Some Thoughts on HiE and The First Person Perspective · 9:49pm Jul 17th, 2015
So I'm bringing this all up... because I got the strangest private message the other day.
You should have seen me, staring at that pm, confused at what I was reading.
The cap-locks, the swearing and the WOULD YOU KINDLY bleeding off the computer screen. I looked at it, closed the tab, and then I went back and looked at it some more. Because holy shit, this is not how you ask for updates, dear god.
This blog is dedicated to that guy or girl who wanted Silhouette in Fives Hues updated. I'm pretty sure this is not what you wanted.
So I've been looking through Zamairiac's back-catalog and chasing after similar stories in the recommendation box. And I've been skulking around the sagging threads of the Humans in Equestria group for answers that have always alluded me. And after reading them and thinking long into the night, I couldn't help but look at my own human protagonists/first person perspective and go, am I doing something wrong.
But this isn't a thing about right or wrong, it's all about style.
Yes, I'm talking about prose style. Otherwise as I like to call it: Stylization.
This is taken from A Toxic Romance, a story of his that had been sitting in the featurebox when I logged back in.
It's about four lines in.
My name is Jason Storm and this is my story.
You see it all started on a day like any other. I had woken up, gotten ready and walked to school. And of course Sir Twatalot was there to meet with his usual greeting of pinning me against the gate and demanding I give him my lunch money.
Of course I denied him that luxury...and got absolutely battered as a result of it. But then I was saved, by a stick of all things hitting the great twit in the back of his head. I didn't know who threw it at the time but I distinctly remember thanking them fervently in my thoughts.
This might seem a little random but stick with me on this.
If there is one thing that I care about more than theme, it's style. I will read a story just for the pretty sentences, the commas stomped on, the imagery blinding and the wonders that can wrung out of a single sentence.
That being said, I tend to dislike a lot of Zamairiac's prose because he tends not to do that.
His lines are serviceable, spoken plainly without any details or scene setting beyond words that make a vague imprint in your head. Yet it works, placing all of the emphasis on the scenario and the tragic, morbid yet addicting way about the human leads and their alicorn mistresses.
It's not bad, it's just different. Interesting, really.
I actually wrote the first chapter of In The Land of Fuzzy Wuzzies in a hybrid-mix of his style and my own need for vivid stylization.
Like so,
I pinched my nose as I shifted uneasy in the Canterlot Castle main hall. The one that's just about a rock's throw from the throne room. I assumed Princess Celestia was there, holding court, but she could be anywhere this time of day. It was important that I'd be around her vicinity whenever I did these things. It made my unsuspecting audience somewhat calmer to my presence.
In that opening sentence, I made sure to not give any concrete details and allowed to the narrator to give his rendition of things, 'a rock's throw' that could be seen in any shape or form. Then I made sure that the paragraph would set a tone of tension and uncertainty. Like you know that he's up to something.
When I think of beautiful, first-person prose, I think of theycallmejub and his Eyes Without Face. This is from two lines in, the first setting scene of the city where this story takes place, Manehatten.
When I open my eyes the city greets me with the familiar sound of ambulance sirens and thundering hooves racing down poorly maintained streets under the vigilant gaze of Luna’s full moon. Fleeing. Chasing. That's all this city is. Just fleeing and chasing. Tonight I am chasing.
From the roof of my brownstone downtown Manehattan looks like an affront on Celestia's green earth. Less a city and more a declaration of war on all things natural. I've heard it called the "concrete jungle" but the metaphor does wildlife a disservice. The city is nothing but miserable urban sprawl. It stands as a testament to squandered pony potential: seeds of avarice, lust, and pride sewn in barren land, and from them sprout the looming edifices of stone, iron, brick, mortar, concrete, stainless steel, and glass. Great sheets of crystalline glass. Dilapidation has rotted most of this city to the bone, but the windows are always kept clean. They sparkle when shattered.
A harsh laughter plays games in my ears as Manehattan watches me up on the roof of my brownstone. Watches my hooves tremble like the coward she knows I am. She is a living thing, this city, and tonight there is a smile on her lips because she knows I am afraid of her. She’s laughing. Hot and haughty. I let her enjoy it. Let her have her fun.
A moment of silence, please. It's just oozing with style and tone and how much it just doesn't care, grabbing you by the hem of your shirt and holding you right under. Watching as you squirm, stealing your time and eyes until it's ready to let you go.
But you know, most HiE fics don't do that. Writing with style and especially using that stylization with the first-person perspective means you better have a damn clear fully-fleshed out narrator or at least someone with the making of one. The OCs tend to be flat, interchangeable, and very reactive to the scripted plot than to show any activeness on their own; physical or mental.
But what if that's the point?
It's not about the human, it's about the human in Equestria. Someone we could easily identify with and project ourselves onto, watching their struggles as they make pony friends and/or fall in love.
And now that I know this, I can't help but feel at odds with the stories I've written.
Because yeah, Mikey, Horace, Jerith and the Anon of The Etiquette of Mounting are all idiots that couldn't fight their way out of an emotional paper bag. But that's their charm. I'm an author that enjoys schadenfreude and miserable characters caught in their miserable ways. It's important to me that the source of their misery not come from the plot or scripted events but by some crucial trait that they are conveniently ignoring.
I've never made a genuine attempt and these are the factors I have to take into consideration. So to the person who messaged me, I'm going to be working on a spiritual successor to Silhouette as a sort of trial run. Then after that, I might add the chapters I've been sitting on and update.
Same elements. 'Different' characters. And the great old Regina razzle-dazzle.
I'd prefer if you updated Social Sins of a Young Thang Living Alone.
... Oh, right, there was a theme to this blog post.
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Have you seen those comments on that story? I've thought about it, time to time, but I feel it's still going to be a while before I go back to it. And while I was looking at cover-art, I realized that story I was working up follows a similar plot of the recent episode (that I haven't watched yet). The one time I feel like writing dreams, this happens. I can't deal with this.
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You should keep writing your story anyway; just because a dumb person doesn't understand the purpose of your story, that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.
I feel like you ought to know about a blog post I wrote, over here.