This originally started out as some meta stuff and context that might be interesting to someone somewhere but didn't belong in the same post as the story fragment. I'm not sure if any of that survives. It's a lot of rambling. Not much else.
As I think I've mentioned repeatedly, when it comes to fanfic I've been kind of fixated one story worth of source material for ages. A year and half at least. I've got a lot of variations on that theme bouncing around in my head.
That's probably not surprising, I wrote four alternate versions of the van scene from Twilight (book version), after all.
The story is The Equestria Girls Holiday Special, which is a tie in comic to the human world of the current My Little Pony continuity. In the fandom it tends to be known as "Anon-a-Miss" for . . . reasons that would unnecessarily distract from this right now.*
I've known for a while that this particular subplot of this particular version would be the most likely thing to break through my depression. Here's what I wrote about it on Twitter, for example:
great justice sustenance is actually in the fic bit I'm sharing right now. It's after the "two homeless kids" have joined forces, but not about that. The whole thing is set up by the fact that an important foundation of their relationship is that, in spite of a significant age difference, they're equal partners.
Second, the two are Silver Spoon and Sunset Shimmer. Names tend to be meaningful in both Equestria Girls and Friendship is Magic. As such, you can probably guess that Silver Spoon is the one who passes for rich.
She's also the younger one.
Canon, and especially the fact that it hasn't ended yet, makes exact ages difficult.
If you don't want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to pull coherency out of a fictional multiverse that was long ago handed off to people who haven't watched previous episodes and are unaware that children ask "Why?", there's a simple answer:
If you do want to go down that rabbit hole, then on one end you need to start counting up vacations and finals and returns and seasons (as in times of year) as part of seeing how far back they've pushed Sunset now. Is she a junior, or did they stick in so much more still-in-high-school crap that we've been forced to revise her grade (and with it presumed age) at the time of this story again, pushing it down to sophomore?
On the other end, Silver Spoon is a high school freshman in spite of being visibly younger than the photographs we have showing what freshmen age at the high school in question looks like. Since she's mostly been ignored so far, we've yet to see, say, a still-in-high-school flashback that forced us to bump her up a grade beyond that.
Given their respective positions the last time I actually untangled canon, we're about two additional retcons away from the underclassmen and upperclassmen being in the same grade.
Something about Octavia or stringed instruments was probably going to go here.
Sunset plays guitar. Acoustic and electric both (though we never see her play acoustic.) Given that she's a unicorn from a magical land of talking ponies, it's often speculated that part of the reason she learned guitar was as a sort of self-directed physical therapy regime to help her with the whole fingers thing that human form carries with it.
Octavia is a cellist. Octavia is sort of a fixture of Anon-a-Miss fics for reasons that might best be summed up as "Bwah?", and if I hadn't thought up this scene I'm not sure if I'd have included her in the story.
Silver Spoon doesn't have a canonical musical instrument, and I wasn't planning on giving her one until I had Sunset make a crack about not being able to be first fiddle (to Silver's alleged status of second fiddle) because she doesn't know how to play fiddle.
Silver Spoon responded to the revelation that Sunset can't play fiddle with, basically, "Wanna?" which is why she now plays violin. I've even figured out how it fits into the backstory.
Sunset was part of a band called the Rainbooms, but the Holiday Special that this is spun off on has her successfully (if ineptly) framed for stabbing them in the back.
This particular vision of the story grew out of thinking about what might have happened if, instead of the incredibly rushed ending, Sunset managed to convince some but not all of her friends that she was innocent, Sunset didn't suddenly realize who was framing her at the same time, and the conveniently coinciding confession didn't take place.
Absolutely none of that has anything to do with Silver Spoon.
But it does mean that of the band Sunset has on her side Rainbow Dash (guitar and vocals), Fluttershy (tambourine and back up vocals), and maybe Pinkie Pie (drums) depending exactly how I fit the pieces together into a final timeline. Against her are Applejack (bass guitar), Rarity (keytar), and maybe Pinkie Pie (see end of previous sentence.)
That's only vaguely related to anything, but there's at least one line in the scene that would have to be different if Sunset had a bass player on her side.
I seriously don't know why I made this section (there was a reason) and writing without direction hasn't brought me any closer to figuring it out.
* The plot of the comic is basically:
That's only part of the reason it tends to be called that, though. A fan fic that used "Anon-a-Miss" as its almost single-handedly defined the genre. It's influence was and is massive and for a lot of fanfiction writers and readers, it completely overshadows the original source material.
It defined the genre a little too well and too narrowly, as the author will tell you himself. (Except I'm being absurdly charitable when I write "a little bit [...] too narrowly.")
Almost everyone has their point of divergence from canon at the exact same place, almost everyone includes certain elements that were introduced in that fanfic (even when they don't make sense in the context of the new story) and even when it comes to stories that don't follow it, there's a definite tendency of writing with the implicit assumption that the reader is familiar with it.
(I try, I think successfully, to avoid all of that in my own work.)
But, anyway, they tend to be called "Anon-a-Miss stories" both because it's the name of the account the plot is built around and because Anon-a-Miss, the fanfic, has left an undeniable and inescapable mark on (that part of) the fanfic community.
~ * ~
As I think I've mentioned repeatedly, when it comes to fanfic I've been kind of fixated one story worth of source material for ages. A year and half at least. I've got a lot of variations on that theme bouncing around in my head.
That's probably not surprising, I wrote four alternate versions of the van scene from Twilight (book version), after all.
The story is The Equestria Girls Holiday Special, which is a tie in comic to the human world of the current My Little Pony continuity. In the fandom it tends to be known as "Anon-a-Miss" for . . . reasons that would unnecessarily distract from this right now.*
I've known for a while that this particular subplot of this particular version would be the most likely thing to break through my depression. Here's what I wrote about it on Twitter, for example:
A lot of my hope of breaking through my current inability to write fiction is tied up in a fanfic concept that grew out of a single panel in a (very bad) tie in comic to "My Little Pony: Equestria Girls".First, none of the con artistry / thieving for
The basic idea is that two homeless kids, one of whom passes for rich, team up to improve their situations via the noble practice of conning assholes out of money they didn't need.
(And accidentally create real demand for guitars made by a fictional virtuoso.)
In their distant future, the demand would allow them to transition from being con artists to being legitimate luthiers (stringed instrument makers), but the story as currently envisioned only has them doing crime to pay for the costs of being alive.
Because that's where my brain goes when I ask, "Why would Silver Spoon steal Diamond Tiara's necklace?"
Second, the two are Silver Spoon and Sunset Shimmer. Names tend to be meaningful in both Equestria Girls and Friendship is Magic. As such, you can probably guess that Silver Spoon is the one who passes for rich.
She's also the younger one.
Canon, and especially the fact that it hasn't ended yet, makes exact ages difficult.
~ * ~
If you don't want to go down the rabbit hole of trying to pull coherency out of a fictional multiverse that was long ago handed off to people who haven't watched previous episodes and are unaware that children ask "Why?", there's a simple answer:
Sunset Shimmer is a high school senior; Silver Spoon is middle school, probably the middle year of it. (It's possible she's in the first year, but not likely.) Also, the high school and middle school are conjoined.
If you do want to go down that rabbit hole, then on one end you need to start counting up vacations and finals and returns and seasons (as in times of year) as part of seeing how far back they've pushed Sunset now. Is she a junior, or did they stick in so much more still-in-high-school crap that we've been forced to revise her grade (and with it presumed age) at the time of this story again, pushing it down to sophomore?
On the other end, Silver Spoon is a high school freshman in spite of being visibly younger than the photographs we have showing what freshmen age at the high school in question looks like. Since she's mostly been ignored so far, we've yet to see, say, a still-in-high-school flashback that forced us to bump her up a grade beyond that.
Given their respective positions the last time I actually untangled canon, we're about two additional retcons away from the underclassmen and upperclassmen being in the same grade.
~ * ~
Something about Octavia or stringed instruments was probably going to go here.
Sunset plays guitar. Acoustic and electric both (though we never see her play acoustic.) Given that she's a unicorn from a magical land of talking ponies, it's often speculated that part of the reason she learned guitar was as a sort of self-directed physical therapy regime to help her with the whole fingers thing that human form carries with it.
Octavia is a cellist. Octavia is sort of a fixture of Anon-a-Miss fics for reasons that might best be summed up as "Bwah?", and if I hadn't thought up this scene I'm not sure if I'd have included her in the story.
Silver Spoon doesn't have a canonical musical instrument, and I wasn't planning on giving her one until I had Sunset make a crack about not being able to be first fiddle (to Silver's alleged status of second fiddle) because she doesn't know how to play fiddle.
Silver Spoon responded to the revelation that Sunset can't play fiddle with, basically, "Wanna?" which is why she now plays violin. I've even figured out how it fits into the backstory.
Sunset was part of a band called the Rainbooms, but the Holiday Special that this is spun off on has her successfully (if ineptly) framed for stabbing them in the back.
This particular vision of the story grew out of thinking about what might have happened if, instead of the incredibly rushed ending, Sunset managed to convince some but not all of her friends that she was innocent, Sunset didn't suddenly realize who was framing her at the same time, and the conveniently coinciding confession didn't take place.
Absolutely none of that has anything to do with Silver Spoon.
But it does mean that of the band Sunset has on her side Rainbow Dash (guitar and vocals), Fluttershy (tambourine and back up vocals), and maybe Pinkie Pie (drums) depending exactly how I fit the pieces together into a final timeline. Against her are Applejack (bass guitar), Rarity (keytar), and maybe Pinkie Pie (see end of previous sentence.)
That's only vaguely related to anything, but there's at least one line in the scene that would have to be different if Sunset had a bass player on her side.
I seriously don't know why I made this section (there was a reason) and writing without direction hasn't brought me any closer to figuring it out.
~ * ~
* The plot of the comic is basically:
A character who's always been alone finally feels like she's found a (figurative) family but then a cyberbully pretends to be her while targeting those closest to her, which causes everything to come crashing down around her.The screen name of the cyberbully? Anon-a-Miss.
That's only part of the reason it tends to be called that, though. A fan fic that used "Anon-a-Miss" as its almost single-handedly defined the genre. It's influence was and is massive and for a lot of fanfiction writers and readers, it completely overshadows the original source material.
It defined the genre a little too well and too narrowly, as the author will tell you himself. (Except I'm being absurdly charitable when I write "a little bit [...] too narrowly.")
Almost everyone has their point of divergence from canon at the exact same place, almost everyone includes certain elements that were introduced in that fanfic (even when they don't make sense in the context of the new story) and even when it comes to stories that don't follow it, there's a definite tendency of writing with the implicit assumption that the reader is familiar with it.
(I try, I think successfully, to avoid all of that in my own work.)
But, anyway, they tend to be called "Anon-a-Miss stories" both because it's the name of the account the plot is built around and because Anon-a-Miss, the fanfic, has left an undeniable and inescapable mark on (that part of) the fanfic community.
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