Day 1: Don't Worry, We'll Have You Acting Like A True Man(e)hattanite In No Time... · 12:05am Sep 19th, 2020
"The present in Manehattan is so powerful that the past is lost."
Day One...
So far, so good, if also so slow. Writing has already begun; it's just not particularly spectacular, so my notes for this blog post are going to be a bit sporadic compared with previously.
Character-wise, I'm largely ready enough to start writing. If anything, I'm still trying to get the setting down.
As for that writing:
Thus far, it's only one scene involving Babs Seed and fleshing out what her connection is with Aunt and Uncle Orange.
The original, simple solution was to have the aunt and uncle be her parents: she's already a cousin of Applejack and Apple Bloom, after all. But then it raises the question of why their "sophisticated Manehattanite" attitudes are so wildly different from her stereotypical "Noo York" mannerisms. I just don't think they're responsible for her upbringing.
It wasn't long before I considered the idea that she was an adopted daughter, which would work well with the dark angle (think of the things one could do to her biological parents) and give her something of a parallel to Applejack (who has no parents anymore) and Pinkie Pie (who lives a long way from her nearest relatives by blood).
Also, it'd steer the Oranges away from a more obviously stereotypical portrayal of them as basically misplaced Canterlot souls: they might think "y'all" is quaint and eat portions that are one slice away from being crumbs, but they're still part of the Apple clan.
Problem was that this doesn't sit well with the "Babs is a cousin" angle. True, I could go the "family is family, blood or no blood" angle, but that sort of thing is taking liberties with the show a bit, and I try not to get loosey-goosey over details unless I think it's strongly necessary (it's part of the challenge).
I think for now I'll compromise and have her still be a cousin of the Apples, just by different parents. As for her biological parents, I've a few plans for them. Whittling the selection down...
Also trying to figure out which of the Oranges is the blood relative and which one married into the family. So far, I'm going with Aunt Orange as the sister of Bright Mac, which suggests that Applejack's stay in Manehattan was almost a case of repeating history. That said, Aunt Orange is largely just a random pick.
Actually, given how the Pear family fared in Ponyville, I'm curious now as to how the Oranges fit into all this anyway. The show largely forgot the Oranges existed after Season Three's family reunion, but it'd be interesting to find out how they dealt with the family's (in)famous romance, and whether or not that was a factor in their moving to Manehattan.
Sometimes, the gaps of the show are all to the writer's benefit (it's one perk of working with background ponies: you can pretty much extrapolate and invent to your heart's content). The downside, of course, is the effort and tangle involved in figuring everything out from scratch. 
A bit of trivia I've always loved about the show: Applejack went to Manehattan (the Big Apple) to learn from the Oranges, who are completely different class-wise (hence the phrase "Apples and Oranges"). So far, so obvious.
Yet on top of that, orange is a colour heavily associated with the settlements of the New Netherlands that existed before the real-world Manhattan - and larger New York City - arose. In fact, many placenames in New York City are anglicized leftovers of those pre-American settlements. That's what I love about digging: the layers of history behind everything you might otherwise take for granted.
Hence the Fort Orange I mentioned in the last blog post.
So it's a four-way bit of wordplay between the Apples and the Oranges, the Big Apple and its former Orange settlements. Sometimes, this show is so clever in its playfulness. 
One problem that's immediately looming up is due to me wanting to map real-world Manhattan Island onto Equestria's version. Manhattan is huge - I'll have to really think about and research what places and landmarks would be depicted, because it'd be insane to casually have Applejack and Pinkie saunter from one end to another in short timespans.
Plus, I've sadly never been to New York. Living in the UK on a budget, I can't just hop over even at the best of times. I can research places and cultural trivia all day, but I'm going to have to accept a very vivid handicap when it comes to depicting it. Especially since class rears its head with the Oranges in tow. So far, all I can say for sure is that there are dozens of neighbourhoods, and I don't know much about any of them.
At the moment, I'm ignoring the other boroughs of real-world New York City. The show's only ever used Manehattan, and we can probably invoke artistic license (it doesn't have to be an exact copy), plus it just makes it easier not to get sidetracked.
I'll be working with placeholder names in the meantime, but this is one of those things I'd prefer to depict accurately if I get a chance to. Yeah, pony world and artistic license and all, but it's at least an opportunity for worldbuilding even if I reject bits here and there. It's like the old training advice about knowing the rules in depth, the better that you know when to break them.
Overall...
Looking ahead to the next few days, I think I picked a bad time for this experiment. I won't have as much luxury time as I originally thought. I doubt the actual writing will pick up until early next week (Tuesday is my best guess). Between work and family commitments, a lot of this is going to be at the "idle daydreaming" level of productivity. 
Still, that might be a good opportunity to compact the hazy story plan into a solid shape, and there's always the possibility of extending this experiment for another week.
Well, that's about it for now. Update over. Till tomorrow.
Impossible Numbers, out.
Minor Addendum: That quotation at the top of the blog post isn't my own invention. It's a modification of a pretty eye-catching quote by John Jay Chapman in the preface of Emerson and Other Essays: "The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost." I'm not much of a geographical researcher, but I do love quotations!