Behind the Story: Ponyville is falling down.

This story was a bit of an experiment, but it eventually dabbled deep into descriptive SoL territory and I really don’t mind it.

I’m a huge fan of The Beatles, it’s a simple, basic band to be a fan of, but I do genuinely enjoy their music. Aside from the incredible production, I’ve always been a fan of their lyrics. They all wrote good lyrics at some point, but I always found John’s the most interesting.

Towards the back half of his Beatles’ career, John started writing what 12 Tone calls vibes lyrics, those being lyrics that don’t really mean anything. However, I’ve always been attracted to these lyrics, because they certainly sound like they mean something. In other words, it’s complete and utter nonsense but it’s really well-written nonsense.

Songs like I Am The Walrus and Come Together are both fantastic examples. They don’t mean anything, but people on sites like Genius still try and pick apart these lyrics word for word to try and decipher what they mean.

After listening to the entire Beatles discography for a second time I realized I wanted to write a story like this.

So, I got started on it, I started to write a story comprised of vibes writing. This is the meaning behind the intense discrepancy of pretty much everything. When you open the story, the title and picture vaguely relate to each other, but the chapter title is a Korn song that means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Then, the story begins with a line that makes very little sense. It’s all intentional.

I didn’t get 5 paragraphs in before I couldn’t write about nothing anymore.

It was originally going to be about Berry Punch’s experience of Discord from her perspective, being all warped and mind-screwy, and then since she’s the town drunk it became a story about how society treats alcoholics instead, becoming more of a Bob Dylan song than a John Lennon one.

That isn’t to say there’s still not a lot of nonsense in there, if it made any sense at all, the line was kept in. It’s stuffed full of non-sequiturs, referential lines, and overcomplicated metaphors. A lot of these will probably fly by the average reader on a first pass through, but as long as they sound nice that’s all I need.

I also relied on the Grunge principle of contrast, putting two diametrically opposed lines right up against each other to confound and further amplify the underlying meaning. For example, ponies don’t have TV, a ‘veneer of pretend’ is contradictory because a veneer is by definition an act, and also ‘silently decide with a million words’.

The idea behind all this was to paint a picture that is in itself a bit of a contradiction. Berry Punch is an alcoholic, but the people who scorn alcoholics are not talked highly about within the story. But actually, it’s a bit of an examination into the reactions. If you think Berry Punch being an alcoholic is just as bad as people who don’t talk highly about alcoholics, that that’s who the story is about.

There isn’t a lot of depth beyond this story. It’s a super simple idea done in such a way that makes it sound incredibly profound and also not privy to the sort of issues 500 Songs has.

Aside from all that, I also switched up my tenses so you knew whether Berry Punch was remembering something, at the bar, and discussing tomorrow at the end.

She was originally going to be a functional alcoholic, but it didn’t pan out that way. Well, she functions in a very loose definition of the word. I like how it ramps up though.

I don’t really have much else to say about this story, and I’m also sick so I don’t really want to. You can ask me what some of the lines mean though, presuming the line means anything.

Influences included: FabulousDivaRarity (especially Delirium), John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and Kurt Cobain