The pony most likely to kill themselves... · 9:20pm Sep 23rd, 2014
Rainbow Dash died yesterday. She took her own life.
I think Fluttershy died the day before that. Same cause.
And prior to that, Rainbow died. In fact, I think she died four times in eight hours. Well, you know Rainbow: nopony's allowed to top her for anything, and that includes suicide. So she has to keep on killing herself. Which really puts a crimp in her schedule, because she also has to outsuicide Twilight, Rarity, and Pinkie. Also possibly Applejack. ( I've never seen Applejack kill herself, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.) And on a particularly active day, Spike. I'm not sure how she plans to outdo Spike, especially as some dragon suicides probably just don't work for ponies. It's not as if she could even bite into that jewel in the first place...
Suicide is a powerful topic. In a story, it can lead into any number of deep themes, including how so many people live with depression (until the moment they don't), the causes for making that final decision, and how few ever truly perceive the pain they leave behind in an attempt to end their own. Because it's such a strong tool in the right hands, it gets taken off the shelf a lot. Locally, I've suggested that it was at least gingerly touched by two different hooves before those ponies backed away, so let's not call me innocent in this. She is also considering it over on Triptych, with what some might call good reason -- and it's leading to discussion of whether the act can ever be justified among some of the other characters.
But when taken across all of FIMFic... ponies kill themselves. A lot.
Looked at cumulatively, it almost starts to seem vindictive. Here's some characters who often have happy lives and the support of friends to get them through the rough patches. Let's take that away from them! Nopony can be happy! Ever! Some people would rather die than have them be happy -- well, rather have them die. And all it takes to kill them is to write the words.
Taken individually... you can see motivations if you want to.
Rainbow: constant driving internal pressure to succeed. Can't keep up with herself.
Twilight: internal and external: unable to live up to what she sees as Celestia's standards.
Fluttershy: life is just too hard to get through every day, and the other option possibly only has to be dealt with once.
Rarity: you know, nopony ever truly appreciates an artist until after their demise, yes?
Pinkie: as said, nopony can be that happy all the time, so...
Applejack: sick of all that barn building.
...what? I've seen the least AJ suicide stories scroll down the New column.
Okay, fine: Applejack: can't handle the responsibilities of being a virtual parent plus the farm, overworked and overtired and now just plain over.
Spike: no respect, fear of his adult self and has to stop it before that comes to pass, isolation of species -- with Spike, we could keep going for a while.
And that's just the Mane Cast. I'm sure there's lots of other ponies killing themselves every day. I'd be surprised if every named character in Equestria hasn't reached for a noose at least once, although tying the thing is going to be a two-thirds-of-the-time problem. There may be a group exit somewhere on the site. There could be several. I'm afraid to Google for grape-flavored drink. Oh, and if Celestia and Luna go together, anypony following might be considered to have an assist, or at least be preempting the inevitable.
So... why?
Is it just because the topic is a strong-enough tool that everyone's taking it down from the shelf? Are people working through their own crises by giving them to surrogates? Either is legitimate and, for the latter, potentially helpful.
But I do wonder if there's something darker going on with a few of the stories. Writers are killers, many of us. We create some characters specifically so they can die. (This is especially common in mysteries and anything G.R.R. Martin has ever touched.) We brought you into that world and we're taking you out. Sometimes, that's in the service of the story.
But at other times... does someone see something beautiful, untouchable, forever out of reach... and just decides to destroy it? I'd be shocked if that hadn't happened at least once. Or a few dozen times. Possibly several hundred, and that's just on this site.
(This could turn into a post on the recent run of 'humans kill all extant ponies in a war, because clearly we can, at least for the author's personal definition of 'clearly'' stories. Let's not have it do so until at least the third Comment.)
The last time I saw a pony suicide story go through the New column, I briefly thought about writing a response to the subgenre. A story in which every single pony in Equestria committed suicide.
It would have been a comedy.
ETA: I accidentally tagged this blog post to go with Twilight's Escort Service. I apologize for that, and it has been fixed.
I would gladly do what I can to facilitate that story happening.
In my Shadow Wars continuity, two of the Mane Six have considered suicide, both of them when they were in adolescence. Neither have attempted it, but both got to the point of actually seizing the necessary implement and holding it in preparation.
A Robust Solution
RealityCheck, you forgot to relogin.
Suicide is cheap, and that's about it.
You get a lot of reactions, feels, etc, for relatively easy to write words, "so why not?"
Seems that I don't really follow the trend. In twenty stories, I had only one suicide and one attempt, both caused by the feeling of guilt – in the first case, Lyra survived a battle, but shot herself after witnessing a POWs massacre (it's that kind of a fic). In the second, Diamond Tiara tried to hang herself, seeing it the only way to stop herself from killing other ponies. Then she almost killed Apple Bloom when she stopped her.
Suicide should not be introduced as cheap thrills. Life isn't cheap. Characters should have good reasons (from their POV) to even contemplate suicide.
I can't help but think of Mogworld, where perpetually respawning MMO NPCs turn suicide into a hobby bordering on an art form.
In any case, I can't really speak for the authors in question. There seem to be a number of reasons: easy drama, spite, actual serious consideration of the topic (hey, there's bound to be a few of them,) or even just wanting to set up a funeral without turning forward the clock too far. Really, I don't see the appeal.
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I just pictured him sitting bolt upright, sniffing the air, and softly saying 'I feel offended, and I don't know why...'
(To be fair, just about every writer on the site would have that reaction to the suggestion of secretly being me, at least after you allowed for a few changes of pronoun.)
I've made it policy to avoid those kind of stories. They tend to be written because somebody loves something that they can't have so much that they have to destroy it.
Having two friends try, and one succeed (by inches) makes it really, really hard for me to consider using suicide as a cheap pathos tool. Or a way of saying "I have some control over this thing, and I will use that control to break it to pieces." It makes me very, very angry to see it used that way.
This is not to say that such is a worthwhile tool of writing...just, Sturgeon's Law applies here. 90% of the stories that use it are crap.
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This post is SO in his style! Like you were possessed by his spirit.
Also, what's wrong with being you? Why anyone would feel offended by this?..
I've never included it. I'm not one to normally proscribe an idea, and if handled well stories or discussions about suicide can be beneficial.
The problem is, who do you trust in this fandom to handle suicide that well?
I've seen far too many stories that feature suicide not of any pony characters, but rather humans. I'm sure you've seen them yourself -- I call the genre 'Suicide into Equestria.' A misunderstood teenage brony is sad and kills himself, and wakes up in Equestria as a pony.
It's wish fulfillment disguised as suicide, and if we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit that there are a great number of emotionally fragile or unstable people in this fandom. Emotionally fragile suggestible people.
If it sounds silly, remember that it's happened before. When Goethe published The Sorrows of Young Werther in the late 18th Century, an unknown but probably not insignificant number of young men died in a spate of copycat suicides.
Is there literary merit to writing about suicides? Certainly. But as far as I'm concerned it's playing with fire, and I don't feel comfortable with that.
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That seriously bothers me, and for the obvious reason. It could encourage confused and deluded teenagers to kill themselves.
I'd never write that. In the two occasions I've had characters contemplate suicide (both mentioned in the same story) I had my protagonist (one of the ones who had contemplated it) point out (to the other one who had contemplated it) that suicide is an ugly deed and a poor solution to life's problems. The opinion wasn't accidental.
Screw Loose has a screw for a cutie mark. This seems to suggest that being psychotic is her special talent.
Destiny is very active in Equestria. Yet, the regular appearance of titanic monstrosities, the fact that there's a standard procedure to lock those monstrosities up for millenia and slowly go insane, and generally the fact that Equestria is horribly messed up in all kinds of ways suggests that destiny sometimes gets things horribly horribly wrong, or else doesn't care. I keep thinking of different vignettes and characters that are variations on this theme that don't seem to have much in the way of a writeable story around them.
Here's one: Somewhere in Equestria there is a depressed blank flank adult who will be found in his flat with one noose around his neck, and an identical one on his butt.
Congrats on 700
stalkersfollowers2477927
I've been lucky: one friend, one attempt, stopped. But I was sort of there for it, live: it was announced in chat, and... well, that's why it got stopped.
The time spent waiting to find out if it had been stopped is not one of my better memories.
You have reason for the anger.
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I find very few people enjoy being called Piano Murdering Pony Hitler. (And now, Knuckleball Pitcher.)
RC and I don't interact much and likely intersect even less. We had a long argument on one story, he enjoyed another. I think that's been about it.
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Would you believe I'd managed to dodge the entire genre until you brought it up?
*sigh* I've always felt that someone in the mindset for a given act can always locate a final excuse: if something isn't available to copy, something else can be invented. A style could be mimicked, but not always incentive. But at the same time... some people on the verge of that last push can see a model to follow. So I understand the fear.
Adding one in here:
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So I couldn't tackle that specific genre. (And knowing about it gives me some long-term concerns.) Because you could get a good story out of it, or even try to Owl Creek a shock save at the end... but there is that dread of feeling as if you're pointing out the road.
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That, however, is just cruelly Addams-level funny.
2477927 Only 90%? You, sir, are an horrible optimist.
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I'm guessing that Screw Loose once had a different Mark; that Marks can change under sufficient pressure. Or that her Mark once meant something very different.
2478048 My optimism remains, because there are good stories out there that I just haven't found yet. I just really wished for more ways for the cream to rise to the top, rather than the crap.
Of course, your definition of cream vs. crap may vary...
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I'm assuming you mean in relation to the Mane 6, because the last chapter of Salvation...
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It's no more cheap than having a character killed in any other fashion. Like in most things, what you do tends to matter less than how you do it.
2478052 It seems obvious to me, her talent is screws. In pony society where most tools are held either by mouth or hoof, screwdrivers that require fine manipulation aren't popular. The stress of trying to sell screws just got to her obviously.
As to my take on the overall issue I really don't get it. I mean yes it seems reasonable enough ponies might feel that way, but why write about ponies killing themselves, it boggles the mind. Though I do try to avoid dark fics in general, but still it's just beyond my understanding why anyone would want to right about that sort of thing.
And then I read a story not marked with a sad tag that was about Alicorn Twilight killing herself while being rather upbeat about it. Immediately I had the thought that with my headcannon that wouldn't even work, because she wouldn't stay dead. This resulted in Twilight kills herself a lot. It's a (mostly) lighthearted comedy from Dash's POV. I confuse myself sometimes.
2478055 My definition of crap may be rather strict, but even if it would be loosened up I would still venture to guess that 99.999% of stories with suicide in them did it poorly. And only that because I'm a believer of statistical anomalies that prove the rule.
Because depression and feeling the need to suicide is so goddamn relative to a person's circumstances, even genuine sharing can trivialize what others are going through or have gone through and walked away from. For any author, let alone those on this site, there just is no good angle to it.
I think the innumerable crapsack-apocalypse conversion stories out there come closer to the idea of Wreck Something Nice Just To Do It. Suicide stories strike me more as either a quick pathos grab or an actual attempt by an author to deal with a personal pain or tragedy.
The cynic in me says people see the show as "too cute" and feel a need to "even things out" with a little grimdark.
The optimist(?) in me suspects these overdone "mature" topics are already clichéed in other media people encounter, and they write what they (think they) know. It'd explain all the nonsensical video game crossovers, at least.
Actually, a suicide comedy has been written. I think it's called the many deaths of rainbow dash, or something like that. Basically, rainbow becomes immortal, but also incredibly unlucky in death, and she repeatedly is killed by a series of ridiculous coincidences, and she and twilight have to hide all the corpses and stuff from other ponies.
Also, I'm surprised you didn't touch on sacrificial suicide (as in dying to save something/somepony else) , which is more subtle but also incredibly commonly used. I can think of two stories at least off of the top of my head. Often times, these characters are also the mane six, though primarily either twilight or one of the princesses.
Suicide is a subject that is easy to mishandle.
I've never quite understood the point of those stories. They invariably suffer from terrible OOC tendencies, for both ponies and humans. It might be interesting to see a story that handled an Equestria-Earth war realistically, perhaps following the steps of first contact and the misunderstanding that sparked the conflict. Their languages could be different, and perhaps Equestria ponies become nigh indistinguishable from small Earth horses when in Earth's magicless environment. Perhaps magic is fatal to humans. It would be easy for some sort of misunderstanding to occur that caused one side to believe it was under attack; perhaps there's a portal between the worlds, and the creation of the portal seemed like an attack, or caused some sort of damage on one side. There are many ways that such a conflict could be realistically depicted, without twisting the characters. And only imagine what might be done with the realization that all the violence has occurred over something neither side intended. Were I a better writer, I might attempt to redeem the genre. Alas, it shall likely languish in its present state of disrepute.
Weird coincidence. I wrote one myself about two weeks ago, put it up late at night, and ended up pulling it from the site the next morning. For me, the biggest 'hook' to it was the persistant hopelessness and violent, intrusive thoughts that might accompany such a depressed mindset.
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I wouldn't be offended if someone suggested I was secretly you. Although I would question their sanity. I would love to have half your writing talent.
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I'm more of a 'friendly contact' guy myself, but your description made me think of SCP-1322
2477918 I would consider it a huge honor to be mentioned in the same sentence as you.
Hmm. Haven't seen one in which a Mane 6 character even contemplates it, but I have seen two other characters attempt it, and one succeeds.
(The two stories are Too Far and the incomplete Why Am I Crying?, by the way.)
I don't have the desire, the need, or the writing chops to take it on, but yeah. There are a lot of authors with one of the first two, but as with any kind of story, not necessarily the third...
I think there's a few things.
1) Yes, the destroy something beautiful thing.
2) A misguided attempt to increase suicide awareness.
3) A lack of understanding of depression and suicide.
4) Depressed people wanting to write about something like that and allying themselves with the characters.
It doesn't really fit with the world or the characters very well, at least not in the present. I could see Fluttershy having attempted it at some point.
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I've been kicking around a Robin Williams goes to Equestria story. It would be a black comedy, because I'm a terrible person. Though it would start with him in Equestria. And he would immediately regret it, as people who attempt suicide usually do. I remember reading about one guy who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge:
I haven't written it because I have better story ideas I need to work on.
I feel that a lot of writers (probably most writers) want to seek an audience through shock and awe. They want to write something powerful (or at least something that they can convince someone of being powerful), and so, instead of putting forth the effort of trying to connect a reader to a character and then showing a logical and frightening path to certain dark or sad moments, they grab the scariest and darkest topic they can come up with, and shove it onto the characters that we here at Fimfiction are already well connected to.
Sadly, this is the default for a lot of writers seeking to make an impact, and for this reason, it actually 'dilutes the market', so to speak, and soon we readers begin to feel less and less about those stories because most of them are written for such a reason.
Now of course there are good writers who use the topic seriously and decently, and writers who have some real experience with it and wanted to communicate and raise awareness as to the seriousness of the topic. I respect this authors. But they are the minority.
Of course few writers will admit "yeah, I just wanted to make a click bait story" or "I don't know how to write sad stories so I just chose a topic that everyone takes seriously", and they'll say and even believe that they understand the seriousness of this topic, and they just might, but we know that, subconsciously at least, a good portion of them were hoping that it would be the reason their story got popular (assuming that it did).
Now I don't want to say this is bad practice, for writers to use suicide in their stories, particularly when it is used properly and not just as a click bait tool, and I believe that it is indeed a serious thing that does need awareness. I'm just sayin' this is how it works in the world of fan fiction. And sadly, it is quite ineffective, disgusting, and perhaps may have negative effects on how we perceive this topic, and might even be an instigator for an actual event (I pray that such doesn't occur). I don't know for sure, but I hope that writers think twice before using suicide in their stories.
I've seen one suicide story that I thought handled it well, and that was The Last Report by BRBrony9.
More often, suicide fics make me angry. Not because of personal experience, though I've had some (a friend hung himself when we were seniors in high school, a friend OD'd in college and I don't know if it was intentional, and my father attempted via bridge jump during a psychotic episode when I was in middle school). But simply because, so often, the characters are handled badly and the reasons given don't even come close to justifying their actions, and the worst of those are Twilight Hates Immortality Because She's All Alone Now (So Long As You Ignore Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Spike, And Discord) And The Only Answer Is To End It stories.
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I now have this image, of Scooby Doo-like, every author here pulling off their latex masks to reveal that they're all clones of you...
Your choice if it's comedy, horror, or shocked awe.
See, for a moment Twilight's Escort Service took on yet another meaning.
TES: Escorting you to the other side.
This absolutely happens. I think most of us could name some stories that are all about destroying or defiling the ponies and Equestria.
On the subject: If I were to write a suicide-themed fic, it would be about an attempted and unsuccessful suicide, the causes which drove the pony to that, and their recovery with the help of others.
Or, possibly, it would be a black comedy about the Flower Trio setting up a suicide pact, and their bumbling and unsuccessful attempts to off themselves at the drop of a hat.
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Oh gosh, you're right. Well, in my defense, my portrayal of a suicide was meant to show how damaging and traumatic the event is for all concerned.
Huh. Can't believe I forgot that.
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We get a lot of EqD submissions based on that premise. The other pre readers have learned to let me have them so I can get this rant out of my system from time to time.
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Several people, actually. Oddly enough, I've seen around half of them in this very thread.
Or maybe it's not that odd. The people I trust to handle suicide well are the good writers who I don't think take suicide lightly. And people who don't take suicide lightly are fairly likely to be unhappy when other writers do take it lightly, so I would expect to see them show up in these comments if they saw this blog post.