Site Post » [Interview] Horse Voice's The Writing on the Wall · 4:06am Jul 20th, 2013
Originally posted to the Vault on 7/12/13.
The term "tragedy" as a genre gets thrown around a lot, and is often used as a synonym for "sad". So when a true tragedy comes along, a subtle masterpiece of horror and sorrow, a dark tag is necessary to convey the depths of despair the tale will plumb.
[Dark][Adventure] • 6,200 words
Daring Do can't believe her luck when she is asked to help explore the most ancient tomb known to ponykind. But terrible danger awaits her, for beneath the earth rests something beyond equine understanding.
Hit the break for an interview more suited to a master of comedy, and links to The Writing on the Wall out on the ponynet. Don't forget to grab your own ebook copy over at the Downloads page!
Where do you live?
You know how some people say they want to move to Equestria? Well, I went and actually did it. And let me tell you, you can have it! There's no angry music, almost nobody sells meat, and I can't find a 7-Eleven anywhere.
What kind of work do you do? (i.e. are you a student, do you have a career/day job, etc)
I'm a full-time collector of publishers' rejection letters.
How did you discover My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic? When did you realize you were a fan of the show?
I promised myself I wouldn't start watching, since everyone who tried it seemed to get addicted. But I go on the Internet for the same reason regular people go to zoos: to look at the exhibits. I thought, what could be the harm in checking out some fandom weirdness?
I happened to go to Equestria Daily when The Thessalonica Legacy was posted. That story crossed ponies over with a franchise I had fond memories of, so I thought, "Why not?"
It kept alluding to stuff in the show canon, so I had to start watching to understand it. At first, I was only modestly amused when I wasn't annoyed, and intended to only watch enough to understand Thessalonica.
But later, a funny thing happened. While I was out and about, my mind began drifting back to what I had been watching, and even looking forward to seeing what came next.
They get under your skin, man, and then they've got you.
Do you have a favorite episode?
"Boast Busters II: The Wrath of Trixie."
Who is your favorite character based purely on the canon of the show itself? Would your answer change if you considered the fandom in its entirety (i.e. art, fanfiction, memes, etc)?
Our first meeting was the stuff of fairy tale romance. I looked across that courtyard and saw her, in that boring yellow dress, jerking around spastically to the music, with her face scrunched up and her tongue flapping around.
And I thought, "That's right, honeypie – work that business."
It's a funny world. Before that moment, I never thought I could be attracted to a chick with a hairy back.
How did you come up with your handle/penname?
Originally, I planned to produce a YouTube show called Tales From the Glue Factory, in which I would do dramatic readings of dark pony fiction. The handle seemed fitting.
When I found out the cost of quality recording equipment, I chickened out, and decided to write stories instead of read them. But the alias stuck.
Have you written in other capacities (other fandoms, professionally, etc)? When did you first start writing?
I majored in creative writing, because I wasn't good at anything else. I thought a ravenous consumer of a medium would be able to easily produce it. Being completely wrong, I spent a couple of years as the classes' whipping boy before people finally started laughing with me instead of at me. After they beat the suckiness out of me, I got hand-picked for the college newspaper. Eventually, I reached the point where my work consistently got rave reviews.
When I graduated, my muse promptly ran away. Months later, she came back smelling like a horse. And here we are.
What do you like to do when you're not writing?
Lately, I've been trying to learn the guitar. Give me a couple more years, and you may find your eardrums graced with such musical triumphs as, "Bronycon's Burning," "Equestria Uber Alles," and "Anarchy in the EQ".
Someday, I hope to release the first-ever pony album with a "Parental Advisory" sticker on it.
Who is your favorite author (published or fanfiction)? Do you have a favorite story or novel?
Hunter S. Thompson, and his nonfiction novel, Hell's Angels: the Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, which I have read about five times. Other notable influences include Roald Dahl, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Alan Moore.
Stephen King believes that every author has an "ideal reader" – the one person who they write for, the one person whose reactions they care about. Do you have one, and if so, who is it?
I write the type of stories I want to read, but no one else seems to want to write. Other people liking my stuff is an unexpected bonus.
Do you have any tips for aspiring writers, or writers who are struggling with their own stories?
Always have at least one person look at your stuff before you publish. With The Writing, I tried to get away with doing it on my own. Equestria Daily's prereader insisted on a change to the ending, which I at first resisted, but which I later realized was an improvement. If I had workshopped it first, I'm sure we would both have been spared the hassle.
Before anything else, master English mechanics. That way, you won't write a zillion-word epic, only to find out half the sentences need to be re-structured. Plus, once you know the rules well enough, you can start finding good places to bend them.
Read every damn type of thing you can find – fiction and nonfiction; stuff you agree with and stuff you don't; stuff you like and stuff you don't.
Everyone has his own way of going about the actual writing. The key is to figure out what works for you.
Most important, remember to think outside the box.
What is your typical writing process? (Do you work through multiple drafts, do you have any prereaders/editors, etc?)
Back in college, I had time to write and proofread exactly one draft per assignment, and now I'm stuck in the habit of doing it all in one go. I don't recommend this to others, as most people need at least two drafts to make a piece as good as it can be.
Some stories, such as this one, require that an outline be written beforehand. In other cases, it's best to let the story surprise you as you write it.
On a given day, I work on whatever part I feel like, and later stitch them together, piece by piece (and now that song is stuck in my head). Once a draft is done, it's best to sit on it for at least a day or two, then look at it again, with a fresh mind, to catch as many errors as possible before workshopping it.
What inspired you to write The Writing on the Wall?
Would you believe... porn?
Back when Ponibooru was still around, I stumbled across John Joseco's "Adventures of Human Daring Do". It was basically a modern-day Tijuana bible: short, silly, black-and-white, pornographic. To most people, it would be amusing for what it was. But that's not how my mind works.
For me, the ending was just too darn happy (she got a "happy ending"). Something compelled me to write a Daring Do story that was its thematic opposite. And since I had been reading about [spoiler redacted] around that time, the whole thing sort of formed in my mind, all at once.
Did you run into any tough spots or challenges when writing The Writing on the Wall?
Procrastination is my great weakness. Just look at that word count. It should not have taken six weeks to write this thing.
When you set out to write The Writing on the Wall, did you have any specific messages or themes in mind?
Absolutely. A number of people said the story inspired them to learn about [spoiler redacted]. That, more than anything, was what I was going for.
Someone on EqD said the title must be a reference to Pink Floyd's "The Wall". Actually, it refers to the book of Daniel:
Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it wrote. Then the king's color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together. [...] Then all the king's wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king the interpretation.
Fittingly, the king's reaction here resembles a lot of people's immediate reactions to The Writing.
Where can readers drop you a line?
PM me on FIMFic. PROTIP: If it's a long message, back it up in case of 502 errors.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of my readers for their support, especially the following.
GaryOak, for being my partner in crime.
V-invidia, for proving that very different people can be friends.
Cynewulf, for believing in me from the beginning.
JerryQWERTY, That_one_guy, and Prime 2.0, for being my original fans.
Horizon, for giving better critical analysis than my work probably deserves.
Minalkra, for Lost Angel, and for being a generally chill guy.
Bad Horse, who vouched for me during the Biblical Monsters drama storm.
Lucky Roll, Truth_Seeker, Steel Hoof, and A-hardie, for being such great readers.
Bradel, EldritchSpires, and others too numerous to mention, for gracing my work with in-depth critiques.
Obabscribbler, for all the TLC she put into the Biblical Monsters audiobook.
Vimbert, for insisting on that crucial change to the end of The Writing.
And RBDash47, for giving me this chance.
No doubt, by the time this interview goes up, I will have thought of others who deserve special thanks. Much respect to anyone I miss.
Be well, everyone.
Sincerely,
Horse Voice
(Man, I hope these red bumps are just heat rash...) Huh? Are you still recording? Oh sh--
Horse Voice seems like a pretty chill dude.
On a side not, I haven't checked to be certain, but are all of the stories you add to the vault on Equestria Daily?
IT was an amazing story. Still is.
Omigod this story was so fantastic...
I love the actual text of "the writing on the wall," like what it's based on in real life. Friggin' awesome. And, y'know, terrifying and sad, but it just evokes such an interesting mood.
1221861
No, actually. I'm always surprised when I discover a Vault story isn't on EqD, when I'm compiling the links section. As an example, next week's isn't.
1221940 Ah, so there's hope for me yet.
Good to know, I only asked because I see so many of them with links to EqD.
Hey everyone, if you need some picking-up after reading this, there's an unofficial epilogue, which has this author's blessing.
1221861
I just realized -- I don't think you ever ran across my work before now. But I certainly know about you.
1222002 oh no what did I do
1222006
Silly -- everypony knows Regidar.
The great thing about the writing on the wall is that it is real and meant to be exactly that chilling. Of course, those familiar with the site would likely catch it earlier. I very much approve of the story though. Digging up humanity is dangerous.
1222012 I guess I am rather infamous.
Although your writing is loads better than mine is at the present time.
1222024
Keep at it; you'll get there.
(Worth noting: Said quality also comes at the expense of timing. I release a new story about once in a million years.)
1222036 True, I sacrifice quality for quantity
people seem to like it all the same though so I can get away with it
Congratulations Horse Voice, that story deserves the position the vault!
This story totally deserved it. It was great to see a story that is both intriguing and deep - wish there were more stories like that here.
Also, I gave everyone here an upvote.
Horse Voice writes some pretty awesome stuff.
I'd like to question the meaning of "sad is often used as a synonym for tragic." The only way we can really justify there being a distinction between "sad" and "tragic" stories is in formal classification schemes such as the Tags system. If we are simply taking a consequentialist view, it seems rather likely that "sad" and "tragic" stories would stimulate the same centers in the brain. Granted, I haven't yet researched this, but it seems logical considering they so often carry similar stylistic elements.
Could the poster please provide reasoning for this unsubstantiated and, quite frankly, trivializing claim? (yes, this is a bit of a poster issue for me, I must admit)
I agree it is often used, but that is simply because a tragedy is one of the great archetypes of human fiction. It can be argued that the only tags necessary are comedy, tragedy, and maybe one other.
1222624 I'm sure someone else will explain more fully, but in short tragedy is a distinct literary structure. It's a very particular type of story, which is usually but not always sad. But yeah, I'd like to see HV's reasoning (he knows his shit when it comes to literary theory).
1222898
Tragedy is, in what is doubtlessly a grossly oversimplified definition, a form of drama that deals with human suffering. It often makes use of "sad" events because such events often are related to human suffering, and aid in the catharsis of the audience at the conclusion of the tragedy.
It is not prescriptively "sad" because it is not bound by definition to make use of "sad" events.
While a great many tragedies do make use of nominally "sad" events, the fact that they are not bound to specifically, only, or mostly use "sad" events precludes them from ever being prescriptively synonymous with "sad" stories.
For "sad" stories to be descriptively synonymic with tragedies, artificial schema are necessary to stratify and classify meaning. Thus we come up with a "genre" system.
The genre system is widely accepted (and serves a purpose, however ill-conceived, even here), but its all-encompassing artificiality inherently precludes it, no matter how we may justify our choices of genre tags, from ever truly providing an absolute, correct, accurate, and truly descriptive classification of every possible story -- including "sad" stories and tragedies.
This may serve no apparent practical purpose, but it is certainly a call-to-arms to reform and continually evolve our schema. And my comment was mostly referring to RBDash, but if HV would deign to explain the necessity for a "dark" tag, HV's action would help elucidate this issue.
Congratulations, HV, on the exceptionally rare honor of having been Vaulted twice!
1222964
IMO, the way I see things is:
Sad stories are sad, as in they have sad elements, and sad emotions. But sad does not indicate permanent loss necessarily, and can involve people moving on or growing as well. A story about growing up and moving away from your friends may be sad, but it isn't necessarily purely depressing.
Tragedies involve suffering and loss. In a sad story, there can be a happy ending. In a tragedy, the character has still lost whatever it was that they had, though in some cases they might still "win" in some sense - Hamlet is a tragedy, for instance, but Hamlet actually wins in the end versus those against him.
A dark story is about something, well, dark. The holocaust is an example of something which was dark; sexual abuse would also apply. So could someone killing themselves. It can be dark or twisted or messed up subject matter as well - madness or whatever. IMO Dark doesn't have to mean that it has a sad ending - the heroes CAN win in a dark story. An example of this would be, say, the original StarCraft. The story is dark, but in the end, they win, albeit at great cost.
I don't think that the categories are redundant but rather separate things. Something can be dark without being tragic, or even sad really (though I suppose the last thing depends on your point of view - Hard Candy is a dark movie, but is it really a sad movie?).
Here's a serious question. How do you keep showing up on my feed even though I've blocked you? Is blocking users broken?
1223767
Calling attention to the qualifier "IMO", I think you've demonstrated the descriptivist view of "sad", "tragic", "dark", and the like.
I'm not saying we can't not use a system like that -- rather, to the contrary, it enables us to shut out what we don't want to read and find what we do -- but it is so artificial that a misappropriation of the genres can skew the reception any literary work may receive.
Additionally, this whole system of classification and stratification exists in human society on so many levels: race stereotypes, class stratification of European aristocracies, the haves and the have-nots, the whole system of science, etc. ad nauseam... that it seems a waste to put into practice this schema.
Classification is a powerful tool. In many respects, the genie was never in the bottle. I simply urge everyone (myself included) to not lose track of what really matters (hint: it's called "the story" and it happens to be a bunch of formatted and organized glyphs that hopefully carry a similar meaning to most readers) in our careful nods to those around us, and our glib quibblings with each other.
Hypocrisy? Most certainly. I would think it'd be impossible to have a good debate without reversing my views at least once. Guess I shouldn't have read Mitt Romney's "Guide to Presidential Campaigning."
In conclusion, whatever we say here matters very little. However, the fact that we've said it means we all have stimulated our brains at least a little bit. And it is my fervent hope that little bit was enough for us all to learn a little something.
With thanks to all,
exeunt IX (barring a comment I simply can't pass up, of course).
1223969
The entire purpose of labels is to classify things. If a label is useless for classifying things, then it is meaningless as a label.
And classification is a good thing, not a bad thing. Humans like giving things labels for a reason - it makes it easier to keep track of them.
1223993
Who am I kidding, I can't not respond to a comment...
I don't have much to say to that, though. Classification is useful because it helps us understand our world. But it has the nasty issue that it is inherently a retroactive process. We can't classify something beyond our perceptual capabilities. Therefore it only expedites the understanding of objects we already know or infer the existence of, and this understanding is limited and all too often flawed.
The only other use classification has besides expediting processes is in maintaining social order -- at the cost of a repressive, immoral social order.
I'm not arguing that the practical concept of a label is meaningless. I am simply arguing that, since it's not strictly necessary, and it only serves except in a very few cases to divide us, I feel I have sufficiently grounded my indictment of the purportedly 'synonymic' phrases "sad", "dark", and "tragic".
1=1
INSERT MATH HERE
ergo Labels=immoral
1224022
According to your system:
Labels = immoral
Immoral is a label
Therefore your system is immoral.
QED.
The idea that labelling is flawed and limited is silly. Labels are inherently limited, but they can be very descriptive. Look at the names of elements. They are quite absolute and work quite well. Indeed, most labels work very well.
Labels are also vital for language and communication. Indeed, ultimately, language exists in order to label things so that we may communicate about them. And communication is good.
Incidentally, there's nothing wrong with social order. Indeed, social order is a good thing. Anarchy sucks for a reason. Of course, anarchy itself is inherently unstable - whoever has the power eventually emerges and creates order in some form or another.
The site should make sure to clearly define (and use) the tags, as otherwise there isn't much point to having them in the first place.
1223958
Some users (admins, mods, me) have the ability to create 'site posts' that appear in every user's feed. This is used for info about the site itself, and 'community interest' things like my interviews and the mods' reviews.
I don't actually know if you "should" be able to prevent these posts from appearing in your feed; the idea is it's meant to be a way to ensure all users see a given piece of information, so I assume it's currently working as intended, but you could drop one of the admins a line to confirm.
1224122 It's not a bother really, I blocked you because I thought it would stop the posts. But thanks for letting me know that it doesn't really do anything, I'll unblock it now, I mean I don't want to be a jerk.
1223066
Thank you, thank you! It's almost a good thing--for me-- that the Vault will switch to read-only soon. Otherwise, RBD would have to make a rule that you can only get in a certain number of times.
Uh-oh--hubris. Now watch as I meet my downfall somehow.
1222898>>1224067>>1224022
I'm not particularly interested in the philosophy. But I will say I'm not a fan of the fandom's tagging system.
It's made up of a few moods, and a few genres, but not all of either. "Dark" is a mood, and "Horror" is a genre, and since there's no tag for the latter, the former must suffice. There is an element of Tragedy in this story, by one of the definitions of the word. But I consider myself a Horror writer, and this a Horror story. And it's not good to have too many tags on one story.
1224067
My system may be immoral, but then immorality itself is immoral then. We can continue this ad nauseam. A label simply is a descriptor, though. It is a term used to signify some sort of attribute's existence. Immorality, however, is not a label, but the attribute. To say something "is immoral" may be a label, but then we get into the infinitely-recursive statement above.
Anyway, I think we've reached some level of agreement. Labels are useful. They are limited, but absolute. Just don't think they're everything. Thanks for this, though.
1224253
The whole reason we as authors use tags in the here and now is simply to follow a generally-accepted practice, isn't it? I doubt any of us (myself included) puts an overlarge amount of thought into which tags matter for which philosophic reasons while we're writing a story.
That may be useful, and it may be a good thing. All I'm justified in doing is simply urging caution, I suppose. Caution for what? That's up to you.
1224461
I guess my opinion regarding tags is similar to Aegis Shield's. See the second item, there. It's best not to have more than a couple of tags, if possible. It looks unprofessional.
1224667
As I am still somewhat of an aspiring author, thanks for your insights. Professionalism seems to perpetuate the prescriptivist paradigm we so unfortunately have here, but I suppose there's no way to undermine it simultaneously inside and outside the system.
I suppose it all ends here, then. I do not wish to be a fool, and I have no more to say. Therefore I will say no more, save thanks to all.
1224461
this comment chain has a higher word count than some things i've read.
1234309
I suppose it's a good thing to see our social tendencies haven't yet fully been eradicated.
1235158
hey, i like not having social obligations. it means i can ignore people without feeling bad. i probably would do that anyway, though. i hate people.
1235312
I meant more as a race. I suppose we all have a little to learn in that regard as individuals, though.