From Pierside to Pony: Reasons MLP fans might want to check out my book · 2:48am Jul 30th, 2016
(Plus some free stories for you to read.)
Before I get into this, a quick note about how I decided to do this: This month, my Monday blog post will be happening and will be about novel writing; specifically, a method I’m calling “The Inefficient Method.” They can be read as either warnings or legitimate tips, depending on where you are in life and what you hope to accomplish. They’ll also be spoiler free, I think? But more on that Monday.
Fridays, like today, I’m going to be talking specifically about my novel and linking to stories promoting it. I’m hoping I can do this in such a way that it will be interesting to read and not like me talking about my favorite D&D character (18th level halfling rogue who formed her own thieves guild.) There will be minor spoilers, but I’ll outline what kind before the cut.
Somewhere in there, I’ll also be publishing pony words: a handful of minifics to Apple Potpourri, and one or two short stories.
Now for today’s blog! This is the answer to the question "I like stories about cartoon ponies; is this book for me?" If you only ever read one post about Pierside, I recommend this one.
The post itself is spoiler level one: Information about the setting and characters that you’ll learn shortly after their introduction in the book, or not at all in the text because it has nothing to do with this story. There’s no information in here that I wouldn’t put on the back cover blurb, if the back cover blurb were 1500 words long. The stories linked at the end are spoiler level two: They might contain information or details that would let you put together things revealed in the first four chapters of the book.
Unlike a lot of people here, it wasn't a surprise to me that I fell into MLP fandom; as soon as I heard about the show, I knew I was going to be hooked. The types of characters and themes in MLP are ones I love in any medium, and they tend to show up in anything I write.
In fact, it was something like a half a year between when I first heard about MLP and when I watched the show. See, I heard about this character, Applejack, and she sounded a lot like one of the characters in my novel. Since I knew I'd be writing fanfic and analyzing the hell out of MLP, I needed to finish my novel before I dove in so I didn't end up being influenced or looking like I had copied the character.
It's probably a good thing I did that, both because I actually finished my novel, and because I probably would have been influenced.
I've written pony fic in a lot of different tones and maturity levels. I've aged characters up by decades and written them humanized. But for me there's an inherent "pony-ness" to everything I've written. It's hard to explain, but I see the main characters, and a lot of the side characters, as having an inherent goodness to them. I might disagree with them philosophically, but the core is an unselfish, active desire to do the right thing. Even if they sometimes mess up, or try to set that aside, or have no clue what the right thing is.
If I were tagging Pierside for FiMfiction, aside from being about humans and not in the show setting, it would be tagged Dark. And it would have the Gore tag, and probably be rated Teen, though it's definitely skirting Mature based on subject matter (and language. My characters cuss a lot.) In fact, I’m going to include the trigger warning again here: Suicide and ethical questions surrounding it are a major plot element in Pierside. If you feel like you need more information, please contact me. I’d be happy to go into as much detail as you want to let you balance your mental health with a desire to read it. Also, don’t kill yourself.
There would be other tags, too, but they can be spoilery so I’ll leave them off; the important thing is that I’m not claiming Pierside is a “show-style” story.
But to me, a lot of the things that make a story "pony" are actually still there, and that starts with the characters. When I watched MLP and looked at my characters, I saw some interesting parallels. Now, I know the characters in MLP are very trope based, so it’s not hard to find aspects of them in characters from other properties. But my writing tends to be trope-based, it’s one of the things that drew me to a 1930s setting where noir and old Hollywood have developed tropes that are nearing archetypical. So that makes for some very strong connections in some cases.
...Which I’m going to talk about now because I’m a huge dork.
Maddy West, the character I was worried about, is a strong mix of Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie. In surface details, she's a lot like AJ: she's from a small farm in some mountains that are an obvious Appalachia stand in, and speaks with an accent; she was orphaned at 13, and raised the rest of the way by her brothers (one of whom doesn't appear in the book, but is totally Big Mac. Like, if people accuse me of copying in a story where he shows up, I have no defense except "no, really, I wrote this character before I watched the show.") She also shows a lot of AJ with her best friend, Ezzy; they have a very AJ and Twilight relationship, with Maddy counting on her to point in the right direction, calming Ezzy down when she gets panicky, and supplying a more empathic common sense that Ezzy has trouble with. (More on Ezzy in a sec.)
But with everyone else, Maddy is much more along the lines of Rainbow Dash in personality. She's hot-headed, aggressive, cocky, and blunt. She's generally laid back and refuses to take much seriously, until it comes to a challenge or defending people she cares about. Unfortunately, in those cases, she's not so much for planning. Shoot first, and hope someone else already asked the questions. She dropped out of school in the seventh grade and never cared much for books, though I'm 100% sure she'd love Daring Do.
The connection to Pinkie is the loosest, being based in part on totally not MLP things, but I think it's the most telling. First of all, Maddy likes drinking and sex, a lot, and is utterly shameless about it. But she likes them because they're fun; her bluntness and flirting come totally from the idea that everyone should be having fun, and there's no reason to be ashamed of putting it out there. She also refuses to take life too seriously, and refuses to let the people around her fall into that. Since she met Ezzy, it's been her driving goal in life to make her smile and relax, and she's about the only person who can do it. If Maddy was to bear an Element of Harmony you could make a case for Honesty or Loyalty, but I think I'd give her Laughter.
So, Maddy turned out to be less like any one character than I'd feared. But the big surprise was Ezzy.
Ezzy is arguably the main character of the book, and heavily influenced by my having been a teenaged girl in the 90s, and falling in love with the whole Darlene Conner/Wednesday Addams/Daria Morgendorffer character type that was popular then. But Ezzy ended up a bit less snarky and a lot more neurotic, vulnerable, earnest, and curious.
It took me until I was writing A Fact for Twilight to realize that Ezzy is Twilight, from a dark AU.
If I ever wrote an AU story where something awful had happened to Twilight, something that destroyed her confidence and enthusiasm and especially her faith in Princess Celestia, but it left her intellect, her organized mind and desire to understand things, her earnest desire to do good and be helpful, and her difficulty relating to other ponies (and occasional awkwardness or snark as a result)... I would be writing Ezzy. Complete with the feeling that those missing traits should be there, and are there under the surface, but something went very wrong.
Of course, Ezzy has a different story, different experiences, and different challenges. But in terms of character, if that's an AU you'd be into, you really might want to check out this book.
Ezzy and Maddy were the most interesting comparisons, but there are two other characters who are only very slightly less important and I would be remiss if I left them off. Besides, I shouldn’t discriminate against the guys-- it’s not like this is Equestria or something.
If you combined Rarity with Fancy Pants, you'd have Ian Rathsly. He has Fancy Pant's implied wealth and position, and his easy ability to take charge of a situation, but Rarity's passionate nature, generosity and thoughtfulness, and tendency towards drama. And even worse taste in lovers. Throw in some F. Scott Fitzgerald style, and you've got a pretty good sense of who he is.
Roy Shepard... well, Roy is Spike. He's a police officer who ended up wrapped up in the plot, and he's well out of his league and knows it. But he's a good guy and wants to help, he's a voice of reason, and is probably the most competent overall even if he doesn't have the impressive specialities and resources the other characters have. And while he doesn't double as a fax machine, he does spend a lot of the book tracking people down because they don't have cellphones.
Other Pony Stuff: Characters are the primary selling point of MLP, and especially MLP fanfiction, to me. But here are some other things that draw people to MLP, or fanfiction, or certian kinds of stories, and how Pierside stacks up.
Setting: I always think of the setting as a fantasy world that has advanced from "medieval" to the 1930s... which puts it around 30 years past the average tech/social level of Equestria. Of course, Equestria ends up presenting a mix that gives serious world builders headaches, while I tried to limit mine to a more narrow time period. But as I said before, I was drawn to the 30s because the pulp/noir/old Hollywood style allows for trope use just slightly less broad than MLP: nightclub singers in sequin dresses and shadowy men in trench coats, imaginary places “flavored” by real cities and regions, etc. It’s much darker and more cynical than Equestria, but some people write a darker, more cynical Equestria than I do anyway.
Lesbian shipping: Hell yeah! Why do you think I talk so much about Maddy and Ezzy? OTP 4evar.
It’s no spoiler to mention that Ezzy and Maddy aren't exactly platonic best friends, but they're also not """best friends.""" They've known since they were teenagers that they're both physically and romantically attracted to each other, and the only thing that stands in their way is that Ezzy will not allow a romantic (or physical) relationship. When they're alone together, Maddy flirts openly and shamelessly -- as a way to tease Ezzy, because it makes Ezzy smile, and because she sure wouldn't mind if Ezzy changed her mind one day -- but she never expects anything to come of it, and they're both grateful for the friendship they have.
Also, trivia: Since the setting doesn’t use real world locations, I tried to avoid most words with real world locations as their origins… words like lesbian. My solution was to go with “sapphist,” on the basis that there could have been parallels for real world people. I don’t see why people who don’t like “fillyfooler” don’t do the same thing in MLP fic for the same reasons.
Friendship: I can’t say too much about this, but yes.
Magic: It is a fantasy setting, though a kind of weird one. I’ll talk more about this next week.
Horse puns: Out of luck here.
Free stories: While you will have to pay for the book, I do have some free stories for you today! And I have a lot of stories in various stages of completion, so if people are interested there will probably be more free stories in this setting even after the book comes out.
Today I have two stories. There are no outright spoilers for Pierside, but there may be information that lets you put together things revealed in the first part of the book:
Never Look Back (987 words) - Fifteen years before the events of Pierside, Maddy West says goodbye to her parents.
Building a Life (5706 words) - Two years before the events of Pierside, Ezzy is confronted by the uncertainty of beginnings.
(I apologize for the blog not being the best set-up for story reading. If it's truly killing you, let me know and I'll work something else out. And if you know of a better way of doing this, let me know!)
So… if that stuff sounds up your alley, you should check this book out. And if you were interested in this post, let me know, and check out the one on magic I’ll be posting next week, with more stories or minifics.
Hurray, lesbians!
For the original novel I've been planning, I plan for there to be a significant focus on the relationship between two girls. While I'd love to go ahead and make a full blown romance, I'm wary of what that means for hypothetical book marketing and finding a publisher. I could easily tone it down to BEST FRIENDS and hang the core of the story on the Mystery aspect instead, (then go full gay in a sequel).
I might be getting a bit ahead of myself here, but either way. How did the sapphic aspect of your story effect everything to do on the marketing and publishing side? Were they wary of it? Is it a publisher that saw that and went "hell yeah!" Do you get into the LGBT section of the bookstore, or something a little more mainstream?
4121426
Well, I'm with a small press-- one not related to the LGBT community -- and they never said a word about it one way or the other. Though I admit that one of the reasons I sent it to the small press was that I didn't think a mainstream publisher would be interested due to lesbian relationship, and I was between small press or self-publishing. So I totally understand your fears there.
It probably won't be in bookstores unless people specifically order it, but I'm going to make sure it's tagged LGBT for Amazon.
4121456
The book will be out August 22nd, if all is on track with my publisher.
And there's a lot going on in it besides lesbians, so you might enjoy it anyway.
Looking forward to more!
Because 'people who don’t like “fillyfooler”' and 'linguists' isn't a very common overlap.
I, for one, will definitely keep the word 'sapphist' in mind.
4121503
So you're saying that very few who don't like 'fillyfooler' are cunning linguists?
4121597 ...
*comically over-exaggerated sigh*
Yes.
4121610
There are also kenning linguists. A kenning is a well-understood turn of phrase that substitues for a noun. Such as 'filly-fooler' for 'Pony lesbian.'
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: TRIPLE ENTENDRE!!!
Also, those stories rock. There's something about the tone that's awesome in its combination of the familiar and the strange, a certain disorientation from the cultural differences on top of the apparent early 20th century normality of it all. I mean, nothing sinister happens in them, and yet I feel like something's building off screen.
I wonder what the actual novel is like.
Well, I can tell you wrote these from the dialogue alone.
Also, I am still amused that you wrote an original fiction story about your own novel for the writeoff a while back. I remembered the name of the town from that.
The stories certainly sound Bookplayer-y. Though I'm sure Bad Horse will be along shortly to do stylometric analysis. :)
I liked both of them quite a bit and am looking forward to the book. Which I will buy, incidentally, about a month from now.
Wait, was there a link in tehre and I missed it? Where can I buy a copy of this book?
4122246
The book will be released on August 22nd. I'll be sure to let you know.
4122410
Thanks! it really does seem relevant to my interests: I look forward to reading it!
Kay, so I need your book, like ASAP. Do you do signed copies?
In case things get rough and I need to sell it on ebaybecause I'm a sucker for signed stuff?Will a digital version of your book be available? If so, when can I get it?
4124184
I would be happy to arrange something.
4124779
It will be available as an eBook, an I believe it will be available on both the publishers website and amazon.com. I'll link to those places as soon as its released.
4125412
Great! I'll keep an eye out for an update on the release. I think it's really cool that you've written and published an original novel. I have a lot of respect and admiration for writers because the process of creating a world with characters and storylines requires imagination, persistence and patience. I loved reading many of stories here and am looking forward to reading your book as well.
Was this aimed at Estee?
4121503 if they did like fillyfoolers, they'd be cunninglinguists.
4121597 dammit I didn't read all the way through the comments
4139212
Nah. I mean, he might, I don't know. I've just had conversations with people about the level of realism/cynicism you can get away with in Equestria, so I know my typical innocent and philosophically romantic view of it isn't the One True Way.