Rarity and Tom's Magical Adventure

by OneWingedDevil

Author's Note - Acknowledgements and Thoughts

I'm unsure whether this should be a blog post instead, but I'd rather not edit a blog post if this story is edited, and I'd still need to link the post in the story anyway in case people don't know it exists. I could also, y'know, put it in the author's note at the end of 'Memories', but I'd rather people subject themselves to this of their own volition. This just seems the best choice.

I'd like to give a shout out to Flanagan and Ariin. Flanagan is partly responsible for this, as we had a conversation on Skype that morphed into this. The conversation was 'crack fics', and since I keep my crack in-universe, my go-to for MLP is Tom/Crystal Heart. Of course, I had to figure out how they'd get together, so Rarity taking Tom up by train seemed a logical choice. Then, I needed to know why Rarity would take Tom up to the Crystal Empire. First thing that made sense to me was 'a gift for Spike'. Thus the initial promise of a crack ship went down in flames, and a story in which Rarity thinks she's a terrible pony replaces it. Progress!

Ariin helped a little bit with editing/proofreading for the story, and I do appreciate it. I hate seeing grammar/spelling errors in stories I read since they drag me out of my immersion, and I don't want others to suffer the same fate when reading my stuff. Hopefully everything is good right now, but I'll believe when at least 20 people say it's good on that front.

Everything past this is more about the story itself, what I hoped to achieve with it, and how I went about it. I'm an editor, first and foremost, and I feel like that comes with a duty to help people who actually wanna do writing seriously understand how to approach a story. Assuming this is any good, they can learn from my experience. Hopefully. In any case, I like over-analyzing things, so I'll enjoy this even if no one else does!

Oh, and if you don't want everything in the story explained, don't read ahead. Kinda obvious, but I know some people like a bit of ambiguity to their stories, and there won't be any left after reading this.

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I already said how the fic got started. Crack fic gone wrong. Most of the story was plotted out in the hour after I first had the TxCH thought. The result was a few paragraphs that outlines each character Rarity met and the reason she gave them for bringing Tom along. That's the core of the story - Rarity telling a different story to everypony she meets until we get the real reason at the end. When I *actually* decide to do a story, I always need to have a summary like that done before I start writing anything else. Without that, I sorta feel lost with what I'm doing, and it vastly increases the chance I'll lose interest and wander off to do something else, like play on Kongregate or do schoolwork. For any story you care about that'll be more than a few thousand words, I'd recommend something like that to keep you focused. As it was, chapter 3 was only intended to be a few paragraphs that would lead into chapter 4, with Shining Armor speaking with Rarity at the party instead of just running into her, but I wanted her to interact more with someone at the party. It's fluff, plain and simple, and doesn't fit the theme all the others do (more on that later), but I liked it enough to keep it. Maybe I'll go back one day to tighten it up. Who knows?

Since the core of the story was on the stories Rarity told, the conversation had to reflect that. I don't know how well it came across, but every conversation had a clue (of sorts) to what her real reason for bringing tom along was. Twilight's chapter had Rarity mention Tom after considering gift ideas and Twilight bringing Spike up, and Rarity was initially going to confirm Spike was on her mind before she backpedaled. At this point, even she's not sure what she meant when she yelled, so she's latching onto the first plausible reason she can until she has time to think things through. The part with AJ brought up that the story was all about love, and it is, in a way. I don't ship Sparity because of age/mental development reasons, but she still cares for him. Shining helps bring up the fact that many objects are only as valuable as we perceive them to be, which is why Tom is a good gift for Spike and no-one else, and Cadence... well, she helps lay out everything, so it's not really a clue, is it? Chapter 3 with Ruby is the oddball, unless I'm secretly a better writer than I thought and put in a clue I didn't even realize. It's the main reason I'd consider revising the chapter, since it doesn't fit the way it should.

Also, the whole 'clue' thing? I didn't plan it in the initial summary, and I wrote the first two chapters before I realized what I was doing. The ending went differently than I planned, too. My initial idea was Rarity just accepting her idea and rolling with it when she talked to everyone, but I know Rarity is the most flawed out of all the Mane 6, giving her the most potential to rise above it. Thus, I figured I could have her basic desire for attention and recognition taint her views on why she's doing this for delicious angst at the end (which gave me problems with the ending, but more on that later). Give yourself enough room when planning to just write freely, and you can surprise yourself in a good way.

Some of you may have picked up on my shipping tendencies in this fic. Did I intend any ships? No, other than the ships I set up specifically to mislead (RariTom and TxCH). Did they happen anyway?... yeah. I can't recommend shipping in a story not focused, on some degree, to romance, since some people are sticklers about it. Me, I'm fine with just about any ship, as long as the more unusual ones have depth behind them. Since this was more a fun project than anything else, I gently fanned the shipping flames (even if they aren't my favorite ships), but keep in mind your audience when you do write.

The ending was what gave me the most trouble. I wanted it to be a surprise, sure, but I also wanted to make sure it wasn't out of left field for anyone. That presented a dilemma - putting in clues had to be done in the earlier chapters, but that meant excising sections of those chapters or editing them to fit the new material being added. Also, the more I published, the less room I gave myself if I decided to add in more justification for the ending. Could I edit published stuff? Sure. Does it feel like a good habit to change canon so people have to re-read to get the full experience? No. To be honest, this entire story was finished before the first chapter went up, because I knew every chapter had good potential to impact how the ending was perceived. The only thing that kept it from being published all at once was a desire to give myself more time to make minor edits in the story before finalizing them. In the end, I figured 'good enough', and posted the rest after a few alterations.

If I come back to this story to refine it, I'll be sure to talk about it here as well, and possibly contrast what I thought here with what I think then. I won't pretend that there's any one way of doing the horse words, or words in general, but I'll say again that i hope you learn something about writing anyway. If you think this look into my mind is terrible and should be expanded, let me know in the comments and I'll expound on a topic as necessary. In case y'all can't tell, I like using lots of words, and any excuse to use more of them is a good one to me.

Comments

[TheGreatEater]

Honestly read this 3 times, and it always hits me in the feels. Although I wonder how I missed all the error fixes the first two times. I guess the fic is just that good. Although I don't know why this doesn't have more likes. It's a great, feel hitting fic.