• Member Since 28th Aug, 2011
  • offline last seen 33 minutes ago

Cold in Gardez


Stories about ponies are stories about people.

More Blog Posts186

  • 1 week
    A town for the fearful dead

    What is that Gardez up to? Still toiling away at his tabletop world. Presented, for those with interest, the town of Cnoc an Fhomhair.

    Cnoc an Fhomhair (Town)

    Population: Varies – between two and five thousand.
    Industry: Trade.
    Fae Presence: None.

    Read More

    5 comments · 218 views
  • 12 weeks
    The Dragon Game

    You know the one.


    A sheaf of papers, prefaced with a short letter, all written in a sturdy, simple hand.

    Abbot Stillwater,

    Read More

    7 comments · 536 views
  • 31 weeks
    EFN Book Nook!

    Hey folks! I should've done this days ago, apparently, but the awesome Twilight's Book Nook at Everfree Northwest has copies of Completely Safe Stories!

    Read More

    9 comments · 565 views
  • 34 weeks
    A new project, and an explanation!

    Hey folks,

    Alternate title for this blog post: I'm Doing a Thing (and I'm looking for help)

    I don't think anyone is surprised that my pony writing has been on a bit of a hiatus for a while, and my presence on this site is mostly to lurk-and-read rather than finish my long-delayed stories. What you might not know, though, is what I've been doing instead of pony writing.

    Read More

    26 comments · 991 views
  • 79 weeks
    Short Story: The Sculpture

    This is not a story about ponies. No ponies here! Go elsewhere for ponies.

    But this is a story for a D&D adventure I am writing. And I suppose it's also a story about what it means to have purpose, where we get that purpose form, and what happens when that purpose vanishes. People things, in other words.


    The flower turns its face to the sun.

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    10 comments · 792 views
Jun
29th
2014

Oops! Story is up now, and a little bit about 2nd person perspective · 12:43am Jun 29th, 2014

Hey folks,

Sorry about the juke, it's up now! Original blog post below:

You might remember that I asked a few weeks ago, would people be more interested in a carefree story about the joys of summer, or a darker tale more in line with The Carnivore's Prayer? At the time, I had pretty much already settled on the former, and in fact that story, “Down the Endless Paths of Summer,” is quite a ways along. In fact, I'd expected to have it out by now.

Then came Obsolescence and his “The Most Dangerous Game” contest. To sum it up, he made a list of the most terrible types of stories – think OC alicorns, self-inserts who fall in love with the mane 6, Human-in-Equestria, etc – and gave us a challenge. Create a good story using one of those terrible ideas.

How could I resist? Sometime in the next few hours, assuming it isn't already, my latest story, “For Whom We Are Hungry,” will hit Fimfic's virtual shelves. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, because I enjoyed writing it a lot.

* * *

I chose the “2nd person perspective” portion of Obs's challenge. Second-person perspective is widely derided, and usually for good reasons. There's almost no story that you can write in second-person that wouldn't be better off in first- or third-person.

People have written entire books about this difficulty, but to me it comes down to a simple idea: suspension of disbelief is essential for the reader, and second-person perspective has the most difficulty establishing that state of mind:

In first-person perspective, I somehow have to convince the reader that what they are reading is actually a story written by, say, Twilight Sparkle. Since most readers (hopefully) know that Twilight Sparkle is a fictitious character and cannot write stories, this would seem to be a difficult task – however, through the magic of suspension of disbelief, readers and writers agree to this lie, and we all pretend Twilight really did write this story. As long as Twilight doesn't do anything too out of character, and the book remains consistent with its own internal logic, the suspension of disbelief isn't broken, and everyone is happy.

Third-person has it even easier. Now you don't even have to pretend that Twilight Sparkle wrote the story; it's just a story about her, and it doesn't even matter if she's real or not. Significantly less suspension of disbelief is necessary, since you only have to accept the truth of the narrative, rather than the truth of the narrator.

But then comes second-person. Right away the author is stuck telling a lie; when I say that 'you' walk around Ponyville at night, you, the reader, instantly know this is a falsehood. You are not a pony, you do not live in Ponyville, and you never walked around it at night. I'm making the character do things that you, the person, would never do, but to read the story you must somehow accept that you would. I'm putting thoughts in your head, memories in your head, making your decisions, deciding your fate. The reader must be a very willing participant in this falsehood.

So, that was the challenge with “For Whom We Are Hungry.” I hope you can all suspend your disbelief long enough to get through it, and possibly even consider giving it your vote as part of the “Most Dangerous Game” contest, when it opens to the general public (date to be announced).

Report Cold in Gardez · 694 views · Story: The Carnivore's Prayer ·
Comments ( 12 )

I think the reason why second-person is so widely reviled in this fandom in particular is that, for the most part, in such stories the 'you' is an 'anon' in Equestria, and it's used as an excuse to be lazy about physical description and characterization. It exists for no other reason or purpose than that of self-insertion, usually into a plot-less (or nearly so) smutfic.

As a long-time fan of Homestuck, though, I can certainly attest that it IS possible to do second-person right.

Then again, Homestuck's storytelling style is modeled after old-school text-based adventure games, which is one of the few genres where 2nd-person narrative is kind of necessitated anyway.

In any case, I'll mark this fic to read later, sounds interesting.

Outside of narrative based games I have a burning hatred of 2nd person... I'll give your's a chance, eventually, as I'm ridiculously behind on reading.

I've never understood the problem of having the reader as the protagonist in second person stories. Is that somehow a necessity? I read For Whom We Are Hungry, and I never once felt that I was somehow the one being written about. This was a story about Ingstar, not me.
I think that may be the problem with writing these stories. Are people writing in second person view trying too hard to write about the reader, and not the protagonist?

There are certain cases where second person does a great job displaying what another POV wouldn't be able to, and that's when narrator reliability is in question. When the words play off the audience's preconceived notions of themselves, it plays a really neat trick on whoever's reading. For instance, if the exposition of a story describes a horrible, run-down bar and goes on to say, "This isn't your usual place," it will actually help suspend the disbelief. If the reader has a high opinion of themself, then they'll trust that sentence at face value, because they know they wouldn't go to seedy, run-down places. But in first person: "This isn't my usual place," the reader may be inclined to assume the narrator is unreliable.

But second person definitely isn't done well often. I'm looking forward to what you've written, because I'm sure it will be a great example of second-person perspective done right.

2241893 I haven't read the story yet, so possibly I'm misinterpreting your words and lack the slightest clue what I'm talking about.

But It seems to me like if the reader does not feel to some extent that he/she is the protagonist, it's not really properly second-person. It's just a first-person (or I suppose in some cases third-person) story with weird pronouns.

2242549 Second person is a story told by one person about another, addressed as if spoken to - or about - that person from a short remove. The reader isn't necessarily that person.

Look at it this way: a good first person story is an intimate retelling of events by the protagonist. They are revealing their thoughts and feelings as they participate in the story. Those two elements - participation and intimacy - are the core of what third person is.

I contrast, a good third person story generally has the narrator removed from participation in the tale. They are an observer, outside events, whether omniscient or otherwise. The intimacy of feeling and thought is removed as well. The narrator can relay the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist if they are omniscient, but they are not experiencing those thoughts and feelings.

The purpose of second person is to retain the intimacy of first person narrative, but to remove the reader a level from the "experience" by having the narrator as an observer rather than a participant in events.

Second person only becomes an issue if the point of view is visible. A well-written story pushes the actual mechanics of the writing into the background. A badly written one pulls them into the foreground (and in the case of second-person, usually makes them a gimmick as well), which ruins immersion.

2241893

The ability to separate the 'you' of the character and the 'you' who is reading is possible, but it requires a disciplined reader who understands literature and some of the theoretical aspects of writing. I am not so confident in my writing ability to assume that I managed that trick. I can only hope that after the first scene or so, the 'you' tends to fade into the background, and people simply become absorbed with the story.

2242174

Wanna know a secret? I'm terrible with narrator reliability.

It never even occurs to me, whether I'm reading or writing. I almost always assume the narrator is a flawless and incapable of deceiving me or withholding information. The closest I can come is incorporating the narrator's incomplete perspective, as in this story, when Gin Star wonders if the older foals collect food and bring it back to their nests.

2242888

Are there any instances of 2nd person in real literature that you thought worked well? I can only name two off the top of my head, and one of them is Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, which is often considered the archetypal 2nd person story.

(Side note: I have a huge author-crush on Italo Calvino.)

2242905 I can't think of any off-hand. The closest I get is a story called Hadassah, a retelling of the biblical story of Esther. It was written as a first-person narrative (with third-person inserts every few chapters), but the first-person narrator is speaking to an unnamed recipient of her letters who is always addressed as "you", so it's about half and half.

CDF

2242174

I don't really agree with you. If the 1st person narrator tells me that run down bars aren't really his/her usual place, I'm inclined to believe them unless they're really prone to lying. But if I happen to, for example, love country music, and the story I'm reading contains a passage like "You turn on the radio and wince as the sounds of slide guitar and a twangy voice reach your ears. Ugh. Country." then the author has effectively nullified any attempts to get me to identify with the protagonist who is supposedly "me".

Studies have shown when someone reads about an action being performed or having been performed their motor cortex lights up as if they were performing the action. Likewise, sensory words--such as sweet, rough, and so on--cause the related sensory regions of the brain to respond as if the reader's body had encountered the taste or texture. However it is written, all fiction is read in the second person. This is how it engages the reader.

The problem isn't so much the lie (this is fiction it is already a lie) but the honesty of it. In first or third-person, the supporting structure is concealed which creates room for cognitive dissonance (I have read this; I have done this; I have enjoyed this; but also, I have only read this; I would never do this; I am, as a moral reader, I am appalled at this). In second-person the supporting structure is left bare. One must either recognize themselves in the room or not.

2242905
You posted in the "Most Dangerous Game" thread about second person, unlike first person, offering the chance to distinguish between the narrator and the character; I wanted to respond to that without cluttering up the competition thread by talking about outside stories.

Depending on your feelings about clop, you might want to take a look at my story "One-Knight Stand" (NSFW; no direct link because of site policies). It was an experiment in second-person format in which the narrator is explicitly a character interacting with the protagonist, and lampshades a lot of second-person tropes such as telling the reader about themselves.

Even if you can't stand horse sex, it might be worth it to read the first 500 words or so, and then just nope out of there when the story starts turning.

2267043

Having written a few mature stories, you need not fear for my sensibilities. I'll give it a look!

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