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Author's Commentary – Prench Tale Part 1 (spoilers)

Chp.0 | Section 1

• ‌This was my third novel-grade production, and the first one written in English. No wonder these first chapters can get pretty rough around the edges, I'm always tempted to just go and edit it all into something a bit closer to my current standards.

• ‌Writing in 1st person wasn't something I had much experience with before this story, and not much more with present tense either; I've improved quite a bit since then, but here there's still a lot of characters just describing what they're doing or thinking instead of just... *doing* and *thinking*. This story was focusing on how each character was perceiving their own change, so being privy to their inner thoughts, and how they were being altered, felt like the better option. I suppose it does mesh with other Five Score stories, too.

• ‌"*Focus*, dammit..." – This was a real gamble in my eyes. I knew I'd probably lose a number of readers with lines like this one, but that way those who stayed knew what they were getting into.

• ‌Each of the three characters has its own little language idiosyncrasies, like saying 'toward' instead of 'towards', 'I suppose' instead of 'I guess', en-dash instead of semicolon, and so on. In this little introductory flash-forward, I tried to stay relatively vague on these so that it wouldn't be immediately obvious which of them was speaking.

• ‌I know it's pretty stupid, but my focus on avoiding repeating words extends to avoiding beginning subsequent paragraphs with the same letter. I've tried to be a little more lax with this rule since then.

• ‌All of Part 1 was planned, scene by scene, before I started writing. Therefore it wasn't too problematic to include in the Prologue this scene from a later chapter, but I was still a bit nervous if it would really feel natural once back in its 'native environment'.

• ‌A great, great many more ellipses yet to come...

• ‌The goal of putting this scene here was simple: reassuring readers that yes there *would* be ponies, even if the next few thousands words would be pretty human-centric; and that even though the following chapters would be very character-focused and kinda slow, there *would* be action and danger and excitement to come.

• ‌"*sigh*" – Another gamble here, with these 'stage direction'-like inclusions. Not making as much use of them as I could.

Chp.0 | Section 2, Ambre

• ‌Ah Ambre. Silly, silly Ambre. Wasn't sure how well that'd work for readers, but I liked giving a clear personality to her prose.

• ‌Trans Ambre: I was purposefully indirect in how I revealed Ambre's transness here. My hope was that readers that wouldn't catch the significance of her 'treatment' would get to know her a little bit more before the fact is laid out plainly later on.

• ‌Here we can see how much I was breaking with the conventions of present tense 1st person, having Ambre detailing her backstory in such an unnatural way. Sadly this wouldn't really improve until later in the fic... At least I was somewhat aware of the issue, hence the ‘I’m thinking to myself about how I’m thinking to myself’ bit as a way to give some kind of explanation for it.

Ch.0 | Section 3, Sarah

• ‌Fun fact: Sarah was initially called Soraya, her name changing shortly before publication (her pony name and design changed a bit too).

Ch.0 | Section 4, Laurence

• ‌Of the three characters, by far the easiest one to write for – the grumpiness helps, a lot.

• ‌Generally speaking, it's pretty wild to read this first chapter, to reacquaint myself with these initial versions of the characters, so different from what they've all become now!

Ch.1 | Section 1, Ambre

• ‌I'm currently working on an updated version of this cover art, which will become the cover for the whole of Volume 1. This first Part will have a brand-new cover instead. The cutie mark point-of-view markers will also receive an update.

• ‌I must admit that the info-dumping, though far from elegant or pleasing to my current ways of writing *Prench Tale*, has the advantage of getting the reader up to speed on the characters' state of mind early in the narrative. A necessity, considering I wanted a strong base for the human characters before the change would start – it's all a question of contrasts, so you need to have a clear idea of who these people are.

• ‌It's been noted, and I can't avoid seeing it now: there's a *lot* of French loanwords all over the place. It's possible I may have pushed for it because of the 'haha, French' aspect, but it could be just as well that I was just limited in my vocabulary (despite extensive use of a thesaurus). In this specific case, Ambre is supposed to have a more upper-class speech compared to the others, sure, but that's still stretching it a little.

• ‌The whole 'limits of transhumanism' discussion is of course a nod to the main themes of the story... And may event hint at some future developments.

• ‌Gosh that prose can be so clunky and lame and overcomplicated at times, past-me would really benefit from a good editing pass from now-me...

• ‌“It doesn't even look like a tattoo... The lines are too regular, the colors too uniform... Actually that's...” – Here, as you may've guessed, Sébastien was about to suggest it looked like a cutie mark, but he stopped himself. He's more of a closet brony at that point.

• ‌Ambre behaves pretty maturely, and seems to have a good head on her shoulders, don't you think?

• ‌There may be a pattern to Ambre deciding to stay behind to help Sarah out, and Sarah feeling despondent and unsure what to do in a difficult situation... As well as Laurence just checking out.

Ch.1 | Section 2, Laurence

• ‌"Stupid Sarah and her stupid drinks and stupid Séb and stupid Amber for making me talk so much I had to drink and stupid me for..." – A proof if there ever was one that I use 'stupid' as an insult far too often in my writing.

Ch.1 | Section 3, Ambre

• ‌"Hers are clearly less abstruse" – Seriously, who use words like 'abstruse'..? That thesaurus was a mistake! More seriously, this is a consequence of me having a very long-and-complex-and-unusual-words-skewed vocabulary in French, and simply checking translations when I want a specific word. Nowadays I try to write a bit more ‘naturally” ‘cause it’s just more believable, instead of how *I* would say it.

• ‌All this prose feels so *heavy* with unnecessary words and complicated sentences... I remember why: always afraid that I wouldn't be able to convey precisely what I wanted to convey, that the reader wouldn't get a perfectly clear picture of what I was seeing, so no choice but being extremely precise. And it makes for poor prose. I've got more trust in my readers' deductive abilities now, fortunately; it also makes for more dynamic, ‘punchy’ prose.

• Beetroot. Yeah I know it’s usually just ‘beet’ in US-English, but just saying ‘beet’ feels... lacking. Maybe I should just use ‘beets’, plural, that could work.

• “Does yours mean anything to you, Ambre? I don't know, likes or dislikes, past history, special talent..?” – More signs that Sébastien is suspecting cutie marks, even if he’s not ready to admit it.

Ch.1 | Section 4, Laurence

• “Pff... Smoke smells even worse than usual.” – Just like Ambre feeling antsy about being left alone during the previous scene, this is another sign that their brains have started to transition towards their pony selves’ – Laurence’s pony brain isn’t used to cigarette, and so the positive association between smoke and nicotine high has been lessened.

• “fioriture” – This right here is a word I commonly use in day-to-day life, in French, but that isn’t really seen as ‘common’ for most people. It feels even more bizarre in English, seriously what was I thinking? I mean, it conveys *precisely* what I wanted to convey, but it’s far from reader-friendly.

• “even if for some reason I feel slightly off-balance” – Same as earlier; her handedness is changing, which conflicts with her usual stances.

• ‘Professeur’ and ‘tireur’ are official terms for teachers and practitioners of French-style boxing.

• “But I know I've found my equilibrium, and it would be unwise to upend it.” – Portend of things to come...

• This whole boxing scene may not advance the plot much, if at all, but it’s important for laying some more groundwork for Laurence’s character. We’ve seen her grumpy in the Prologue, then asocial/introverted plus emotionally vulnerable earlier in this chapter, now we see some of her strength.

Ch.1 | Section 5, Sarah

• I’d been tempted to add an earlier scene, either during the Prologue or in this chapter, with Laurence catching a glimpse of some kind of altercation, but not intervening despite her justice sense tingling because of anxiety and such – to contrast it with this here scene of Sarah being ‘saved’ by Laurence. It didn’t really have a natural place though, and I felt her character was going to be controversial enough as it was.

• ““Your eyes are not supposed to be magenta.”, Laurence states bluntly.” – Laurence is my vehicle to convey the *precise* colors of things, she likes to be precise (and helpful) like that. Ambre could’ve identified the color too, if it’s ‘common’ enough, but for Sarah it’d only be ‘light purple’ or something like this.

• It’s funny how even for the Sarah scenes I end up talking more about the other characters than herself. Not too surprising, as she’s the character I’ve got the less affinity with, and the hardest to write for.

Ch.2 | Section 1, Ambre

• “my night was plagued by vague nightmares, full of a sense of danger, or helplessness...” – I’ve stayed purposefully vague on the content of these nightmares at first (see also previous chapter, mention of having had a rough night for the same reason). This is in part because the dream of one character will be plot-relevant, and will thus need to be directly shown, so I didn’t want to get too repetitive. Also, I often start scenes with characters waking up, which is kind of fitting for 1st person narration I guess.

• I’m honestly tempted now to depict Ambre’s troubles with a constantly growing super-mane while in the middle of serving customers their meal. Maybe that could make a fun mini-comic...

• “Kilo” – Not so sure it was a good idea, but to add a little more Frenchie flavor to the whole thing I often use the metric system, and local currency. It can be seen as a sign that what we’re reading is originally in French, but then why would the units not be translated along with the rest? Maybe it’s also kind of revenge for being always confronted to inches and miles and pounds and so on when I just wanna read fanfic. ;P

• “It also happened last evening. (recounting follows)” – Again with the direct, inellegant exposition dumb. We could maybe imagine it more as Ambre *picturing* the memories, rather than verbalizing them as written, I guess. Getting more creative in how I’d convey ‘known exposition’ may be one of the factors that contributed to increasing wordcounts.

• “I remove my glasses, looking over the object that helped me see the world as it should be seen, something that could, in a sense, be considered a part of me just as much as my natural kinky hair... I will have to relinquish them to their case, for now...” – Not so subtle parallel here between the glasses and Ambre’s whole human existence, of course.

• “*Ambre, you alright? You had us worried here!*” – Putting ‘non-standard’ speech in italics isn’t fully satisfying as a solution, but it’s better than nothing. As it is, italics have been, or will be, used to mark dialogue heard through a phone’s speakers (like here), or said in another language, especially English.

• “*We got weird eyes and hair yesterday, and freaky ears and tail during the night.*” – It was fun to scour the original story for exact times when the Mane6 had their changes occur, and take into account time zones to determine a general timeframe for our French characters’ transformation. Moreover, I considered that mainland Equestria shared the same time zone as Dubuque; I based this on the facts that Rainbow is cursed late at night, and that Dave’s birthday is similarly late at night – suggesting very similar timeframes. Consequence: the Prench crew can be awake and aware of some of the changes that occurred while the Mane6 were asleep, and vice-versa.

Ch.2 | Section 2, Sarah

• Another gamble: none of the main characters are knowledgeable in pony matters. This is in part to contrast with the original story, but also to represent how FiM just wasn’t as much of a thing in France. This is also the first element of one of the big thematic through-lines of the whole fic, which could be boiled down to ‘Know Thyself’ – they have everything to learn, about themselves, about their place in the world, and have to contend with what the world tells them, or doesn’t tell them, they are or how they should act/be.

• Sarah clearly hadn’t fully found her voice yet back then; nowadays she would be using much more ‘down to earth’ vocabulary and expressions, and I would know how to better avoid using uncommon words just to avoid repetitions.

• I actually don’t remember if the ‘being easily transfixed by the show on first exposure’ was something I’d found somewhere or if I came up with it... The idea behind it wouldn’t be that the visuals by themselves would hold some kind of mind power or anything, but instead that being exposed to a bunch of little authentic details in short succession – names, concepts, events, some aspects of look/animation of places and creatures – would evoke some inscrutable feeling akin to nostalgia or yearning or simple subconscious recognition, *especially* once the ‘memory gates’ have been reopened following the cutie marks reappearing. This could be used to explain why many of the Five Score protagonists are fans of MLP – they went through a similar, maybe less powerful variant of this effect, that got them into following the show and/or fan productions, or helped them keep on being fans after the show’s end. Of course, this is a mostly ‘first exposure’ thing, the effect lessens more and more with exposure as the brain can relies on fresher, more easily-explainable memories of pony stuff, and Equestrians-in-human-form don’t necessarily have the same ‘threshold’ for the effect to kick-in in the first place, depending on the nature of the stimuli and how much they correlate with what little buried memories manage to percolate closer to the surface. Here specifically, Ambre and Laurence got drawn in early by aspects of Canterlot and Royal Guards, while for Sarah it happened a little later once we got to the more agrarian Ponyville.

• “I ball my fists, ready to jump to my feet” – Sarah feels a bit aggressive, huh? She may be playing up the nonchalance most of the time, trying to avoid thinking too deeply about the situation, but clearly the uncertainty and upended normalcy still affect her. Maybe there’s also some new hormones starting to brew inside... Well, that’s one way to see it; if I were to edit all this again, I’d tone it down, make it more natural and understandable; I don’t like the implication that she’s somehow more aggressive or violent than the others, *especially* as it’s a frequent stereotype, when it’s mostly supposed to be impulsiveness.

• “neither of our symbols are present in the show itself” – Gambling once again, with the main characters being OCs and thus inherently less relatable/engaging from the get-go, as they don’t come with a preexisting rapport to the reader. Multiple reasons for this: first off, I enjoyed the high degree of freedom this afforded me in crafting the looks and background of the pony characters; second, it played again with the ‘Know Thyself’ theme, this time with both characters *and* readers – they don’t know who they’re turning into, and we don’t know what to expect, adding another kind of mystery dynamic to the plot; and third, even if, as one reviewer put it, most of the cool ponies were already taken, I just wouldn’t have felt comfortable making heavy use of a canon character, with all the expectations that’d come with them. Hence, OCs. Though as we’ll see later on, I did find ways to go around some of these issues...

Ch.3 | Section 1, Ambre

• First of the ‘Content Warning’ mentions. I was unsure if it were really needed, if maybe it spoiled a bit too much what was gonna happen, but I didn’t want to take any chances – we’re depicting pretty heavy stuff, with just a Teen rating. Plus, the vague warning can also help build up suspense.

• Interesting how brash and impulsive Sarah suddenly becomes all ‘huh, neat’ seeing this gruesome physical change happening on her in real time, no? This kind of response to overwhelming events/situations will have its consequences...

• The switch from Sarah’s to Ambre’s perspective here is very purposeful; like mentioned just above, the way Sarah reacts to this type of event would make for a very ‘succinct’ description, if any description at all, while Ambre stays a lot more lucid and can thus tell us what’s happening with some details. In fact, for this same reason we won’t have much of Sarah’s internal perspective on her transformation at all – denial’s setting in thick. As for Laurence’s perspective, well...

• “She stutters incoherently, eyes wide, staring in turn at Sarah's hooves, my own hooves-to-be, and her slippers-clad feet” – Laurence noticed what was implied earlier – there’s a specific sequence to how the changes play out, first Sarah, then Ambre, and Laurence last – and seeing her fate galloping towards her, she panics. Better to *choose* to harm herself and rob the change of a target, than to see herself be harmed without any way to stop it, in her eyes. We’ll come back often to this issue of control with her.

• Sarah’s denial, Laurence’s control, what of Ambre then? Well she has both enough introspection, like Laurence, and enough flexibility, like Sarah, to navigate this situation without falling down into one extreme or another. It’s also why she’s our main viewpoint character, wordcount- and scenes-wise: aware enough to describe what’s happening, functional enough to not break down from it.

• “Sarah looks dazed, and unsure, leaning against a wall, fiddling idly with her pants' waistband.”/“(...), concurs Sarah as she keeps twiddling with her pants” – For those familiar with the sequence of Five Score changes, you may have a guess what could make her feel slightly uncomfortable in her pants right now... The implication gets even more overt a bit later on.

• “Poor guy looks drained, and I doubt it's only because of his injury” – Sébastien is awesome, but he's only human; felt important to still acknowledge that for all the strength of his friendship, he's still affected by what's happening. Ambre can see it too, and thus tries to give him some respite.

• “I force the shoe to accept my changed foot with a brief ripping sound and fasten the laces; it'll do!” – A metaphor for how Ambre's trying to deal with things; trying to make things work, even if it's not easy and can't ever 'fit in' again.

• Laurence opening up about her feelings over her self-harm attempt, how she must be stronger, not yield so easily, the stress of the situation being no excuse, being put against herself... It goes beyond a need for control, even though she hasn't learned the reason herself yet.

• “a mad scientist and/or an exorcist” – I seriously spent a long time deciding if I'd dare use that slash or not.

• For the scene of Ambre going to the bathroom, I tried to stay pretty vague, focus on her emotive response rather than on the physicality of it all, but it's still one of the two likely reasons I was asked to add the 'Sex' tag to this story before publishing.

Ch.3 | Section 2, Laurence

• “The only upside of this insidious transformation is that it has sped up quite substantially the healing process” – Don’t remember if it’s something I came up with or not either. My rationale was that, basically, the curse reverting is coded to recreate the pony’s body in *exact* detail (which is the only way I can explain that it would give back ponies their exact same manestyle, age, and so on), and so as long as it’s still running its course, limited damage to a zone that is still in the process of being changed can be ‘healed’ as the transformation progresses. Not ‘healing’ *per se* then, and more the curse seeing the wound as more stuff to replace as to recreate the pony’s body. All this to say, that it gave me a convenient excuse so that Laurence’s injury wouldn’t matter much health-wise.

• “at a rate of a little less than two centimeters every half-hour” – Yup, I did the math; it’s not a random number.

• “Séb's warm voice pulls me back to the here and now” – In a lot of TF stories, including some Five Score ones, humans are to be avoided, or they’re antagonists. Human friends and family are often barely relevant, if at all mentioned. Here I really wanted to see what would happen if we kept a human friend of the protagonists right in the thick of it. I’m sure Laurence’s grateful at any rate.

• Speaking of, I’ve heard from some reviews that Laurence’s despondence, constant grumbling and general passiveness in these chapters could get old pretty fast. Honestly I can see it; she’s passive and self-focused in chapters that are already action-free and focused on the characters’ inner conflicts, with a big dose of domestic trivialities. However, her behavior wouldn’t change much, if at all, if I were to go on my editing spree, first because of character growth reasons (we need to see her at her lowest), and second because these scenes of her struggle were the primordial seed from which this whole story grew, it all started with this vision of a Five Score transformee rejecting their fate. Maybe I just wasn’t a good enough writer back then to properly frame and convey my ideas. Maybe, like some of my characters, I should learn how to let go of the stuff that just doesn’t work.

• “I didn't even recall bringing down my copy of *Old Man's War*” – For those unfamiliar with this great space military SF series by John Scalzi, it deals with, among other things, questions of an individual’s identity in a setting where it’s possible to switch bodies, a kind of technological reincarnation with imperfect or latent memories, and what makes one human. For example, in the first book the main character, the titular ‘old man’ finding himself into a new, youthful body, is confronted by a clone of his deceased wife, devoid of any of her memories.

• I tried to not get too preachy with Ambre’s trans monologue, or have it take too much space – hence being heard from Laurence’s critical perspective. It’s only really relevant in the context of Ambre and Laurence bonding over shared pain, of deepening our understanding of Ambre’s character and where she’s coming from, and of laying down some more thematic parallels and distinctions between trans and TF dynamics, especially in the Five Score context, which was the initial seed of Ambre’s character.

• This other book series mentioned by Ambre exists too, it's the *Tamír Triad* by Lynn Flewelling (which was split into six books instead and given a new title for the French edition, from what I've seen). It deals with prophecies, dark magic, ghosts, a usurper to the throne, and like she said, with a protagonist unknowingly living in a masculine body not her own, until her growth and the demands of the plot have her assume her feminine identity and her true destiny. Sounded fitting for helping crack the egg of a young trans person, among other things.

Ch.3 | Section 3, Sarah

• I actually mapped episode runtimes on Sarah’s day activities to see how much of the show she could consume during this time, and it was a nice coincidence that this scene could occur as she was watching ‘*Sweet and Elite*’. Beyond the little tidbit of opinion on Canterlot elites, it was a fun opportunity to have this *very* subtle cameo of Jet Set and Upper Crust, considering their both have not-so-distant relationships with some of the original characters in this story’s continuity. On the other hoof, we missed Sarah’s live reaction to the two-part premiere of season 2...

• “It's not because I've suddenly grown a pecker that I can't control myself!” – The *other* thing I suppose could’ve led to a mandatory ‘Sex’ tag. And beyond that, poor Sarah clearly needs a bit more time to get used to her new hormonal cocktail.

• Right at the end we finally get a glimpse of Sarah’s true emotional state, now that she can’t focus on something else, like binge-watching the show.

Ch.4 | Section 1, Ambre

• “Gosh Sarah snores like a train engine” – Sleeping while your nasal cavity is still being actively remodeled will do that to you, especially with the schnozzle she’s going to end up with.

• Pony height: I did some research to determine the general height of ponies in the Five Score universe, and fortunately it wasn’t too hard to figure out – a good rule of thumb is that a medium-sized pony’s eye level is aligned with or slightly lower than the waistline of a medium-sized human, which makes a fully-rearing pony about as tall as a human. This is shorter than my personal headcanon, but it fits well for more easily describing proportion changes from TF, and for most ponies to still be able to wear some human clothes. In Ambre’s specific case, her “my new eye level reaches much higher than my [human] groin” comes from the fact she started pretty tall at 5′11″, while her pony form is ‘only’ 3′5″ at from the base of her hooves to the top of her head.

• Pony proportions: I was still fiddling a bit with those when I wrote this part, but the generalities are still the same. I go for pretty horse-like ponies, in that their anatomy is as biologically believable as I could make it while maintaining that pony ‘feel’ we know and love.

• “Pff, and I thought waiting for the Dejean's coffeemaker was tedious!? – ”The whole coffee-making scene drags on a little, but purposefully so – this is meant as calling back to the Prologue and Ambre fixing herself some coffee. Back then it only took a couple minutes, but now that she’s a pony, it requires a lot more time and efforts; she’ll need to get used to her new situation, and find how she can go back to being fully functional, if it’s at all possible.

• “slowly stirring the dark liquid with my reddish spoon” – A very subtle hint that for all they’ll still have to learn and re-learn, our ponies still have some instincts to help – foreshadowing the end of this chapter. Because you see, Laurence doesn’t have colored spoons. But you know what’s red..?

• Ambre really starting to mull over her situation; it’s precisely why I wanted a trans character to go through a Five Score transformation, though she doesn’t have all the pieces of the puzzle yet...

Ch.4 | Section 2, Sarah

• Tried something here with the dream narration, being past tense instead of present tense like the usual narration. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a bit jarring, but I feel it’s thematically appropriate. And we’re finally getting a glimpse at the bad dreams and nightmares our characters have been mentioning for a couple chapters now.

• “Well, as they say, *quand faut y aller, faut y aller!*” – I really don’t get why I thought putting a French phrase here was a good idea. It’s not like ‘when you gotta go, you gotta go!’ was on vacation and not available. Definitely something I’d edit out, it clashes with the implicit convention that non-italicized English counts as French.

• Pony scents: a little bit of headcanon, probably not that original, with each pony having a personal scent, but beyond this simple fact, other ponies perceive this scent through some form of maybe-physiological, maybe-magical synesthesia. Here, Sarah likens Ambre’s scent to firecrackers, though like she says, more to the *idea* of firecrackers than any specific scent. And the thing is, another pony would probably describe Ambre’s scent differently, because it evokes slightly different things to them.

• “from my lower position I catch sight of my poor snapped bracelet on the floor... Forgot to take it off in the end, it must've broke during the night.” – Another case of using items and such as metaphors for the character’s circumstances, past, present and/or future. Right then, the message is that staying in denial for too long (here ‘forgetting’ the situation, when one knew the potential consequences) leads to one’s human existence (represented here by this fruit of one’s hobby, and a gift to oneself to celebrate a personal milestone) being damaged.

• In a previous chapter I mentioned how different the main trio felt so early in the story, but now with this first scene of them together, all ponied up, their group dynamic is really taking shape.

• “Is it really *that* important if I feel good right now?” – It was very purposeful to have Sarah declaring that she didn’t really care about her potential gender issues. Is it denial? Is it plain truth? Who knows, in her eyes it’s not important right now so *we* won’t know for sure. The goal was to include this perspective that I’m usually pretty frustrated with in TG stories, that despite the characters changing in major ways they don’t seem to question their situation or think too much about the implications for their personal identity – just going with the flow. I suspect that it’s mainly a question of ‘don’t overcomplicate things when we could get to the good stuff quicker’, but when it’s almost *always* how it goes, yeah it gets frustrating. Thus Sarah, representing some of these aspects so that I can discuss them.

Ch.4 | Section 3, Laurence

• “Sainfoin is at my side, ever faithful, enduring my clumsy attempts at petting him with my deformed right hand” – One of the boons of first person narration is that we can play with how each character sees the world; for Laurence, she perceives her body more as ‘what it should be’ than ‘what it currently is’, hence using ‘hands’ and other human-specific vocabulary to describe her body. It may be a bit confusing for the reader at times, but it is the intended effect – highlighting the profound disconnect between Laurence’s mind and body.

• This idea that for most ponies the change isn’t that much of a big deal is meant to explain why we don’t have many characters like Laurence in Five Score (she’s not the only one though; thinking notably to this soon-to-be-pony who chose suicide rather than complete the transformation, briefly described somewhere in the Dust-verse). Basically, the fact that the brain changes along with the body ensures that some subconscious aspects come back, including the general feeling of ‘yes this is my body, nothing unusual’.

• “That's the pragmatic thing to do” – One of Laurence’s catchphrases. The meaning she puts behind ‘pragmatic’ may not be the exact same as the dictionary definition though...

• One of the goals of this ‘let’s go make lunch’ scene was actually to have a good excuse for literally putting our three characters side-to-side to compare them. I wanted to play around a bit with body types with my characters, considering it’s something that’s often forgotten about in both the show and fan works.

• “an apple that she... somehow... holds with a hoof.” – Precisely because Sarah's not asking herself questions, she can manage better at using her hooves, letting subconscious muscle memory do the job.

• “Just try not to change it into a carriage, or make it explode.” – *wink wink*

Ch.5 | Section 1, Laurence

• “Oh just coming out of an episode with a character I really don't like, no big deal.” – As may be guessed, said episode was ‘Keep Calm and Flutter On’.

• Our ponies spend lots of time in the kitchen, but it’s to better track their progress in managing to reclaim being functional after the change, through this pretty relatable activity. Besides, it allows me to give a little more weight to my little headcanon for how ponies built a civilization on par with humans, despite lacking hands: what one human with a pair of hands can do, two or more earth ponies may need to work together to accomplish; hence a greater emphasis on community and friendship.

• The meat thing: I’ve always been curious about this idea that ponies would be strict vegetarians, to the point of getting sick from meat, that can be found in the fandom. It’s not *directly* suggested by canon, and it doesn’t make much sense from a physiological point of view... so I wanted to play a bit with it! I consider here it’s a deeply-ingrained cultural taboo, born from the centuries of ponies working closely with very smart animals but within a highly-curated ecosystem rather than someplace truly ‘wild’ like the Everfree. But more than that, we know that at least bovines are quite sentient in Equestria, so eating beef in particular would feel revolting from a purely ethical point of view (I do have a whole headcanon on the administrative and legislative aspects of ‘smart’ and ‘sentient’ animals in Equestrian society, but that’s neither here nor there). As Laurence proves, ponies are still perfectly able to eat meat products.

• “Is this body making me dumber or what!?” – One of the first real signs of Laurence being more of a scatterbrain after the change. More generally, while still neurodivergent, she’s now so in slightly different ways that she’s only beginning to notice.

• “shut up, it's magic” – The French (‘ta gueule, c'est magique’, or TGCM) equivalent of ‘a wizard did it’.

Ch.5 | Section 2, Sarah

• ““Well then Fido,” Sébastien quips as he unties me, “knock yourself out!”” – ... I can *not* believe I didn't have a ‘hey, wasn't talking literally!’ after that... I *may* have decided to highlight more Sébastien’s concern than his wits? Still, such a missed opportunity.

• “At the end of the fifth and last season of MLP... Discord takes over Equestria.” – This was written before the updated version of Five Score changed this to instead have the taking-over at the end of season 9, of course. At first I was thinking about updating in kind, but then, the change to the original didn't add much to the universe beyond some small contradictions, and went against pretty much all the universe that had been built around its original version. So I decided to keep to the 5-season thing. Two interesting consequences: I can now play with canon characters that the readers know about but the characters don't. And I like the potential surprise and foreboding feeling this could give readers who know the show isn't *supposed* to end so early.

Ch.5 | Section 3, Ambre

• Getting precise with how magic works can easily backfire. There's lots of non-compatible headcanons on the subject. But considering where this fic will go, it was necessary to give details.

• “it feels wrong to leave to their own devices somepony who's hurting” – As the pony names get more common, we're also seeing somepony/everypony crop up – but only in thoughts, to reflect that there's no equivalent of the words in the French dub of FiM (‘everypony’ is usually replaced by ‘my little ponies’), and so they don't have a French word to use while speaking either.

Ch.5 | Section 4, Chad

• “Brian is in the kitchen” – Apparently this is, like, a stock phrase widely used during English classes in French schools, or at least it definitely has reached meme status as such, and is often used to comment on how French people are pretty bad at English in general (because it’s the only sentence they know and understand, you see).

• And here we get the main reason for this chapter being titled ‘Fractious Impulses’ – beyond the tensions between the three that threaten to pull them apart, it's Chad's impulsiveness that manages to fracture the group and get them all in trouble. Other reason for the title: being the fifth chapter, and published on April 2nd, which is Five Score Day, hence starting with an ‘F’ for ‘Five (Score)’.

Ch.6 | Section 1, Ambre

• “a freaking magical laser beam” – Thought it was interesting that many unicorns could obtain pretty advanced spells that way, just like Shining did in the original story, and that it could be used as a way to evaluate the reality of the dreams.

• “Compared to my first day here, getting myself a glass is laughably easy – thanks magic!” – Those cheating unicorns! More seriously, it’s on this note that we end the succession of ‘kitchen moments’ for our characters, from their initial routine as humans to the trouble they had to adapt as ponies, and now the new normal, just as functional, only not in the same ways.

• “Darn it, he *did*!!” – Through Volume 1 I tried to never italicize the punctuation following italicized words, but it doesn’t look especially pleasing visually; I’ve decided to change that come Volume 2.

• “Laurence stomps a forehoof, cutting us off” – And here we are, the pivotal moment when Laurence shakes off the passivity; she’s got something to focus on, and she shall not dither.

• “Oh, and the password is Je_Veux_Être_Ton_Oisillon.” – A pretty obscure reference, even more so translated in French, but I know some got it.

Ch.6 | Section 2, Chad

• And here we’re really beginning to see how we end up with chapter with high wordcounts and number of sections: switching character perspectives often for advancing the overall plot.

Ch.6 | Section 3, Laurence

• When I was working on Part 1’s structure, at first this Charles dude was just a random jerk for Laurence to ‘save’ Sarah from, but then his role extended quite a bit once I realized that he’d also fit naturally in this position in the plot.

Ch.6 | Section 4, Chad

• And so we have our first song, yet another gamble! Gosh that was an ordeal... ‘Cause you see, I’m just plain bad at rhyming and I never had to write lyrics before. And I was rushing through this mammoth of a chapter to get it published on time. Not perfectly happy with it, and it’s a bit on the short side, but it does the job. Initially I was supposed to have a lot more time to work on it thanks to my buffer of two to three chapters, but after I’d been forced to publish everything I had, I only had the one week to get everything ready – or as much as I could, at any rate. I’d dreamed of actually producing the music (which is partly written), but alas.

• Oh, and we meet Crispy! Probably not as much of a surprise as she could’ve been, her existence having been introduced in Chad’s dreams. Still, another meaning for the fourth chapter’s title, ‘Four on the Floor’, beyond ‘four hooves on the floor’: four *ponies* on the floor.

• Sweetchard – or Chard. Like with Sarah/Soraya, the original name was ‘Bilberry’ (and his mane was blue instead of green).

Ch.6 | Section 5, Ambre

• Our ponies spying on the Brigade meeting was a slightly clumsy way to have the antagonists’ motivations made a bit more clear to both characters and reader, something that’s sometimes a bit problematic when you keep to first person narration and don’t have the time for long, complex detective work for the information to come up more naturally. Rushing things also makes them sound maybe a bit cartoonishly evil, but they’re not the worst offenders in this chapter...

• “Now, you all probably heard about what happened in Grenoble on Monday...” – These events are relevant for at least one other pony character in the story, though they probably won’t be discussed much in the future (though now that I think about it, I see how I could organically bring some light on these events...).

Ch.6 | Section 6, Sweetchard

• Ah, old man Laterrade and his religious spiel... So cheesy, and not much time to make his ‘arguments’ breathe a little more. It would’ve been interesting to have earlier Crispy scenes, to see how he descended from a strict but well-meaning father figure to a broken shell of a man, holding on desperately to whatever absolute truth he thought he could fall back on, with his only son lost to such devilry...

• Crispy putting herself between Chard and her father is also significant, though we won’t know why quite yet.

Ch.6 | Section 7, Ambre

• Eeyup, that’s a car chase scene alright. Slow beginnings, but we’re rushing towards the conclusion with a good serving of action. I’ve tried to improve on that point later on.

Ch.6 | Section 8, Sweetchard

• Laurence’s ‘running up a wall while beating wings’ was inspired by one of the hypotheses that had been proposed for how land-bound dinosaurs progressively developed arboreal habits and then flight.

• Laurence’s choice can be disputed for sure. Unfortunately, her decision wasn’t motivated by tactical matters only.

Ch.6 | Section 9, Laurence

• And here we’re back again, now with proper context...

• This whole scene was written in one go, outside editing, something that’s unusual for me (it’s usually more bits and pieces that are then tied together). My first real fight scene, and thus once again a gamble. I hope it worked as intended.

Ch.6 | Section 10, Ambre

• A somber note to end on, for sure... Especially as it was a full week before next chapter back then.

Ch.7 | Section 1, Laurence

• “I push through the oneiric veil, tearing the dreamscape apart” – Must have been some nightmare...

• The transfusion issue is another clue that the transformation wasn’t random, that the bodies came with a history of their own.

Ch.7 | Section 2, Sweetchard

• This scene, outside of the ‘starting to put the pieces together’, was the beginning of my attempts to improve rhythm on a per-chapter basis – adding a little tense scene or some action to each one, so it’s not just all talking.

• Interesting how these two seem to know each other so well, no?

Ch.7 | Section 3, Laurence

• I wasn’t sure if I should include this scene here or in the next Part, but it fit well enough here, and was important for Laurence’s character.

Ch.7 | Section 4, Ambre

• And at last our conclusion. Trying to put a little thematic bow on the previous events, so that Part 1 would feel like a slightly more cohesive whole, while still serving as the first step into the greater story. Very far from perfect, and perhaps not the best way to catch new readers’ interest, but it is what it is. Onward!

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