Interview: The Descendant's Zenith · 4:02pm Jul 31st, 2013
Zenith is the best story I’ve ever read about Spike, and it’s one of my favourite fanfics ever. It’s heartwrenching, beautiful, and breathtakingly epic. The Descendant’s professional life involves working with children, and he brings that experience to Zenith, painting a vision of Spike so compelling that it completely redefined the way I see him. In this interview, The Descendant explains that vision, and in doing so gives a ton of advice for authors wanting to write child characters.
1. Do you have any advice for authors writing child characters?
In general, authors make two mistakes when writing for children. They either portray them as smaller adults, or as dullards. I have worked with thousands of children in my life, and I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of them are neither.
Do me a favor. Spend a few minutes sitting on the floor. You are now looking at the world through the eyes of a four year old. See how high-up everything is? See how far away everything seems? A child's world is limited in size and scope, and far too many people still look at the world through an adult's eyes when writing children. The situation gets a little better as children age, but an author needs to keep limitations in mind. Remember how great it felt the first time you were allowed to take your bike out of the driveway? Suddenly the world felt massive and open, and suddenly you were a grand explorer... because you were allowed to ride to the end of the block and back. Once again, a child's world is limited in scope and range.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, not everyone under eighteen is an infant. Children's minds are not yet set, and as they encounter new things they attempt to categorize and appreciate them. Children have a sense of wonder at the ordinary, and they are, in many ways, more open to new ideas than adults. Children are not oblivious to their surroundings. Everyone can think of traumatic events or events that left an impression on them from their childhoods, and that's the way we were designed to be. Children have the same emotional range as adults, but too often writers only lets kids have two emotions... blissfully happy or crying. This is a shame, because kids often show their emotions more fully and with less self-consciousness than adults. Pensiveness, embarrassment, depression, all of the emotional aspects that writers love to show in adults are present in kids as well. Children have all of these emotions; all that they lack is the toolkit of experiences that they need to fully articulate them and deal with them.
2. What inspired you to write Zenith?
Well, first and foremost, it was the artwork of Lysok. When I saw his pieces Spike's Quest and Griffon's Lullaby I was startled by how closely they matched the "high fantasy" vision of Equestria that I've always used when I approached the series. I had to ask him for permission to write this story.
Second, I've always wanted to write an epic story about Spike. He's the most overlooked principal character in the series and in fan art and fan fiction. The kid has everything that he needs to be an "underdog hero", and saving Twilight, the character who means the most to him, was exactly what I needed. What makes Spike such an effective character is the fact that he doesn't have the capabilities of the rest of the cast, and that he is facing a world they have forgotten. He has to make little jumps to reach things that are high, that he grabs ahold of his tail when he's worried. He's a character caught in a moment when he still has a child's body, but has the intellect and spirit of someone much older. That is something that I've wanted to utilize in ways I hadn't before, in an epic fantasy story, and Zenith is that platform.
3. In your mind, what is Spike's relationship with Twilight, and how do you explore that in Zenith?
Well, let's start off by stating what, in my opinion, it is not.
We are far beyond the point in canon where anyone can reasonably suggest that Twilight only sees him as a slave, employee, or pet outside of a comedy or dystopian alternate reality. Still, Twilight has a bad habit of falling back into "supervisor mode" at the blink of an eye. Spike has responsibilities that no child would realistically be assigned (in Owl's Well it is revealed that he cooks for her, and he is essentially the library's janitor).
I think this state of not knowing "which Twilight", be it supervisor or friend, he's going to encounter from hour to hour shows on him, and is one reason why he's developed such a sarcastic personality.
They are best friends, that's obvious, even if Twilight did not recognize what that meant for most of her time in Canterlot. The fact that she says that Shining Armor was her "only friend" grates on me like a thousand house cats being taught to yodel. I can't help but think that Twilight is still Spike's best friend, but that since they came to Ponyville and she's learned what having friends is like, they are both closer and farther apart. She is showing him more tenderness, but she's now leaving him behind to do activities with "their" friends. Once again, it is not explored how Spike feels about having her go off to have fun, and the child is left not knowing who he is to her.
We don't have an episode that tells us how Spike feels about Twilight having picnics or going to parties with the other ponies, though we can safely assume that he (tried) to make himself the cake in Just for Sidekicks as a way of dealing with her leaving him behind. It's the constant change between friend, employee, and family, that the kid has a hard time dealing with. So, he becomes sarcastic and snarky as a way of acting out.
Now we get to the big two.
They share a lot of traits that siblings would have. They know each other's moods, and they aren't afraid to be snarky, loud, or even cynical with one another. They care deeply about one another, and have difficulty showing it at times. In many ways, Twilight's relationship with Spike is more typical of a "real" sibling relationship than her "blood" relation, Shining Armor, which feels almost too perfect and free of conflict to be believable. The problem here is that Spike has responsibilities that no sibling would have, and in the canon we see him acting as her equal far too often to assign him the "baby brother" role. They never refer to one another as "brother" or "sister" (except when Spike was speaking ironically in Winter Wrap-Up), and the hints at other aspects of their relationship are too strong to leave it in what otherwise would be the most obvious category.
And now, the heartbreaker... Twilight is not Spike's mom. As much as I adore stories like DarthLink22's Families and TheMyth's Longing, whenever I read him call her "Mom!" or "Mommy!" and her say "Son!" or "My baby!" my eyebrows arch a little. Despite the immense amount of work that these authors did, I can't quite wrap my head around the context that would be necessary for that to happen. Part of this is because Twilight makes a piss-poor mother.
Seriously.
Really.
If I asked a student what they did last night and he answered, "Well, my mom went into a fit of hysteria where she believed her actions would lead to the end of the world. When I tickled her to snap her out of it she threw me against the wall and I had to apologize" (It’s About Time), or "I was doing some math, and when I told the athlete that they hadn't done much better my mom hit me" (Hurricane Fluttershy), I'd be on the phone to the school principal and Child Protective Services before the last syllable had sounded from their lips.
Furthermore, Twilight is guilty of the great crime of any parent or caregiver... namely, withholding affection. She has never fully embraced him, and only gives him politically correct "half-hugs" or "side hugs". This would be tolerable if she did the same with the rest of the cast, but she hasn't. I grumbled when she wrapped Flash Sentry, a boy she'd known for a day, in a full hug right in front of Spike. Furthermore, at the conclusion of season three she told the girls that she loves them. Spike has never received those three most important words.
He told her that losing her love was what drove him to run away in Owl's Well, but her reply was a nuzzle and to tell him, essentially, "In my personal secretarial pool, you have seniority!" When Sombra's door showed her that his worst fear was being put away from her, being separated from her, she put him in another crappy "half hug" and told him, "That will never happen. You have tenure!"
This is not how a mother interacts with her child. There are some very famous stories in this fandom that show Twilight as a mother, but fail to address the way that she treated the child who was already under her care, and substitute another child for the role Spike has been denied over and over in canon. That bugs me a little.
Still...
Twilight has shown Spike tenderness and concern above what an employer, a sibling, or even a best friend would show. At the end of the day, even if they are even "half hugs", he's the character that she has hugged and nuzzled the most. She worries about him and shows him more tenderness as the series goes on. He rides along atop her as foals do with their mothers and siblings. In Dragon Quest, Ms. Faust's intent to have shown Celestia as Spike's mother figure are dashed when Twilight says that Spike was given to her when she hatched him, leaning us towards Twilight having been his primary caregiver most of his life (I personally like to think that Celestia and others were still present in his upbringing, especially during Twilight's youngest years). Spike has not only dealt with having a mother figure in Twilight who wasn't the epitome of motherly instincts, but also having her be not that much older than him, and has come out of it as an affectionate, caring, loving, happy child.
For someone like me, who works with kids and sees how their lives are shaped by their experiences, it says a lot about him, even if it is just a cartoon reality.
So, how do I see their relationship?
As we've just seen, there are no easy words that work. They aren't siblings. They are more than best friends. They are not parent and child. Yet, oddly enough, they are all of these things. Spike has always been with Twilight in her deepest, darkest moments. The first moment we meet him he's trying to help her make friends, and the last thing he says in the series is that she can't give up and that he believes in her. Spike's devotion to Twilight is so constant that when he doesn't believe her in Canterlot Wedding we are left scratching our heads and saying, "What?". Twilight relies on him. She believes in him and trusts him. Twilight treats Spike in a way that she does not treat any other character in the show, and she has never recoiled from his comforting touch. They are as close to one another as his doggie basket is to her bed.
So, how to describe their relationship. I always say that, whatever they are to one another, he's her little one, and she's his big one. They have a relationship built on shared experiences, familiarity, love, trust, and just a little bit of interdependence. This "indefinable we", this "Us", is what their relationship consists of, and no two other characters in the canon, or in many series I've watched, share such a unique relationship. In most mythology, unicorns and dragons are enemies, but here we see an adorkable, obsessive-compulsive character who is prone to fits of adorable insanity raising a snarky, sarcastic child of a different race, a different specie altogether, and somehow this has just worked!
That is a very important lesson to be told, that love supersedes all things, especially in this age of mixed families and foster children. That's what draws me to these two, what inspires me to make stories about them, and what keeps me active in the fandom.
4. How do you see Spike's relationship with Twilight changing now that she's a princess, and how did this affect Zenith?
Despite having individual moments sitting in my pre-writing. I was missing the crux of my story, the event that would send Spike off on this quest and make it so that only he could go. Alicorn Twilight was exactly what I needed, so that was fortunate that it happened when it did.
I think that Equestria Girls showed us a few things. It showed us that Twilight does have new responsibilities, that Spike is still trying be useful to her, and that the characters work as teenaged high school girls (complete with shallow crushes). Throw his all together and we see that Twilight's life is changing.
I was inspired to write Zenith not because of anything that I saw last season or because of anything that was hinted at in EqG, but because of what I feel we aren't going to see. Everything ended up smiles and blushes at the end of EqG, and at the end of season three, so the "vibe" that I'm getting is that Twilight becoming an alicorn (or beginning a romantic relationship, possibly) won't be creating the type of conflict that it has immense potential to.
This is especially true for Spike.
A child's world is defined by routine. The first thing that a teacher tries to establish in the first days of school are the classroom rules and routines. If that is not established, a very special kind of anarchy will rule for the rest of the year. Spike's wants the best for Twilight, he loves her and wants her to be happy, but his world has now changed in a very fundamental way. Twilight has changed not only physically, but now has new roles and responsibilities. If she had to leave him alone to go to a meeting of Ponyville's Hay Council, then going off to attend to matters of state that last until the wee hours of the morning probably means that they are going to see less and less of one another, and that Spike is going to have to get used to going to bed alone.
In the real world, this is a very trying time for a child, and worrying. I remember trying very hard to get one student to tell me about his mother and how she was going to have a baby, as we knew something was interfering with his schoolwork. He broke down in tears. This wasn't a little kid either, but a fifth grader. His world was changing in ways that he could not control, and without the experiential emotional toolkit to help him deal with the situation, I... well, I broke him. That felt bad.
I honestly do not believe that the show staff will choose to deal with these issues. I do not feel that they will look at the realistic emotional toll that changes in the life of a principal caregiver has on a child. I can not see a scenario where Princess Twilight Sparkle takes the time to tell him that she loves him and that no matter how much her life changes that she always will.
Therefore, I decided that I would do it myself. Zenith is a story about change, about how there are right ways and wrong ways to deal with it. Spike, being a child and without the experiences to help him see the right and the wrong, will make a series of choices that will define his relationship to Twilight for the rest of the series (in my head, at least) and hopefully give the readers something to ponder.
5. The hospital scene in Zenith was the only hospital scene ever to make me cry. What did you do to make it so effective?
First of all, thank you for letting me know that it was that emotional for you! I'm glad that you found it so effective.
Put bluntly, I tried my best to write it from a child's perspective. From the first moment, Spike i already in over his head with this thing. He drops the glass, shattering it, and suddenly all of the things he's been trying so hard to hide from the adults become impossible to hide. He has to stretch and squirm to try to get a new one. He is shocked by the breach of trust when Pacemaker accidentally lets slip how long Spike has been at Twilight's bedside.
All of these things would be "big deals" in a child's eyes, and for Spike, who doesn't have Twilight to hide behind anymore, it means dealing with these problems without her. For the first time in his life, ponies are speaking to him directly and trying to get him to make hard choices, telling him that he must leave her. This is a story about Spike trying to function without Twilight. It goes poorly for him, at least at first.
6. Zenith also has one of the best synopses I've ever read. Just the scope and the strength of character it promises were enough to get me emotionally invested in the story, even before reading the first page. Do you have any advice for writing a good synopsis?
Heh, truth be told, I shocked myself with this one! I've always thought that the most effective synopsis in the fandom is "Rainbow Dash flies east," from Imploding Colon's Austraeoh. I tried to copy that feel with the first line of my synopsis, namely: "Once upon a time, Spike went for a walk." Still, I felt I needed more.So, I decided to speak in generalities. I let my readers know that there's a lot to come with this work, but I tried not to give too much away.
I think that this is the best description I've ever done, and I wish I could tell those who are still reading this and haven't given up yet what they could do to make successful synopsis. Let me say, there are some things I can recommend.
Capitalize your story's title appropriately. If you don't show your story respect, why should we? Don't tell us that this is your first fic, that you know that there are errors, that there are certain shipping pairs, who your favorite pony is, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum. You are telling us about the story, not you. If there's anything wrong, you should have taken measures to fix it, and anything else about the story should be shown in the story itself.
7. Do you have any thoughts on the CMC?
I've never tried to write a C.M.C. "We're gonna get our marks!" style story, mostly because I find those the most onerous episodes. As individuals, though, I think I could write character studies as long as the one's I've written about Spike today for each of them! They really are wonderful little characters in their own regard, and each has something that makes them unique.
Apple Bloom is an amazingly resilient character. I've often praised her in other places, mostly because her spirit seems to be the strongest of the three. She is growing up in a difficult situation. Her brother, grandmother, and sister have had to become something akin to parents for her. This role confusion is exactly like what Spike is going through, and I can't help but feel that a clearer "mother figure" is one of the things that Apple Bloom is looking for when she visits Zecora. Apple Bloom is just that right combination of innocence, farm-bred toughness, and folksy wisdom that I appreciate in characters who I need to be earnest and dependable, so that's why I used her as the other little dragon in To Change a Heart.
Sweetie Belle is adorable. If there isn't some insane super-genius out there attempting to weaponize her trademark squeak then I will be greatly disappointed in how far the mad sciences have fallen since I left that profession. Sweetie Belle has a stable home life and has good friends, so we have to look to other places for her conflict. Her relationship with Rarity is the most explored... perhaps too much, considering the good place they've reached in the canon. I'd like to ask other authors a favor: When you have Rarity tell Spike that it isn't going to happen, or you wish to ship Spike with some other character, don't choose Sweetie because "she's Rarity, just smaller!". That's bunk. Sweetie has her own personality. She is more jubilant, more adventurous, and more free-spirited than Rarity. Remember that each character has their own personality... if you respect these characters, you'll see that they aren't interchangeable.
I struggle with pegasi. Fluttershy is the only one I feel I can write well. I find Dash hard, and Scootaloo harder still. I guess that it is because the "life fast, die young, live for the moment" vibe that the pegasi send me is so much in contrast with my own personal philosophies. I feel bad for Scootaloo, in that I don't think that I can write for her without knowing something more about her. She has a great personality, though. I don't dislike her, I just don't have any real use for her. I need to know where her conflict is coming from. Her relationship with Dash seems like a shadow version of Spike's with Twilight. We know why Spike has a relationship with Twilight, but Scootaloo's desperate need for approval from Dash still requires some context for it to be exploitable in my writing.
8. What is the one thing you would like people to remember when writing Spike?
I've noticed a recent trend towards people writing that Spike has asked Twilight to stop hugging him in public, or that he squirms away from hugs. Really? Spike wears his heart(s) on his sleeve, if he had sleeves, and he is by far the most loving, clingy, and "huggiest" character in the series. Within a minute of meeting Dash they were laying in a pile laughing together. He springs upon Fluttershy and wraps her in a proper, full hug when they discover that she is alright in Froggy Bottom Bog. He leaps to Twilight to give her a hug at the end of the second episode. He hugs Applejack over and over until she's literally sick of it at his birthday, and again during "that episode". He has never, ever, ever shied away from receiving affection from Twilight... and why would he? Every time he receives affection from her it cements his belief and hope that he's important in her world, that he has a place. Look at episodes that aren't even about Spike and Twilight. When Apple Bloom is in the library getting mark after mark, he's holding Twilight's leg, as though he's seeking her reassurance. In Green Isn't Your Color he's standing beneath Twilight when they are watching Rarity, seeking her closeness.
Spike is a great little guy who wears his affection openly. Let him hug and be hugged in your stories... it will make you smile when you do.
9. Any general advice for people trying to get their story accepted by EqD?
I have three stories awaiting approval on EqD as I writing this, Zenith, Children of a Lesser Dragon God Boy Whelp Thingy Guy, and The Father of My Children. If all three are approved then I will have twenty-five stories that have been featured on Equestria Daily. I don't know if that makes me the most posted author on the blog, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Here's the thing, the last story that I sent through that was approved without at least a request for some revisions was Bailout back in November of 2011, and looking that story over I wish that it had been sent back to me for work. Every story has something that it can be improved. The blog wants to feature stories that show off the talent of the fandom. If you submit a story, don't ask yourself, "Is this story better than X's story?" What you should ask yourself is, "Have I done my best, and does it compare in terms of quality to the art, music, and videos that are on the blog?"
I've been writing for over a decade, across fandoms that are now dead and silent, and now I can only say that those experiences had helped me learn. I would have learned faster if somebody had told me what I was doing wrong rather than just giving me hollow praise for all of those years. I wish that the other fandoms had sported places like EqD, and that there had been pre-readers to tell me how much I sucked.
Don't take rejections personally. The pre-readers are just fans too, trying to do what they think is best. Learn, grow, and do better next time.
Normally I get 3-4 story updates read during my lunch hour, but instead I read this interview and I do not regret it. Wonderful analysis of Spike and the CMC.
Zenith so far has been one of the most emotion-provoking stories I have read in years. When I got to the end of the most recent chapter, I didn't know whether to cry, scream, or sit in a heap on the floor. I think I was breathing heavily as well. There's probably been others, since I read so much, but the last story I can recall that affected me this much was something I read in '02 or so.
From this (quite excellent) interview, I learned that Desc gave up mad science for a life of teaching, and I relived the moment when I was 7 and my mother told me she was having a baby. Yeah, that is traumatizing.
Longest explaination about Spikes relationship with Twilight I have ever seen.
How wonderfull!
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// Sphex
PS. Why do I almost write "// Spike" after every time I read about TD talking about Spike.
Does anyone else think TD is the best pony author over here?
This nifty interview is just another reminder.
OK, everyone can have their favorites, so if not the best then definitely one of them.