My Influences

“Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.”

This quote is often cited as being said by Pablo Picasso. The quote itself is often used to describe that art is derivative, and that sometimes the best pieces of art are doing what’s been done, but doing it even better. After all, Super Mario Bros. is not considered the best 2D platformer, as people often consider World or 3 to be better anyways.

That is to say, everyone, every artist has influences. Some are pretty open about who influenced them, Oasis with The Beatles, for instance. Others aren’t, but they all have influences.

And FabulousDivaRarity happened to show up earlier, and it made me realize that I’ve never actually explained my influences in-depth. I tried doing it once, but then it got deleted somehow and I didn’t have the energy to rewrite it.

I do now, but I’ve also realized I have a lot of influences, and I’ve been here for long enough. This might take a while, but to attempt to make it more readable and divided, instead of just waffling one and realizing there’s another, I’m going to attempt to split it by year.

So let’s get into this.

2018

I’ve actually been on this site longer than 5 years (I missed my anniversary a bit ago. Not great with deadlines). 2018 contains some of my earliest writing and my influences have been lost to time by now.

However, I can remember a couple.

Among my earliest influences are two in particular. Believe it or not, I used to enjoy reading, and I think I was trying to emulate Tui Sutherland’s style because WoF was what I was interested in. However, I don’t see any of that reading my earliest stories.

I think what I’m mainly trying to emulate is a story I’ve mentioned many times. It’s my favorite fanfic and pretty much molded me into becoming an SoL writer. Tangled Up in Blues is a story by the acclaimed* writer The Descendant. It follows Noteworthy (in this story Blues, as it was written before he got the fan name) through Season 1 and eventually into its own story as he actually makes good in his life.

It’s an incredible little SoL story. One of the first ever fanfics I read, and a legitimately well-written piece from start to finish. Aside from the tense screw-ups, it’s pretty much perfect.

My relationship to this story has changed overtime, and I’m still trying to emulate a fraction of its power to this day. In this early stage of my career, it’s pretty obvious to trace the influence.

A big part of Tangled Up in Blues, specifically the early story, is the emphasis on loneliness. The Blues are a huge part of it, and the story does wonders at emphasizing the emptiness of the vast places it takes place in. In particular, Turning Pages is heavily influenced by the story tonally. The vast emptiness of the settings are pretty prevalent.

Tangled Up in Blues has been a very consistent influence on my stories in general, even after moving beyond that. Maybe I should go back to emulating that style, I think it’d be neat. Maybe after I’m done with the current piece.

The second influence I can really trace is songwriting. This is the first time I’m going to mention songwriting but it won’t be the last. I have a very consistent relationship with music, it’s been my hyperfixation for years at this point and it’s not going away anytime soon. I’m too deep in it to quit now.

Like Tangled Up in Blues, my relationship to song lyrics has evolved over time, but in 2018 I thought the lyrics to I Am The Walrus were dumb. My primary influences in these early days were rational lyrics. None of that “expert textpert choking smokers” bs. I was more into “On a long and winding highway, east of Omaha” and “It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in”. They’re lyrics that describe scenes in a somewhat poetic way but aren’t attempting to be poetry.

My earliest stories were based on such lyrics, though I didn’t really understand why they were poetic so I was just replicating them. People don’t talk the way they do in The Piano Mare, Billy Joel is not using the lyrics literally.

Now those are what I was generally influenced by. I only wrote 3 stories in 2018, but there’s also a very unusual influence that permeates some of my early work. StallionForce (the now-deleted original specifically) and Rockin’ On are influenced by the Rock Band 4 story mode.

The RB4 story mode is very comedic in tone. It’s very much an affectionate parody of things like Behind the Music and even some other rhythm game (with peripherals) storylines. It just tells the story of your band and that’s it, got some witty dialogue and funny moments but it’s really not much.

I was mainly influenced by the linear progression bit. I’m not a comedy writer and still haven’t figured it out, so I just thought the “touring the world” part was neat. So, I utilized it. Those stories influenced by that are more out-there and have terrible pacing because I wanted to replicate the storyline. It isn’t much, but I figured I’d mention it.

Now it’s time for the next chapter.

*I cannot generally confirm this, there’s too many blog posts that mention “The Descendant” in some way, shape, or form. However, the reviewers I found who mentioned the author tended to hold them in fairly high regard.

2019

2019 is an interesting year for the development of my writing. It’s when I started making stories that were kinda neat actually. While StallionForce (the rewrite) was the first story I wrote this year, I feel the influences don’t come in until the next one.

Again, there are a couple influences I can cite for my 2019 tenure.

So, I learned there was a trend called Scootalove in 2019. The trend was originally made to combat Scootabuse, where Rainbow Dash treats Scootaloo like shit. In Scootalove, they have a sisterly (pr motherly) bond and treat each other very well. However, both trends have since died down with the canon veering more towards the idea that Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash see each other as sisters and love each other very much.

I loved this little idea of how a good family treats each other, but that’s not what I’m mentioning this for, oh no.

FabulousDivaRarity is my favorite writer on the site.

I stumbled into her Scootalove stories by chance. I forget which ones they were, but I seem to have saved other Scootalove stories I downloaded from TVTropes, but I’m rambling.

The point is that those stories influenced Orion directly.

If you’re unaware of who FabulousDivaRarity is, she was a very prolific writer from 2019/2020. I have not read her entire body of work because that’s like reading Austereoh and then realizing the series is 7 million words long (although FDR’s stories are fairly short). However, I did read a small collection of her 2019 pieces.

FDR is one of those authors who just has a throughline going through her work. A lot of her work is about faith, impermanence, the little moments, and strongly based around motherly relationships. She does write ABDL fic, but I think her greatest strengths, and where I’ve pulled the most influence, are from her SoL stories and her experimental fiction.

Around the time The Endless Cycle came out, she was writing stories such as Remember When It Rained, which I’d wager influenced The Endless Cycle quite a bit. In fact, The Endless Cycle takes from so many influences and it does it fairly blatantly. The entire story is about impermanence of one life and the beginning of a new one, which I almost certainly have to credit to FDR.

I’d also consider The Endless Cycle my first great story. So I think the quote has some truth to it.

FDR influenced a lot of the stories I wrote at the time, and her more experimental works still influence me today. The entire time, when she was writing stories that mimicked her life experiences, making art out of her pain… that probably influenced the entirety of the Raining-verse. Delirium in particular is a story that influences my more dour and depressing writing, Prayers is also very good as a compositional art piece. It’s written very well, and I can appreciate it even if the story doesn’t really make a point.

I’ve only read a few of her stories but by god have they left such an effect on me. I absolutely love her for her efforts and for giving me a style to emulate before maturing into my own.

2019 was when I really started getting into FDR and so many of those stories are about time and the little moments. It really taught me to appreciate SoL as its own artform.

In addition. I would also like to mention music again. Like I said, I will be mentioning it a lot because my relationship to it has evolved over the years. In 2019, I started to move past the poetic descriptions and started getting into the stories the music told.

Several of my stories released in 2019 all use some sort of lyrically-influenced storytelling. Again, it was more rational lyrics than irrational ones, but it is always focused on storytelling. Be it Rock Operas (American Idiot), concept albums (Trench), or just songs that tell a story in the first place like Hurt. Certain stories from around this time also integrate music into the storytelling. I think that was influenced by Rock Operas, but FDR also did that plenty so it could be either.

Music in general was very influential to me in 2019, almost every story being about it in some way.

But of course, we also have all the fringe influences, though I can really only point out one.

The Great Equestrian Journey has two completely unique influences to itself (at least this year, there’s one more story I can think of influenced by one).

The first influence is GeoWizard’s impeccable Mission Across Wales. A masterpiece in storytelling and a really unique idea for a video series. In that series, he attempted to cross Wales in a straight line from coast-to-coast, and he does an incredible job showing off the beauty and nature of the outdoors. I loved the concept so I wrote a story about it. A stallion walking across Equestria (and eventually beyond), in a straight line. It’s really not deeper than that.

However, the other influence on The Great Equestrian Journey was the story Trail Blazer by MagicS. It’s an underrated story that has a pretty comedic tone (at least until the ending), about a mare who’s the best cartographer in the country but is also a raging alcoholic, will fuck anything that moves, and is just generally an emotional trainwreck.

I actually really recommend reading it, just keep in mind that there’s a lot of grammatical issues. It’s actually one of the most interesting reads I’ve seen on FiMFiction. There’s not much about traveling in that story— it’s definitely more about the titular character— but the traveling there influenced The Great Equestrian Journey. It influenced the comedic tone of that story and the idea about traveling Equestria. I definitely think I could mix the two to create something incredibly unique. Did I? Ehh, but I still have to give the two pieces of media credit for helping me attempt to.

Trail Blazer also influenced Twilight’s Quest, but we’ll get there when we get there. That story’s a whole mess.

But 2019 did eventually have to come to an end, and I was about to enter one of my most prolific years on the site, 2020.

2020

I have to start 2020 by immediately mentioning the first story I wrote that year. It’s one of those fringe influences but the story holds a special place in my heart so I want to talk about it.

Sitting On The Dock of the Bay has one particular influence that means a lot to me. I can’t explain why, but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it.

I was a Freshman in High School in 2020, and my sibling was in 8th grade. The 8th grade (homeroom) teacher was a friend of my parents (and also left an impact on me) and somehow he managed to rent out a lake house despite being a Private School Teacher.

I kinda stopped going when you know, I became girl, but it was the easiest escape from Christianity actually.

But anyways, I liked watching the boats go and those sort of influenced Sitting on the Dock on the Bay, as well as my everpresent Tangled Up in Blue influence. That story means a lot to me, and I wanted to share that.

It’s something about the ever-present serenity, the time to sit and watch, the ponies being ponies— all this is my impetus for writing stories like this. That time at the lake house made me appreciate the walk I take to work, the kids playing on the playground, the gravel road that leads nowhere. Those little scenes on the dock of the lake, those are some of my biggest influences. Not a story, not a song. People.

I’ve joked with QnS that I sucked at writing everything else so I just became a really good SoL writer, and hey, I’ve proved that plenty. But there is a reason for it, and it’s Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.

And in the completely opposite direction, you know what else influenced me a lot in 2020? Fallout: Equestria.

So many of my stories that came out in 2020 are based around wars of some kind. Well, four, but who’s counting. Not only that, but they are also based around the main idea of FO:E, “War doesn’t change, but ponies do”.

I’ve never written a straight war story. It’s always in the background, except in Fallout Equestria: 21st Century Breakdown. I actually really like the way that’s written but I think it’d be more interesting to show the loosening grasp on sanity of the MC than the war. Who knows I barely wrote it.

Regardless of the exception, the war is always just happening while the action is focused in the ponies living through the hells of war. I think it was a novel little streak of stories, special mention goes to The Meeting Place. They’re all FO:E influenced.

While the worldbuilding is far and away the best part of FO:E, I think taking it in a pony route is an interesting direction. You see LittlePip evolve as a character in the story proper, so why not make the character evolution the whole point? I don’t really have much else to say regarding FO:E, let’s get to fringes.

Reinventing Music is one of the oddball notes in my catalogue.

It’s not a bad story, far from it. I actually like what I’ve written quite a bit. It’s also one of my most popular stories. The primary influences are actually really just one influence but one story’s cooler than the other.

Yesterday is a movie about a random guy who wakes up and is the only person who remembers who The Beatles were. Naturally he attempts to record almost their entire catalog with all the baggage that entails. It’s actually a really interesting concept for a film, and I actually like the film quite a bit.

I think the ending’s a little contrived, but the soundtrack is actually incredible… and that’s probably the main reason I like it. Look, I don’t think O Brother Where Art Thou is an amazing movie for its black comedy. That soundtrack has no right to go as hard as it does.

However, someone saw the missed potential of Yesterday and wrote a story that fixes most of my grievances with the movie, with the same concept.

The person is CrackedInkwell and the story is The Beatle.

Now, The Beatle probably should be under my main influences because it got me into The Beatles, and I’ll be talking about them a lot later. However, the same concept encouraged me to write my own take on the concept, except with all of Rock. I have a better roadmap of what songs are required for that, but I thought it was a cool idea.

After all, good artists borrow, great artists steal.

Then, there’s The Drumming Pegasus. I really shouldn’t include it in the fringes because I’ll be talking more about its influences later, but I was actually inspired by stuff like Enola Holmes where the narrator is the main character and they’re just relaying their thoughts to you. I don’t think I’d read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy at that point.

The Drumming Pegasus though has a much bigger influence and we’ll be talking about it shortly.

Of special unrelated mention is Neon Moon which is still highlighting that I was influenced by the stories songs would tell, with some poetic descriptions mixed in.

Anyways, let’s move on to the next year.

2021

2021 remains to date my most productive year on FiMFiction, and comes with an array of new influences that I need to mention.

Again, still on my “songs that tell stories” kick, but I need to mention the elephant in the room.

I wrote a lot of trans stories in 2021. Well, I should say I started writing a lot.

The brunt of my trans story influence comes from the webcomic I want to be a cute anime girl with its frank description of being trans. It’s a more positive take on the coming out story, but it still is one.

It immediately won me over with its heart and humor, and I started taking my influence from the “huh wait” moment Cheryl has in that story. After all, you can’t write a trans story without that moment unless you’re me but we’ll get to that.

Trans stories aren’t really something I see a lot of on FiMFiction, I think the most popular writer of them is Boopy Doopy, but I’m glad I was also up there for a short time. I wanted to write something that would replicate that webcomic for me because it helped me discover myself… so maybe it could help others.

There isn’t really much else to add besides the general clarifying of my earlier influences. Lots pf stories here are influenced by Tangled Up in Blues with a further degree of depth.

However, 2021 was also one of my most ambitious years for stories, and there’s plenty of stories that aren’t influenced by any of the above… so let’s talk about them. Quickly.

Only Tree in the Forest is genuinely one of the most poignant stories about an inanimate object I’ve read. So I wrote a story about it, and it was pretty good.

I thought that since Only Tree in the Forest was sort of a SoL take on the Golden Oaks Library… that’s right up my alley. So, let’s make that story but have it be about an actual pony this time. It’s just a furthering of the experience influence, but I did apply Only Tree in the Forest to it.

Then we have Twilight’s Quest.

I still think this is a good idea for a story and I had a lot of fun writing it… I just never finished it because I think what I was gonna do with the story is super dumb. Also I never got around to it.

Twilight’s Quest is one of the stories influenced by Trail Blazer, but the idea around it was influenced by JRPGs. In particular, Dragon Quest IX and Dragon Quest XI. Those just so happened to be the only JRPGs I’d played through at the time (I’ve since added DQVI to the list). The idea was that there’s a lot of shit that’s really contrived in JRPG plots, so what if I made an affectionate parody of them?

Again, it’s a super fun idea and as long as I could write an engaging story that’d be really cool. But in the process of playing Act 3 of DQXI I kinda wanna do this thing again but play it entirely straight this time. But that’d require so much effort, plots aren’t my strong suit.

Wish it went on for longer, but it is what it is.

Now for the last two fringe projects in 2021. We have Story of Us and Amethyst.

I forget exactly what Story of Us was influenced by or why I chose to write it.

…According to my blog post Super Mario Galaxy. Well that’s something.

I mean, Rosalina is my favorite Mario character, and I love the way she is an outcast who raised outcasts and is also hot. I never finished her story in Super Mario Galaxy, I’m not even that wild about that game. However, I know what her story’s about and I guess I wanted to channel a fraction of the brilliance of that story into my own writing.

I mean, even outcasts of stories to tell, right?

Amethyst is unique because it is influenced by To the Moon moreso than anything else. That’s one of the best SoL games I think (Before Your Eyes is the best) and the story is incredible. Also, it’s about an autistic character, how can I not love it?

To the Moon (which I watched a playthrough of to be clear, haven’t played), is exactly what I want to write. Those little moments of introspection, the things that make SoL deeper than “SoL”. It’s something I haven’t quite mastered yet, but I always want to make it work. The best SoL stories are the ones you read and think. Literally. You read it, and then you think about everything that implies. It makes the story hit harder.

What I’m trying to say is that To the Moon hits the sweet spot of brilliance that I wanted to replicate. I did not with Amethyst but I’m still chasing that high.

But I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the greatest things I’ve ever written, Raining.. Really my entire 2023 writing style is actually just Raining. but I’m trying to make it deeper somehow. It’s a story based on experience, love, and the deathly silence that befalls the city at night, with a far-off train being the only noise that breaks that barrier.

It’s influenced by me. These stories are oftentimes the best things I write, so maybe I should start doing them more.

It’s true that good artists borrow and great artists steal… but I’m an artist. I can steal from myself, can’t I? Sometimes the life you live has more than enough material to work with, as FabulousDivaRarity can certainly attest.

2022

2022 continues with me writing about experiences, but now my stories are also influenced by anime!

A good portion of the stories I wrote in 2022 can easily be subdivided into a few different categories. We’ve got stories that are influenced by observation. The type of things I wrote Sitting on the Dock of the Bay about. Little ideas that are sparked from me seeing something interesting that I just decided to run with.

Then we have stories influenced by experience. I wrote Raining. about this, but also Zephyrina/Zipp and Honeybee. These are stories I’ve lived through and experienced for myself, woven into a little structure that makes MLP relay these stories for me.

Then we have the black sheep of the lot, the ones influenced by anime. Allow me to explain.

Anime is a visual medium filled with colorful characters and action. Things like Are You Bored Yet? take this sort of idea and run with it. The characters are more energetic and have more character to them. Instead of being a medium to tell a story they’re more like ponies telling it.

That being said I think characters being a medium to tell a story are a lot cooler. This is probably why I’m not wild about the majority of my 2022 output. Well, the best story I wrote in 2022 does have characters as characters, but A Broken Crown takes the other approach.

There really isn’t much new influences or fringe stories from 2022. They’re me just perfecting my craft and pumping out a monthly story to my fanbase I actually managed to garner in 2022 (until I took a very long unscheduled break and lost everyone. Oops). They’re all pretty simple, I just got into anime, and I loved how characters were used, so I started writing characters. Stories do kinda need that after all.

Sorry, but there isn’t really much to say here, specifically because I wrote this for listing my 2023 influences.

2023

Technically, I have only written 5 stories in 2023. That being said, I consider All the Small Things and Constantly Changing to be holdovers from 2022, mainly because they’re both influenced by anime and have the same “bright but uninteresting” style I presume some of my weaker 2022 entries to have.

However, I learned about MyHouse.wad and started listening to more out-there music this year, so my style has changed significantly.

One Mare Story is a transition period. It’s starting to be more unique but not quite there yet. Then, I wrote Frag/Ment/Ed.

Frag/Ment/Ed was written for Thousand Words II under the single pretense of “let me write something batshit insane”. Something that I’ve been wanting to do since A Broken Crown is just completely break FiMFiction. I wanted to use the site as a tool to experiment on a meta level. The Beatles didn’t become the band they are without pushing the limits of recording tech to its breaking point (actually quite literally, they broke the track recorder by deliberately compressing the hell out of it for stuff like I Am the Walrus and Revolution).

So, influenced by House of Leaves, I started to do such a thing. I drew from experience to write Frag/Ment/Ed and made sure to show the mental state of the protagonist while telling. Meta experimentation is probably my favorite thing to do. I love pushing limits, because then I start to feel like I’m making art.

But my writing hasn’t only been influenced by experimentation so far this year (and chances are you’re getting another story very soon). I’d like to talk about lyrics.

I’ve mentioned I started out influenced by descriptive language in songs, then got attached to the story the song was telling, and now I’m influenced by the abstract lyrics.

The lyrics that are irrational, nonsensical, but done up in such a way that they are actually incredibly written. Using stuff like poetry and juxtaposition to illicit a specific feeling that could only be done by abstraction.

The biggest example from the modern Pop world is Lacy by Olivia Rodrigo. The lyrics are vague, and make ample use of juxtaposition to get their contradictory feeling across. However, probably the biggest example I can cite is I Am the Walrus.

Now the lyrics don’t sound like they make any sense even when listening, but when you look at them, they’re all poetic and done in such a way to convey confusion without actually mentioning confusion. Sure they do this by being confusing, but Come Together is also confusing, but the lyrics there sound like they’re describing real characters that could exist. It illicits that feeling through poetry despite being completely nonsense.

I have grown really attached to these abstract lyrics as of late, and I’m starting to implement them. Slowly, but I’m trying to replicate those lyrics that make no sense but complete sense at the same time.

“Take your time, hurry up, the choice is yours, don’t delay,” is brilliant. Not because it makes sense, but because it illicits the feeling of irritation. “Take your time” introduces the idea, “hurry up” immediately contradicts it, leaving the lyrics a question mark. Then “the choice is yours” comes in, answering the unasked question by giving you time to think, before immediately robbing that time with “don’t delay” which conveys a sense of urgency normal lyrics couldn’t get across as well, in my opinion.

That’s what I want to replicate. I just think it’s neat, and it definitely makes me feel like I’m writing something people will love, by taking influence from songwriting while doing it.

That’s really all I have to say about this 2023 section, and that concludes pretty much the entire blog post.

You now know how my mind works, and I hope it has been enjoyable at least somewhat. I like looking back on things, even if the stories suck or are wasted potential.

And until next time; be awesome!
-Dashie

Comments

[Themaskedferret]

I always enjoy these deep dives, you have such fascinating things to say. I wish my comment was equally fascinating, but I'm happy with supportive words. n_n

[Turbotune]

Time really flows by~