Life of a Project - Three of a Kind

So, this one’s coming pretty soon after the story, huh? Yeah, I’ve decided I wanted to try writing these things along with the stories they accompany, that way the actual writing process is still fresh in my mind. I mean, for something like The Hazards of Dreamwalking which came out years ago I can’t really remember much about my process and that kinda means I’ll never do a Life of a Project for it or many other stories. So I figured getting my thoughts down soon would be the best thing I could do for these fics. And with that, onto our story:

Ever since the fandom started portraying Fluttershy, Coco, and Marble as the ‘Council of Shy Ponies’, I’ve been interested in doing a fanfic about them. When I first had the specific idea for this fic, a tea party between friends that morphs into a three-way, I didn’t act on it right away. You see, at the time A Little Too Equal had just come out, which was an already fairly cloppy story with Fluttershy in it. I didn’t want to have that twice in a row, it felt too much like I was repeating myself. So I shelved the idea for a while, condemning it to a potentially endless fate in The Pigeon Hole (my oh-so-cleverly named purgatory for incomplete fics and backburner ideas).

After my long bout of writer’s block in 2017, I started out 2018 by writing a bunch. Just jotting down the ideas that came to me, getting a few paragraphs, a few hundred words, and occasionally even a few thousand words into some fic ideas, but never really finishing any of them. Three of a Kind (or, The Council of Shy as I originally called it) got its first incomplete draft here, but not quite in the form you know it by.

My idea for this first draft was to tell a much longer, slow burning clopfic, starting out with the formation of their little gang, their discovery of each other’s diaper hobby, and then the fact that they wanted to do 18+ things to each other. And I got a good 1k words into a fic where Rarity introduces Fluttershy to Coco and they start drinking tea before growing a bit weary.

You see, the plan was for Fluttershy and Coco to start having tea regularly, eventually have Coco discover her diapers, have them have a few tea parties just wearing diapers, then have Pinkie introduce them to Marble, have a tea party where Fluttershy and Coco aren’t wearing diapers so they don’t freakout Marble, then they get caught by her at the next tea party with diapers, reveal that she likes them too, then they have the fateful tea party from the actual fanfic that you’ve read.

...yeah. That’s a lot of buildup, and it would make the “payoff” pretty minimal by comparison, right? And the thought of doing all that just for one sex scene (or even just the first sex scene should I choose to continue the fic after it) made me so utterly against the idea of the fic all of a sudden, so I benched it again to write other stuff, mostly StRA which needed finishing.

After a while of going back and forth on Three of a Kind, I decided it would be best served to just be a one-shot. The only problem? I still insisted on having the diapers be introduced later. Even though I decided to skip a bunch of buildup and just have the three of them already hanging out and sipping tea for a while, I still wanted to have them discover they all like diaper stuff and then all the cloppy stuff later in the same one-shot. It was just too much too fast. To go from suddenly discovering they all like wearing diapers to a three-way in one chapter was… let’s say it strained my own suspension of disbelief (which I admit is pretty flexible, especially for porn).

So, even though I’d erased the old draft and dumped a few paragraphs into the new one, I still wasn’t satisfied. I continued hacking away at other projects, resigning Three of a Kind to the Hole once again. Usually around this point, if a fic has bounced in and out and back into the Pigeon Hole, I pretty much just give up on finding an angle for it and delete it. This has probably happened to more fics than the number I’ve actually published, though I don’t know the exact amount to say for sure.

And that fate was looking pretty likely for Three of a Kind. I didn’t want to make a long fic out of it, I didn’t like overstuffing the one-shot, so it was probably dead in the water, right?

Except I really liked the idea. I wanted to write a Fluttershy/Coco/Marble fic badly at this point. So finally, I made a decision to hack away even more build up. Now, the fic was shaping up to be what you’ve already read: the trio already have been having tea parties together, and they already wear diapers during them. All that needed to happen now was they admit their more amorous afflictions and do the deed, which I was able to write out in just a few sessions.

It’s much more streamlined than the original concept, but that’s really what this one needed to be, in the end. And I think it works, even if I do believe it goes from 0 to 100 a bit too fast for a group of shy ponies. But at the same time, it really doesn’t need any more build up than what’s already there. You can get the idea early on when you read and you’re basically just waiting for the clop to happen, so I don’t see a point to dragging it out. That basically covers this one, a fun idea that had a lot of fat to trim before it was ready for release.

Oh, but you may be wondering about Vapor Trail.

For those who don’t know, Vapor Trail is occasionally thrown in with the Council of Shy Ponies in discussions and artwork, but obviously I left her out of my fic. Why?

Well, she was originally going to be in it. The long fic, at least. Probably sometime after the first threeway, I would’ve had RD introduce her to the other shy ponies and have her get it on with diapers too. But once the one-shot idea was cemented, I cut her.

In my opinion, it would’ve been more trouble than she was worth to introduce her at the party and partake in everything with the other girls. All she’d end up being was another pony to have around during the sex scene. Vapor Trail being in or out of the story didn’t make much difference, aside from saving probably 1 or 2 thousand words which I was happy to do.

To anyone who wanted to see her in it, well… good-ish news, then! Should I ever want a sequel of this story, she would be the excuse for it. Throwing in a new pony into the tea parties would be a great way to shake things up for another clopfic, because now her presence actually changes things, unlike before, and she can have a dynamic with the trio. With the groundwork laid, it could be a strong continuation if I’m clever enough while writing it. However, this is assuming I’d ever get around to it, and that’s a big “who knows” type of deal. Certainly something to consider, but I hope it doesn’t die in the Pigeon Hole.

Anyways, that was the story of Three of a Kind. Hope you all enjoyed it, and feel free to ask me any more questions if you want to know more.