Guard Your Feelings

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This story picks up on Caramel as he is contemplating his life in the Royal Guards. He is no longer sure why he joined up in the first place, and it doesn't help when the object of his unspoken affection comes to visit.

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Comments ( 5 )

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KazFox

KazFox #1 · Oct 22nd, 2012 · · ·

Bittersweet and full of passion without acknowledgement towards it. I love it.

sorakun555

sorakun555 #2 · Oct 23rd, 2012 · · ·

Idea is nice, something that I'm sure everyone, gay or not, can relate to. Execution, however, should be worked on. For its length it's not bad, but every scene here could be expanded and be so much more. Don't just use Caramel's inner monologue to convey his feelings towards Big Mac, use the scene he's in as well. It's actually a very good skill to have to portray any kind of emotion from any kind of weather. I once wrote about a man contemplating suicide at the edge of a bridge on a bright and sunny summer day for a writing class. Speaking of the scenes, it's hard to imagine what exactly his surroundings look like when they're not described. You don't have to get poetic on us if the scene isn't important, but at least note where he's at, what's around him, etc.
Your narration is weird in many places when you refer to the audience as if Caramel's talking to someone. He's obviously not, since most of his personality is being portrayed in his thoughts rather than being retold. You also talk hypothetically sometimes, which makes it confusing which tense you're writing in even more than they already are. You also rush right through a lot of things that are very important for Caramel's character development. You need to flesh things out. You've made it clear that he puts himself under emotional war over his love for Big Mac, but how is that effecting him? Obviously negatively, but the only evidence we see of that is his inattention to time passing him. That's good showing there, but there's nothing else Caramel does that seems like it would be different if he weren't so hung over him.
I think it would also be nice to see Caramel interact with the other guards. We don't even see him speak to one and he works with a whole lot of them! If he has even a single friend in the entire guard he'd be sure to notice and try to console him, right? If he doesn't have a friend, that would be an important detail to his character and further add depth to the weight his feelings for Big Mac have on him.
If I understand right, Caramel's motive for sleeping around randomly, not confessing his love for Big Mac, and convincing himself that there's no stallion out there for him is that he's afraid he'll do his typical Caramel thing and screw it up somehow just by being his accident-prone self. I can understand him sleeping around to try and fill the void in his heart without actually getting into a committed relationship. What would be nice to know is what happened in his past to make him think he would screw it up? I mean, aside from being accident-prone? Did he have a crush on another stallion in school but do something stupid and wreck it? Was he constantly bullied and told his entire life he'd never get a mate? This is probably one of the most important missing pieces of Caramel's character that should be added.
This story could easily be ten times longer and be that many times better as well. I intended this comment to be constructive, so if it comes off as a bashing I do apologize. I have a strange liking to the tragic sides of love stories so I find it a little sad when a great story idea doesn't turn out as good as it could be.

stile

stile #3 · Oct 23rd, 2012 · · ·

1488545

Thanks! That's what I was going for.

]1493142

Wow, thanks for the detailed remarks. I definitely take them constructively...don't worry about coming off too critical.

I intentionally avoided describing the surroundings or depicting Caramel interacting with his fellow guards, because he doesn't care about them. I tried to switch back and forth between third-person narration and Caramel's inner monologue, but I don't know how effective that was. Maybe I should have stayed with first-person, but I'm not very comfortable with that perspective.

I know what you mean about possibly being able to flesh this out more, but it just would have been more of Caramel being bored and frustrated and whiny...and he was already whiny enough. Figured it would be more effective if I kept it short. Also, I intentionally left out details about Caramel's past...better writers than me have already explored every facet of that, and I prefer to leave it up to the reader to imagine it. You can also come up with your own reasons for Caramel's pessimism and resignation...I have my own explanation, but I wanted to focus more on his mental state and keep the background vague.

So a lot of the issues your brought up were conscious choices on my part...maybe they were mistakes, but at least I knew I was doing them! Not sure if I'll keep writing, but I'll keep all those issues in mind...my pony artwork tends to be cheerful, but I think I'll explore the "tragic" side of shipping, as you put it, in my writing.

Daemon_Spectre