500 Followers! · 8:19am Jun 24th, 2017
Wow.
Seriously, wow. Thank you, I mean it. Thank you all. Especially to you, An Alternate Universe, who has the distinction of being follower 500, my editor and my friend.
He gave me this essay he wrote on my first ever big story, Wildfire: Lighting the Flame, as a gift. He's also given me permission to repeat it here.
I first read this story a long time ago. Not when it was first being published, it had been finished by the time I first came across it. In fact, by the time I stumbled across it, perhaps drunkenly, it had been completed for almost a year. I presume that many readers were like I was, I had assumed that its title character would be the protagonist. This belief carried with me for much of the story and it is not an unreasonable assumption for a casual reader, as so many of us are. Indeed, Wildfire does take up a significant portion of the action in the story. The second time I read the story, I downloaded it from the site and copied it into a Google Doc, where I took upon myself the task of finding the small little errors that littered the pages, spelling, grammar, syntax, even the tiniest amount of developmental editing, but most of all typos. It was during this search for small details that I came to know the story and the characters quite intimately.
Because of the intimacy I achieved with the story and characters during my editing, I was able to come to one important realization about the story; it is not Wildfire’s. Yes, she is the title character, even the main character, but she is not the protagonist and it is not her story. In the first and second parts of the story, Wildfire played an important, almost critical, role in her group of friends and the story as a whole. In the third part, Wildfire’s motivations and resultant behaviour played an important role in her imprisonment. Despite all this, this is not Wildfire’s story.
It is Air Raid’s.Wildfire may be the title character and the one upon whom the story focuses the most. However, Air Raid — because of her personality and choices — changes the most. Not only that, but Air Raid’s choices and dispositions are responsible for so much of the story’s inner workings. Her influence on the others, her choices — good and bad — and above all, her emotional concerns lead to the story being what it is. Without Air Raid, Wildfire would have remained a static character, only changing when change was involuntary. Air Raid also catalyzed a number of events, directly and indirectly, that led to her friends changing as well.
Air Raid is in fact, almost always, in some fashion, present at the critical, life-changing moments, that her friends experience. She was the cause of Willy’s belief that she had been abandoned by her friends, she was present in the park in Canterlot, when Cyclone erred (not to mention that her irresponsibility allowed the incident to progress as it did), her behaviour and attitude led to Slingshot’s decision, she was in contact with Darkstar when she was attacked and later spent every hour she could by her side. The one life-changing instance that Air Raid was only tangientally responsible for, nor present for, was when Brightstar met Moonbeak. Above all, Air Raid’s actions led to the fight underneath the statue of Sky Dive.
Though it could be argued that many of these incidents were triggered by Dusk Melody, he was neither fully present for the story, nor did he grow as a character from them, he simply slunk away and was a thoroughly static character for most of the story, only changing at certain critical moments, instead of through the story, like Air Raid did.
A protagonist is defined as an individual whose decisions drive the plot and who changes as a result of those decisions, while a main character is the one upon whom focus lays. They are neither mutually inclusive, nor mutually exclusive. Ultimately, it is Air Raid who drives the plot and Air Raid who changes when faced with the results of her decisions.
In the end this is Air Raid’s story. It is her character and choices that are the tragedy. On a fundamental level, the story is Air Raid’s fault. It must be said that Air Raid did not intend for the events to occur, she was not acting in a malicious manner, nonetheless, they occurred as a result of Air Raid’s decisions.
Now, this is quite possibly the best comment I've had on Wildfire: Lighting the Flame. As you all are no doubt aware, the Wilyverse is my baby. Wildfire, her friends and her adventures have taken up the past two and a half years of my life. It's been a joy to write, it's been an even bigger joy to see that people want to read and enjoy what my co-author Zervon Tora and I put out.
To you all. Thank you.
Congratulations.
4581655
Thank you my friend
in b4 2000 followers, book 11: Wildfire: The flame is now water.
4581662
How have you gotten a copy of my to do list?
Let me extend mine congratulations, valorous sir! Truly well done
I know, I know, I still need to bring mine thoughts about Ashes and Accidents in presentable form... Bear with me, the last two weeks were awful in the terms of work.
Congrats on reaching such an amazing milestone on this site!
4581800
Thank you!