Behind the Story: SHY.

I’ve been caught in a dreg of OC stories lately (and more to come considering I just experienced something it would be remiss to not write a Raining-Verse story about it). A lot of them have been good OC stories, but nobody reads OC stories.

So here’s some good old-fashioned Rarishy (kinda).

I don’t really participate in Quills and Sofas speedwrites anymore. I have determined that while I’m a good enough writer, I’m not a good speedwriter. It takes me a week and half to write 1k word stories for crying out loud. Over the course of that week I can come up with ideas, tweak existing ones to fit, and eventually get a product I’m proud of.

That being said, QnS— every year— runs a fic exchange. I requested a femboy Thorax, but you have to write a story too. The prompt I got was “anything to do with Rarity and Fluttershy”. That’s a lot of room for a lot of options.

A song was also bundled for inspiration, and the song I was supposed to write from was Contractual by Chase Petra. Upon listening to this, I thought of “Rarishy but Fluttershy loves everything Rarity has done for her, but Rarity doesn’t see it like that”. It was simple, hard to mess up, and along the way it became this.

The story I have is not related to Contractual very much, the song got lost in the shuffle along the way. I felt that instead of this barebones idea, I could instead have Fluttershy failing to tell Rarity her feelings? Why? Because she’s shy, naturally. Not just shy though, suffering from social anxiety berating her at every turn.

I don’t have terrible social anxiety, but I included a lot I hadn’t experienced in Frag/Ment/Ed, so I figured I could do it again. Based on some testimonials I’ve read and Bocchi the Rock, I constructed Fluttershy around this idea of social anxiety. I mean, she probably has it, we don’t see inside her head much, don’t know if it’s to this degree, but still.

Along the right side of the page are Fluttershy’s intrusive thoughts, things that disrupt the flow and distract her from enjoying the moment, constantly trying to remind her that she’s absolutely useless regardless of whether or not she is.

Along the left side are Fluttershy’s attempts to fight back, getting more and more desperate as the intrusive thoughts nag on. Her thoughts spiral out, imagining a million different scenarios and focusing exclusively on the worst of them, constantly afraid she’s going to do the wrong thing.

Again, my social anxiety isn’t that bad, but I think I got it alright? Feel free to tell me otherwise.

At the end of the story, the center-aligned text represents her coming to peace for that brief moment in agreement.

As for the story itself, I wanted it to feel oppressive, which is part of the reason it’s written in present tense. She’s supposed to be sitting there, and the entire question is whether she won’t or will. She eventually doesn’t, but don’t worry she ends up with Rainbow Dash instead (/j).

Sorry if this all sounds a little pretentious, but I really don’t have much to say about this story beyond how I implemented the theme. I made many choices to make this thing as experimental as my recent stories (barring Scenes From a Ponyvillian Borough). Obviously nothing is going to be as experimental as Frag/Ment/Ed, but I want to do at least a few new things with each new story I put out.

Fluttershy I’ve had experience writing, and her personality is easy for me. Rarity was a little more difficult, but when I didn’t know what she would say, I repeated “darling” in my head until something clicked. I know her personality is more than “darling”, but that’s the switch for me to go into Rarity mode.

That’s really it regarding this story. Nothing else special about it really. It’s a short story I wrote for someone that I applied some unique things to and that’s it.

Influences: the usuals, Bocchi the Rock

And until next time, be awesome!
-Dashie