Golden Vision will interview me Saturday on livestream · 3:53am Jan 12th, 2013
Tomorrow Golden Vision will interview me for his weekly Writer's Workshop series. It'll be livestreamed here at 3PM US Eastern time on Saturday, and my part of the show (about 15 min.) will allegedly start at 3:30. Afterwards, the audio will be on YouTube on the MLPWritersWorkshop channel. The previous interviews are there already: soundslikeponies, Cold in Gardez, Pav Feira, Paleo Prints, Blueshift, & Wanderer D.
They gave me a list of questions in advance. Some of them are hard! How would you answer them? Here are the questions, and my preliminary answers. Things I added in the show are in purple. Things I didn't say but wish I had are in red.
1. What kind of purposes can Trixie serve as a character or antagonist set against the backdrop of a much lighter Equestria?
That's a harder question after "Magic Duel", where she was flat-out evil, and then we blame it on the amulet--or do we? I wouldn't use amulet-Trixie. Most villain-based stories waste half of their time describing the actions of the villains, yet never make the villain psychologically interesting. Amulet-Trixie mostly falls into that category. You can ask how pre-amulet Trixie must have felt in order to give herself up to that amulet, but that's just a tiny portion of the whole episode, and you don't even know whether she understood that would happen.
Trixie can be a buffoon. Trixie could be the pony that a darker villain like Sombra or Discord turns to their purposes, or can be the pony that protagonist-pony (I used Celestia, but you could use Rarity) sees her own errors magnified in. Trixie can be a twisted but sympathetic, even tragic character if you explain how she became who she is. Trixie can easily be made comic, but could end up being too much like comic Rarity. Truly, the Great and Powerful Trixie can serve almost any purpose in a story!
I said that one backstory I gave Trixie was that she has a driving ambition to be a great performer, but she doesn't understand what that means. She is obsessed with technical perfection, and ignores the social aspect of entertainment, and whenever she fails she thinks it's because she still isn't technically still good enough. This is tragic because she's trying very hard to solve her problems, but she is fated never to solve them, for reasons that are her fault from a free-will viewpoint, but that aren't her fault from a determinist viewpoint. See discussion of Fluttershy's Night Out below. Golden Vision asked who else in the show has that kind of misunderstanding about their own goals. I said Twilight, i.e. Lesson Zero. He brought up Lightning Dust from Wonderbolt Academy, which is an even better example. Lightning Dust is being used in just the way I said above: Rainbow Dash sees her own flaws exaggerated in LD, and learns from LD's mistakes.
2. In what ways do you enjoy exploring Celestia's character, whether through her personality, history, or relationships?
Celestia and Luna--and I'm stealing this from Georg's answer--have a wonderfully twisted relationship, having done horrible things to each other with no satsifactory explanation for why either of them did what they did, and each has thousands of years of possible back-story to draw on. Every possible sad fact somepony learns about life can be presumed to be mirrored in Celestia's past.
The trickiest thing about a Celestia story can be figuring out how Luna works into it. Canon is so inconsistent that there is no canon Luna.
I would like to go all Vernor Vinge on Celestia, and ask, "What would a wise, powerful, loving character thousands of years old really be like?" No one's done that well. We imagine Celestia like we imagine Jesus: Think of the traits we call good, then exaggerate them. I don't think that's what would happen at all. When I look at people at the extremes of human intelligence, I see people who act strangely because they've reasoned their way out of their instincts, who avoid saying what they believe because they would be branded as monsters. Golden Vision said he imagines Celestia's royal facade conceals her normality. I agree, but I said my head-canon is that her royal facade (also) conceals her alienness. I see her as the mirror image of a Lovecraftian Great Old One--loving and benevolent, but filled with knowledge beyond our level that would drive anypony mad if she really opened up to them.
3. What kinds of ideas—fanon or canon—do you enjoy lampshading or parodying in your writing, and how do you go about doing so?
I really don't know. I asked to skip this question, but he thought I'd asked to skip question 6. He asked what I was thinking when I started Dark Demon King etc. I said I just took bookplayer's idea and ran with it, and mostly I was thinking "I wanna get in the featured box!"
4. What kind of emotions or thoughts do you think are most vital to convey to a reader of a [Sad] fic?
A sad fic must do more than just be sad. It has to make you think, "Why did this happen? How could this be avoided?" The harder it would have been to avoid, the sadder it is. Or: Outcomes aren't sad. Fates are sad. If something bad happens to a character, that's a little sad. If a character makes an understandable mistake that causes something bad to happen to them, that's a little more sad. If a character could not have not made that mistake, or they learn an important lesson from their mistake but it's too late to do any good, or you wouldn't like the character as much had they been someone who didn't make that kind of mistake, or if no mistakes were made--that's sad verging on horror or tragedy. Golden Vision brought up Greek tragedy, which is a perfect example, often of the "no mistakes were made" kind--characters are punished by the gods for doing the right thing. The tragedy is not just the tragedy of this one individual, but the tragedy of life, which is set up so unfairly. I mentioned Antigone, who suffers for doing the right thing. I could have mentioned Prometheus.
What's sad in Fluttershy's Night Out is not that some stallion "used" her. What's sad is that her attempt to overcome her shyness and connect with other ponies backfired, making her self-esteem even lower than before because she decided that there must be something wrong with her that everypony else can see immediately. What happened was her "fault", in that her beliefs led both to what happened and to her harmful interpretation of it; but was not her fault, because the story argues that somepony with Fluttershy's personality can't get out of this downward spiral on her own.
I may write a blog post about this point: To the Greeks, what was tragic was that the world sometimes punishes good behavior. To us, knowing as much as we do about mechanistic determinism and the importance of environment in shaping character, what is tragic is that a person can become a bad person, or be stuck in a bad cycle of (self/other)-destructive behavior, by their own actions, which everyone sees as their fault, but which aren't their fault from a deterministic point of view. They could theoretically just choose to do the right thing, but they can't in fact choose the right thing, because their experiences and circumstances have made them a person who just can't do that. This is the tragedy of both Trixie and Holmes in Detective & Magician, of Fluttershy in Fluttershy's Night Out, and in Burning Man Brony.
5. How, stylistically, does a [Sad] fic differ from a [Comedy] fic?
You have a lot less slack in pacing in a comedy. You need something a little bit funny at least every other sentence. You have to be careful not to say things with unfunny, sad implications or connotations (violence is tricky!), except when you're deliberately doing funny-sad (which is a real thing despite what some people say). A comedy can grow like a fungus, spreading out from a few initial blotches until all the pieces grow together into a mass. A serious story requires more planning, more layers. A really good comedy is also a serious story, often a little sad, with a personality issue and a theme and everything in the story reinforcing that theme, like Skywriter's "Beloved" or GhostOfHeraclitus' "A Canterlot Carol." I posted an analysis here of how every scene in A Canterlot Carol points towards the last scene and the theme of the story. The closest I've come to that is that "Socks" is a political parody.
6. What are the most important components of characterization in a [Romance] fic, and what kind of situations might you try and create?
In my blog post "How not to ship the Mane 6 with each other", I said: Don't ship your two favorite characters together, because the thing bringing them together is you, not them; and don't pretend that they've already fallen in love with each other. A romance novel spends about two-thirds of its length having the characters gradually realize that they love each other. The important components of characterization are the things that each character will come to love about the other, and the things that make each character like those things about the other. Spend the first third of the story showing them displaying those characteristics, not showing them falling in love. Also show the things they can't stand about each other.
It's also important to show the things that the characters hate about each other, even if you have a happy ending. These opposing forces create tension. A romance novel isn't about two characters gradually realizing they're perfect for each other; it's about the love between two characters conquering the antagonisms and personality clashes between them. A romance story has two plots, and both have protagonists and antagonists. One is the obvious plot, which is some situation the hero and heroine are involved in that drives them together and pushes along the real plot. In the real plot, the "protagonist" is the things they like about each other, and the "antagonist" is the things they dislike about each other; and the protagonist must overcome the antagonist.
Romance novels, though, fall down terribly in dealing with relationships. They stop when the couple gets together. Fan-fiction is better than romance novels because it looks at what happens afterwards.
I should have said something about what bookplayer said in this post. I hate it when I miss a chance to steal something beautiful.
7. What kind of stories have you most enjoyed writing in the past, and what kinds of stories do you think you will write in the future?
Comedies are a blast while I'm writing them. Serious stories are satisfying after I've written them.
I like writing things sweet and optimistic, and things dark and disturbing. The stories in Pony Tales are in the order that they're in--dark, funny, dark, funny, repeat--because I want to give the reader emotional whiplash. I want them to read them in sequence and feel like they'd feel after watching Heavy Metal. To some extent, at some times, I want to hurt my readers. Ultimately, I want to feel something myself. Pain or pleasure, I don't care. Manipulating other peoples' emotions is how I prove to myself that I have emotions.
Long-term, I want to write novels. If writing novels requires many skills in addition to those needed to write a short story, then I'll probably write at least one pony novel, because writing fan-fiction teaches you some things much more rapidly than publishing stories commercially does.
8. If you had one tip to give to a novice writer, what would it be?
The first tip I'd give a novice writer is: Quit. Writing is stupid. It takes a lifetime to master, takes all your spare time, very few people care, and you probably can't make a living at it. Go learn how to write music or make videos, and you'll make a lot more friends and a lot more money. A ponyfiction that gets more than 500 views is considered a success. A YouTube pony video that gets less than 50,000 views is not.
If they can't quit, I'd say: Write fan-fiction. You can still get a few people to read your stories closely, like they would in an ordinary writing group; but you also get ratings and masses of vague yet sometimes-informative comments, and you get more reader-like reactions, from people who aren't obligated to finish your story.
Write a lot of short stories before you write a novel! (I feel like that's the most-important tip, but I've never written a novel, so I may be full of it.) You learn when you dimly grasp that something is going on, or not going on, in what you've written. Before you've learned to analyze short stories, how are you going to analyze a novel? You'll probably just write it, think it's great, and go on to the next one.
The story isn't done the first time you think it is. "Finish" it, but don't submit it. Set it aside for a few weeks and think about it. I often realize only then what the story is about, and must rewrite it.
The clue to knowing when you understand what your story is about is when it makes you cry. If your story hasn't made you cry, it won't make anyone else cry.
If you spend less time revising than writing, either you're a genius, or your stories aren't tight and solidly-constructed.
Read a lot of books and articles about writing. There are different schools of thought; don't get sucked in by just one. Like Bruce Lee said when asked what style of martial arts the best martial artists practice: "All of them." Be especially aware of the difference between advice from great writers, and advice from Writer's Digest. There is one set of books, e.g., Jack Bickham's Scene and Structure and Blake Snyder's Save the Cat!, which give great advice, but you must understand that this advice is the basics of craft. It is how to crank out serviceable fiction without having any great ideas. If you take great works of fiction, particularly short stories, and analyze them by these rules, they often don't fit. The other school, e.g., Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer, is the art that you must add to the craft to make something great.
Find good pre-readers. Don't imagine you can figure everything out by yourself. You can't.
I tell people who have planned out an experiment, "Once you've got everything planned, stop, and pretend you've already done the experiment, and that the results were wrong. Think of as many ways for it to go wrong as you can, and pretend that each of them happened. Now go back and think over what might have caused that, and how to change the experiment to prevent it." The parallel advice to writers is: Don't believe your story is good because a lot of people said it was good. Take your pleasure in it, enjoy the thumbs-up and the favorites, but after a few months, ask yourself, "What still sucks about this story?" Because it still sucks, in some way you haven't discovered. You learn the most when you've made something that you believe is great, that is as good as you know how to make, and then you discover it isn't great.
15 years ago, I thought I was hot shit as a writer. But every time I learn how to do one thing, I learn about two other things that I didn't even realize writers were doing. Back then, I'd have said I knew 80% of what I needed to know to be a great writer. I've learned a lot since then, and now I'm up to 20 or 30%. No one ever masters writing. The best a human can do is master some specialty of writing. If you think you're great, you probably suck.
Know what you want. This sounds simple, but many writers fail dramatically at it. They write what they want to write, then complain that people don't read it. Well, what do they want more: to write exactly what they personally would most like to read, or to be read by a lot of people? If you're complaining about not being read, it means that you want to be read by a lot of people. Admit that to yourself, and write something that a lot of people would like to read.
I'm always interested in hearing what people have to say about number 2
Question #5 is meaningless, because the only stylistic difference is between each individual fic. There's more than one way to write a story, and those are the differentiating stylistic choices, not the genre. Genre and style are two separate things.
702466 I think the pacing is usually faster in comedy. But I'll ask them to remove "stylistically" from the question. Comedy and sad differ thematically. In comedy, you don't have to have a theme that you keep directing people towards, and that makes the story so much simpler. Although it's better if you do! Look at GhostOfHeraclitus' "A Canterlot Carol" (which is both sad and comedy), or Skywriter's Beloved for funny stories with serious themes.
702486 Okay, if they meant to say "thematically," it at least makes some kind of sense.
Hmm, some of those are hard. But I'll give them a shot.
1. What kind of purposes can Trixie serve as a character or antagonist set against the backdrop of a much lighter Equestria?
If I were to use her in a very light Equestria, it would be to showcase that no matter how sunshine-and-rainbowy a world may be, being a good person/pony is still something you have to choose to do.
2. In what ways do you enjoy exploring Celestia's character, whether through her personality, history, or relationships?
...I could spend fifteen minutes on this alone. Put shortly, though: her personality allows exploration and demonstration of ways of thinking and points of view that other people/ponies have a hard time understanding (something to which I can relate); her relationships allow her to help characters grow through sharing these experiences and unique interpretations--and (if more rarely) to grow herself; and her history allows for the showing of how she learned these things, the mistakes she made, just how she went from being 'just like anypony else' to 'God Empress of Ponykind' (if you subscribe to that progression). And so on, and so forth.
3. What kinds of ideas—fanon or canon—do you enjoy lampshading or parodying in your writing, and how do you go about doing so?
A few examples follow (Disclaimer: Some/all of these ideas are entirely unoriginal. Most/all are my standard headcanon for these characters):
- Rainbow Dash as a confident badass all the time--I subvert that into a fragile mask atop manifold insecurities, because the 24/7 badass can't grow.
- Rarity being a shallow drama-queen obsessed with high society and pinnacle fashion--I throw that out entirely, and play her as a capable, self-reliant, insightful grown mare who knows how to take care of herself and others. If the mane six have a mother, it's Rarity. (It helps that generosity is so widely applicable.)
- Celestia being a mischievous prankster because she would go crazy with boredom otherwise--I play this both ways, kind of. My Tia is still a prankster and tease, but she does it because she can. It's not that she'll go crazy without such distractions, but that her centuries of life have taught her that one's inner child is the wisest and truest self of all.
4. What kind of emotions or thoughts do you think are most vital to convey to a reader of a [Sad] fic?
I have yet to write one, but if I did, I would probably do it in two primary steps: convey the weight of the sadness, and then support that weight, with some sort of lesson or explanation about the strength to bear it. This is my weakest question, I think.
5. How, stylistically, does a [Sad] fic differ from a [Comedy] fic?
One ends in a marriage, the other a funeral. (Thematically, well, I'm not quite that consciously aware of my writing to bang that off on such short notice. Okay, maybe this one is my weakest question.)
6. What are the most important components of characterization in a [Romance] fic, and what kind of situations might you try and create?
DEPTH. D-E-P-T-H. One does not simply confess their feelings to a pony and "[Happy Ending] Acquired!". You have them stew on it, and worry, and agonize about failure and rejection, you have them wonder if it's a good idea...and once in a relationship, you have them worry a little about losing it, working not to, and growing in unexpected ways through being part of something more than themselves. And you talk about all of this. It's not just "I love you"-->kissy faces-->feature box.
7. What kind of stories have you most enjoyed writing in the past, and what kinds of stories do you think you will write in the future?
Romances, oddly enough, given most of the ideas I had before I started publishing were epic adventures or dark tragedies...but romance is what I've started cranking out. And what I have currently cooking. Doesn't hurt the feature hunt, though.
8. If you had one tip to give to a novice writer, what would it be?
Write absolutely fearlessly. Even the worst, most cliché tripe can be revised and polished; and anything that doesn't get published is still helping you be a better writer next time--so do it without fear.
And there we go. You have asked, and I have answered. Official Dispensation: Feel free to shamelessly steal any and/or all of it if it strikes you as worth talking about. I'll be in the chat for the stream, and may squee if you do.
I'm interested to hear your answer to #6. I hope that even if I don't get to catch the interview, you'll give me the jist of what you said.
Now, how I would answer that question, personally: There's nothing wrong, in my opinion, with romantic dramas or fluffy romantic comedies, but what they have in common is that they rise or fall on the chemistry a writer can bring to a relationship. To that end, the most important component of characterization is the interplay between the characters.
The way I see it, you're almost making a third character, which is the relationship. The goal is to convince people that there is no way for there to be a truly happy ending unless the relationship ends happily; that an ending where the relationship isn't happy is wrong, even if the characters went on to have happy lives. To make the relationship a sympathetic character, it rests entirely on the shoulders of how these characters act with one another. No matter how much you show character A agonizing, yearning, worrying and pining over character B, if they don't seem both in love (however that character might show it) and in character when they're together with character B then the relationship is a failure, which means that the romance part of your fic is a failure.
Please note that the relationship, in this case, is referring simply to the bond between the characters, so it often starts before there's any sort of literal expression of it in the fic. The relationship should be introduced right away, as with any main character, even if it's not going to be acknowledged by the other characters until later.
As to situations, I'm personally a fan of the conversation about stuff, the conversation between our couple that has nothing to do with issues of the relationship or their feelings, for this very reason. It's a good way to show the relationship in all its awesomeness, no matter what you're doing to it or plan on doing to it later.
Man, spoilers, Bad Horse! :( You've just given away all the good bits of your interview
(originally I sent this to Bad Horse as an email, as not to hog comment space. I have been properly chastised for my impertinence, and am now posting it below with some additions. Can I get the disarming codes for the nuclear bomb sitting in my back yard now?
)
1. Presume “lighter” purpose for Trixie means “more like the cartoon, and less like most fics”. A. Trixie can be a “Daphne”, i.e. kidnap victim/innocent caught up in an event if she’s going to be played “good” (Help me!) B. She can be a competitor (like Lightning Dust to Rainbow Dash) in an event. (Compete with me!) C. She can become a "regular background pony" who is working on improving her career, and occasionally becomes a participant in an ongoing plot. ((Doubtful, she's an unbalanced NPC, but possible since it's a cartoon))
2. Celestia has a number of facets that have different aspects depending on if you’re looking at her from the cartoon POV or a fiction POV. In the cartoon, she seems to be best used as a narrator, giving history (even if it is horribly chopped due to a 22 min time limit). As a fiction, she becomes a veritable torrent of horrible events long gone that only now are bubbling back to the surface making her, in effect, a Plot Generator. The relationship I like the best is actually between Celestia and Luna. They’re sisters, who have each done horrible things to each other, who each are isolated from the rest of the world due to their immortality and drawn together by their similarity. Entire worlds of Grief, Forgiveness, Guilt, Love, Rage, and Compassion can be scrolled out from their relationship, most of which make lousy 22min cartoons designed to make small children buy toys, but good fics.
3. I’ve been having a *hoot* writing a shipfic, just for bouncing all the normal tropes against the wall. Cartoons and short stories tend to the Love At First Sight trope, where I have a hard time suspending my normal sense of disbelief. I mean if Mr. Strong and Handsome Built was so great in the first place, he would already have a wife or two. Romance is almost un-canon in the cartoon (Hey, they’re advertising to 8 year old girls) other than Hearts and Hooves, and the Wedding episode. Um, and Rarity/Blueblood.
My favorite trick is the two-way conversation, where two people are talking and each has a completely different view of what they are talking about. And I have to admit, I love trolling readers.
4. I don’t do [Sad] well. I'm too ham-handed. Probably best if I restrain comment.
5. [Comedy] I feel is best done taken to 11. (Dawnscroll’s “A Slice of Life” is the best example of this.) Combat with pies. Goddess level pillow fights (mine) Extravagant sweeps of your metaphorical brush across broad strokes of canvas. A character should never just 'fall down', they should plummet at a terrifying rate only to plow into the ground with such force that they have to dig themselves back out and knock pebbles out of their ears.
[Sad] is *not* best taken to 11, probably taken down a notch or two.
6 In [Romance] the critical element is having two characters that the reader needs to like. Secondary is putting them into an environment where they can like each other. Last is the flavor of the relationship, if it’s a sad (Genealogy) or a comedy (Traveling Tutor) I have horrible issues mixing the two of these together as (To Sleep, Genealogy) because I just can't pass up an opportunity for a gag, which leads to reader whiplash.
7. I really liked writing Genealogy, but I made the mistake of having the two main characters be too broken, and that turned off a number of readers. In Traveling Tutor, my main characters are both fairly likable, and the focal point is actually on the perceptions of the friends and townsfolk and how they differ from the actual relationship ongoing. I really like writing stories with a bit of romantic interest in them, even in my planned doomed diplomatic mission fic I have *two* romantic pairings. I blame my wife of over a quarter-century, who has totally spoiled me to the concept of being deliriously in love, and makes me want everypony else to experience the sensation.
8. Write! Ok, now that you’re writing, get a couple good writers to look over the stuff you wrote, and give helpful criticism on it, and LISTEN to it. In payback, help other writers by looking over their stuff and making HELPFUL criticism on them too. Do not simply pound the same thing to death over and over and over. Write what you like to write, review it with others until you are happy with it, and *they* are happy with it. Now write some more. Every once in a while, go back and re-read what you've written and figure out what you could do better. If you ask a professional (that is making-a-living) writer to read something they first wrote, they will most likely recoil in horror. Write to get better, not to get perfect, because perfection is impossible.
And for darned sure, have fun with it! (because you're 99.99999% probably not going to make enough money off it to live)
I'm eagerly awaiting the moment this thing finally hits Youtube. Reading it has certainly been a wonderful insight into the mind of my very favorite mortal enemy.
Regarding Celestia I've a question and an observation: The question is -- what sort of belief would you cite as something a really intelligent person might hold that would, in the eyes of other people, paint them as monstrous? The observation is regarding Celestia as this all-wise, all-powerful character. I really really like the notion of an entity that's Lovecraftian but, in some respect, On Our Side[1], but I'm uncertain if that's the best way to paint Celestia. My preferred method to write my way out of her almost inevitable alien nature is to present her as an exceptional, but mostly normal individual stuck with powers, duties and a fate very nearly beyond her. Worse yet, she is forced to hide vulnerability because the society that she very nearly built is reliant on her always being strong, and always being there. In Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea it was intended (though never made explicit) that this is why Celestia remembers as she does, every morning with tea. It's not supposed to be her teaching Twilight -- that comes later -- in fact, in Celestia's mind she's not doing a favor to Twilight, instead Twilight is doing a favor to her, acting as a sort of confessor. An irony[2] inherent in the situation is that the Celestia Twilight sees and remembers as this font of wise recollection and serene[3] grace is in fact all but bent double under the terrible burden of memory.
704224
Regarding comedy and as a reply to Georg:
1. Hey, you mentioned me in the interview. You mentioned me alongside Skywriter no less.
2. I'd like to riff on the the concept of sad-funny and disagree, politely of course, with Georg. I agree with the idea that a really good comedy generally has an undercurrent of seriousness or even tragedy in it. To give it bite, as it were. I think Terry Pratchett calls this concept "Tragic Relief." And while I enjoy a touch of the anarchic in my comedy, I think that shooting for this-goes-to-eleven in every scene in a comedy may work really really well in the short run, but breaks down before you get out of 'extended vignette' territory. You need slow bits, and pensive bits, and maybe even sad bits, for the funny bits to shine all the brighter. The reverse is very likely true -- all the sad all the time would smother the reader[4], so you must dilute it with a bite of gallows humor or at least a splash of hope.
[1] So much so that I've constructed a species with this in mind, as you know.
[2] An irony I intend to explore in a further story if I figure out how to write it properly.
[3] Odd fact: The only co-principality in the world is Andorra, and its rulers (a pair of princes) are styled "His Serene Highness". Serene. There's that word again.
[4] Imagine something like "Twenty Minutes[5]" extended to a novel. The reader would close the book (or the browser) at around chapter two, and possibly seek out the author with a crowbar.
[5] I'll stop referring to it as my archetypical hyper-depressing fic when I stop having nightmares about it.
708257 Arrgh. You're forcing me to respond. Oh, the pain!
[sad] vs. [comedy] : As the great philosopher Mel Brooks once said, "Tragedy is when I get a papercut; comedy is when you fall down an open manhole and die." (paraphrased) I should have properly said short comedy is easier done if taken to 11. There's a "Reality level" inherent in writing: If your character is flying at top speed and hits a tree, does he have to pull his head out of the hole[comedy], or does he go to the hospital with a cracked skull?[tragedy] Comedy is easier with your Reality volume turned down, Tragedy is easier with it turned up. Making the two meet requires a delicate Pratchett-eske touch that I'm not that good at (and he not only does it the length of *books* but *series* of books. Sigh.) Nearly everything I've done that's funny is short and low-Reality, because I'm not that good, and can really only do cheap gags. The longer my [comedy/tragedy] gets, the deeper it gets, the faster I drown in words, flailing as I vanish beneath the sea of sadness and my readers flee.
There's a light at the end of the tunnel for me, and hopefully it's not a train. (or a clopfic) My recent [comedy/romance] is not turning out too badly, and I have high hopes for a future [drama/romance] that I've roughed out. Both of which are attempted balances between Low and High Reality, with restrained use of the [goes to 11] button. (but it's still fun to punch on occasion)
Interesting take on Celestia. I still have her headcanon-ed as a Wise Grandmother who views all the ponies as her children and grandchildren, and one of the major reasons she spends so much time interacting with the court and others is to keep her "in the moment". Otherwise she would just sit and sort through old memories, which would eventually drive her insane. (Touched on in The Tutor)