Trivia / The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum

• Creative Differences: While not the only reason, this was a big driving factor behind the Spectrum Team's split in May 2017. Notable cases include the depictions of Prime Discord and Chrysalis, as well as TCB!Celestia's fate.
• Creator Backlash: While discussing the reboot, the authors have agreed to cut out elements from the original that they feel this towards.
  • The portrayals of Princess Celestia and Discord was a sore spot for some of the writers. Sledge115 and VoxAdam would later riff on what they felt was the worst chapter in the story, "Sanguine Meetings and Bloodied Past", for its portrayal of Celestia and Discord, with both agreeing that the story went through great lengths to repeatedly demean and degrade Celestia by portraying her as a Nervous Wreck very much unlike canon and placing Discord upon an unassailable pedestal, with his villainous actions justified by the story.
  • The depiction of Queen Celestia as an irredeemably evil monster, due to the fact that she's corrupted by Tirek and has no control over her actions.
  • Kizuna Tallis has gone on the record to admit that she never liked the Sergei/Aquamarine pairing in the Asia Side Story, disliking how it was set up and how it treated certain characters, and planned to cut it out of the reboot altogether and sink the ship in-universe. For the Asia Side Story's Gainax Ending, she has them break up.
  • Fluffy has basically lost most of his ability to enjoy the original Spectrum universe in the time that has gone by since the team's split:
    Fluffy: The old version of Light Despondent is canon to the old version of Spectrum, and writing in the same universe as that (while also being left behind from my friends as they make new chapters in a new universe) was just too painful to consider. Cause... I can't read classic Spectrum. I can't enjoy classic Spectrum. I can't look at Classic Spectrum.
• Creator Breakdown: The Troubled Production period between 2016 to the May 2017 split was not good for any of the authors' well-being.
  • Redskin himself admitted sometime after the split that he'd been dealing with several problems in his professional and personal lives (including incompetent managers at his job regarding the former and reeling from the death of a family member for the latter) during the time period, which he had kept bottled up, leading to him lashing out at the other authors and fueling the acrimonious feelings that drove the team's split.
  • Jed admitted in a comment that he'd struggled greatly during that time period from a combination of job hunting, raising his children, and planning out his wedding on top of dealing with the story, but did his best to not let that get in the way of writing it or interacting with the other authors.
  • Kizuna Tallis admitted that the time period of events leading up to the team's split and her attempts to keep the peace, in addition to some personal issues she was grappling with at the time, did a great deal of damage to her mental health.
• Creator's Favorite: By DoctorFluffy's own admission, Kraber is his favorite. The character himself has pretty well-received, mostly due to being a Take That! to one of Chatoyance's most hated stories and having damn good reasons for his insane tendencies.
• Creator's Pest: Marcus Renee increasingly became this for the other writers of Team Spectrum, especially Doctor Fluffy and Jed, largely because they couldn't stomach his more abrasive aspects and the way the narrative kept glossing over his flaws. This was one of the main reasons behind why Marcus was Adapted Out of the reboot and replaced with the Suspiciously Similar Substitute Alexander Reiner (and even then, the authors went out of their way to significantly tone down those aforementioned abrasive aspects when writing Alex).
• Hostility on the Set: In general, the creative conflicts between Red and the other writers became increasingly more heated and personal as the writing process went on, with the depictions of certain characters (Marcus, Prime Chrysalis, Prime Celestia, and Prime Discord in particular), Red's original plans for how Queen Celestia was going to die, and the handling of the HLF being especially loaded with disagreements. This, combined with how the authors were also dealing with other issues in their personal offline lives (which were being affected by the stresses of their online project), was a big factor behind why the 2017 split was as bitter and acrimonious as it was.
  • In her resignation blog, Kizuna Tallis detailed how in 2016, Red brought a new author who went by the alias of Art onto Team Spectrum, a move that wasn't approved of by the other members. Art wanted to write a side story crossover with Elfen Lied, an idea that wasn't supported by anyone else on the team besides Red. Not helping matters was that Art rapidly became disliked by the rest of the team as his attempts to fit in simply came off as annoying for them while not contributing anything of note. After issuing an ultimatum to Art to make progress on his story idea or risk getting kicked out, the team (minus Red) ultimately cut ties with him after being unimpressed with the outline he turned in. This brief chapter of Team Spectrum's history (which lasted for a little over one month) drove a further wedge between Red and the other members, especially Doctor Fluffy and Kizuna due to them having been most vocally against Art's inclusion in the team.
• Hypothetical Casting: The authors often cast actors in fictional roles for their characters.
• Line to God: The official group. Need a question answered? All the co-authors and editors are there. Beware of spoilers though.
• Promoted Fanboy: Some of the co-authors started off as dedicated readers of the main story.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: Kizuna Tallis has described her decision to end the Asia Side Story with a nonsensical and random Gainax Ending as her wanting to "blow it up like how John Oliver did to a giant 2020 sign" while still giving the characters what she felt would be at least a satisfying send-off. Appropriately enough, she used this specific GIF◊ of Louise Belcher cackling and surrounded by flames in the final chapter's Author's Notes to sum up the mental state she was in as she wrote it.
• Troubled Production: According to Jed, Vox, Fluffy, Kizuna Tallis and Sledge, working on Spectrum between summer 2016 and 2017 was a difficult and stressful experience marred with increasing creative disagreements and growing personal hostilities between the authors.
• What Could Have Been:
  • DoctorFluffy initially planned for Kraber's backstory to just be a Noodle Incident with only a few scattered references alluding to what happened, but he quickly decided to turn it into a Take That! directed at Chatoyance's Michelson and Morely story on the grounds that "The people needed to know."
  • Kizuna Tallis stated in a blog post that she'd first intended for Comet Tail to be an orphan, and Aquamarine Glimmer would have later entered the story with a far different past and circumstances behind her defection from Equestria. This was changed to them being mother and daughter.
  • Originally, the protagonist of Adrift was meant to be a man named Aleksei Potemkin, with a vastly different personality from Stellar Wind.
  • Joy to the Worlds was first pitched by Sledge115 to be focused solely on Frost Wind's troubled night waiting for the reindeer to never arrive.
    • VoxAdam wanted to give the story a full-blown Downer Ending, culminating in Weaver throwing Sint off the mountain and to his death, then walking away with a captured Elsa's shawl in hoof, the image of her own future suicide weighing on her mind. TB3's introduction of Eadmund and Lucie drastically changed the story's outcome.
  • Marcus' argument with Acevedo and TCB!Vinyl in "Training Days: The Second Month" was going to be a lot darker, culminating in him punching Acevedo, but this was dropped due to all the Conflict Balls, Jerkass Balls, and Idiot Balls circulating through the scene.
  • Before the team split, Redskin intended to have the story culminate in a Big Badass Battle Sequence with Queen Celestia being devoured by the Bag of Tirek and Tirek physically reform for a final battle, One-Winged Angel style, at the end.
  • Another from before Redskin's departure: there was going to be a scene expanding upon the downfall of the HLF enclave Defiance and Marcus would be shown shooting a pregnant HLF member and not receive any sort of punishment; the rest of the team were not at all okay with this.
    • Ironically, the fourth chapter of the reboot implies that Marcus' Suspiciously Similar Substitute, Alex, did exactly the above, but that there was also some sort of in-story blowback from it.
• Word of God: Too many examples to be listed. The authors have a habit of delivering blog exposition on details unexplored within the stories.
• Writer Revolt: Kizuna wrote The Other Side of the Mirror as one against the Sergei/Aquamarine relationship.

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