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I pretty much stole her character designs for Firecracker Burst and Blossomforth and her Sweesong pic inspired me as well, though that is much harder to tell. I was looking for a better reference for Firecracker when I stumbled upon her (maybe I should not keep assuming I got the gender of somepony on the internet right?) neat tumblr. She did Bumblesweet too, but I already had a clear idea for her when I stumbled across this.
Yes, Dream Volt is my self insert OC. I also practically wrote him out of this version of the story, so I don't think you even know enough about him to hate him. If you do, eh, whatever. Nothing I can do.
The first version of this story was told from Luna's perspective, but that drove me crazy trying to write from her perspective without things sounding very emo. Silent Sky was always Luna's captain, but her name and cutie mark were originally going to match one of the blind bags. I then decided I was being dumb trying to force a cutie mark and coloration on her instead of what I really wanted, so bam, full on OC.
Azy I plucked from something else I wrote and ponized her. Part of her character is that she really stands out in a crowd, much to her annoyance obviously. Also zony is just fun to say, who cares if there is no such thing in RL or not.
This is still not perfect, but I'm sick of editing this and if I keep going I'm pretty sure if I kept going I'd drive myself even more insane, and I really don't have that much further to go. But this thing was acting as a roadblock for the other stories I've already written, since they all flow from it.
Which means yes there is a reason it says Episode Zero up there. My intent is to make it series like. I was going to cram the episodes together in a few stories on the site, but then realized they're all long enough by themselves, not just this one, and they could really use their own separate tags. They will all be first pony, and most of them from this point on about from the point of the mane 6. The first one will be Pinkie. That was interesting to write.