On My New Story— I Alone · 5:09am Feb 12th, 2013
So... I had one of those spur of the moment things and wrote this. I warn anyone who hasn't read I Alone yet, because this blog will be all about that story and contain spoilers. For extra safety, I'll spoiler everything so it looks like it's a classified document. It kinda is, since it contains my thoughts on the story and what I put into it. So without further ado, I give you a step into my mind so to speak. No safety gear required, but it is suggested.
So to begin with, let me start with why I created this thing in the first place. I was thinking one day while pushing carts about pony—as I usually do—and wondered, "is there a story out there where the protagonist's name isn't given?" I thought about it and came to the undeniable conclusion there likely was, but then I had the wild idea to take things a step further. I wanted to suddenly write a story where there the main character had was not given a name, gender, description, or even told what type of pony it was. The first thing to pop into my head as to do that was, well, from the perspective of a wild animal. So that's kinda what this is in a nutshell. I Alone is from the perspective of a wild, "uncivilized" pony who spent its entire life in the wood, away from society where it couldn't learn to talk and whatnot.
And it was rushed. Oh, was it rushed. Namely, it took me about three hours to write them 2,257 words. But it was intentional, to a degree. There's a sort of chaotic form of logic to why I rushed it: I intended it to be from the perspective of a wild animal and I did my best to write what a wild animal would see or think. As such, focus would only be on the things found important to the protagonist. That's also why I forced myself to use only periods and commas for punctuation, as well as kept sentences rather short, repeated, or in some cases loaded. The protagonist is rather simple; maybe a better word is dumb. As I wrote, I kind of imagined the protagonist as man's best friend—a dog. A dog is happy and loyal, willing to go out of its way for it's master. Except the master in this case, if there is one, is the confusing character of "me."
As I hope it was easily picked up on, "me" is the protagonist's reflection seen in the pond. However, much like a dog might when looking at a mirror, the protagonist thinks this "me" is another living creature instead of the protagonist's mere reflection. The pond, with it's cold water, stood as a barrier that the protagonist couldn't step inside or even understand to some degree, but it was accepted because that's what the protagonist saw and had no way of explaining it. There's also the admittedly cruel aspect of "me" that I absolutely love. "Me" is the protagonist, but the protagonist doesn't necessarily know that. To the protagonist, "me" is what the protagonist is—a pony, more specifically the protagonist's self. But because the protagonist had lived a life of isolation, there's no word for what the protagonist is. So it's just, "me." It's a bit confusing to put into words, but I hope the point is getting across nonetheless. I didn't write this story to tell one what to think. I wanted the reader to think for themselves, hence why some things are so up for interpretation at times.
That's another thing. Going into this story, I only wanted three things: the protagonist with the pond, being chased by the angry tree (which I hope came across as a timerwolf), which led into the end scene I especially wanted with the "other me." This "other me" purely existed to confuse the protagonist, and when I wrote the character I intended for it to be Fluttershy. I wonder if anyone caught on that, but since it was from the perspective of a wild animal with no real language to associate names to, I'm perfectly fine if the new character wasn't received as being Fluttershy. As I said before, I wanted the reader to draw their own conclusions; I'm just supplying my own here in this blog.
Another thing with that end scene with Fluttershy is how the protagonist reacted. I kinda imagined the "deer in the headlights" look as I wrote, but from the deer's perspective. Fluttershy I imagined to be alarmed, but not scared. If anything she's worried, scared for this poor pony who's dirty and covered in mud and wanting nothing more than to help. And, much like a wild animal, the protagonist bolted at the first sign of an unknown creature advancing on it. Fluttershy was the only other pony the protagonist has seen—the other of course being the protagonist's self's reflection: "me." As such, the protagonist became confused and ran away.
So, that's what I was thinking when I wrote this, I'm pretty sure. Undoubtedly I'm leaving something out, but whatever. What's here is good. Also, I will not be writing a sequel or additional chapters. I think the tag [Slice-Of-Life] suffices, even if it could come off as being rather sad or tragic. But that's not what the protagonist thinks, so I don't think the tag should change. Overall, I'm pleased with the story.
This blog post looks like it came from the CIA.
I thought the Fluttershy scene was pretty transparent, especially with the butterflies metaphor. Same with the timberwolves. The only real pitfall there were the varying degrees of intellectualism the protagonist displayed. I really liked the "no name given" mechanic, though, even it was stretched to the extreme here with your feral pony. It's something I really dug about Fight Club because it lets you have both an established character and forced immersion (beyond the other reasons that story doesn't name the protagonist). I had a story idea kicking around for a while, and even wrote a bit of, where the protagonist was simply "the kid." It was to be an introspective musing on culture with really angsty statements about the layers of conformity and whatnot. Meh. I think you should consider using the mechanic in more work, though, especially in introspective, but not necessarily first person, work. The added air of mystery is a nice effect.
Edit: added a sentence because I'm like that.
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Interesting... Never realized it was Fluttershy. Makes sense though, if you've never seen pink before that's more or less the only way you can describe it.
The impression I got reading the story was that this was a lost reflection from the mirror pool in Too Many Pinkie Pies. In that episode Pinkie's own reflections were shown to be relatively mindless compared to the original, so I thought the protagonist was a long lost duplicate of some long-forgotten pony that was trying to justify its own existence through a reflection, the one thing most familiar to it. After all, if me is real, then so am I, right?
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That's certainly an interesting take, one I surely haven't thought about. Either way, I'm glad you got something unique out of this. I wrote the story with the one intention in mind to get the reader to draw their on conclusions, and I seem to have been successful in that regard.
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But wouldn't forcing a feral pony into an established society, with all the noise, the crowds, everything just drive it insane? Having 'I', 'me' and 'other mes', after spending his/her whole life with just 'I' and 'me'? No memory of parents or siblings. Just him/her and the pony who lives in the pond.
It would be better to just leave them to live their life. Or at most, leave food sometimes, and a blanket, to maybe, try and draw him/her out on their terms?
It was a great story, and a great idea.