The One Pony She Would Talk To... · 3:16am Feb 17th, 2015
First, a quick reminder that I’ve actually put out two new stories since I last blogged!
Dubious Enchantment won second place in the February writeoff, and I just posted it today. It’s a comedy based around a shop full of magical (cursed) items.
Fit for a Princess is the sequel to A Fact for Twilight, and was posted last Friday. It’s some super feelsy TwiJack.
Check them out if they sound cool.
Second, Jake’s bookplayer bonanza continues today with How to do A Sonic Rainboom. Check it out to see his thoughts on it.
Now, on to the show...
Based on a few fics I’ve been working on, including Fit for a Princess and the someday-sequel to Somepony’s Daughter, I’ve been thinking about a unique capacity that ship fics naturally have for world building. A ship fic has two characters who are unusually close, they love each other, and they’re working towards sharing their lives. I am not saying this is better than friendship, but it’s different. If you are, or are planning to, live with someone, share bodily fluids, build a family (or just be a family,) and stand by each other through everything in their life, you’re going to want/need to know more about them than you would even a best friend.
Ship fics are an open invitation to explore the things that a character doesn’t want anyone to know, or doesn’t like to talk about because it makes them sad, or angry, or confused. For a lot of people, parts of family history fall in here. Past relationships, too, or lack thereof, especially if you’re writing them as adults. Horrifyingly embarrassing moments, phases they went through (for example, it’s my job to ensure that my husband’s journal of awful teenaged goth poetry is never destroyed, despite his objections,) things you feel bad about that you know you shouldn’t, or things you’re secretly glad for even though someone got hurt. These kind of discussions happen when you go to sleep next to someone on a regular basis, or can’t just tell them to go away when you’re dealing with stuff, or when they have access to the back of your closet where you stuck the things you don’t want to look at but can’t get rid of.
The secrets don’t have to be dark, depending on the tone of the fic and how long it is it can be something silly, especially for ponies like Rainbow Dash or Rarity who are likely to guard their most embarrassing moments with their life. It can also be a lack of dark, sad reaction to something dark, which works well for ponies like AJ and Twilight who would understand that they should feel bad about something, but they just… don’t.
There are some great fics out there that have tackled things like this, but not nearly enough for me, especially compared to stories about characters getting together where the big secret it revolves around is that... surprise, Pony loves Other Pony! Having a more character specific, personal hidden thing is such a great way to make the characters and the relationship feel really three dimensional, and show off how they relate to each other. And all of the characters have gaps and open questions in their lives that will probably never be addressed on the show. Just off the top of my head:
Twilight Sparkle: How does she feel about leaving home at a young age to live at school and her relationship with her parents? Does she feel bad or guilty about somepony she wasn’t friends with that she sees now that she should have been? Or about being Princess Celestia’s protege when there might have been other smart ponies in the school that didn’t get as much attention? Also, if any of the mane six have poems somewhere that start “I am a tree, alone atop a barren hill,” I’d bet it’s Twilight.
Applejack: Obviously, there’s her parents, and the whole time in her life surrounding that. But AJ also strikes me as among the most mature and well-adjusted, which opens the door to past relationships and what happened there.(Or, if she hasn’t had past relationships, why not, and how does she feel about that?)
Rarity: The big question with Rarity is when she went from typical Ponyvillian to Rarity, complete with accent and fake eyelashes, and why? And maybe more so than Applejack, Rarity seems like she must have had some past romantic experience-- at the very least stallions seem interested in her and she likely broke a few hearts, which can be just as painful as having one broken. And of course, as I mentioned, Rarity is one of the ponies most likely to be hiding the time she tried to dye her own mane, and her hair fell out, and she had to wear a wig for a year.
Rainbow Dash: We know she either dropped out or was kicked out of flight school, but we know nothing about how she felt about that, how ponies close to her reacted, or if she ever bothered to get the flight school equivalent of a GED (if there is such a thing.) We also know that she moved to Ponyville on her birthday, which also raises some questions. We’ve seen her with her dad (or a male family member) when she was a filly, but we aven’t seen them at the major events we’ve seen her in, like the Best Young Flyer competition and the Equestria Games (as opposed to Twilight’s family, who at least showed up for her brother’s wedding and her coronation.) Were they there, or is there a reason they weren’t? Also, as with Rarity, there’s a good chance that Rainbow Danger Professionalism Dash has done some silly stuff that she’d rather her friends didn’t know about, but a special somepony might stumble on.
Fluttershy: Fluttershy had a rough foalhood, and she’s pretty open about that. In fact, I would say of all of them Fluttershy is the most likely to have good things that she’s hiding because she doesn’t want to make ponies feel bad--rich or famous connections, awards or recognition she’s received, hidden talents… we know she picked up a freaky and thorough knowledge of sewing and fashion history somewhere, what else is she not telling ponies that she might reveal to a special somepony?
Pinkie Pie: While we the audience have seen Pinkie’s family, she’s… not the most trustworthy of narrators to other ponies (“...and that’s how Equestria was made!”). It would be easy to build a fic around a lover finding evidence for just about any kind of story or situation she’s never hinted at, and trying to get the whole story straight.
… and that’s just the most developed characters on the show. Any side characters are wide open for whatever history and secrets you want to give them.
Now I do have a few words of advice for approaching it and avoiding pitfalls:
Obviously these things need to fit with what we do know from canon. Applejack probably didn’t go through a girly phase after she came back from Manehattan, but she might have before. Twilight might have had any number of crushes, but since she didn’t have time for friends it would be pretty illogical if she had time for a boyfriend.
Along the same lines, they have to fit with how the characters act in canon. You could probably play it so that Fluttershy has an aunt who’s a famous fashion designer who she would never, ever mention for fear of making Rarity jealous. AJ or Twilight would mention that with no problem. On the other hoof, if AJ got teases as a foal, it would be a lot harder to get her to admit how much it bothered her than it is to get Fluttershy to talk about it.
Some secrets are overdone. A character needing to come out of the closet and one of the CMC being someone’s illegitimate daughter come to mind. Rainbow Dash having a previous romantic relationship with Gilda is such common fanon that it would be hard to pull off as a secret unless there was something else involved. You probably want to avoid these unless you have a really creative twist.
Pay really, really close attention to the weight of the revelation. There is nothing that will throw off a story like a character treating a personal revelation as either heavier or lighter than they really would. This is sometimes different for different characters, and even if they apply the lesson from Lesson Zero there might be secrets that are a very big deal to one pony that require trying to stifle laughter from their partner. But at the same time certain thing are always a big deal. Even with the character who has the secret tries to pass it off as nothing, other characters who are just hearing it will react appropriately.
Obviously, these ideas can work for friendshipping as well, it’s not always a relationship that prompts people or ponies to reveal their secrets. But in a relationship secrets are going to come out, and there’s either a conversation about stuff or else a whole story to be found there. Instead of more stories where the big secret is that Pony has a crush on Other Pony, why not write one where they’re already together and the thing they don't want to talk about brings something new to the character and setting, and brings our loveponies closer together?
Just a thought!
Thanks to my February subscribers: Jake R, Ultiville, Singularity Dream, bats, Merc the Jerk, nemopemba, diremane, First_Down, sopchoppy, jlm123hi, Bradel, stormgnome, JetstreamGW, and Lambent Dream. If you want to see your name in links, or get other fabulous prizes, check out this post for information on how to subscribe: Subscription Info.
I still haven't managed to figure out where the line is between Terrible Teenager Poetry and Legitimate Art.
Aside from that, you make a very excellent point! My idea-inator is guilty of not paying enough attention to these concepts, I think. So hopefully it will become so! And hopefully we can see more fics that pay more attention to who and less attention to what. That does seem to be the missing link.
Although, it's a tricky line to walk, because I know that at least I can tend to reject more outlandish ideas. It takes a bit for me to get used to blatantly foreign additions to Equestria; maybe that's part of why tropes like RD/Gilda are so common.
I was reading through this and doing the usual "look at these freakily insightful things that writers notice" and noting how they all fit and most relevant facts were being considered and then I hit this:
We know this? I'm not sure where you got this, much less that it's unequivocally elucidated by canon events. But you seem pretty sure about this so... how, exactly, do we know this?
Now I'm imagining a moody, angsty teenage Twilight as the most nerdy and regimented goth ever.
She might have graduated early as well; it is entirely plausible. She's an excellent flyer, after all, and it is possible she just pushed to get out of there ASAP. Honestly, we have no idea what happened; the only ponies to tell us that weren't necessarily very reliable.
I think the real question is when you do a revelation like that, at this point, it isn't really a twist because we've seen it before. As such, using it as a twist won't really work, but using it as a part of something else might be more effective (unless you're springing it on a naive audience, anyway). To be fair, Ruin Value worked surprisingly well despite how many times that particular idea has been done, so obviously lots of people haven't seen that stuff - and frankly we may be overstating the visibility of older stories. I mean, we've all read Home Grown at this point, but a lot of new people probably haven't.
Gaynst in general is overdone, though I think there are ways of making it interesting; that being said, it is a somewhat tired genre mostly because such stories tend to be so predictable (unless you're parasprite).
2804198 2804287
From the exchange with the bullies in Sonic Rainboom, who accuse her of being kicked out because there were "too many rules and not enough nap times" we can reasonably assume that Rainbow Dash stopped attending flight school suddenly, and that her love of napping and dislike of rules was widely known.
This lines up with what we know about her character in season 1, along with what she said in Testing, Testing 1,2,3 about "all her years as class clown" keeping her from learning how to learn.
She specifically, defensively denies having been kicked out. She could have graduated early, so I'll agree that we don't know those things, but given that she didn't bring that up at any point in either of those episodes (and that's not the sort of secret Rainbow Dash would keep) I'm going to continue to assume it's one or the other unless someone makes a good argument to the contrary in a fic.
Could you expand on this? I understand the feeling, but I'm not sure what Applejack or Twilight have to do with it. Neither of them have ever struck me as lacking empathy. When have they ever not shown sympathy towards someone in the show who needed it?
2805527
That's why I think that would be something they wouldn't admit to other ponies.
If, for example, Applejack wasn't as sad as she thought she should be about her parents death, or if Twilight was asked out by a stallion back in Canterlot, then stood him up with no explanation (to him), it's the sort of thing they'd feel guilty about even if they had a logical explanation. And that's the sort of thing they might admit to a lover during a late night conversation to get it off their chest.
I mentioned AJ and Twilight because they tend to be both honest, logical, and empathic, so to not be able to admit their true (or lack of) feelings to anypony would probably be the most realistic and dramatic application. Pinkie or Fluttershy would be more dramatic, but it's hard to imagine a realistic explanation for them not feeling bad for something bad happening to anyone, while Dash and Rarity are more likely to accept their reasons for their own emotions and not hold themselves to quite as high a standard of empathy. AJ and Twilight are both capable of thinking "He had it coming" or "I didn't do X because Y," really understanding that, and beating themselves up for it at the same time.
2805933
Okay, that makes sense.