Visual Storytelling and Cutie Marks · 10:50am Sep 16th, 2016
So, you may or may not have noticed, but I'm not really a visual writer. It's a strain to keep the narrative from floating in a grey mist of intentions and actions; I hope I've kept down the weeds in that lot, but one of the victims has been pony description and (shudder) cutie marks. There's a number of problems with the mark - if I could rank them, they would be as follows: 1) tone, 2) fanon, and 3) inclination.
As far as tone goes, the whole cutie mark thing cuts against the semi-seriousness of mercenary ponies slaughtering their enemies and burning their property. I've an image that coats and manes are darker and more earth-toned on worlds other than Equestria, as those worlds are darker and more earthier than the highly structured utopian land of sugar and hypercontrol that is Celestia's paradise.
On the fanon front, there's all sorts of fannish theorizing on the subject of cutie marks, among others, that they're only really ubiquitous in a stable, structured, well-functioning society like Ponyville in modern Equestria. Pony fanfic is written mostly by progressive-minded folk who are well aware that the past is a land of strife and misery; for whatever reason, there are very few reactionaries and Rousseauans running around talking about noble savages or Atlantis-like utopian lost civilizations or the good old days before capitalism and industry and social change disturbed the proper order of things. It's almost a given that the past is worse than the present in Ponyland, whatever the opinions on where they're all going. This is probably the child of the pilot episode, and each subsequent "action" episode, which all of them emphasize that Equestria is seeded with the buried evils of the past, just straining to escape their seals and prisons. Whereas in Lovecraftian stories the great evils lurk about the edges of reality and space and time, and scratch at portals and weak spots in the firmament to break into the human world, in pony stories, it is the past, heaving at its catacomb gates to break out of the buried past and ravage the present.
And one of the fruit of that idea of the past as a crapsack is that ponies didn't just find their destinies on street corners or in boxes of crackerjacks, but had to fight and struggle for them, and many failed and fell by the roadside, as guide-posts to those that followed. Thus it follows that in unhappy lands, many if not most ponies never get their marks. I'm not sure I want to go that far in my story, which is why I've been ambiguous about the extent of marks in the narrative. It helps that most of my characters wear heavy barding, and thus their flanks are well-covered.
And lastly, my story is tied up in my narrator and protagonist's biases and inclinations, and he's a rabid pony universalist. It isn't even clear if he has a cutie mark, or if zebra can get them. Because it is very unclear whether they do, in canon. The show's been crazy ambiguous about Zecora, and zebradom beyond her. Are zebra a subspecies of pony? I mean, they aren't in actual taxonomy, clearly, but Equestria isn't a scientific world, or even Earth, so all those are basically guide-posts rather than bible truth. I mean, Sawbones thinks that zebras are ponies, but he also thinks that minotaurs are ponies; he's not strictly speaking sane on the subject.
And "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks" just set the goddamn building on fire when it comes to cutie marks and racial divisions. I don't doubt they thought they were dealing with... some perceived social message or other, but it muddled the hell out of my waters, and it certainly didn't make for a universalist message of inclusiveness and racial equality. In point of fact, it was rather paternalistic and neo-colonial condescending, from stem to stern. You can't have a cutie mark, but your cute little attempts at mimicking your betters will be acknowledged with our little baubles and ribbons of participation! Yay.
For a magical land of destiny and infinite potential, there's a lot of resignation and acceptance of ugly limitations. [Eyes Scootaloo and her damn-near-canon permanent flightlessness]
Canon is the result not of deep thought all too often, but one writer cranking out another episode with little thought as to how it effects the rest.
This is especially true for implications of stuff that will never, ever be shown in the show.
(non-cartoon death, bloodshed, sex).
Sticking rigidly to canon based on things happening that are often incidental and certainly not the result of reasoned deep thought by someone envisioning Equestria as a whole can rob stories of power.
Depart at will from canon, but think about why you are.
Leaving canon behind can create a deeper and better story.
I think of, for example, "rites of ascension" - a very non-canon ascension of twilight - done (IMO) lots better than 'bang - you're an alicorn now'.
4212381 you know, I haven't read Rites of Ascension. I believe I've seen it mentioned here and there, but I probably should look at it and see if it's up my alley. A story from 2012 that still isn't complete, but is still being updated? That's something, I guess.
Me, I'm in mourning for This Platinum Crown and The Abyssal Forge, the later pretty clearly having been abandoned, and the former in some sort of limbo the origins of which I've only seen alluded to in a cryptic fashion.
4212381 Hrm, after reading the first few chapters, it seems like it might not be my sort of thing. Well-written, but versions of Equestria where Discord is a straight-up murderous monster generally aren't my bag, baby. I *like* the canon version of Discord where he's a classic Trickster; re-casting him as the Joker or worse, Darkseid seems to result in versions of fanon that just aren't fun. About the only setting with an outright evil Discord that I've been able to tolerate is the Five Score, Divided By Four sandbox, and even there, the stories where writers have Discord stomping around being evil are the ones that aren't particularly fun, either.
Despite all our playing around with punning Discord-for-devil, he isn't Lucifer, at his worst, he's the low-impact family-friendly version of Loki, and more often than not he's a Coyote
4212499 Indeed - this is a considerably more bloody and violent version of equestria.
Ponies die to monsters, and the heros that save them are correspondingly more risked.
I would argue that Equestria and Lovecraft diverge not in the nature of their BBEG but rather in the agency of the heroes. For example, Cthulhu and, say, Tirek are both locked away in a plane-bound prison of some sorts but the agency of Twilight versus Tirek is much greater than any Lovecraftian protag versus Cthulhu. Even Nightmare Moon could be positioned as a Colour Out of Space or Migo-like entity ... well, maybe not Migo-like but sourced from the same general area. But despite the overwhelming power of Nightmare Moon, Twilight managed to BS her way to victory (and she still got AJ and RD wrong anyway). It's the end-feeling. For Lovecraft, a reminder of how utterly small we are. For MLP, a reminder of how lost we'd be without our friends.
But aside from that ... uhm, okay? Honestly, I'm enjoying the minimalistic style you're going for in the descriptions. I know a lot of authors would be purple on the page to describe all the various feints and thrusts in each chapter but as a report in the Annals, it doesn't need that. In fact, I'd say you're getting a bit TOO visually descriptive/narrative in some places with this piece for the intent of the work - though Sawbones admits it's not a traditional Annals situation anyway. The only reason I'd see to describe the CMs is as identification or historical record of some sort - 'Lost today was Biggus Maximus, Earth Pony stallion with weights as his destiny mark' or some such - and it's not really adding anything so cut it.
EDIT: Besides, the Annals are for the future to read about what the Company did - they don't need to know the coat and mane of every member, just their deeds and what the Company did with them.
As to 4212406 , I think Cpn_Chrys is working on his XCOM/Mass Effect crossover more than pony words. Look up 'Psi Effect' if you're curious, it's a forum-based work though so it can be a bit of a struggle to follow 'in the raw.' He has it on FF.net but not all of it.
4213470 true enough on the Lovecraft angle. Have you read The Rise and Fall of the Dark Lord Sassaflash? You can do Lovecraft in MLP:FiM, but it takes some tonal contortions, and tends to result in OP magic as a side effect.
I'll think about the description thing. I may be overcompensating. Although right now my biggest problem is that I'm developing a "Zeno's fanfic" tendency - new chapters are getting shorter and covering smaller and smaller slices of story time and plot. The temptation to allow the next half dozen chapters devolve into X reacts to appearance of NNM, followed by infirmary and medico filler is overwhelming. I put aside a couple pages of absolutely pointless Captain dialog yesterday. I think I'll have to force the focus to pull back a bit and cut some of the cheap Mamet and dialect comedy.