The First Person Paradox · 5:52pm Sep 22nd, 2020
New chapter coming soon. Trying not to make chapters too long since I can split up various arcs now, and any more would have risked over shooting the mark. That said, this is not just filler. Odd as it seems to me, a few of you seem to have taken the bet from last chapter a little too seriously, and I'm not sure if you actually expected Mercy to fight Morning or not, but that's what a few of the comments came off as to me which says I'm not doing my job right.
Aunt Mercy may be a mess, but she's trying her best; some of the reactions to her last chapter make me think I'm falling into the exact same trap with her that I did with Rumble--namely, because the story is from Night's point of view and Night currently has an issue with Mercy, Mercy's behavior may be coming off as worse than it actually is in a lot of cases. Regardless of her ambitions or aspirations concerning becoming second wife, even the big mistake of her just sort of pushing in on them is tempered by a few things--such as when she literally asked Night if she should move out last chapter.
Now maybe I'm paranoid and most folks actually catch the little things I put in to try and show that beneath that big, hot, mess is a pony just like anypony else, but I figured hammering that home a bit couldn't hurt. As I said when I first started posting this story, the Mercy arc is not meant to get so dramatic as to merit me adding a drama tag. It's sorta required to start hard and fast, but in the end the Mercy arc is about family, and family has it's ups and downs.
I think the fun of doing a first person view is that there are things going on in the background that the person who we are following and this us are unaware of. That adds drama because we only have part of the puzzle and no box.
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That is a huge part of the fun. The issue here—if it is actually an issue—is this isn’t me purposely withholding information. Back when Rumble had a crush on Night, I put a lot of work into that little arc. I tried to feed plenty of hints that Night was unfairly judging the ‘insubordinate little whelp’ and that Rumble was just fumbling to get to know her, so it bothered me a lot how a decent-ish number of folks empathised with her not just more than but over Rumble. Somehow somewhere, I made Rumble a sort of mini villain in the eyes of some readers when to me that whole arc was a big example of Night being the bad guy.
Not that she was so on purpose, but when I think of reasons why Night shouldn’t be a Mary Sue, that bit in particular stands out to me because she was the one who made Rumble cry. I’m honestly quite baffled how some folks got the complete reverse effect of what I was going for, and because of that it only seems to affirm the idea that ‘Yes, she is in fact a sue, regardless of how much readers still like her.’ She’s always come out the hero even when I was trying to highlight her faults or the other ponies in her life.
And here and now, there is no real good guy, bad guy to this situation with Aunt Mercy, but I already see the beginnings of the same ‘problem’ that there was with Rumble.
🤓