Featured: Man Cannot Live On Tea Alone · 9:52am Apr 26th, 2017
Well, uh. Hello, feature bar. It's been a while!
So, Man Cannot Live On Tea Alone was featured today. I'm super flattered that people are enjoying this story, because it has a pretty interesting breakdown as to why and how it was written. Let me bring you into the loop!
I've been wanting to write a story inspired by the cover art above for almost two months, now, but nothing was really clicking for me. I wanted Rarity, and the floppy sun hat, and the enraptured gaze she's giving the viewer all to be in this story, but I couldn't grasp onto anything, so it lay by the wayside.
I was looking at other beautiful art online, and I remembered that the artist behind "Rarity/Cafe", SunBusting, had given me permission to use this beautiful piece of art as a cover. I fell in love with that damn piece all over again, and the resulting WANT to give this art a story resulted in the beginning of Man Cannot Live On Tea Alone. This process began about a day ago. All told, this story was written over the course of about 12 hours.
At first it was a vignette piece. It was 2nd person, 'you' were a human, and 'you' were having tea with Rarity in a cafe. It was cute and romantic, but it lacked soul or background or any character. It was pure self-fappery, but I NEEDED to write THAT, to get to the end product. I got aggravated with the whole 2nd person angle, so I changed it and started re-writing. I waffled for an hour or two on whether our main character was a human or a pony, and then decided to go for it and write a Human In Equestria story.
At first, this character was nameless, but it started getting too close to "Anon" territory, and not having a name was dumb, so I searched for a name for this character. Who was he?
Enter our good friend, JakeTheArmyGuy, who snarkily said "self insert FTW" when I posed the question of naming my main character to a group chat.
Fine. Ya wanna joke? You're getting a main character named after you.
Thus, Jake was born. No, he's not actually Jake, but he shares a few similar qualities, mostly through coincidence. I'd planned the character out a fair bit, and simply was having trouble deciding a name, and when Jake snarked at me, it was made canon.
I had a lot of fun with the first half of the story. Adding backstory, writing Corporal Sapphire Spirit the guardsmare, creating a cute little friendship between Celestia and Jake and Raven. Jake leaned on Celestia and Raven for the beginning of the story, as I was getting a feel for his character, and he grew into the snarky, take-no-shit, coffee-loving character that you see in the final form of the story. I liked that the vulnerable moment Jake showed early on became a moment of character-defining action for how I was writing Celestia, Jake, and Raven. Celestia and Raven see this problem, and they both feel this sense of responsibility for Jake, even if he's a tad adversarial in a playful manner. Jake decided to take a cue from his real life counterpart in that moment, where he toughed through the hurt and wanted to do something constructive. It clicked, even if I had a moment where I could have gone a very different direction, and gained some exposition from Jake on his backstory.
This story evolved a lot as it was written, and I went in with this romantic notion in my head, and came out the other end following along with the characters and how they wrote themselves, and found that Jake and Rarity were not instantly in love. They were adults, having fun, flirting and enjoying each other's company. Their interaction felt real to me, and that was what mattered. So, maybe Rarity's adoring stare from the picture doesn't quite fit...
... but it will.
I'm going to start working on a sequel, effective immediately, so look forward to more cute Rarity and Jake.
Ya say this, yet I'm still waiting on the update to the sound of diamonds.
4510478 The Sound of Diamonds is... technically done?
I have plans to continue it at some point, but as it stands right now I'm happy with the story and where it sits. It did what I set out to do as a writing challenge, taking on a character with a major sense removed.
Until then, accept this token of cute Rarity as a consolation prize for the lack of updates.
I appreciate your readership, man!
damn. i wish more authors gave insight to their stories and chapters like this.
and whats wrong with "anon?"
4511258 Just feels like it gives license for lazy writing. Anon is a good excuse to make the Main Character into a pair of pants - in that the reader can put them on and pretend to be them. Jake has a character and a backstory, not that I got much into it in this story, but that will change.
4511258
The fact that anyone has to ask the question shows the intellectual standards on this site.
The answer is that "anon" is a bad name for 4chan retards and bad writers.
4512383 I wouldn't go quite that far. Self insert has its place, especially in fantastical stories, and well... as Celestia said, "There's no wrong way to fantasize."
That said, just going with "Anon" and not caring much about your protagonist has always struck me as a less interesting option than actually taking time to create a character. I've seen "Anon" handled decently, but every time it is done decently, I always am left questioning why they stuck with the name "Anon". Holding to the style, I suppose? Regardless, nine times out of ten, a story would be better served simply naming a character, with a few exceptions on some comedies that are intentionally parodying the format.
4512412
The problem is that in fiction, conventions and rules have to be established. For example, a 'realistic' sci-fi story is different from a 'realistic' fantasy story. HiE implicitly suggests a protagonist from a modern Western culture where the name Anon is not used.
Now nothing stops a story establishing such a culture exists, but it never does. Meanwhile the premise of magic pony land has already been accepted; it is intellectually ridiculous to equate the two as some do when others decry it for a lack of realism.
There's also the point that many use it without irony. If you can't spend 10 seconds to name your character, you're a bad writers.
I am excite. Story was cute, so the sequel can only be cuter.