Unfamiliar Spellings of My Little Pony? (or, Ari Plays With Dolls)

So guys.

I wrote this book. Or this novel manuscript, if you want to be more precise. And I’m doing the whole querying thing with it. But back before I could do any of the querying stuff, I needed to have people read the book and, you know, tell me if it was any good, or if there were problems and mistakes I needed to fix. One of those people was my friend Michael, whom I’ve already lauded here on the blog for drawing me my first-ever, 30-second fan art. Michael is obviously awesome for a number of reasons, but the reason that’s relevant to this post is the fact that not only has he read my book, but he actually indulges me when I talk about my characters like they’re real people. Such was the case when we were Facebook chatting the other day. A simplified transcript of our conversation follows:

(For context, we’d been discussing the website DollDivine, which is basically a bunch of games where you can create and dress up a character, like a fancy digital version of paper dolls. We’d just spent a good fifteen minutes messing around with the My Little Pony one.)

Ari: These things are so addictive. Have you played the Tudor one yet?
Michael: *looking up the Tudor one*
A: I’ve never actually made a doll version of myself with this one. I did my characters, though. :-p
M: LAWL. Now I’m imagining your characters as ponies.
A:HAHAHA! That would be hilarious! You saw the Tudor version I did of them, right?

From left to right: Julia, Kozm, Albert, Charlie, and Robert. Kozm and Albert look the least like I imagined them (I was of course limited by the parameters of the program). Julia is the most accurate.

M: Oh, that’s wonderful. <3 Julia. I could see Julia with those colors, but she and Albert would have to be unicorns—magic-workers. And having either be pegasi would defeat the point of SOOOO much. XD
A: AHAHAHA. YES. You realize we need to do this now?

…and so we did.

And here were the results:

From left to right: Kozm, Julia, Albert.

As you can see, our design plan morphed a bit as we went along; Kozm ended up being the unicorn instead (for complicated reasons). Even now, several days after the fact, this picture still totally cracks me up because the facial expressions are hilariously perfect. And they’re standing in a spelling workroom. And Kozm is wearing a silver bracelet. And Julia is tiny and feisty. And Kozm is tall and suave. And Albert looks like he’s either nervous or angry or about to be sick.

Not that this means all that much to anyone who hasn’t read the manuscript. But if you have, hopefully you get about as much of a kick out of this as I do. So special thanks to Michael for his input and his pony expertise.

EDITED TO ADD: If anyone cares: Julia’s real-life doppelgänger is an actor named Mary Kate Wiles. I’ve never been one of those writers who casts their novels with actors, but when I first came across Mary Kate performing in the YouTube web series Squaresville, my reaction was something unabashedly along the lines of: “HOLY SHIT. IT’S JULIA.”
See for yourself:

 

I’m still blown away by the resemblance, appearance-wise. Mary Kate’s character in the show is pretty different from Julia in terms of personality (though the facial expression at 1:15-1:16 is spot-on), as is the character that she plays in the (AWESOME) Lizzie Bennet Diaries (CLICK IF YOU LIKE JANE AUSTEN). But watching both shows is utterly bizarre for me because it’s like watching my character play these characters. And honestly, if Julia weren’t so into spelling, I could totally see her going into acting.

Anyhoo, fun fact.