Mar
31st
2024
zecora · 9:56pm March 31st
So I have a question that I'm going to put in the blog, I put this in the last chapter of my story, but people don't seem to want to comment as much as they used to, so ill ask here as well. How should I handle Zecora. I can't rhyme to save my life, so should I just not include her, or should I come up with a reason for her not to rhyme around harbinger? Like, maybe she does it to annoy the bigoted ponies or harbingers kitsune nature translates them into normal speech. I don't want to remove her from the story because it would be interesting for them to interact, but I'm honestly at a loss. I'm open to your opinions.
Hmm…
First of all, it’s your story so it’s your choice, but sometimes you should take advice from commenters, which is what you are currently doing.
My opinion is that removing her is the better option if you cannot think up good rhymes for her to use.
The second best thing to do, in my opinion, is removing her rhyme-speak from the story entirely. After all, you want your story to be more realistic, right? Might as well just remove that feature without ruining it with the over-used “she does it to mess with the ponies” which is just simply out of character for a character that helps those in need.
She is a healer/alchemist shaman with a reputation to help anyone as long as they ask.
She was willing to help cure the poison joke even though she was shunned from the very ponies she helped. If that isn't a sign of an altruist, i don't know what is.
Lastly, you could just remove her from the story entirely which isn't a big deal. It’s a big forest, not every creature that exists there has met her, or she them, I'm sure. I get why you don't want to do that, though.
I do like your translation idea. Maybe you can bs it into the whole… aspect thing.
Rhyming is very important to her character, so removing it entirely without explanation seems to not be the direction to go. I could get on board with translation as a solution, but it would be best if there is some other quirk indicating the rhyming is still happening on the other end. And also if you keep to it being translation going forward. One of my pet peeves is when a story makes a point that the characters aren't speaking English then has them using puns or having misunderstandings that only make sense in English.
As for her doing it just for the ponies, that would probably work okay. Might be best if she starts out rhyming until she notices that Harbinger isn't friendly with the ponies, or if some other parts of her usual character are also just for show. I can't say I have seen a version of Zecora where her Witch Doctor persona is entirely just a front so people don't investigate further and find she has something else entirely going on. Like she is a mad scientist making death rays in an underground lair beneath her hut or something.
5774482
How would you recommend showing the quirk of translation, cause right now my best idea is that Harbinger doesn't actually speak any real language and instead speaks tongues. Meaning, when he talks to zecora she hears her mother tongue and not equestrian and then making the only reason she rhymes to be some kind of memory trick she does to help remember the rules of the pony tongue in the first place.
5774693
Hmm. Well, first idea is that rhyming language is pretty much always in even parts, as the second part rhymes with the first. So even if the parts don't rhyme after translation they would still be paired. Either two sentences, or a sentence with two sections.
Second idea is to have it seem oddly long winded. Zecora is extra wordy when she says things, just to be able to complete the rhyme. Which when translated would still be wordy.
My third idea is for if the translation magic is a bit smarter, and capable of translating the intent in how the words are structured. In real life when people translate rhyming poetry they often change the words around a lot to keep the rhyming, or make it have a similar rhythm anyway. So perhaps she ends up speaking in a non-rhyming poetic way, for example haiku, which has a similar intent to the rhyming but isn't the same.
Of course all of that only matters if she is actually speaking in rhyme at the time. If she decides to speak in her native language without rhyming then there is no need for any of it.
5774713
Thanks