The Colors We Paint: the Thought Process Behind Writing "The Colors We Wish For" · 4:54pm Jun 29th, 2023
Hello, Sunlight Rays here, and I’m here with another Writing Of blog post. It’s been a hot minute since the last time I did this; I didn’t do this for… More than two years. Jeez. But I feel the need to write a blog post accompanying this new story of mine. As in, I have to write this. Because this is the most personal story I’ve written since End of the Line, and The Colors We Wish For contains a lot of aspects that may not be immediately clear the first time you read it. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
A lot has changed in the past two years for me. If you knew me pre-June 2021, you’ll be able to tell how different I am now from who I was back then.
I guess being in the MLP fandom for almost four years tends to do a number on people.
To give a brief overview, June 2021 was when I started to really learn what being a member of the LGBTQ+ community meant because that’s when I really started to hear from folks about the experiences of being a member of the queer community. Before that, I never had anyone to tell me what it meant to be queer; it was just this vague concept where there existed people who loved others of the same gender, and I thought it was such a weird thing because, well, everyone else around me thought it was out of the norm.
I don’t think transgender people didn’t even exist in this vague concept of mine until 2021, and even if they did, it was most likely only a vague idea of “people who change their bodies into the opposite gender.” Really, if someone told me what I would find out about myself in two years of time in June 2021, I would have called that person crazy.
I only wish I had someone or somewhere that told me more about LGBTQ+ communities earlier.
June 2021 was when I genuinely began to learn about the experiences LGBTQ+ people go through. I met people who were lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders (the last one isn’t necessarily exclusive to the former three). I saw how they, instead of being this vaguely alien group that looks and acts like “normal” people but are not exactly the same as others, are just as normal as everyone else, that they’re just normal human beings that have the same wants and needs and desires just like others’. I’m sure this sounds terrible when I write it out like this, but really, the subtle context clues I’ve gotten from people around me when I was growing up did a really good job of internalizing that homophobia without me noticing.
As I said, I can only wish I knew about this earlier.
With breaking the internalized homophobia and transphobia came a period of introspection and self-reflection, mainly on my feelings toward people. Basically, I was renewing my perception of my sexual orientation, and that took around four months, until October 2021. Turns out I was bisexual.
It wasn’t much of a surprise when I figured that out. It was rather more like things were clearing up, that I was finally getting some clarity about myself.
Then came the heavier aspects of being queer.
Here’s the thing about being a sexual or gender minority. Before you realize you are a member of that minority, you don’t really connect to the struggles the members of that group faces in their daily lives, although you will be thinking that something does not sit right with the way you feel toward people and about yourself.
You may be empathetic and feel sympathetic for them, but you can’t really relate to what they experience, mainly because you really don’t think it’s your problem. Once you do identify as that minority, though? You really start to feel what they meant when they were talking about the issues they face.
I feel this is an issue that’s different from being, say, a racial minority. It’s not like you can tell someone’s sexual orientation from their appearance. Okay, fine, there are so-called “gay vibes” or whatever you would like to call them, but those are educated guesses at best. So, really, unless you tell people that you’re lesbian or gay or bisexual or trans or whatever label you identify best with, they’re not going to know. Especially if they’re people who don’t like to nose into others’ business.
So, really, the option a lot of us choose to go with when we’re surrounded by people who disapprove of our identity as a sexual or gender minority is to just keep our mouths shut and never speak a word about who we really are; if we were to open our mouths and tell them who we really are, we’d lose so much.
Now, each one of us may feel differently about not saying anything about our sexual orientation and gender identity. But personally, I feel not saying anything is just as good as outright lying to others, because when people don’t know, they just assume we’re part of the majority, that we are cisgender and heterosexual. Most of the time they don’t even bother to ask. So we just choose to live as cishet individuals, mixing in with the other cishet people in our communities, blending in as a person that is not who we are.
Such are the troubles I experienced in the first seven months after realizing that I was bi.
Fast forward to May 2022, and I was wanting to celebrate the upcoming pride month. I wanted to write a story about members of the LGBTQ+ community, but I didn’t want to use specific labels like bisexual or transgender. Rather, I wanted to write a story that a lot of people in the queer community could relate to, regardless of the label they identify with. Thus, the goal was to write a story that included various aspects of the daily issues we face as sexual and gender minority groups. So, instead of leaning on the labeling of different sexual and gender minorities, I decided to go with something more symbolic: colors.
Writing this story was not easy. The process began on May 24th, 2022, with the actual words starting to be written on June 1st. Looking back on it, I started too late to get this story out for Pride Month 2022. I had initially planned for the story to be a multi-chapter story, and I knew the story would revolve around two original characters, which I later came to name Topaz Glow and Dancing Sky, trying their best to survive in a black-and-white society as ponies of colors.
That’s pretty much everything I had planned out when I began writing. I planned up everything else on the spot as I went along, improvising plot points whenever I ran out of them.
One fun fact is that the original version of this story was quite different from what it looks like today, owing to the fact that I didn’t have a clear idea about the universe this story was taking place in, despite it being an alternate universe story.
Such is the price of not planning out my stories before I start drafting them.
But if there is one thing that stayed constant throughout the versions of this story, it’s the scene where Topaz puts on hair dye and has a bout of raging dysphoria. That scene, written from June 6th to 7th in 2022, was in the second chapter of the first rough draft, which was a multi-chapter story that was canceled as I realized in May 2023 that I wouldn’t be able to finish it within the deadline of June 30th. It was in the second rough draft, derived from the first rough draft where I shortened it into a one-shot and changed the ending from the original ending I had in mind. It is included in the final version, which is the version you see on this website today.
Funny how I was able to write about dysphoria even before realizing my gender identity.
But back to where I was; that scene, although improvised on the spot when I wrote it over the course of two days, became the pivot point for this story when I was revising and redrafting the story in my later variations. It became ‘that’ scene where you can’t take it out of the story; once you do, the entire build-up just crumbles to ashes.
Out of this 651-word-long segment, it’s really hard to decide on a favorite part, but if I had to choose, it would probably be the following lines:
Outer layer, inner layer. Bangs, side, back, top. Topaz knew the process like the back of her hoof. It made it much faster for her to get it over with.
She was painting another layer of lies on herself.
If I had to represent the entire story with just a short few sentences from the story itself, I would pick those lines. I think that puts into perspective the importance of this scene when it comes to the scale of the entire story.
Anyway, back to how the drafting process went. Once pride month for 2022 was over, the motivation to work on this story was gone. I did work on the piece for about another month even after June was over, but really, I didn’t have the pressure of having to finish this piece before a set date. I had a year until the next pride month, so why worry about something that I have 365 days left to finish?
So I paused work on it for a moment while days went by. I moved to the United States at the end of July. I began college at the end of August. I started taking classes, both ones I really loved and got really bored by. I met a good friend who was also interested in writing, and I managed to abduct her into writing stories about colorful horses with me (shoutout to Zenith Sky for brainstorming this story with me whenever I got stuck).
Then, in November 2022, I had further revelations about my identity, this time about my gender. That changed everything.
The day I figured out I was trans, every issue I faced as a member of the queer community—the fear that I might get rejected by people I care about, the dysphoria from the discrepancy between the person I appeared as and the person I wanted to be, the anxiety that I won’t be able to help myself become the person I wanted to be because of what certain people out there in society were doing to people like me—all came back to me in full force.
It’s been a rough ride since then. Though I won’t go too much into the details, I’m very sure I’m not out of the clouds yet. I don’t think I will for a long time, given that there are people who disapprove of folks like me in just the right positions to negatively affect our lives for a very long time and people who disapprove of my gender identity that I have to rely on for college educations and such.
During the 29 days I was revising the second rough draft to make it into the final draft, all the negative emotions I felt during the past half year—the anxiety, fear, despair, anger, sorrow, bitterness, indignance, powerlessness, and other emotions I can’t put into words right now—became my fuel for rewriting the story. There were some very good points my editor had made about the second rough draft (once again, thank you so much for the help, Ruby), such as needing to include more context clues about the universe this story takes place in. That point became the basis for including news articles on how there were laws being introduced to limit colored ponies’ freedom.
Looking up at the countless articles already pinned there, Topaz searched for a spot to pin the new piece of paper. Titles such as ‘Multichromatic Disordered Ponies Banned from Getting Hair Dye Treatment in Beauty Shops and Salons’ and ‘Restrictions on Marriage Between Ponies with MCD and Grayscale Ponies’ dug into Topaz’s eyes, cutting through her body and embedding themselves in her heart with their serrated blades of words. Topaz wordlessly stared up at the titles, the letters in black ink staring back into her soul.
It shouldn’t be too hard to guess that the bills and laws mentioned in that scene are based on anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and bills being introduced and passed in states across the United States.
Another shaky breath. Another teardrop. “We didn’t do anything wrong, did we?”
Sky shook her head. “We didn’t do anything wrong to them, unless you count existing with colors in our manes as a crime. If anything, we’re committing wrongs against ourselves.”
“Why do they hate us, then? Why are they doing this? What do they have to gain by doing this?”
I asked the exact question Topaz asks in the story so many times, especially in the second quarter of 2023. I asked that question when they banned mentioning LGBTQ+ individuals in schools. I asked that question when they banned gender-affirming care. I asked that question when they made a bill that threatens same-sex, interfaith, and interracial marriage. I asked that question every time I heard on the news that a member of the queer community was attacked or killed for an unjust reason. I’ve had people try to answer the question every time. No matter how much their answer made sense logically, I don’t think I’ve ever managed to accept that on an emotional level.
I know I initially set out to tell a story that a lot of the people in the LGBTQ+ community could relate to. Right now, looking back at the draft I have here on my Google Docs, while I still feel like a lot of queer people would relate to the things Topaz and Sky talk about, I also feel like a lot more of the subjects that were brought up in this story are based on my own experiences.
Is that a good thing? I honestly don’t know.
It could mean that I’m mistaken and I wrote a story that not a lot of queer people would relate to since everyone has different experiences and I can’t generalize the issues a queer person faces in their daily life. Or it could mean that I’m just experiencing a lot of the issues other queer people face in their lives and that those issues are becoming my stories as much as they are others’ stories (see the paragraph where I talked about sexual/gender minority groups’ issues becoming your own above).
Whichever the case is, I just hope that I managed to mostly encapsulate what a lot of us queer people have to go through in our lives.
Though, in all honesty, I’m very certain there are so many aspects of the struggles of the queer community that I didn’t manage to capture in this story, and I apologize for that. Any troubles that I could not incorporate into this story is a shortcoming of this piece, and that is a direct representation of my limits as a writer, and as a member of the queer community.
One thing I should mention about our two main characters, Topaz and Sky, is that their dialogues and lines are based on actual conversations I’ve had with my friends about the subjects handled in this story. Whenever I was in Topaz’s place, always being so afraid of what the future holds and in despair about not being who I wished to be, I had friends play the role of Dancing Sky, always there to pull me back from the brink and give me enough hope and strength to keep on going.
Topaz stared at Sky. Exhaustion covered her face, and her bloodshot eyes were dim and dull. “Would we even see it in our lifetimes? And even if we do… What would be the point if we don’t have anything left by that point?”
Sky hesitated, biting her lower lip as she struggled to come up with an answer. Eventually, she said, “We’ll have to wait and see. I sincerely hope things get better soon, just as much as you do. And really, until it does happen… We’ll just have to keep pretending, holding onto hope that things will improve for us someday, and just… Hiding who we are until the day comes. That’s the best I can give ya.”
No one has been able to tell me when things will start to become better. Although, for what it’s worth, I consider myself to be in a luckier situation compared to Topaz; contrary to the anxiety and despair Topaz has to face every day regarding not being able to show who she really is, I have enough wriggle room to pursue what I want and who I wish to be while keeping that mask on towards the people that disapprove of my gender identity and sexual orientation. I don’t think I have to say how much I’m grateful for that extra space.
One last thing I would like to talk about before I wrap this blog up is the ending. Originally I had planned for Topaz and Sky to have their colors found out and essentially become the pariah of the town. The story would have ended with them gathering their essentials and taking the earliest train out of the town. However, that was an ending for the first version of the story, and the ending had to be changed when the multi-chapter plan got scrapped.
After some consideration, I eventually settled on a more open-ended resolution, where Sky would console Topaz when she was having a nightmare and let her sleep in for a couple more hours, while Topaz found some respite in her dreams thanks to her friend. After all, aren’t all of our lives open-ended, unless you’re telling your life story up to your death?
Topaz tossed and turned as she tried her darndest to get out of the nightmare that had her in its vice grip. More tears joined the ones already gliding down her cheek as she squirmed, and her whimpers only grew in intensity.
Instinctively, Sky reached out a wing and held her tight. She gently rubbed Topaz’s back and whispered in her ear, “Shh… It’s okay, Top… I’m here, it’s going to be okay…”
Gradually, the crying and the tears died down, and Topaz’s expression became calm once more. She let out a small groan, then squirmed closer to Sky, snuggling deeper into her embrace. Sky reciprocated, holding Topaz tighter.
If there’s one thing I envy about Topaz, it’s the fact that she has someone to console her through her nightmares and change them into happier dreams. That’s the one thing Topaz has that I don’t have.
It’s a small consolation that my dreams are forgotten very easily.
So, until I can freely be who I wish to be, the best I can do is hold onto the hope given to me by my friends and wait for things to improve. Because, as Sky said, nothing gets infinitely worse; at some point, things will hit rock bottom, and they’ll start to improve.
As of now, this story sits at 16 likes and 10 dislikes with a view count of 153. It’s not a complete failure, but it is the story with a visible rating bar that has the worst ratio I’ve gotten so far in my 3 years and 10 months of being a member of this site.
Personally, though, I don’t care about the downvotes. If anything, it probably means that I’ve triggered a bunch of bigoted people, and I count that as a win. Because why else would they ever go out of their way to hit that tiny little thumbs-down button in the corner of a story written by someone they don’t even know?
But anyway, for now, I’ll be holding on, braving the trials we queer people face every day with those who support me for being who I am. That’s the one thing I would never give up in this situation; the camaraderie I and other queer or ally friends share.
This blog has been a bit of a ramble, but really, all I hope is that you enjoy this story. If you made it through the entire blog post, thank you for reading, and I will see you in the next story I post.
Until Things Get Better,
Sunlight Rays
