Your Headcanon Is Wrong, or, Twilight Sparkle's Literary Preferences · 3:38am Aug 21st, 2014
I wanted to talk about a common malady in shipfics, and the cream of this week's featurebox seemed the perfect opportunity.
I'm looking at Spike Through The Heart by Golden Graham. Though I love good SpiLight and Spike Harem, I didn’t like and didn’t finish this fic. However, it’s a good example of Alien Shipping Syndrome, a fiction malady that—
Y’know what? I can’t even get into that right now. Alien Shipping Syndrome (or ASS) will be a topic for a later blogpost. First, I have to get what really irks me about this fic off my chest: Twilight loves Catcher In The Rye. That, my friends, is some bullshit and Twilight explains exactly why it’s bullshit in the fic:
Twilight sighed. "Close. More importantly, it was because the role models that he did have were all so terrible. He spends the book trying to find somepony who will talk to him and listen to his problems, but every pony he meets has ulterior motives. All of his friends and family, his teachers, cab drivers, the prostitute, the nun...they all wanted something from him. None of them were willing to just sit and listen. And to Foalden, this was..."
This is the exact opposite of a character Twilight would identify with. She’s Twilight Sparkle, for chrissake! She’s gone through life with a surfeit of authority figures and role models who suited her perfectly. Her friends are role models for her society’s cardinal virtues! Her parents loved and encouraged her from an early age, she loves her BBBFF in an almost incestuous manner, and massively admires her sister-in-law, the Princess of Love. She’s on first-name terms with the God-Queens of Equestria!
The idea of having no role models should be barely-comprehensible to Twilight Sparkle, let alone something she’d personally identify with and love in her fiction. Hell, imagine trying to even explain that viewpoint to Twilight. Oh, not enough good role models for you in society? What, is the fucking all-merciful Goddess of the fucking sun not good enough for you?
Look, I can get Twilight loving Canter In The Rye for reasons based on its literary place, its mockability and its frame into a different time. I love Conan the Barbarian, in spite of (and almost because of) the purple prose and the blatant mary-sueism and the brainless racism, but let’s be real: Foalden Plowfield is not a character that Twilight would identify with.*
More so, Catcher In The Rye, The Great Gatsby, The Count of Monte Cristo—okay, except The Count of Monte Cristo and anything by Dumas because she’d have read them as an eight-year old and Dumas is awesome—none of these are books that Twilight would see as truly personally important to her. They’re school books, ones pushed on her at a slow pace and explained to her in patronising tones. If she liked any of them, it would have been before she was forced to spend an entire term doing nothing but one over-analysed book for a year at a time in school.
Now, there are different ways to portray Twilight’s literary tastes. I’m not saying any of them are wrong or right EXCEPT THIS ONE WHICH IS TOTAL BULLSHIT.
In Man About Town by Mr Unsmiley, a humanised Twilight Sparkle jumps Spike’s bones when he reveals that he reads Albert Camus for pleasure. I can totally see Twilight loving pretentious, superliterary, Mandarin novels that are slathered in abstract philosophy, allusions to the classics, lyrical prose and experimental storytelling. I can see her with a dog-eared copy of Finnegan’s Wake on her bedside table (“The underrated companion piece to Ulysses!”), writing a whole damn academic journal of analyses and deconstructions of Mrs Dalloway, loving literature that presumes “neither the writer nor the reader is in a hurry, that both are possessed of a classical education and a private income.”
There are other, perfectly valid ways to portray Twilight’s love of the written word. This is from the greatest romance novella ever written, I Wish I Might by RagingSemi:
“Well, the thing is... I’m not sure how to explain this. I used to have a roommate. Every time she would get dumped or angry or depressed or moody, she would eat. Like candy or cakes or donuts. She would always feel better afterwards. I guess I’m kind of like that, only with books.”
“Comfort books,” you suggest.
“Yeah, comfort books,” she says, and laughs. “Those were just some of my favorite books. I grabbed them in a rush.”
“You’ve got pretty good taste. They’re all of my favorites too.”
“Really?” she asks, surprised. “You’ve read all of them? Most people I meet have hardly heard of some of them.”
“Well, to be honest,” you say, “I haven’t read Vitruvius. Although I’ve been meaning to. There was an interesting article about him in American Scientist a couple of years ago...”
“Oh was that the one on LFT reactors?” she asks. “I read that same article! That’s why I first picked him up too.”
“And it’s been a long time since I read Foote. I think I might have skipped a section around Vicksburg, but I finished it. You know, what I like about about Foote is that he seems to have a natural Southern bias, but he manages to put it aside completely for the sake of objectivity.”
“Oh, I agree. There’s not a hint of Lost Cause sentiment or propaganda. In fact he destroys its entire foundation.”
“And Vance,” you say, shrugging your shoulders. “What can I say about Vance.”
With her elbow on the table, Twilight places her chin on the palm of her hand and sighs a dreamy sigh. “He’s got such an ear for language. Nobody writes like Vance.”
“You know, I was once reading a review of his work. The point was made that if it wasn’t for a bias against English language sci fi authors, he probably would have won a Nobel for literature.”
“Oh,” the dreaminess seems to disappear. “A Nobel. Huh.”
“Even the place names. It seems such a little thing in all that ocean of prose, but even his place names stood out better than anybody else’s. The Persimmon Sea. The Thaumaturge Sea. Lurulu.”
“The Gaean Reach,” she adds. “The Beyond. The Cobalt Mountains.”
“Alphanor.”
“Barleycorn.”
“Chrysanthe.”
“Diogenes.” You both laugh as you realize that you could keep this up for awhile. You like to discuss books, and neither of you have found somebody else who shared such similar tastes. The conversation you share lasts so long that you lose track of time. You both diverge from Twilight’s original reading list, discussing books that you’ve never read, or that she’s never read. It’s as if you’re feeling around each other, seeing where the other has been and what they know. The busy cafe bustles around you. If you were on time lapsed video, the other patrons would ebb and flow about you like the tides of a sea, while the two of you remained fixed at that table.
Twilight loves everything! This is very consistent with her character. She loves science, she loves high literature, she loves high pulp, fantasy, science-fiction, everything.
In fact, do you know what the most canon interpretation of Twilight’s literary tastes is? As my darling ScarletWeather pointed out to me, Twilight Sparkle loves genre fiction.
A reader’s literary tastes can pretty much be summed up by what they recommend to a friend who wants to get into/back into reading. For example, my recommendations would be books on probability and psychology like Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely and Fooled by Randomness by N. Nassim Taleb, gonzo journalism and writing like Dispatches by Michael Herr, No One Would Listen by Harry Markopolos, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. If you asked me for fiction alone, well. I’d recommend Harry Potter if they hadn’t been inundated with it before, The Hobbit if they wanted a classic, Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone for a modern classic, Conan the Barbarian for a classic to be taken with a fistful of salt. I’d call for Pratchett and Adams, because they are two of the greatest fiction writers in the English language and two of the funniest people in living memory.
But truly, I’d recommend two series that touch me as a reader like few others: The IPCRESS File and subsequent sequels by Len Deighton, and the Thieves World anthologies edited by Lynn Abbey and Robert Asprin. They are the books I’d bring up if you said ‘Chuck, give me something amazing to read.’ They’re my very favorites.
What series does Twilight Sparkle recommend? Daring Do. Pure genre fiction. Doc Savage and Indiana Jones rolled into one. The kind of stories that doubtless came out first in cheap magazines full of adverts for long-lasting deodorants and collectable action figures before being bundled into anthologies and then written into full-length novels.
Twilight Sparkle understands, you see. After her many years of reading, she truly sees the wonder in stories, not the literary shells that contain them, not the prose but the characters, the excitement, the twisting, turning plots and devious adversaries. Twilight Sparkle understands writing both on the level of poetry and prose, and on the level of ideas: she loves Phillip Dick and Ray Bradbury and Tolkien and Jack Vance for their ideas and their knowledge of society’s relationship with its technology and with its symbols, and she can separate them. She appreciates that a good conceit is as challenging, if not far more so, than a good sentence.
And hell, this is Twilight Sparkle, natural philosopher extraordinaire. Fuckin’ Rarity is the artsy one. Twilight appreciates Mandarin writing for the challenge, sure. But for pleasure? Sci-Fi and Fantasy, any day of the week.
Because Twilight isn’t just a straight-A student, Twilight is a lover. She can explain more books than you’ve even heard of inside and out, and it’s not because she needed to know them to pass some course. She knows them intimately, good and bad, and like any obsessive maven is happy to sort the good from the bad for anyone close enough to listen.
And that’s why I can’t buy her as a damned Foalden Plowfield fangirl.
*Y’know who Twilight Sparkle would identify with? A ponified Don Camillo of The Little World of Don Camillo. Don Camillo is a catholic priest moved to a small, post-war Italian town, where he tries his best to tend his flock, deal with a place where everyone knows each other but doesn’t necessarily like each other, frequently converses with Jesus and occasionally talks to Satan, tries to best follow his deity’s path but finds that what he thinks is right and what Jesus thinks is right are two different things, and does his best despite his personal flaws such as impatience and an overriding view that he’s correct. Don Camillo is Twilight Sparkle to a fucking tee.
I seem to remember sympathizing with Holden and thinking Catcher in the Rye was great when I read it in high school. But that was because I was a stupid kid who didn't know anything but thought he did.
I once picked up the book again and realized it was pretentious crap.
Seeing all the books you've listed has made me realize that I have a lot of reading to catch up on. I very recently just got through The Hobbit, for crying out loud (and it's one of the best stories I've ever experienced). I can't comment nearly as much as I would like to, simply because I lack the knowledge ti, but I would like to comment on this particular part:
I apologize for not being able to say anything meaningful, but I would like to say that this is beautiful, and you are what I would equivocate as a genius, and I thank you for saying it.
Thanks for really thinking this through, I hope a lot of authors who with an outline that says <insert Pony-version of a famous novel here> in Twilight's dialogue use this post as a reference.
I wasn't aware anyone still liked Catcher in the Rye.
Only time I've ever specified what book Twilight was reading, it was a ponified Frankenstein. I think "pushing the limits of magic into the realms of the forbidden" would be something that would catch her interest in fiction.
And pretty much the only authors I ever bother to recommend to others are Terry Pratchett and Jim Butcher. I liked Douglas Adams at one point, but as time went on, HHGttG just got less and less interesting, and I never got into his other books.
'My opinion is correct.'
LOL
I'm just fuckin' with ya Chuck. I have those kinds of opinions too.
When it comes to recommendations, I always go with my die-hard favorites, books that I can and have read time and time again.
Pratchett's Discworld novels, sure there's nearly 50 of them but nearly every single one is a treat.
Douglas Adam's Increasingly Misnamed Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy.
Just about anything from Dave Barry.
These 3 are all wonderful authors which can take a look at the insanity in everyday life and point it out to all of us in ways that make us laugh and make us think.
Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. His high-fantasy books (The Furies) are forgettable, but if you enjoy hard-boiled mystery and hidden world stories, or if you just like wonderfully irreverent and snarky characters then you'll love the tales of Harry Dresden Chicago's only professional wizard (he's in the phonebook and everything).
Every damn book that John Scalzi will grace us with. Start with the Old Man's War series if you want something more thought provoking or Red Shirts if you want something more humorous, but be warned you'll devour everything he's written eventually and it will always feel like it's gone too soon.
If you like lots of interesting world building and inventive magic systems then you'll want to get ahold of pretty much anything that Brandon Sanderson has written. Fans of Wheel of Time will be familiar with him as he's the author who finished the series after Robert Jordan's passing, but for readers unfamiliar with his work I would highly suggest starting with the Mistborn Trilogy or if you're a fan of 1000+ page epic-fantasy works then feel free to start on his Stormlight Archive series. Just don't start with Elantris, it's his earliest work and by far the weakest.
I'd also recommend the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey, but I will preface this with the fact that I love dragons and will absolutely be biased towards anything where dragons get to be awesome.
Buried by review work for the writeoff this week, but had to at least come say:
huz. fucking. ZAH.
I don't even really hate Catcher, because I kind of enjoy how it's written if not the content. Always a fan of engaging first-person. That said, I totally agree with my sweetheart up there that it's not the kind of novel Twilight would identify with. She'd assign it right next to some kind of counterpoint novel if she was teaching it to a class.
One of the other, more insidious little details here- notice how both of the examples of good literary taste in Twilight are quoted from humanized fics? I think that's significant because in those stories, we aren't just assuming a parallel between our literature and Twilight's literature, we know they're pretty much identical. When a story is actually set in Equestria as "Spike to the Heart" is, I'm usually of the opinion that pun titles are best kept to a minimum in favor of trying to come up with new pop culture icons for the pony world, and new literary figures. They can draw on real ones, but it should rarely be as 1:1 as Folden Plowfield (ugh). Would Catcher in the Rye ever be written during the reign of an immortal Alicorn princess who is widely considered wise and just (at least, outside fanon) and in a kingdom that seems to be pretty well non-feudal and which has booming economies and contentment everywhere? I can see an Equestrian Fight Club being written, but not really an Equestrian "everyone is phonies."
It's the little things that get you. If "Spike Through the Heart" was more engaging on other levels, I'm sure we'd have walked right past Twilight's choice of reading material. But it isn't, so the story draws focus to its smaller shortcomings.
I feel like I've read all this before... but yes. Absolutely yes. Twilight is a lot of things, but a pretentious twit she is not. I think I'd lost sight of this fact at some point. It's good to be reminded now and then.
Huh. I love Catcher in the Rye. My mom hates it. Maybe it's a young people thing.
I'm kind of embarressed that I've never really thought about Twilight's reading preferences before. Maybe because I've yet to write any focused long-form stories about her domestic life.
The last non-pony book I truly read for pleasure and not just because school required it was One Hundred Years of Solitude (R.I.P. Gabriel Marquez), and that was four and a half years ago in Senior year of high school. You and some of the commenters mention so many doubtlessly great books I'll never read. It reminds me of when I stood inside the Hollywood Amoeba Music store, and I told one of the employees "It kind of saddens me that there's so much amazing music in here I'll never listen to."
But Chuck, you're going on my short list (with Bad Horse) of people to ask for reading recommendations.
Have a great day!
I Wish I Might was a damn good story. I wish Semi was still around in the fandom.
Question: how would Twilight Sparkle react to House of Leaves?
I haven't actually read it, but I'm curious
Tim Powers. Recommend starting with The Anubis Gates, Last Call and Expiration Date, then onto pretty much anything with his name on it (although Dinner at Deviant's Palace isn't so hot.
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I read Catcher in the Rye as a sophomore (I had to do something in study hall).
It sucked. I honestly can't make much note of its literary merit, but Holden Caufield. Oh my goodness. I want to punch him in the face, forever.
Playing devil's advocate here, the author may just be riffing around the fact that the (canon-unless-proven-otherwise) comic book Micro Series #1 out and out says that a ponified Catcher is Twilight's favorite book.
It's no less wrong-seeming when an official source says it, but maybe the blame isn't all on the fanfic author here.
EDIT: And I'm not specifically defending the canonicity of the comics, either; "canon-unless-proven-otherwise" is the official stance, AFAIK.
Wow.
I am now following you just for more blog-posts like this one.
Hopefully your stories are as well written as this
2389802 See, I liked Holden. He could be an ass, but he was sincere and a good kid at heart. Plus, he was anti-hipster before hipsters were a thing.
2387744 You don't talk shit about Codex Alera. Them's fightin' words, Anypony.
I've seen the need for Twilight's Comfort books before. From Traveling Tutor:
To say Twilight was in a ‘mood’ was a horrid injustice to the poor word. Four letters cannot possibly encompass sleep-deprived, frustrated, hungry, damp, chilly, teeth that still ached from the dentist’s spell and a neck that seemed to be all knots and tension clear down to her tail. Embarrassed and mortified would have to fit in there somewhere, and still leave enough space for Princess Celestia’s sigh. It called for a much larger word. Or many such, bound together with covers and glue.
And from there, it goes to Don Rocinante and beyond...
I think this blog marks the first time I've actually wanted to write a "Pony Does X" story. Namely, "Twilight Sparkle Reads the Collected Works of Ayn Rand". Because that could be very entertaining.
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Surely you'd have to read some Ayn Rand yourself, no?
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Oh, I have. I have.
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Opinionizing rears its ugly head!
While I agree on basically all of the author recommendations, do be cautious in how you go about actually giving them. For example, I like all of Jim Butcher's stuff, but if I had to pick one series over the other I'd personally go with Codex Alera. Writing some of their books off really isn't a good idea when talking about authors like this - with very few exceptions, all of their stuff is good, so if I say, for example, that Old Man's War wasn't nearly as worthwhile as any of Scalzi's other stuff that I've yet read, my poorly-phrased opinion masks the fact that it's still a lot better than most of the dreck I've been obliged to read for non-enjoyment purposes.
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You poor unfortunate soul.
2390045 2390384
Well, when it comes to recommendations it's all opinion, and while I can tailor them when dealing with a specific person, when giving them to such a broad audience as this, the best I can do is to preface them with why I feel they're good and the type of book so that if you enjoy specific genres you'll know which ones are best suited to sample.
It is true that the Codex Alera may be perfectly fine books, but I personally did find them to be rather forgettable, though I should note that I only read the first and simply had little desire to read further. It wasn't a bad book by any means, Jim Butcher is of course a talented author, but I felt that it never really stood out for me and the ham-fisted foreshadowing, heavy use of common fantasy tropes, and odd new words for common things to simply make them feel more alien, just turned me away from the series. It probably didn't help that I felt the series was taking Butcher's attention away from the more personally anticipated series of the Dresden Files, so I might have been a harsher judge than usual.
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See, that's because the comics are badly written fanfiction themselves.
If you're going to write a fanfic about fanfic, you should choose a good story to write it about.
Like Eternal.
I mean, let's face it: why did they pick that book? Because the writer wasn't well-read enough to understand that only pretentious assholes would pick that book as their favorite.
2390457
Well, I can understand your opinion in that case - just like a lot of series, they take a book or two to really get up to speed. My reasons for preferring the Codex Alera series start a little ways in (I'm tempted to say the third, though since I've only just started the second during my current reread, I can't say for sure). It's like reading Storm Front (or The Color Of Magic, or...) and saying the series is alright, but not great - you really need to let it hit its stride to judge for sure.
The alienness is more a matter of preference, of course, but it is at least intentional. For example, I've seen people assume that gargants are just a smeerp name for elephants, but they're actually more like giant ground sloths. I'm having trouble thinking of good examples under pressure, but they're in there.
And of course, you do at least have to respect that the series is basically a full-length published version of a The Most Dangerous Game contest entry. Apparently Butcher was debating someone whether or not you could write a good story with bad premises. Other guy says I bet you you can't, Butcher says I'll take TWO and use both, guy gives him the lost Roman Legion and Pokemon. Even if you don't like it all that much, it's still pretty impressive in that regard.
For being a magical land with a plethora of puns taken straight-faced by the locals, it seems like it would be fitting to put some reference to Piers Anthony's Xanth series in.
2390117 Do it. I must see the result.
2390500 Indeed it would.
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Normally this is where I'd bitch at you for fucking with my comics, but yeah, that was a poor start to the micro series, with far and away the worst art the comics have ever done and a script with too much of a desire to namecheck other works that it gets weird when you think about it like this blog does. It wouldn't surprise me if the writer picked Catcher just because he could think of a pun for the author's name.
Boy howdy it's a good thing the Friends Forever series got a much better first issue, am I right people?
Also, Eternal? Interesting choice. I thought from the slagging on Catcher that we wanted to avoid pretension, but what do I know?
2390583
I was making a joke because Skywriter wrote a story about Twilight reading Eternal.
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But if puns are a part of your everyday life, do you even see them as puns?
Also the Xanth novels became way different over the course of the series. The first few books were quite serious, with the puns being more a background thing; over time, the puns took over and the series became sillier and less serious.
2390457 Dude! No! Don't read "Furies of Calderon" and stop! That'd be like reading "Fool Moon" and stopping!
"Furies of Calderon" is his "setup" book, like the first three Dresden books were. As a result, Furies of Calderon is booooring. You need to read "Academ's Fury!"
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Oh right, I remember that. I liked it better than the source material.
Well, you have to remember she was talking to Rainbow Dash, who was rather bibliophobic at the time. She knew Rainbow too well to recommend a treatise on higher mathematics or anything like that. She does clearly enjoy genre fiction quite a bit, but she could easily prefer other sorts of literature that were simply not so well suited for Rainbow Dash's tastes.
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I'mma argue with you here: In Read It And Weep, Twilight dives for the book-cart, drags Daring-Do out without a second thought, and then says:
"It's the first book in the series! I own all of them. *Squee*"
Those are not the actions of someone who kinda-likes a book and is recommending it purely based on an evaluation of a friend's taste. Those are fangirl actions.
So while canon does not show pulp to be Twilight Sparkle's favourite genre above all else, it undeniably shows that she loves them.
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is how I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how the Dwarves were occupied and all before they left, and why I have tentacles, and all that Elder Edda kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. "
--J. R. R. Salinger, The Watcher in the Water
I'm going to go ahead and completely disagree with you here.
Is it really that hard to imagine Twilight enjoying Catcher In The Rye specifically because it deals with a situation that is completely alien to her? Is it not the point of fiction to explore the impossible, the improbable, and the incredible?
The very fact that she lives in a world where the story presented in the book could never possibly happen could be the entire reason she likes the book. Now, I'm sure you could criticize the author for picking that book and say it should have been another book from a literary point of view based on how you want to present Twilight's character and argue about subtle psychological points for ages on end, but the argument you present here seems hollow.
It doesn't need to be that she relates to the character on that level. She could very easily relate to the character based on his personality and not his circumstances, and then imagine herself growing up in a world without a role-model, and admire the character for managing to succeed in a situation that she, herself, would be completely and utterly lost in.
Twilight is extremely intelligent and fascinated by the unknown. Ironically, by picking a book that details a situation that is fundamentally incompatible with the world as she knows it, she is simply demonstrating that she is drawn to fantastical worlds that couldn't possibly exist in her reality, just like we are. She is drawn to tragic pain that befalls a character in circumstances that simply don't happen in her world, because she has the ability to empathize. It's an insult to her intelligence to say that she is simply incapable of imagining a world without role models simply because she has a goddess as a teacher. As humans, we are capable of making up incredible worlds that have no place in our reality and ground them with made up physical laws. Surely, Twilight Sparkle can imagine a world without Princess Celestia as a mental exercise. Perhaps she cannot truly comprehend it, but who is to say that anyone on this site can truly comprehend what it would be like to live under an immortal goddess?
All we can do is imagine, and sometimes, that's all we need.
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Challenge accepted. Let the conversation begin! Beware, my pretentiousness has no boundaries and my paragraphs are like walls of deadly prose.
Mixture of truth and falsehood there. Fiction is capable of exploring the impossible, improbable, and incredible. However, fiction neither has the responsibility to do so nor is it particularly engaging simply for doing so.
I just finished reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons a few days ago. Great book, 10/10 Literary Porn, buy three copies so you have extras to loan people material. Hyperion is never going to happen. There will be no discoveries of Labyrinthine Worlds, no Fatline transmitters, no Ousters, no planet where a group of pilgrims re-enact The Canterbury Tales as they travel to a strange being all the while being hounded by the specter of John Keats (whose name was writ in water).
But what makes the book engaging is not its foreign elements, but its juxtaposition of them with real elements. The premise and world of the book are fantastical, but the characters who the book revolves around are deep and rich and easy to connect with. All of them are easy to relate to, even the unpleasant or unsavory ones.
What Chuck has outlined were reasons Twilight Sparkle wouldn't find Holden Caufield a particularly realistic protagonist, yes.
They were also the reasons she would never be able to relate to Holden Caufield. And that is a graver sin indeed. Twilight might very well be able to digest Catcher, but she's never going to sit back and declare it a favorite novel because it does not speak to her in the way favorite novels speak to us.
I find this more believable because it posits that Twilight's imagination might run away with her as she becomes entwined with the thoughts of the protagonist. However, I think under the circumstances this would probably result in a nervous breakdown at worst and the book being highly unpleasant to read for her at best because seriously have you seen how she interacts with Princess Celestia early into the show? Disappointing her role models is slightly above "horrible screaming death" on the list of things Twilight Sparkle wants to avoid. Positing a world where Everyone is Phonies is pretty much her worst fear ever, I'd imagine. The book would still have a place in her heart, but I don't think she'd be gushing over it. She'd be approaching it the way I do books where I recognize the craft but am disturbed by the content- with an eighty-foot academic pole and a grimace.
Twilight is fascinated by the unknown in the world she currently lives in. She performs scientific experiments with her magic, performs detailed observations of people when they exhibit traits she's surprised by, and is an avid reader of both history and general nonfiction. She's fascinated by the unknown and she wants to go out and explore it. That's not the same as being invested in any piece of speculative fiction ever, even one you can't relate to.
That and Catcher isn't speculative fiction. It's a novel that's attempting to describe reality as the protagonist sees it. Twilight wouldn't relate to that nearly as easily.
Plus... yeah, I can say as a former fundie it's really easy to imagine living under the reign of an immortal being with my best interests at heart, seeing as I was able to do that for many years. In fact, I've never entirely stopped imagining it, I've just modified my image of what that being would have to look like in order to match up with the reality I see. So that's kind of an odd question. Yes, all of us can imagine a world where this is possible.
The reason we can relate to that world is because the characters living within it are ones we can relate to on a level unrelated to the world they are a part of. Twilight's bookish and reserved, and has serious issues regarding disappointing people. Rainbow Dash is overconfident and a wannabe smooth-talker. Applejack has had enough of everyone else's bullshit and just wants to get her work done, damn it. Pinkie Pie has issues with loneliness. Fluttershy takes a lack of self-confidence to a humorous extreme. Rarity is a visionary who gets distracted by shiny things.
These are all eminently and broadly easy things to relate to. You probably understand what these characters feel like, why they feel like it, and have had experiences that allow you to more easily step into their hooves as it were.
When a character is so alien, so removed from you that you can understand nothing about them... well, then the novel might be engaging on the level of reading something like the memoirs of Hannibal Lecter, but it's not necessarily easy to relate to.
Note that I am not going to advocate that being direct and easy to relate to is the sole way a novel becomes someone's favorite. I am arguing that it is highly improbable that Twilight would be able to relate with the central character of Catcher in a way that would bring her back to the book again and again and again, the way we return to our favorite novels.
I can imagine many things.
But I still can't follow the thought processes of people whose way of thinking through things is totally alien and bizarre. I leave that to Will Graham and other fictional empaths.
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As I mentioned in my post, at this point the argument has devolved into a psychological analysis of Twilight, which can never be anything more than wild extrapolation based on how she's been portrayed.
What I am specifically objecting to is this:
My favorite novel of all time is Watership Down, in which the characters are rabbits. One of the main plot points in one chapter is that the protagonists do not understand laughter. I like the book not because I can strongly relate to any of the characters, but because it presents it's own fictional world that behaves on it's own rules. None of this has anything to do with how my life actually operates, beyond more primitive ideas of survival, but I can project whatever I want on to the adventures of the rabbits of the book. It's my favorite story because it's a damn good story.
I would like to counter with the argument that you are projecting the reasons you like a novel on to Twilight and asserting that everyone likes novels for the same reasons you do. You are making a false assumption that you must be able to relate to the central character of a story in order to enjoy it, and I challenge this notion. I do not think that is required, and I think it is entirely possible for Twilight to be able to name Catcher In The Rye as her favorite novel because of both the storytelling and the circumstances the main character finds himself in, precisely because she herself never had to deal with anything of the sort.
2392753
You know, that's kind of funny.
Watership Down is one of my favorite novels too. I loved learning about Lapine culture. Again, this is a book I have extra copies of in case I lose them. It is a book I am most likely to "lose" if I borrow it. Never loan me a copy.
This is a good point, however, Watership Down is a high fantasy story told using the perspective of garden rabbits- complete with mythologies, languages, monsters, and a sense of exploring a foreign world.
Which is the exact opposite of Catcher in the Rye, which is supposed to be a disaffected and cynical portrait of our world. It is a declaration that "such is the world we live in." That is Catcher's essence. That is the difference. Books like Catcher when they become favorites are not drawing you into a fictional world, they are explicitly trying to comment on reality. And that's why even if I discard everything else, I can't buy your analysis that Twilight would list it as a favorite novel.
That's a fair point, I may very well be projecting. But are you not arguing the same thing? You're even transposing genre in order to make the argument you're constructing as to why it's plausible that Twilight would enjoy the book work. We've gone back and forth using Hyperion (equal parts literary tribute, space opera, and science fiction proper) and Watership Down, but I'm not sure you could really compare them to Catcher. If we understand that the context of the Equestrian Catcher is roughly the same as our own- a disaffected young character who concludes that everyone in the real world, the world Twilight is actually living in and a part of, is "phonies"...
...no, I don't see her being either comfortable with that or particularly enthused.
it's like saying "I can't see why Scarlet wouldn't like Atlas Shrugged. It's so far removed from reality that maybe Scarlet could empathize with the characters inside it and enjoy it because they're so different from each other."
Even if you don't acknowledge it, it's not the fact that you're different that brings you closer to the characters in a novel- it's your ability to empathize with them and understand them on their own terms. A story like Watership builds its world and characters from the ground-up, with both informing the other. Catcher in the Rye starts with the premise that "this is something like the world we live in right now", and then delivers a story with the central conceit of "this is what our world has created."
You cannot equate these two things. One has the advantage of being able to create empathy by showing the similarities between humans/rabbits while also explaining the differences carefully. The other is far more dependent on whether you're willing to constantly wrestle with the author's viewpoint (or at least, the viewpoint assigned to the central character).
Maybe it's because I haven't sat down with it in a few months, but I honestly can't remember that plot point. I remember them being surprised by Kehaar, I remember a few other assorted and amusing Lapine details ("rabbits do not count higher than four") but I seem to remember that laughter doesn't usually freak them out and that they have an entire culture built on telling each other entertaining and sometimes amusing stories. The sequel short novel includes a huge nonsense tale that more or less breaks all the central conceits of the story just to illustrate rabbit fondness for telling those kinds of stories. And I definitely remember that one of Fiver's dream-visions has him encounter, of all things, a sign- which laughs at him mockingly.
I do remember that one plot point involves them not understanding 'art' or 'poetry' when they encounter it, because those just aren't things rabbits "do", and are unnatural.
2393266
To a degree, this is true, and limits my ability to transpose genres here, but there's another hidden assumption here.
It appears that you are objecting to this because as far as we know Equestria does not suffer from the same problems, and therefore Twilight would have no way of appreciating the book. However, this is presumably a ponified version of the book, which implies that somewhere in Equestria, ponies could actually suffer from this same issue. Perhaps things in Manehatten aren't all sunshine and rainbows with the Princess so far away. In fact, wasn't the entire plot of Rarity Takes Manehatten about Manehatten being full of ponies who were, as one might put it, "phonies"? I mean, literally, the central conflict was about Suri Polomare being a phony. How can you say she wouldn't be able to understand someone else coming to that conclusion under different circumstances?
If these issues do exist in her world, Twilight would still be able to understand them, even if she herself did not experience it. It's like how I know poverty really sucks even though I've always lived a comfortable middle-class life. Furthermore, even if there are issues in the book that Twilight would have great difficulty relating to, that doesn't preclude her from identifying with the other issues. You don't have to like everything about a book to make it be your favorite book.
2393294
Because the central premise of Catcher isn't that "some people are phonies." It is "Everyone is Phonies, also you can't preserve innocence forever and eventually it will be corrupted." It's also a book that actually exists in the real world, and transposing it without adjusting it for the fantasy setting of Equestria seems off. Yes, Equestria does have people like Suri Polomare running about.
It also has literal embodiments of disharmony who once plunged the land into a dark age before being defeated by benevolent sibling rulers. Those same sibling rulers then fought each other and one of them literally metamorphosed into a monster because of her jealousy. Then she was sent to the moon for a thousand years and defeated when a rainbow made up of the purest essence of friendship funneled through magical artifacts crashed into her and made her turn into a normal person again.
The point I'm trying to make- and this is extending a bit beyond Chuck's post- is that the world Twilight lives in is so far from the world that created Catcher in the Rye that I'm not sure you could even argue it's the same book. In which case, transposing the plot points verbatim into Equestria for the sake of a horse pun isn't particularly graceful. And it certainly doesn't seem to entirely mesh with what you'd expect Twilight to pick as a favorite novel based on other things we know about her, meaning that the story should be trying to provide a rationale for the choice. Spike Through the Heart used it as a throwaway gag.
Now normally I could leaf right past that in a fic- see my comment below- but it's something Chuck and I zeroed in on while reading mostly because it was surrounded by a really classic ship-fic mistake, which highlighted the strangeness.
At this point we're basically dueling headcanons again, mind.
I'd say you still have to capable of embracing the central theme of the book when you're going to call it your "favorite." I have nothing I could put my hands on as a favorite book, but for quite a long time as a younger kid Ender's Game ruled my world (insert short rant about Orson Scott Card ruining my childhood by being O.S.C. here). As I've become older I've noticed that while I still love the book it's not something I classify as a "favorite" anymore, because while the speculative fiction and characters hold up really well some of the premises don't. I find myself able to understand Ender, but I'm less able to completely accept his actions or to lose myself in him the way I did when I was younger. I've outgrown my attachment to the character, and to the book as a favorite novel.
(and bear in mind, we're talking the subject of favorites here. I don't think Twilight would necessarily entirely dislike Catcher, I just don't see it as being a novel she'd suddenly fangirl squee over).
Instead I find myself empathizing a bit more with the protagonist from Iain M. Banks's sci-fi extravaganza, Use of Weapons. Which is funny because Cheradenine Zakalwe is about as far removed from me as I can imagine, and while Ender is pushed to be a dick, Zakalwe actually is a massive tool. What makes the novel more significant to me than Ender's Game right now, however, is the fact that I feel like the world it presents is more compelling as a dark reflection of our own- and also because almost everything horrible that happens to Zakalwe isn't forced on him by some dark conspiracy of authority figures. Sure, the people in authority really don't have his best interest in mind, but instead of being a victim of those older and wiser he's a "mature" adult and half the horrible things which happen to him are his own damn fault. And he has to scramble to fix them.
This is what makes me think Catcher's an unlikely book for Twilight to list among her favorites. Even if she can understand the themes of poverty and- as she'd understand it- "disharmony", I think there'd be better novels which capture those themes which she'd be more likely to embrace.
2393862
You have to remember that the conclusion of the book, from the point of view of the protagonist, is not a hard and fast reality. When the book concludes that everyone is phonies and innocence must eventually be lost, this is one point of view. Hence, When I reference Manehatten, I am saying that Twilight could potentially consider this a valid but misguided conclusion based on the experiences of the protagonist.
While I agree that this is an unusual and unlikely favorite book for Twilight, I'm trying to point out that it is very difficult to say that it flat out couldn't be her favorite book, without going into psychological analysis and headcanon territory.
2394321
As to Holden's conclusion not necessarily being reality, fair point except then you have to establish that the Equestrian Catcher is a completely different novel built around an unreliable (and not just a difficult or meandering) narrator who sees things differently than the reality he's taking part in would actually be reflected. I really don't remember that being a thing about Catcher.
However as far as "you can't say it's IMPOSSIBLE", I say "fair enough." If well-characterized and explained properly, you can make sense of idiosyncracies.
However can you at least concede it's an unlikely favorite, or even an unlikely part of Equestria? The initial starting point for this, Spike Through the Heart and its use of Catcher, was a very clumsy implementation. Twilight gets fangirly about a big, classic novel that everyone's read, but nothing really explores why she'd like it or what about it she likes or why that novel exists within Equestria.. It's clumsy and shows a lack of forethought from the author. And it would also be very easy to ignore, but Spike Through the Heart doesn't just show a lack of forethought there, it shows a lack of thinking things through in its entire premise. When the big things are wrong and the details are questionable they compound in strange and unrelentingly awful ways to make the reading experience less pleasant.
(Also, as for headcanon territory, the title of the blog post kinda says it all. It's hard to call out something for being part of dueling headcanons when it says so right on the tin.)
A+ blog post.
mmmyes
Wonder how Grant Morrison would feel knowing he's a purple pony princess in another universe. Then again, he doesn't seem to have any qualms about being a monkey with a typewriter in others...
2391656
Dammit Ed. I'd read that.
2390478
YES! And that highlights the biggest damn problem for anyone trying to write Twilight Sparkle: If the writer isn't a joyful, honest, intelligent polymath, they are only going to be able to depict the surface appearance of a character they are incapable of understanding in any depth. Even most of the show writers are guilty of this.
So... now you've made me want to go and read second-person, humanized clopfic.
How is that even possible?