The Conflict

My thanks to Sunset_Shimmer83 for commissioning this piece!

This story stems from the last short I wrote for Paul's Friendship Collection (at the time of writing), which saw the end results of Aria defending Sonata against Lightning Dust. Sunset_Shimmer83, apparently a big fan of catfights, was not satisfied with seeing just the ending of that battle, and thus offered a commission to write a proper fight between them. My first question was "but why are they fighting?" Sunset_Shimmer83's response was, in not so many words, "I don't know, just repeat the reason in the short?"

That wasn't good enough for me. It was clear Sunset_Shimmer83 wanted a proper no-hold-barred brawl between these two. But I have zero interest in writing a fight dump. If Aria and Lightning were going to give their all, they needed a lot more reason to do it than "stop picking on my sister!" Protip: if you want two characters to give their all in anything, you need to give them something to lose. It was in thinking about the hows and whys that I came to envision what this story is. It held my fascination enough to make me decide this was something I wanted to see happen, so I accepted the commission.

Does this mean I'm open for commissions now? I suppose so, but I have my limits. I was willing to take on this one because A) it interested me, and B) there was no wordcount limit, so I could make it what I wanted it to be. I also set a price cap; if I wrote beyond a certain number of words, the charge wouldn't keep going up. That way Sunset_Shimmer83 would get their story, I wouldn't break their wallet by making the story more than what they asked for, and I could have the story live up to my own standards. I was willing to do all of this because, again, I enjoyed what I was doing with this one. If I'd accepted a commission for something I wasn't interested in, there's no way I would have the price cap.

Which leads me to the point of all of this: yes, I am willing to take commissions now, but I'll be very picky about what commissions I accept. If the subject matter doesn't interest me, I'll probably pass. I write because I like writing, not because it's a job, and I don't intend to make it into one.

Random Story Facts!
WARNING: Here There Be Spoilers

• The "Morrissey" mentioned in the argument between Aria and Adagio is John Morrissey (1831 - 1878), an Irish American politician and boxer of New York who was also known for owning gambling houses and racetracks.
• I seriously considered having the last thing Aria said to Snips before she left being something along the lines of "By the way, Sonata likes when guys check out her butt." It would have been a moment of dubious honesty for humor's sake, but I decided it just didn't fit with the scene.
• Sonata working as a bartender is a tiny nod to I-A-M's SciTwiXSonata romance Rules of Hospitality, which heavily featured Sonata as a bartender at a strip club (click here for my review of it). Sadly, I-A-M abandoned the site and deleted all of his works, so we're stuck with FIMFetch for the series.
• Because I expect the question to be asked: The idea with the mind control was that Lightning figured out that she can brainwash people with the siren stone, but didn't know the finer points of that power. So while she managed to put Gilda and her stepfather under her spell, she was unaware that this rendered them susceptible to commands from anyone, not just her. There's also the possibility that her not being a siren means she can't wield the stone with the same finesse as a proper siren would.
• Although he is never expressly named, Lightning's stepfather is Wind Rider. I originally did name him, but decided to do away with the name as a narrative-based indicator of Lightning's negative feelings towards him. His identity was never meant to be a secret though.
• Since this is one of those things I'm sure readers will ask about: The idea behind the siren stones is that the intense negativity Lightning has towards her situation and her stepfather was so strong that it empowered the shards and allowed the stone to repair itself. The lingering intensity of this negativity was also enough to repair the other two once Lightning unintentionally released enough of it from Sonata's. I am aware that this is very questionable and hand-wavy but I felt it fit with the overall manner of the story.
• When I first wrote that Adagio works at a bank, it was just a throw-in because I couldn't think of anything at the given time. I left it in because why not a bank? True, I could have had her in the music industry as a producer or something, but I wanted something that would make their financial situation make more sense. And hey, when you've been around for centuries it pays to wear many hats. My original thought was that she'd be a bank teller – indicating she's new to the job and only grabbed it because she needed any job. Thinking on it though, it's entirely possible she's more of a bank manager or something else higher up the totem pole. That would make more sense with the "six days a week" line, but might not fit with where the sirens are at financially for this story. Plus: When you still look like a teenager, how do you make your resume of three decades of experience (or whatever) not look like a blatant lie?
• Adagio's room being less decorated and her closet lacking clothes is intended to hint that she's been secretly selling her more expensive possessions to help pay some of the sirens' bills, sacrificing so that her sibling don't have to.
• While I wasn't consciously aware I was doing it, I ended up making this version of Adagio into "mamadagio". I am not at all opposed to this. Seriously, look up the tag on derpibooru for some cute pics.