yellow )
So what did you think? Did you enjoy the story, did you think it worked? If you've not commented yet I'd love to hear what you thought, even if it's just a resounding 'meh'. After all, every scrap of feedback helps me improve!
In the meantime, here's some art of this story by some fantastic artists!
"Twilight's Victory" by Don_Komandorr
http://don-komandorr.deviantart.com/art/Twilight-s-victory-207023696
"Twilight's Doppelganger" by Slagmalsklubben
http://slagmalsklubben.deviantart.com/art/Twilight-s-Doppelganger-209458227