This story was a melting pot. I put everything I could into it. Post-Apocalypse, Ponies, Marathon, Halo and the Mass Effect series; The Bible, Greek Mythology, the Medieval and the Mythical; the Secret of Nimh, the Bone graphic novels, Peanuts, The Civil Right's Movement, Motion Picture stars, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, a hundred songs and more art than I can remember.
Fallout. I think I started writing because I wanted to escape into this place. If only for a little while longer. I knew the Capital Wasteland too well. And Fallout Equestria couldn't go on forever. I needed there to be more. So I started making more. I suspect that Kkat must have felt the same way. I don't know how Bethesda did it. How they left so many people wishing for the end of the world.
Kkat for Queen of the fandom.
That's all I really had to say.
Marathon. Independence day and the birth of Begin Again had come and gone by the time I got into this series. But Marathon likely made me a better writer overnight (be it a long night punctuated by old slices of breakfast pizza and root beer). There is no dialogue. And there are only ten songs, probably composed in some basement in Seattle. But this is one of the greatest stories ever told.
Halo. I grew up with these games. And some of the songs can still make me cry. Why would anyone wish the world had ended? Why would anyone wish that they were stranded on some alien ring, an impossible way away from home? We all want to escape sometimes. We all want to save the world and, at the same time, get as far away from it as we can. I want to be a hero. I want to be one of the last people left on earth. Sometimes I need to be somewhere else. Someone else.
Mass Effect. Damascus and the Illusive Man. Garrus and Tali and Shepard. Caliber and Ash and Grace. I'm too arrogant to just copy somebody else's work, and I only started playing Mass Effect after Sola Gratia had taken its last breath. But even though Ash and Caliber were not based on Tali and Garrus, or on Liara and Miranda, they took something from them. If only a little. If only so I didn't have to leave those characters behind once the game was over.
The Bible. I haven't finished it yet. So don't tell me how it ends.
Greek Mythology. These stories have been remembered for so long. Longer than any living religion's. I wonder if, in a thousand years, the world will look back at our dead Gods and call us an ancient civilization.
The Medieval. I wrote Begin Again, thinking about how, once it was over, the world would not be so different to how it began. The three tribes coming to Equestria. The survivors poking their heads out to see if the war was over. The Windigoes. Sovereign.
The Mythical. Art really gave me so much inspiration. Is that a cape on his back? Is there a sword in his hand? It all tells a story.
Is the sun rising or setting?
The Secret of Nimh. I was lost, and had come to another clearing in the wreck, but threw myself out of it even as the air began to steam and stink. I hid, wriggling into little places and cramped spaces like a frightened field mouse.
Peanuts. I wanted Grace, Caliber and Ash to sound like children, sometimes.
To act like children. That's where real friendship is, I think.
Bone is a series of graphic novels that I read over my childhood. I would get the newest book whenever I came to America for the holidays, and read it right there on the coast of Maine. It's influence runs deeper than I can measure. It was one of the things that breathed imagination into me. It made me who I am. How do you measure that?
The Civil Rights Movement. This was the most important time in American History. You know, in my personal opinion.
It almost feels like an insult to say that Malcolm X inspired Damascus. Or that Kathleen Cleaver, a mixed race woman who was one of the most important members of the Black Panthers, gave some of herself to Caliber along the way. Not only in appearance (Caliber wishes she had such a groovy afro), but in spirit. As a person, she would also have been mixed race, seeing as Damascus is modeled after a black man, and Damascus is her - Nevermind.
One good thing about Music.When it hits you, you feel no pain.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - Kanye West F# A# - Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Where the Light Is - John Mayer All Day - Girl Talk
Full Circle.
|*| I guess you think you know this story |*|
You don't. You're all too drunk on toasts and glory.
The watered down one, the one you know.
Was made up centuries ago.
They made it sound all soft and sappy.
Just to keep the children happy.
Twisted fictions, sick addictions.
You're grown up now. It's time to listen.
|*| Mind you, they got it right about the dawn |*|
The part where each tribe moved their pawn.
Those three thrones: all crowns, no Kings
Departed from their empty springs
While that darling little season summer
Led them like a marching drummer
As the call of autumn filled their sails,
Winter danced, and pulled their tails.
|*| They danced on graves, they sang in tombs |*|
Buried three seeds in a washed out womb.
Then, at paranoia’s poison door:
Begged for power, howled for more.
See children swallowing; as monsters feed.
See soldiers following; as madmen lead.
In history’s pool, through waters muddy,
The light of dawn comes dim, and bloody.
|*| I guess you think you know this story. |*|
You're the Lambs of Babylon. And Winter's predatory.
Is that the way they say it went?
The end of War: Easy. Elegant.
The end of Chaos: Heaven sent.
What you know, will not be known, when you are gone, and the world moves on.
When the curtains close, it was all a show, made up years and years ago.
You wrote the song. And wrote it wrong. The sun stayed up, for one day too long.
The rib is the shell, and the heart is the yolk. Swallow it and - Choke. Choke. Choke.
Those three tribes, all crowns, no rings. Those three tribes, all clowns, no Kings.
They had a heart. And its fires found you.
And that's why the devil just can't get around you?
Please.
The sky was black; The waters muddy.
The light of dawn came dim and bloody.
False depictions, benedictions. In the blood of Spring:
Summer's christened.
Twisted fictions, sick addictions. You're grown up now.
|*| It's time to listen |*|
