//------------------------------// // Loose Ends, References and Inspirations // Story: Nine Days Down // by JoeShogun //------------------------------// Not necessarily in that order. In fact, backwards. Here’s some of the stuff that gave me the ideas for this little tale of woe. We’ll start with pony-related stories. Siren Song, by GaPJaxie – This guy has inspired more than one story of mine. But this one is the story of a girl from Equestria dropped into a dystopian nightmare. It’s a riveting, wrenching, ponified version of Bioshock. It occurs before Rapture entirely falls apart, and explores what becomes of an isolated society torn apart by greed and weird magic far better than the game did. It also has the single best portrayal of a long-term, stress-induced breakdown that I’ve ever read. Siren Song was probably the single biggest motivator for Nine Days Down: I saw what someone could do with a story like that and wanted to see if I could do it myself. Tragically, I don’t think the full saga of Siren will ever be finished, but you should definitely give it a look, regardless. Though I feel obligated to warn you, it is not an easy read. https://www.fimfiction.net/story/87120/siren-song Eternal, by Device Heretic - I think everyone that’s ever read this one has cried over it at least a little, even the guy who tricked me into reading it. That’s about the best compliment I can give a drama. I borrowed tons of ideas from this one, consciously or not. https://www.fimfiction.net/story/5921/eternal Uprooted, by Naomi Novik - It ain’t pony, but it is hands down my favorite fantasy novel. The Wood, the novel’s immortal, ingenious, and utterly monstrous nemesis, was where I got a lot of inspiration for Tartarus. The heroine is a combination of panicky teenager and crazy hero that I found thoroughly compelling. Her foil, the Dragon, is exactly what you get when you take a 20-something dude and age him by a couple hundred years. Also, the power of friendship features prominently. I love everything about this book, but the Wood really stands out as a great, scary-as-hell villain. Also, it’s a one-shot, so you won’t have to slog through a whole damn trilogy or whatever. Worm, by Wildbow – If you ever wished superhero stories had more soul-breaking trauma in them, look no further than Worm. It was too much for me, and I never finished it. But credit where it’s due, Worm is compelling as all Hell and one of the most creative looks at the superhero/villain concept out there. Just be warned that the fandom motto for Worm is “It gets worse.” It’s a web serial, by the way, quite long, and has nothing at all to do with ponies. I mention it here because it was sort of a cautionary tale for what I was trying to do with Nine Days. My goal was to dance on the line of Too Much without crossing over it. I guess you guys will have to let me know if I pulled that off. https://parahumans.wordpress.com/ Exalted – I got a lot of the ideas about gods having multiple souls from Exalted, which they, in turn, got from old, weird mythology (but more on that later). I also made use of its over-the-top aesthetic for the bigger fight scenes. I’m interested to know what people thought of all the esoteric god-stuff and the fights between them, so lemme know in the comments, if ya want. Boogieman, by Johnny Hollow – This a song, actually, and it’s about a girl who was abused and became something worse than her abuser in response. It’s from her perspective, and she seems to be having a wonderful time of it. Luna was strongly based on this idea (the part about being scarier than the scary things, specifically), but Twilight’s arc was too. What if, instead of becoming a monster, she rejected the whole process and became a hero, instead? Well, more of a hero, I suppose. Speaking of Luna, I mostly based her off how she's portrayed in the comics. Which is to say, less mopey, more fun, with an added dash of scary. Rainbow, by Sia – Did anybody else actually listened to the lyrics of this song? They are not the sort of thing I’d expect to show up in my magical talking pony movie. They’re about pain driving you to be a better person, more than you ever could have been without it. It’s actually pretty awesome, and I’m totally adopting it as a theme for Nine Days. Greek and Celtic mythology – You’ve probably already guessed this one. I kind of wish I’d gotten around to slipping some other country’s myths in there, but this story was long enough already. And, as always, my occasional editor/person I bounce ideas off of, Spice of Life. He was too busy for most of the later chapters, but he’s always around to help turn stupid ideas into passable ones. References! Here’s the stuff that showed up in the story and what it was like before I got ahold of it. Ben – Ben began life as a scorpion, actually. He shows up in an episode of Sealab 2021. I liked him, so he became my familiar in a Dungeons and Dragons game I briefly played. The concept of a screaming spider came from Spoils, a collectible card game that I was terrible at but loved, and since friendly spiders were canon to MLP, I guess I decided to sneak him into the story. I regret nothing. He was meant to be a continuous stabilizing influence, the one thing in Tartarus that was (almost) always there for Twilight. Making him a dream-being and creature of Luna just seemed appropriate, given their mutual penchant for mischief. Cretes – The Great White Bull is something of an amalgamation of several white bulls that show up in Greek myth. One of them was Zeus in disguise, another a gift from Posiedon, one just a bit of fancy livestock. Some were monsters, some actually totally cool, but all of them were rather, eh, amorous. The most terrible/hilarious story involved Aphrodite charming the Queen of Minos into falling in love with said bull. Shenanigans ensued, and thus was born the first minotaur. GREEK MYTHOLOGY! Anyway, Cretes was put in as a big, intimidating, but still reasonable example of the kinds of things imprisoned in Tartarus. I wanted him to show up later as an antagonist, but was convinced by Spice of Life to do something more interesting. His brief third appearance was a questionable decision, but it was meant to show that Twilight was having an impact on Celestia, Luna, and Tartarus itself, even if she didn't know it. The bull himself is a brute and a bully, but in the right circumstances, a hero, too. It turns out being stuck in a hell-scape and having to protect his people are the right circumstances for him. I wanted to put in more about the cows that follow him, but never found a way to do it. In answer to the perfectly reasonable question of what happened with the herd after Twilight's escape, they're fine. They had a big, ugly rumble, but they're a tough bunch. Whether Terra was willing to adopt them is anyone's guess, but finding and getting the herd home is one of Twi's top priorities upon her return to Tartarus. The gorehounds and the wyrds – I took one look at the diamond dogs and was all like, 'Those things are werewolves. Look at how huge those things are! They could tear people up!' And thus, with the addition of shaggy hair and a viking-esque religion, were born the gorehounds. Wyrds were just a little something to make things more interesting, an old trick Discord pulled on the world that gave random creatures random bits of violent magic. The ash viper, the clot – Just some ever more unpleasant creatures for Twi to contend with, though the singing thing on top of the clot came from an old game called Odium, I think. It was just some singing mutant that never attacked you, but led you toward a fight. Don’t know what brought it mind, but it was weird and I thought it made a good lure, so there we are. Update: I found it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorky_17 The manticore - That word means man-eater, by the by. They've been described as tigers with spiny tails, giant lions with scorpion tails and men's faces, the former with wings, and even more exotic creatures. I went with the canon pony one. The idea that they're scared of rhyme came from an actual pony publication; The Journal of the Two Sisters. It was the diary Twi found in the old castle. Virago – Flagrantly stolen from Fluffle Puff lore. It’s Markseline. That’s pretty much it. I’ve always liked the idea of a Goddess of Crazy, and she seemed appropriate. I wanted more out of her, actually, but writing convincing crazy is pretty hard. Virago means mad-woman, by the way, and also, warrior-woman. Funny how the two are synonyms. Anyway, I took further inspiration from the series she was inspired by: Deadspace. I really liked how the first game handled the Marker. The idea that it was inimical to the human mind but not actually hostile to us was super interesting. They kinda ruined that in the sequels. So it goes. Somebody in the original comments totally called me out on the plant that was being used to contain Virago. Its name was Yothga. It comes from Robert E. Howard’s Conan classic, The Scarlet Citadel. Yothga had roots that reached all the way into Hell, and the being it contained was a great wizard who eventually destroyed the guy who had imprisoned both Conan and himself. The Wights – What if ponies lived underground and were predatory? What if one of them wasn’t happy about it? What if MLP came out with a canon story like that, but with a changeling? … Fuck! Anyway, the scene with the wights was there as a counterpoint to the scene with the gorehounds. Twi had no one to help her, so here was where we were meant to see what she was really made of. And also a centaur, because fuck it, why not? The wights also served as a sort of twisted counterpoint to ponies in general. They work together and have something of a society in which responsibility and family bonds are important (which is better than most things in Tartarus can do), but those things are expressed in very different ways thanks to the environment they live in. On the note of Bait, I worry that I picked on the little guy too much toward the end. One of the hazards of having several-month breaks between chapters is that you forget how much you've already done a thing. *shrug* Alas, he was the best hook I had to make Twilight do stupid, interesting things. The Shrimp - These were based on mantis shrimp, which are a real thing that lives in the ocean, can grow over a foot long, and can punch through pretty much anything. Enjoy your next trip to the beach. Nuckalavee – Nuckalavee is the best and greatest and most god-damn terrifying fey in all of Celtic myth and I love him. Or maybe them. It’s not clear if there are more than one of him. Regardless, I took his description and personality straight from the lore, and then gave him a sword. The disease he breathes is called mortasheen, and his hatred of horses is totally canon. He even has some great old-school mythological weaknesses. Specifically, being enraged by the smell of burning seaweed (in case you ever want to enrage this monstrosity) and unable to cross moving, fresh water. I had no particular plans for him after his first appearance, but having him head the Wyld Hunt (which is pretty much as described in the story) made for a convenient chase scene at the end. The Hekatonkhire – Ah, the hekatonkhire. These weirdos are one of my favorites, and may actually have been the catalyst for this whole story. I kept thinking about how something with fifty heads and a hundred arms could possibly work, and eventually I came up with Briareos. Once I had one, I knew I had to figure out the others, and I wanted them all to be unique. The idea of a ‘tree’ whose ‘fruit’ were spooky masks was pretty decent, I thought, but I never really did come up with a good third idea, so I defaulted to a shape-shifting centipede monster that was Cottos. Anyway, the hekatonkhire were Gaia’s first children by Uranus (Earth and Sky, respectively), and the father was so disgusted by them that he shoved them deep under the earth. Sidenote: Gaia was the earth. According to most translations, this meant that the father of her children pushed them back into her womb. Gaia was upset by this, as any mother would be, and that was why she betrayed the rest of the Titans in favor of her other son, Cronus. Then he went and did the same thing (and worse, actually). As such, she ‘betrayed’ him too in favor of Zeus and the Gods, who promised to allow her sons to hang out in the much nicer Earth. The hekatonkhire, once freed, beat back all the Titans damn near by themselves and were the reason the Gods came to rule. The Gods then made them the jailors of those Titans that survived...And put them in Tartarus.              GREEK MYTHOLOGY! Speaking of… Terra – According to mythology, Terra and Gaia are synonymous. She is the Earth, a Titan, one of the original creators of everything. She birthed and houses all life, being both a place and person, and turned on the Titans when they were all dicks to her children. She led her children in their fight, but she kind of disappears from the legends after that. The Shattered – It occurred to me that the mirror pond from the Too Many Pinkies episode could be used for nefarious purposes. But an army of clones forged from evil magic might not be much good for anything. About that scene in the cave – I dunno, man. SHipping is hard to resist, as I have now learned. This whole story was an experiment, and I wanted to try my hand at it, so here we are. Hopefully it didn’t ruin it for everyone. In my defense, sometimes people just need a win, right? Surrounded by death and despair, maybe a girl just needs a way to feel alive. And clandestine make-outs are a pretty good way to do that. That was my justification, anyway. If I had it to do again, I'd leave it out. Maybe I'll write an alternate version... So. Many. Chimera – Greek mythology has two tricks when it comes to making monsters: 1. Put two or more animals together. 2. Add more heads. Being born from spilled blood also showed up a time or two, I suppose. The Bewilderbeasts and swamp trolls and troglodytes – Just some critters for Luna to victimize, to show how much better prepared she is for this place than Twilight or Celestia. I got pretty attached to the bewliders, actually. The idea of a sort of alternate changeling that also blended in, but different, seemed pretty cool. Too bad Luna murdered them all. Phix – The name wasn't just me being lazy. It is the mythologically canon name of at least one Sphinx. Anyway, Sphinxes are pony-canon now too and they're adorable and I love them. Regardless, Phix was a Greek sphinx, what with the tits. The Egyptian ones were totally chill and didn’t eat people, but their only human feature was the head. I kind of fused them, because I like the Egyptian look, but also tits. *Shrug* The guards – Some normal people, finally! That was pretty much their role. To be normals. But not the sort of normal Twi is used too. The Swords – Twilight’s very first new soul! Deities often have a signature weapon, and I thought it would be interesting to have Twilight form hers in front of the reader, especially since Insight has a little arc of her own. The idea of someone being born a weapon and then told to be something more was pretty interesting to me, and hopefully to y'all too. Dullahan and his Procession – Another Celtic mainstay. The headless horseman (though it was never actually the dullahan, but a dullahan. There were lots of them) and banshees. According to myth, neither being was a monster in itself, really. They were just harbingers, a warning of things to come. I always liked that. I’m not sure where I got the idea to have Dullahan approach people and offer them a painless death as a mercy, or that those who had accepted this 'gift' might tell their story to any who listened for eternity, but there were are. Plus, I thought it would be fun to have Luna have gone through a goth phase with them. Tartarus – Ahh, yes. The big villain. Tartarus is a Hell, first and foremost. A prison of darkness and despair where the gods threw their undesirables. But it was a deity in itself, as well. Perhaps the first one. A living thing. Many a hero and villain were cast into Its depths, never to be seen again. A few escaped, but that was rare. Typhon - Typhon has always been one of my favorite mythological figures. Younger brother to the Hekatonkhires, he was the last child of Gaia, and the greatest. He was the one being to ever defeat Zeus in combat, and, depending on the story you read, he was only beaten through base trickery. He joined the wars of the Gods for his mother's sake, and never really did anything evil. Alas, he is always portrayed as a villain, his children murdered by mighty 'heroes' even as he languishes in a prison he doesn't deserve. His description varied. He was either an enormous, well-muscled man with snakes bursting from his back and arms, or a dragon, much as he was described in this story. He usually had only one head, except for the snakes, but kept the wings and the tentacular lower body. He was married to Echidna, who had the awesome title 'Mother of Monsters,' and looked much like him. Together, they spawned nearly every Greco-Roman creature you might ever have heard of. Alas, Echidna's story is vague, as is the tale of how all their kids escaped the bonds their parents suffered. Thsi story didn't really have a place for her, but maybe someday... Sidenote: What the hell happened to Artifice? A: She's in friendship jail, awaiting trial. Equestria is too nice to have actual prisons, so basically she's just in holding until Starlight Glimmer gets around to tricking her into being a better person. I had a few vague ideas of what to do with Artifice after the main story, but it never panned out. Anywho, if you made it this far, thanks for reading!