Odds and Ends

By Jayson Thiessen

Jayson Thiessen and Erica Pitt have endowed us with a few revelations over the recent weeks. There are no really big spoilers here (hence the no-spoilers tag) just a few small things. I have put them in white type, so you have to mark the section to read them.

In an interview on BroNYCon (September 24), Jayson Thiessen answered a great number of questions, as reproduced here and here (same content). Furthermore, there’s a video of the Q-a’-neigh part. A few interesting points are:

• Hasbro doesn’t invest inordinate amounts of money into the show. The producers don’t have any budget pressure, but that’s about it. The reason why it nonetheless rocks as much as it does lies in the great team behind the show. “They’re just doing what they think makes the show as great as they can, to entertain each other as best they know how. In other words, the creative team on this show really is just having that much fun making it.” But Hasbro also contributes by “giving them a very loose rein.”
• The Hasbroian intervention is usually limited to “Hey guys, can you put this balloon in the show somewhere?” but sometimes they make very valuable contributions:
• Applebucking was originally applebumping: “Applejack would harvest apples by ramming trees with her head. (You can see how the script originally had her consciousness deteriorating already, huh?) But Hasbro said, uh, maybe that’s not quite the kind of thing we want to be encouraging kids to do, y’know? So they rejiggered the concept into applebucking, which works as a drop-in replacement to the story—making it about sleep deprivation instead. So applebucking ends up both becoming an iconic Applejack ‘thing,’ and the story turns out quite a bit more fun than a lesson about repetitive long-term cranial trauma.”
• Lauren Faust always intended Discord to be based in Q, but originally wanted to get a “John de Lancie–soundalike” to voice him. It may have been Jayson himself who suggested that they could try to get the real John de Lancie.
• “[It’s] always been the plan, from day one, that they were going release the music as a CD. They haven’t done it yet, but they may come out with something soon.”
• He also commented on the issue of the underped version of the CMC song. Sibsy said during the Happy New Season Celebration Mareathon [stet] that she had listened to this version a lot, but Daniel Ingram wrote on his Facebook page that a “good” version had never been recorded, but implied that there may be a less bad one. Here is Jayson’s take on the issue: “I was asked to bring [the real version of the CMC song]. I’m sorry. I asked Hasbro if I could bring it, because they want to be making sure… and they said no. But you know what, I listened to it and it was a demo version that [Sibsy] was referring to, with a demo singer, totally different singer, and it wasn’t fully mixed or mastered or anything, so it wouldn’t be as finished of a song, so wouldn’t have liked it as much maybe.” (My rendition here is a bit of an interpolation.)
• “[Jayson]’s adamant about not changing the show to suit ‘our’ tastes; he firmly believes that if the show exactly as it is is what we fell in love with, then by God they’re going to keep making that show.” So true. “Whenever some fan in the audience would ask some dumb question about ‘hey are you gonna put some OCs of high-profile fandom contributors in the background?’, the rest of the crowd would shout him down or cheer when Jayson said no.” What harm is there in putting a little Nyx in the background? She’s hardly going to “change the show.” But then again it would be a bit unjust to include Nyx and not, e.g., Littlepip, so it’s probably for the best.
• “I couldn’t believe these guys were squandering this kind of opportunity on … ‘Will the flower ponies show up again? Specifically Roseluck?’ ” Hey, Rose rocks, especially at Doctor Whooves’s side.
• After answering that “Equestria might have a border,” he jokingly declined to answer the question whether Gilda was an “illegal” immigrant.
• We’re going to see more two-parters, a “scary” episode (whatever that is), a “Derpy bit,” and no cutie marks for the CMC any time soon (“That’s a question that hasn’t been answered yet, so down the road we’ll have to see.”).
• Also, “‘There is a new villain.’ (He put on an ‘oh shit’ expression right after this, like he legitimately didn’t mean to let that slip out.)”

Please also read this message to the bronies by Jayson.

Then there is also a Friendship is Madness interview with Erica Pitt, one of our esteemed season one animators. She said that she drew a great deal of motivation from our enthusiasm about the show, that it helped her to not just go through the motions. She then went on to confirm that Ditzy Doo is in fact Derpy Hooves. Have a hoofmade transcription of the relevant part, starting around 7:45. And sorry for not giving the names of the interviewers. They are introduced at the beginning, but I don’t feel confident identifying their voices, and I don’t want to mess up.

Interviewer 1: Well, I got a question. In terms of the pony names. Do you actually use the fan-made names for the anonymous background ponies?

Erica: I think we do. I think Derpy originally had a different name, but then, because the Internet kind of exploded in calling her Derpy Hooves, we just like … [inaudible]

Interviewer 1: Went along with it.

Erica: … along with that.

Interviewer 2: Because in one episode they mention Ditzy Doo. Was that her original name, or was it … [inaudible]?
Erica: That was going to be Derpy Hooves’s [hard to understand] name, yeah.
Interviewer 2: Oh! So it is true!

A few more yeahs and yays, and a “You heard it here first” ensued.