Author Interview » Ponydora Prancypants' "Que Sera, Sera" [Royal Canterlot Library] · 2:08am Jun 29th, 2014
Hello, folks, Present Perfect of the Royal Canterlot Library here. Apologies for falling off the wagon with these weekly update posts. To make up for it, I'll be posting on a four-day schedule until we're caught up, so you can expect lots of excellent fics hitting your dashboard in the near future! (And likely a bit earlier in the day.)
In an oddly literal sense, today's story is the end-all of My Little Pony fanfics — though in an equally literal sense, it's got no ending at all.
Que Sera, Sera
[Sad] • 15,437 words
Princess Celestia always knew that Twilight Sparkle was destined for great things, but she never revealed the source of that knowledge, not even to those closest to her. When the day of Twilight's true destiny finally arrives, can Celestia fulfill an ancient promise to save Equestia's past, present, and future, even it means saying goodbye to Twilight forever? How can Celestia refuse her mother's last wish?
FROM THE CURATORS: Yes, that cover image is exactly what it looks like — but it's okay to figure out that "spoiler" before you go in. "Ponydora's stories are big on the dramatic irony thing where the big 'twists' are totally obvious from the very beginning, and he uses the reader's knowledge of what's coming to build tension," Benman said. "So when he takes you on a time loop story, you know you're in for a ride."
And what a ride it is. "I am crying so much. This is why I read fanfic," Present Perfect said. Horizon agreed: "Thank goodness the boss isn't in to see me crying at my desk."
That raw emotional power quickly catapulted Que Sera, Sera into the stratosphere of our top-scoring features, accomplishing for sadfics what Skywriter's Princess Celestia Hates Tea did for comedies. And, like that story, Que Sera, Sera is exemplary due to its depth. "Powerful emotions, believable worldbuilding, in-character humor where appropriate, and concerned with finding the inherent virtue in even — especially — the most tragic of circumstances," Chris said. "This is exactly the kind of fanfic I love."
Read on for our author interview, in which Ponydora Prancypants discusses taxed axons, disordered lists, and the separation of church and cake.
Give us the standard biography.
I am a lawyer, a parent, and a spouse, not in that order. I like baseball, apple pie, horses, and America too. Words and their many uses are a constant source of wonderment. If meat is murder, then I’m a monster. If I were not a lawyer, I think I would be a very good engine mechanic. I am an optimistic sort of skeptic, with no inclination to conspiracism. My tastes are epicurian, esoteric, and callipygian, not in that order. My greatest talent lies in doggerel, so it is fortunate that I am not a cat person. I am compelled to live by the ocean or be stricken with intense claustrophobia, so I suspect my genes express my fish ancestry unusually strongly.
How did you come up with your handle/penname?
I was inspired by pony silliness and the well-known humpback whale, Mister Splashy Pants.
Who's your favorite pony?
That would be Rarity.
What's your favorite episode?
My favorites include "Suited for Success", "Sweet and Elite", "Pinkie Pride", "Hearth’s Warming Eve", and "The Best Night Ever". Possibly in that order.
What do you get from the show?
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is a cartoon sitcom with fantasy adventure elements and simple stories, starring colorful horse analogues that look much like soft toys, which are purchasable online or at your local Target. There is an overriding sense of positivity and an emphasis on strong friendships and family bonds. It’s concentrated fuzzy feelings, so I certainly see the appeal for anybody who needs a hug from time to time. And doesn’t everybody?
What first drew me in was Season One’s creation of a sort of fantasy early-industrial gaslamp magicpunk nineteenth-century-Europe-meets-Rivendell quadrupedal world with a classic yet interesting internal mythology. Basically all that Lauren Faust stuff.
The show is also a great program for small children, because it is less frenetic and boisterous than most children’s programming and does not make parents (like me) want to cave in their own skulls, and it largely consists of characters having friendly conversations with each other, which I hope and suspect promotes language learning and interest in cooperative group play.
What do you want from life?
Freedom, comfort, security, opportunity, choice, intellectual stimulation, discovery, and love. Not in that order!
Why do you write?
I think I must have a backlog of juvenile dreams stewing in my amygdala that I missed out on due to childhood insomnia, about flying and swashbuckling and magic and adventure and other things that preoccupy children, which have been slowly seeping into the part of the brain that stores my more adult sensibilities, and the resulting electrical stew is always taxing my axons and slowing my synapses until I slop it out onto a computer screen or scrap of paper.
What advice do you have for the authors out there?
A writer’s block is a real thing: a penny on the track that can derail your story train no matter how much steam has been built up; a pressing weight that squeezes on your ribs and makes you not even want to get out of bed; or a niggling doubt that calls into question all your best laid literary plans. The only way to get through it is to chip, chip, chip away. Even if you just stare at your screen and think about your story every night, eventually you will break through into the light of day. Of course, the next block is probably not far ahead. Also, try to get paid.
How do you keep events straight when writing a time loop?
In the case of “Que Sera, Sera,” the time loop was easy to keep straight because it is not a clever sort of self-fulfilling time paradox where all of the characters’ actions end up inadvertently setting in motion a future they wanted to avoid, and I did not have to consider changes to the future world based on actions that Twilight and her friends might take. Instead, Twilight and her friends eventually realize that their personal past/objective future only existed because of the actions they took in the present historical past. The story recounts how they (1) create the Elements of Harmony; (2) set up Celestia and Luna to eventually wield them; and (3) ensure that they would be sent back in time in the first place. The “paradox” of how the Elements were used in the first instance if Twilight and her friends had not yet been sent back in time is never addressed.
Because the “hard” questions of time travel are hand-waved, and there is minimal discussion in the story about timelines and possible changes, I think of QSS as less a time-travel sci-fi type of story than a story about relationships, most importantly the special bond between Celestia and Twilight. At the time, the show had not yet touched on the history of the royal sisters, the nature of alicorns (I had already begun writing before Twilight got her wings, which is part of the reason she loses them upon going back in time), the origin of the Elements of Harmony, how and why the “stars” aided in Luna’s escape from her banishment, the apparent coincidence of the Element Bearers all being in Ponyville at the right moment (still unaddressed) and Princess Celestia’s decision to make Twilight her personal student. Trying to fit all of these topics into the story through the vehicle of the time loop was more of a challenge than trying to come up with a plausible, not self-contradicting time travel mechanism (a task which multiple readers pointed out that I did not quite accomplish).
What are your thoughts on depictions of religion on Equestria?
In the story, Fluttershy finds solace and personal meaning in a sort of vague faith that existed in Equestria’s past, and which may or may not have died out in the intervening years before the present day and the coming of the royal sisters.
I figure that even in a magical world where immensely powerful and eminently corporeal beings (you can eat cake or play carnival games with them) control the sun and moon, your winged neighbor might be responsible for scheduling and delivering the morning fog along with your newspaper, and the local tailor regularly dances with her troupe of levitated dressforms, there must be questions that science and magic together have not satisfactorily answered: “Why are we here?” “Where did we come from?” “What’s next?” That sort of thing.
Aside from explaining tornados and frog plagues, those questions are the sort of things that purveyors of faith have always claimed to be able to answer, and I doubt even the apparently unaging alicorns could shed much light on them. Given the preceding, and that the herd mentality of ponydom has been showcased on the show (think “Green Is Not Your Color,” “Sweet and Elite,” and “Leap of Faith,” among others), there is most likely a place for organized and disorganized religion in Equestria. (I am ignoring the apparent priestly garb in “Hearts and Hooves Day,” which could easily be dismissed as some sort of secular funereal attire).
That said, Equestria presently seems to be pretty burned out on bigotry. The ponies are good-natured about being split into district, very differently-capable races, to the point that everyone laughs unashamedly at the casual racist humor in the national Hearth’s Warming play, as if the collective prejudice that Earth Ponies are ignorant rubes, Pegasi are short-fused warmongers, and Unicorns are effete snobs truly isn’t a “thing” that matters any longer. And why shouldn’t they be burned out on bigotry, since the popular history/mythos is that it nearly destroyed their civilization? I suspect that modern Equestrians in general are just as tolerant of each other’s personal beliefs (and other personal predilections), as they are of the anatomical peculiarities that define the different tribes.
For all we know, Twilight Sparkle is pony-muslim, Fluttershy is pony-wiccan, Rainbow Dash is a devout pony-mormon, Applejack is a pony-atheist, Pinkie Pie is pony-buddhist, and Rarity is Jewish. It’s kind of nice to imagine them all getting along so swimmingly, if you ask me.
One of the end results of this story is that Celestia will no longer know what’s to come. How will she face a truly uncertain future?
She will also have some serious ‘splaining to do with her sister, who not only ended up being banished to the moon in part because she felt left out and unloved, but never had even an inkling of her true origins and family tree, and was further denied any opportunity to meaningfully connect with Twilight Sparkle while possessing the knowledge that the once-and-future-past unicorn was her mother.
I imagine that Luna, Celestia, and Spike are in for a very long, very difficult healing process. I further suspect that it is the kind of thing that will require the sisters to take a step back from the daily trials and travails of running a sprawling monarchical federation (or whatever Equestria is). They should probably all move to a cottage by the seashore for a few centuries in order to get right with the world. Whether she could have done anything better or not, Celestia probably owes the other two at least a decade of breakfast in bed.
I reckon that Tia and Lula can let their Uncle Shiny and Auntie Cay-Cay keep the lights on in Canterlot, and maybe encourage them to read up on republican forms of government.
What’s in store for Spike after the story’s end?
Spike is a cute little guy again, but he’s seen some stuff, so to speak. There is an open question as to just what his mental state is after all he’s been through, but I think that dragon minds may be just as mutable as their bodies, and that he has been purged of much of his anger and resentment. I suspect that he and the sisters will spend a long time exploring their unique interpersonal dynamic, and ruminating on their past and future.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
A lot of folks have wondered whether the Princesses and Spike will devote themselves to somehow recovering the Mane Six and restoring them to physical existence. I suppose I can imagine Spike getting carried away with such a thing, given his innate desire to tangibly hold and possess the things he cares about. But is being back on four hooves really better than shining down from the firmament (or wherever the girls are)? Scientists (and Moby) say that we are all made of stars anyway. Perhaps to stars shall we return. Celestia, Luna, and Spike have plenty of time to find out.
(You can read Que Sera, Sera here. You can follow the Royal Canterlot Library's interviews at our site, or join the fimfiction group to get notified of new selections and suggest your own favorites.)
You're a site blogger now? That's pretty cool.
Anyway, this story has been sitting on my RL for awhile now. I think that it's about time I finally got around to reading it.
You've got powers now, presentperfect! Be careful as to not accidentally make one of your many personal quips and ramblings site-wide now.
2241956
I highly recommend it. :) And yes, I'm a site blogger as of, like, an hour ago, for the express purpose of posting these. Just so everyone knows.
2241963
Don'tlet the power go to your head!But seriously, about the story. A bit of an oldie, but definitely one I remember enjoying.
Hey, if you wanted to interview Ponydora Prancypants on his stories, why not talk about the coveted Adamant Triskelion Trilogy that's been on hold for so long?
I have mixed feelings about the story, and I wholeheartedly disagree about you saying the spoiler doesn't spoil the story. Every single person I described this story to heard that Twilight was their mom and said, "That's fucking stupid and I'm not reading this."
It's a testament to Ponydora's prose that she can make this idea even work, let alone at such an affecting level as when I read it. And now I'm hearing the author's ideas about the fallout from this and I honestly kind of want to see a scene or two of continuation, though any sort of afterlife where they can all reunite is probably best left to the imagination of readers like me.
Oh, cool. I just did my own review of this 4 days ago. I did quite enjoy it, despite shedding my five tears.
Ah, the first horsewords I ever read. I still cry when I read it. And the cover art didn't spoil for me, because it doesn't...
Or maybe I looked over it too quickly, and I didn't spend time pondering over the picture. Same with the description. I read it so fast, I didn't realize right away what the last question implied.
Man, Ponydora's prose is great even when answering interview questions.
Well, at the very least I got some closure as to whether or not they ever tried to bring the mane six back, even if the pipe dream of seeing one last mother to daughter conversation sounds good, it's just a dream.
And on the bright side, I didn't have to meet Ponydora in person and be disappointed to get my answers!
WHO ARE YOU?????
So does the title translate to 'What will be, will be'? Because without context it could be a number of things.
2241963 Why the change? Just so there's two people doing it in case one of you is sick/out of town?
I had never even thought of Spike, Celestia, and Luna wanting to return the Mane6 to pony form... I would love to see a sequel where they try and succeed, then watch how they return to their old lives, especially Luna and Celestia with the knowledge of who their mother is.
I've read your comment about why you can do site posts now, but I prefer to think you drank Obselescence's blood and acquired his powers. You probably absorbed his courage too.
As per this story, I once had the exact same idea, and then discovered that the story had already been written. Kind of a bummer. Ponydora is one of those authors whose prose is just... I guess it's good, but even though I would love it in a normal book, I just don't enjoy it with ponies.
No idea why. Que Será Será (it's a friggin Spanish sentence so you can be sure I'll add those accents whenever I write it!) is that kind of story that I'm sure I would like but not love, if only because it's too heavy-handled or something. It doesn't feel pony for me. I guess it's about personal tastes.
Anyway, dude, don't drink that much blood. More or less that's what I wanted to say here.
2242009
The Royal Canterlot Library's interviews are based on the stories we spotlight.
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I'm one of the Royal Canterlot Library co-curators. Hello. :) Benman was doing this job before, but he's kind of incommunicado right now, and we wanted to get back into it. Expect more posts through the early part of August!
2242309
Yes, the title is translated as that. It also fits the theme of the story, which I would describe as just that: what will be, will be. But I'm not sure I can see how it can be translated in any other way. That's just me.
The concept of religion or a belief system is done so well in this story, especially considering how impossible it must have been to create something mystical in a world of spell-casting equines.
Big fan. About time this review got out. :)
2242309
These words are also lyrics to a popular lullaby.
2243024 well the que could be translated as 'that' and with context the 'be' in 'will be' could be implied and simply dropped from the translation.
2243188
I suppose that could be true, though Spanish must have a rule that distinguishes the two. I wish my five years of Spanish were worth anything; I might have known the rule.
2243208 well in order for the que to mean 'what' it should have an accent mark but I guess the author didn't have the option.
2243219
Shit, you're right. I forgot all about that. God, what have my five years been for?
Ponydora, thank you for reminding me that Callipygian is a word.
2243219
2243254 It's badly translated Italian in a popular oldies pop song.
2243283
Italian isn't a language, silly.
Man, it's been forever since I read this story. I still consider it to be one of if not the best I've ever read here on this site.
2243290 You are being silly, right?
2243309
>uses Wikipedia as a source
You ever gone to school?
2243317 Happier?
2243318
Pinkie Pie happy.
I favorite'd this story, but unfortunately I don't think I can ever read it again, because it makes me cry so much.
Certainly not the only horsewords to induce tears, but certainly one of the best.
2243219
2243254
It's been a while since I Spanished last, but I believe the English "what" is in the sense of "that which", and so "que" sans accent is the intended meaning.
So I just dropped off another batch of recommendations to the RCL Rec post . . . to find that since my last batch of recommendations, posted over three weeks ago, no one else has entered anything! I was shocked, to say the least. But I digress, I'm sorry to hear about the departure of Bennman but I am happy to see the return of the author interviews to Fimfiction.
Until when next out paths cross, Cheers!
Que Sera Sera is one of the greatest stories to have been written.
Tragic? yes.
Mind wandering? yes.
But it is one story that, in my opinion, is neck and neck with My Little Dashie in terms of writing and storytelling.
2243290
Of course not
It's a kind of sausage
2244466
We don't get a lot of suggestions, but thanks for continuing to send worthy stories our way. :)
I translated this.
Very nice interview, I liked having the point of view of the author himself.
This story left me as a crying mess, and feeling sad for the following three days. And I'm not exagerating, at all. I haven't cried with a book since Snape killed Dumbledore (And that was the 2º time I read that book. I knew it was coming, and yet...)
TLDR: Fantastic story, very worth of every second.
If this had gone on to have a sequel, the one thing I would hope the Princesses and Spike would never do it try to bring the girls back down to earth. Celestia needs to have a very very long talk with her extended family and three very special little sisters about the truth of their very unique family.
There is something very special, very comforting about knowing that your loved ones are quite literally watching over you from the heavens that you can quite literally point to a star and say "Do you see that star? I can't even being to understand how it came to be but that star right there is my big sister and she will be there watching over our family for as long as the stars shine in the night sky. My sister and her friends loved us all so much that they will never stop protecting us."
Holy crap. Even his conversational speech is elegant and just fun to read. Talk about a talented writer...
A classic pony fanfic from a classy writer who is inventive, charming and erudite.... Not necessarily in that order!
Heh. When people say that a story on fimfiction made them cry, I immediately assume it's shite. This one was a pleasant surprise, because it was actually good. I enjoyed it. I don't think it's tear-worthy at all, but enjoyable and well written.
We need more famous stories on the site that are actually good.
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Or don't quite.
I actually have no reason to believe openended fic is harder, but it sure seems harder.