Trivia / The Lost Element

• Author's Saving Throw: Despite his best efforts to handle the budding romance between James and Smolder with as much tact as possible, this subplot did find a sudden surge of detractors in late 2022. But while some outright harassed the author while making very drastic accusations against him, a few readers were more diplomatic in their criticism and provided well-meaning suggestions regarding the dangers of such a relationship that the author did try to take to heart. After months of contemplating the advice of these critics and discovering the Sawtooth Waves grooming scandal, which appeared to be exactly the kind of situation the critics were fearful of what may become of Smolder and James, the author quickly put to work efforts to rectify this in the Volume 5 finale. While the concept of Smolder and Ocellus moving out of Fluttershy's cottage and getting their own house built had been in the pipeline in the first place, the author made this development a priority and got it started ahead of schedule to reduce the risk of Smolder and even Ocellus potentially becoming too emotionally dependent on James.

• Creator Breakdown: During their time together late in "A Refined Evening", James reveals to Rarity details regarding a previous relationship that ended badly. Before this chapter was completed, the author underwent a very messy breakup with his first girlfriend, resulting in her enlisting internet hackers and trolls to harass him for roughly four months and compromising or outright deleting◊ many of his online accounts. Mentioning said relationship's end was likely a means to help vent over the trouble it brought him.
  • What makes this even more poignant was that this chapter was in development at the time the author went to personally visit his girlfriend for the first time, just weeks before the breakup and resulting fiasco occurred.
  • This also applied to the entirety of the soul-crushing depressing narrative of "The Price of Failure" as the author had gone through another painful breakup around the same time and wrote most of the story while listening to "Eyes Without a Face" on loop.
• Creator's Favorite:
  • The author makes little attempt to hide that Rarity is easily one of his favorite characters in the entire series, being his favorite of the Mane Six. Further testimony comes from the original early draft of the story where Rarity became James' love interest early on.
  • Smolder very quickly became one of the author's favorite characters to write once she was added to the story late in Volume 4.
  • The author seems to have a lot of love for the hippogriffs of Equestria, if the early mini arc involving their homeland in Volume 5 is anything to go by. Special mention goes to Queen Novo, whose character and background are vastly expanded upon when compared to her depictions in the source material.
  • Ember. Not only did the author backtrack on his plans of having her debut deep into The Lost Element's sequel. He has grown to adore her the more he studied her character and has found her relationship with James to be one of his favorite romances to write.
• Development Hell: "The Lost Element" was put on a two month hiatus in 2020 during the earliest days of the lockdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic due to making it difficult for the author to get out of the house. When the lockdown still did not entirely lifted by May, the author decided to get creative to try and get back into the swing of things.
• Extremely Lengthy Creation: The overarching plotline that revolves around the history of humanity in Equestria had always been a Driving Question in The Lost Element since the very beginning, the author having planned out the resolution shortly after the story got started. This plotline was finally concluded in the fittingly titled "Finis Omnium", a full 11 years after the story began.
• Method Acting: The author admits to speaking out conversations he plans between certain characters to get a better feel for how their words would rouse emotion in them.
• Milestone Celebration: On July 21st of 2021, the author uploaded the appropriately titled “We Have Come So Far” to mark the 10 year anniversary of the completion of The Lost Element’s first chapter.
  • Just a month later, the author released the 100th chapter of The Lost Element as well.
• Orphaned Reference: Two occurred before Volume 3 in The Lost Element.
  • Early on, James writes a message and has a care package sent to Earth that is addressed to a friend named Richard. This name belongs to a friend of the author who bonded with him during his early fanfic days in the Pokémon fandom. He was even offered a role to co-write Return of Humanity with Richard serving as a new protagonist. This plan fell through when they met in person for the first time at Bronycon 2013 with the author being very disappointed with his friend being much more unsavory in person than over the phone. They eventually stopped talking to each other over the following years and with Richard’s role as the sequel’s co-writer being quietly dropped. Which leads us to…
  • Kendra. James writes another heartfelt message to a friend on Earth named Kendra late in Volume 2 and sends it with a care package that includes a bejeweled sword. Kendra is another longtime friend of the author from his Deviantart days who he called up halfway through Bronycon 2013 when he became disillusioned with Richard and offered her the role instead, which she happily agreed to. The two of them planned extensively much of the sequels plot with the author even commissioning artists online to design Kendra’s appearance for the story. Sadly, largely in part to The Lost Element still having not been completed 10 years after the fact, Kendra ultimately backed out of the role due to her interests shifting over the years. With both candidates dropped from the project, it remains to be seen how the author will salvage Return of Humanity’s intended storyline.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Many past events described by James are all events the author himself has experienced, or has been influenced by outside sources.
  • The chapter "Follow the Rainbow" was written specifically as a favor to an old friend of the artist's from as far back as his days in high school, who was introduced to The Lost Element by the author himself and quickly got into the show with her favorite character becoming Rainbow Dash. The request was a chapter focusing mostly on Rainbow Dash, resulting in a chapter where James spends the majority of the day just hanging out with Rainbow Dash for a field trip all the way up to Cloudsdale.
• Reality Subtext:
  • During an archery session with Sky Beak in "Dragon of the East", James goes into much greater detail over his strained relationship with his father than at any point before in the story where he openly discusses incidents of potential abuse he suffered at the hands of his father. This was not a coincidence. The author's father died from late stage ALS roughly a week before the chapter was finished and it is heavily implied (and was eventually confirmed) he chose to not bury the hatchet with his son while he had the chance.
  • The Sunny Town subplot, which first appeared very early in Volume 1, was clearly inspired and implements characters and settings from the cult classic fangame Story of the Blanks. While The Lost Element entered development very early in the MLP fandom’s lifespan, Story of the Blanks has largely faded into obscurity.
• Trolling Creator: Immediately after the posting of the infamous "Mortal Chaos", the author set The Lost Element to the "cancelled" status before moving on to writing the tragic alternate outcome of James' battle against Discord with "The Price of Failure". This was an attempt to maximize the emotional impact of the end of the chapter where James falls unconscious in a manner that implies he might not make it. This received a fair bit of backlash from readers on top of the shocked feedback on just the premise of the chapter alone and resulted in the author quickly regretting this decision and vying to never pull such a stunt on the readers again.
• Troubled Production: The author went on two hiatuses during 2023, the second of which lasting roughly 90 days between June and the end of September. The author cited IRL circumstances as the cause where he had a “deadline” to meet that could no longer be delayed.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Much earlier in the story's development, the author intended for the Celestial Sword to extend in length to become a greatsword and the Lunar Shield to be able to take on the form of a matching sword for Dual Wielding. These concepts were scrapped in exchange for a weapon that is set to appear much later in the story and the dual-wielding quirk will be implemented by a villain in Volume 6.
  • The Lost Element was originally titled as "A True Rarity" and focused on the protagonist developing a relationship with Rarity as opposed to Fluttershy. The author eventually backtracked and redid earlier plot points that resulted in The Lost Element today, probably due to a messily escalated conflict with Spike and overly dramatic gestures by James. The resolution with Rarity and the differently handled debut of Nightmare Moon were handled quite sweetly though. What is available is still viewable on his Sofurry account.
  • Ocellus was not originally intended to show up in The Lost Element, instead being planned on showing up in a spin-off while being around Gladesong's age and growing up to marry one of James' sons. The author backtracked on this upon finding how Out of Focus Ocellus generally is in the source material and brought her in much sooner to expand on her as a character out of sympathy.
  • The "Sins of Humanity" arc of Volume 5 was originally intended to be the final volume of The Lost Element, but the author felt unsatisfied with the story ending on that note very early on. Volume 6 is set to be the final volume in the story instead.
  • Had the 2017 My Little Pony Movie been announced sooner, the author would have likely had Tempest Shadow play a part in Volume 6 instead of thinking up an entirely new villain set to appear at that time.
  • Ember was originally intended to appear much later deep into the sequel of The Lost Element, but the author changed his mind upon finding himself liking Ember the more he studied her character.
  • The author originally never intended to have the protagonist end up in anything that was not a monogamous relationship. It was only after personal life experiences convinced him that polyamory can be a viable type of relationship that he started easing into it late in Volume 2.
  • A LOT of material did not make it off the cutting room floor in the war during Volume 5. Largely due to the author finding that letting the characters utilize far too quirky tactics would not mesh well with traditional medieval battlefield situations.
    • Derpy was intended to take part with a catapult device that launches explosive special muffins that would explode into a muffin cloud in a manner to the mini nukes from the Fallout series.
    • Pinkie Pie was going to have an anchor of sorts to pin her to the ground to let her turn the camera upside-down to send enemies falling into the sky before reset the camera to bring them crashing back down to the ground.
    • Characters like Ember, Rain Shine, and Sunburst were never intended to participate at all at first.
    • In the climax, James was originally intended to grab the emperor in a choke-hold and threaten to impale them both on his sword to force his surrender instead of threatening to blow them both up with a solar bomb. The author instead opted for a much grander and more dramatic method to further emphasize the climatic desperation of the situation.
    • The militia was initially planned to march all the way back home on foot with a karaoke booth provided to entertain the war weary troops. It was intended that Braeburn would sing a rendition of “Country Roads” that would have caused James to become painfully homesick.
• Write What You Know: The author takes great pains to portray his Author Avatar as he himself would behave in Equestria and how he would interact with the characters even over the course of James' inevitable Character Development. This ranges from knowing how his strengths, his weaknesses, likes, dislikes, and general skills and knowledge would dictate his behavior without ever breaking character except where warranted. This has resulted in James being an exceptionally human character.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: While the major nuts and bolts of the author’s work are often planned years in advance, many smaller aspects are frequently changed or thought up over time before being put to paper. Examples such as the inclusion of the hippogriffs and James developing an interest in starting a polyamorous relationship were not planned until years into The Lost Element’s development.