Behind the Story: Constantly Changing

Sorry this took so long. My wi-fi went out and I had to upload this from school. But, I’m happy to see that this story did not underperform like my last few (though one I purposely didn’t advertise for it to underperform). I’m prepared to pick into Constantly Changing.

So, to properly explain this story, I need to first talk about anime.

I have found myself in a bit of a weeb trench over the last few months. I’ve watched a lot of anime at this point, mostly really odd ones that catch my fancy. The types of anime I watch can range from really good (Lycoris Recoil) to “what the hell?” (Don’t Hurt Me My Healer!). However, the beginning of this story is an anime that’s a little mid, but enjoyable.

Specifically, I need to talk about Fate/Apocrypha. Now, Fate/Apocrypha is part of the very convoluted Fate series. What Kingdom Hearts is to JRPGs, the Fate series is to anime (and Japanese multimedia in general). While Fate/Apocrypha works as a standalone, it’s really confusing for someone just hopping in.

There is one character in the show though, a very much beloved character, who I’m sure you’ve probably seen before, Astolfo. Since the Fate characters are (loosely) based around real-life historical and legendary figures, Astolfo is based off one of the peers of Charlemagne. Specifically, the one said to be the most handsome. Now, the Fate Astolfo has overtaken the legendary one by quite a wide margin, but when they decided to integrate a character who is canonically handsome, they decided that he’s a femboy now.

I joke that Astolfo is the patron saint of femboys, but it’s not that far from the truth. If you type in “femboy” on Google, you’ll probably get a couple Astolfo pictures. I’d check for myself but, well, my wi-fi’s busted at the moment. As far as I can tell, a lot of femboy memes originated from him.

Post write edit: actually did look up “femboy” and I was correct.

So what does any of this have to do with Constantly Changing? Glad you asked. We’ll get there after a ton of groundwork. Firstly, the fanon portrayal of Astolfo is quite interesting: brutally seductive, trying to get you to love him only for him to remind you that guess what, he’s a boy, how do you feel about that now. In fanon, when Astolfo isn’t being seductive, he’s usually portrayed as quite silly and a little airheaded. Sometimes, the portrayals overlap.

Now, I take a little issue with the seductive fanon personality. I feel it reinforces liking femboys as a form of humiliation, but then again, most of these memes are made by femboys, so I could be completely off the mark. I also take some issue with it because it isn’t his canon personality at all.

In canon, Astolfo is a bubbly, charming guy who dresses up in feminine clothing because he finds it cute. He has approximately 1 braincell and I love him for it. Like, the guy literally forgot the name of his special attack. He’s incredibly friendly, and has strong morals. While the legendary Astolfo is in fact a waifu stealer (that’s a completely different rabbit hole), the Fate/Apocrypha Astolfo very much isn’t.

He’s the most hyperactive character in the show as well, so guess what, he’s my favorite character in the show.

So, I had this canon idea of Astolfo in my head. I left Fate/Apocrypha remembering Astolfo (and also gave a joke review where I stated he was the only thing worth noting in the show on a Discord server).

A little while later, I discovered SockiePuppetry’s art.

SockiePuppetry is an MLP fan artist who has a very distinctive bubblegum style, and tends to write short comics often featuring Thorax and Pharynx. However, one notable SockiePuppetry piece of art features Thorax in a dress and Ember in a suit, with the other commenting on the other’s clothes and saying how nice they look. Pretty simple way to normalize gender nonconformity, but that piece of art would have another effect.

On the QnS Discord, I got into a discussion about Thorax, and had one person say that they thought of Thorax as the type of character to like cute things for the sake of cute things. I agreed, linked the art, and that was that.

Fast forward a little bit, and there’s a QnS contest. Every writer is a mystery, and the only things you have to go off of are writing styles and common conventions. I wrote a not-great story called Found Another Bug. Since I have been writing SoL for years, I naturally wrote SoL. However, this story featured Thorax and Pharynx, this is very important.

I took SockiePuppetry’s portrayal of Thorax, and decided that wasn’t enough, so I made him heavily influenced by the canon personality of Astolfo.

From then on, my Thorax was codified.

I wrote him as an ADD cinnamon roll who has approximately one braincell, loves cute things for the sake of cute things, is overly friendly, and is shockingly good at talking to ponies about issues.

That last part is partially influenced by how we see the changeling kingdom in a couple episodes, being a moderately anarchic utopia where Thorax set up a dozen different ways for changelings to just get along and doesn’t seem to do much ruling beyond letting the changelings get along and do whatever.

Thorax needed a character to bounce off of him, so I quickly wrote Pharynx as the antithesis of Thorax, emotionless, no-nonsense, intelligent, and really good at physical activities but not emotional ones.

So, when the QnS Secret Santa exchange came around, I wrote that I wanted to see my Thorax in any capacity, The Little Things was written for me. I had to write something for Tangerine Blast, and it just so happened that the prompt I got was that they wanted to see Thorax and Pharynx in any situation I could think of.

Well isn’t that convenient?

I looked a little bit into Tangerine Blast’s stories, and found a story that just appears to be a conversation about nothing featuring Thorax and Spike. However, that story had a something going for it, you could practically interpret the conversation however you wished, so long as fluidity was in the analysis.

Personally, I read it as genderfluidity, which gave me an idea.

In particular, I remembered a short scene from (I think) Season 8, where it’s implied that Ocellus is having an identity crisis. Starlight Glimmer tries to help her, but gets distracted.

Naturally, the changelings at the School of Friendship would have to come back. So Ocellus would be in that group.

The pieces started clicking together there, I came up with this idea of extending Ocellus’ identity crisis. Having written Thorax as being very good at emotions, but having Pharynx be his guard, would lead to funny story in which Pharynx and Thorax try to comfort Ocellus during her identity crisis.

The intention isn’t to laugh at genderfluid characters, while comedy would be part of the story, that in particular would be a serious moment. Maybe underscored with a little bit of humor because Pharynx is absolutely abysmal at making Ocellus feel any better. It’s like Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, sure, the movie is funny, but it tries to be serious at some points as well. Even when you know the entire thing is satire, there’s still some genuinely emotional parts.

Now, as for the identity crisis, I debated over whether making that subtle or not, but I decided that subtlety is never a trans story’s strong point. I tried to not drop an anvil, but sorry for any cast-iron pan injuries that may have occurred. Specifically, I decided to make the entire metaphor about species instead of explicitly mentioning gender. I usually don’t like doing this, but changelings can make it work.

As for execution, better than some of my recent stories certainly. However, the comedy doesn’t feel like it hits all the time and I feel Ocellus is OOC. But, I got it done, and I’m reasonably proud of it. The opening and closing parts are really just extra bits of fluff to see cute Thorax. I certainly like more cute Thorax.

The cover art is just a stock photo I ripped from Google and superimposed text over. All the screencaps of Thorax and Pharynx together kind of suck.

This is sort of a back to roots story for me, so influences are really the usual ones and that Tangerine Blast story.

And until next time; be awesome!
-Dashie