EJust What I'm Fighting For
MLP: FiM
Adventure
Sad
So much chaos, so much death. Equestria is in turmoil, and Starswirl is in despair. How could he have ever thought that he would end it? Why did he ever think he could make a difference?
OC
Starswirl
The Wandering Bard · 3.2k words · 20 0 · 459 views

Writing Reflections: Part 5 · 3:06pm Jul 4th, 2016

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to the last edition of Bard's Writing Reflections... for now. Today, I'll be talking about my latest story, Just What I'm Fighting For. But first, thank you to everyone who helped to have Just What I'm Fighting For appear on the Popular List, and thank you to everyone who helped to make it the story that it is.

Now, onward!

Just What I'm Fighting For
As I stated in m previous blog, I was sickened and saddened by the attacks against the LGBTQ community at the Pulse nightclub. And then, somehow, Halo's words in Guardian Halo came back to me.

"Halo finally found Starswirl as dawn neared, and he could see that her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. 'Why, Starswirl? Why does this have to happen? What have these ponies done to deserve this fate?' Her voice was thick with sorrow.
"Starswirl sighed. 'I don't know, Halo, but we must continue searching. We have to ensure that all of this fighting ends.' Halo could see that Starswirl's eyes were red-rimmed as well.

I had also remembered how I sometimes have dreams that feel like I've been reunited with a lost loved one. Those were the starting points for this latest tale. I had never intended to create a sequel for Guardian Halo, yet, slowly, a story arc started to form. Starswirl's journey would have continued, but he would see no changes in Equestria's state. He would despair, thinking he is no good to anypony anymore. And then, he meets Halo once again while in the Never, who shows him that he can indeed still make a difference. I sincerely wanted to write this story as a way of contributing something to this world myself, to hopefully provide some comfort to those who may still be reeling from the attacks, or to at least shine a bit of light on this world once more.

There are some intentional and unintentional parallels between this and Guardian Halo, as well an intentional discrepancy. For the parallels, I wanted to make Corona a pegasus like Halo had been to show the differences between Corona and Halo. Whereas Halo was, and still is, a bit idealistic (at least for now; that does change by the time she meets Lyric), Corona has become world-weary, though not quite hardened. Corona has seen all of the horrors of war, though she - and her troops - fight to make the world better for all. An unintentional parallel was having this story start with Starswirl on a battlefield late at night, and to end with a sunrise. Although the timing is vague in Guardian Halo, we do know from Lyric's tale that Halo and Starswirl worked through the night to save as many lives as they could, and the story ended shortly after sunrise. I originally had it so that the story started as the sun set and the moon rose, but my friend Protopony350 suggested having a sunrise at the end so that both the sun and the moon could be visible in the sky. I did like the idea, and the parallel, and so it was changed.

For the intentional discrepancy, we see that Lyric states that Halo is Starswirl's friend in Guardian Halo, yet Starswirl cannot understand why Halo calls him her friend in Just What I'm Fighting For. This is because Lyric would have found Halo's tale buried in a previously unknown soldier's diary - much in the same way that Ken Burns found previously unknown solders' accounts for his Civil War documentary - one who was there when Halo was made into an alicorn, and so they would have assumed that, since Starswirl and Halo are travelling together, they are friends. And whether Lyric knows the truth and kept that bit in for the sake of the tale, or whether she also believed that Halo and Starswirl were friends, I shall leave that to you to decide.

Now, as for the story itself. The first draft was rather rushed, and the ending was rather bland. I did not know what to do about this, and asked some of my friends their opinions. It was then that my friend Will-Owl-the-Wisp mentioned that Starswirl was merely watching things happen, as if on a screen, rather than experiencing them. That really was the breakthrough for this tale. I added dream versions of Starswirl into the visions Halo showed him, and had him react much more to what he saw. And then, at the end of it all, when he has awoken, he truly sees the soldiers he was helping for the first time, and so he is able to reflect in a way that he hadn't before. This also helped me to convey the message I had wanted to convey from the start as there had been no place for it before, as well as to give Starswirl a more believable character arc within the story itself.

As for the title, you might notice that it is titled similarly to another story of mine. Originally, I was going to name this story The World I Know, as I was constantly listening to the Collective Soul Song of the same name because of how much it made me think of my story and the state of things in the world. That was the inspiration behind this line:

Scouring the field before him, Starswirl said, “This is the world I know, Halo, but it’s not the one I want.” The vision faded, and his eyes glazed over. “And I don’t know what to do about it.”

(Fun fact: another song that really reminds me of this story is Bush's All Night Doctors.)

However, I then was listening to BlackGryph0n and Baasik's song Faster Than You Know, and the lines, "And I'd give anything to know what I'm trying for / Just what I'm fighting for..." really jumped out at me. It felt like a much more fitting title for this tale, because those two lines perfectly encapsulate what Starswirl is feeling at this point in time. And this is indeed the same song that inspired the similar title of my other story.

And now, my friends, we truly have reached the end of these Writing Reflections. It was a lot of fun for me to look back on these stories, and to share these thoughts and opinions with all of you. I hope to keep this going with any new tales that I write, so there will likely be more to look forward to. Cheers, everyone!