Word up! · 12:16am Feb 21st, 2014
Thy Words, that is.
Up on the site, that is.
...
*Ahem* As followers and, in fact, friends, run away from me as quickly as possible...
So my good friend Lady Grey finally finished one of the like, 641,461 short ponyfics she's been working on since FOREVER (if not sometime prior). It's called Thy Words, and in addition to allowing me to make a really heinous pun, it's a charming story about the power of language, the social ramifications of linguistic shifts, and tea! (Her name is Lady Grey, after all...)
...I feel like with that list of credentials I should also mention that it's not boring in the slightest.
But seriously, it's got Princess Twilight and Luna, both trying to cope with worlds and words that are new to them. It's cute, and psychologically well-realized, and it's only 2000 words, so you can read it in like, no time at all. And then go back and read it again to find the clue that foreshadows the HORRIFYING TWIST ENDING[1] *Psycho sting*.
Anyway, go give it a look. Lady Grey is a great writer, and I helped edit it, although this time I didn't manage to convince her to give it a multiple choice title. She deserves your attention, and as with her previous story on this site, I keep hoping the response will convince her to write faster, dangit. Seriously, I've been in suspense on some of her stuff for like a year, it's simply CRUEL.
[1] Thy Words may not contain a horrifying twist ending. I haven't read the most recent draft.
But I'll tell you what I'm about to go do...
I usually hate to be the first person to post on blog posts about me but I just had to say that the following sentence:
...is the nicest and highest praise that I expect to receive. You obviously understood the story really well and damn if I do not aspire to well-realized psychology. My ego is blooming Fed.
And I'll finish Celestia Cannot Sleep just as soon as I figure out how this fight goes down...
Wait no, it's the other story that has the twist ending Fed! This is the emotionally completing one!
I read it, I enjoyed it, and I left a comment saying as much.
As an aside, have you seen the recent site post? Obs recommended Lessons of Eternity, so I figured you'd like to know if you didn't already.
1857763 Thanks! I'm sure LG is glad you gave her a read too.
And technically the Royal Guard rec'd Lessons. Obs is just their puppet spokesman site mod person.
I mean, Obs and I are buds, so he usually clues me in when he's doing stuff (although not in this particular case, and he kept his recent barrage of stories to himself until they were ready to go). And in this case, I submitted the story, so the Guard told me it was in like, a week ago and I was waiting impatiently for the site post, heh. But thanks anyway! I appreciate the effort.
Although I remain sad that nobody who writes up Lessons ever says anything like "It's a drama about Twilight and Celestia having a passive aggressive fight, during which the circumstances of their breakup and the reasons Twilight is visiting Canterlot come to light." I don't know why it matters to me, but it does.... possibly just because I think that's the most accurate description you can give of "What is this story" in terms of form and plot but without giving away any details (I mean, it's basically a one-scene play in prose...). And I think people know whether that type of story is something they want to read or not.
Weirdly, this much time having passed from when I published Lessons, it's nice to get accolades for it, but it's no longer quite as viscerally pleasing (I mean, especially since I submitted it myself--it'd be something else if someone independently decided it needed an accolade). Submitting to EqD or suchlike when a story is new feels like part of the initial "WILL ANYONE LOVE MY BABY?" author push. A year on, after having had a number of people already love your baby, it's pleasant but less thrilling. I'm already worrying what people will think of my next thing, heh.
But now we wait and see if it has any impact on Swans suddenly having more everything-but-views (and comments, but only by like 2) than Lessons. Not that I know how I would play favorites at this point... Lessons is more interesting as a story, but Swans was a bigger personal achievement and has consistently better writing... both of them I think of as interesting journeys to not-tremendously-original conclusions... Iunno, hard to say.
(I am sort of eagerly trying to figure out what the metrics are that determine which story gets top billing on the "Stories" bar under my author card... Swans had to exceed ELA by quite a bit before it moved up, but that could be a function of likes AND faves AND comments? Or dislikes could bring it down a LOT relative to likes pushing it up? It's interesting.)
Thy Words popped up on my feed when it was added to the TwiLuna folder, which is like catnip to me. A recommendation from you bumped it to the top of the Read Later list. Read and faved for finally covering part of Luna's reintegration that no one ever touches on. So... thanks. I even managed to stow my shipping goggles for the duration, too.