The World of Jack Andrews (Ask Me Anything) · 5:21am Dec 24th, 2013
Someone commented on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pageant that I should do an AMA on the story. I had to look up what that means, and after I figured out it doesn't mean Academy of Model Aeronautics, I said, "Sure, why not?" So here it is. I'll answer anything within reason.
First, the story won the Christian Bronies Christmas Story Contest even though, like Jack, I was a rebel and broke all the rules. Yay.
Second, for those of you who don't hang out at my place very often, this story is set in the "Chronoverse," which is not really a tightly contained, self-consistent universe so much as a set of loosely connected stories with a similar setting. Thanks to the new user page layout, which is a sin against Art, you can find all the Chronoverse stories featured really freaking huge at the top of my user page.
It started with "Chronomistress," a story I pounded out in a few hours for a writing contest, and went from there. The Chronoverse is my answer to that enormous slew of Doctor Who crossovers. Basically, Chronoverse stories are set in a world in which Equestria is a massive, expansionist empire with vassal states, a formal peerage, and a sort of proto-religion based around the veneration of ancient figures called the One True Queen and the One True Judge, who are Queen Majesty from the G1 comic books and Megan from the G1 television show, respectively. The nobility has waned, replaced to a large extent by monied entrepreneurs and merchant barons, and to fill the power vacuum the nobles have left, various factions in this Equestria compete for influence over the throne, most particularly the Weather Board of Cloudsdale and two philosophical societies called the Benevolent Fellowship of Geldings and the Sacred Order of Timekeepers, both of which Celestia has defanged by making them wings of her government.
Time Turner and Minuette are members of the Order of Timekeepers. As a full-fledged member responsible for keeping time and making sure the seasons are changed on schedule in Ponyville, Time Turner is a Chronomaster. Minuette is his apprentice who mostly hates his guts. The present story is a semi-crossover with "Chronomistress," but differs from it somewhat, since in the text of that story Minuette becomes a full-fledged Chronomistress (hence the title).
To give real-world analogies, the Geldings are ascetical monks and the Timekeepers are Stoics. They mostly dislike each other, though their animosity has grown more mild in recent generations. They might be creepy, but they make for good allies: if either a Gelding or a Timekeeper says he has your back, he means it.
Not all Chronoverse stories are HiE stories, and not all HiE stories in the Chronoverse have the same premise. In A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pageant, a space-time rift between Earth and Faerie has opened over the North Sea on Earth and the Foal Mountains in Equestria. Thus, by the Catholic Church's reckoning, all of Faerie for the time being falls under the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels. Thus, the current bishop of Canterlot, His Excellency Bishop Gillaume Van der Velde, is Belgian. However, the Equestrians speak Ponese, which sounds strikingly like American English, so the bishop, with permission from the Vatican, has been rounding up American seminarians to train in Canterlot to be priests.
Jack Andrews is brilliant but lazy. He converted to annoy his parents, but later converted for real. A bad experience (to be explicated later) gave him a fear of large animals, which he had managed to keep secret from most everyone, but when Bishop Van der Velde picked him as a candidate for Canterlot, he decided to go in order to get away from trouble at home. Jack means well, but he's a natural rule-breaker. He met Lyra soon after his arrival in Equestria. She's in Canterlot trying to make it in the music scene, so they're both away from home, and they quickly became fast friends and partners in crime. She's responsible for getting him over his animal hangup.
I am, I'm sure no one will be surprised, a devout Catholic. I am also a convert, and I confess I converted, like Jack, partly to annoy my parents. I spent two years in seminary in training to be a priest, so I have some inside information. Jack is an exaggerated version of myself: I was known as that one guy who was a bit off-kilter. However, I was never in trouble with my superiors; they actually like guys who chafe a bit at the rules, as long as it's within reasonable limits. Mostly, I freaked out the other students because I carried stuffed animals to class on test days or dressed as a monster instead of as a saint on Halloween. Some of those guys were real sticks in the mud, know what I'm saying?
Anyway, some readers have asked me if they think a Catholic missionary effort in Equestria would be as incompetent as I depict. Good question. I don't know. I doubt it would be organized quite as I'm depicting, and I doubt they'd train students on-site in this way in the first generation. I do think a lot of bumbling would take place, because this is the Catholic Church we're talking about.
People tend to have this vision of the Church as vast, tightly controlled, and responsible for numerous multi-generational conspiracies. As if. Multi-generational conspiracies would require some level of competence and organization that we don't have. There's a joke amongst Catholics that a lot of people claim to be opposed to organized religion, whereas we wish our religion would get organized. I think it was Archbishop Sheen who once said he met a young man who said he was making it his mission in life to destroy the Catholic Church, and Sheen replied, "Good luck. Her bishops have been trying to do that for two thousand years, and they haven't succeeded yet."
Bishop Van der Velde is a kindly, grandfatherly man. He's a really nice guy, and he's smart. He just happens to be doddering, indulgent, and slow-moving. I haven't known any bishops precisely like him, but I think he adequately captures a certain face of the Church nonetheless.
If it sounds as if I'm being overly critical, that's because I'm talking about my family. We all tend to get critical, in a good-natured sort of way, of our families. So if this story seems irreverent, that's not me expressing resentment toward my Church, of which I have none. It's more like me giving my cousin a noogie.
Besides that, we all know we're muddlers and incompetents over here. Jesus started out by calling a group of fishermen who didn't even know how to fish right, and he's continued in that vein ever since.
Oh, and the next chapter will be soon, I hope. Christmas has gotten busier than anticipated. I hope you all don't mind this story going past Christmas, as it's gotten larger in the telling than I originally intended it to be.
So that's it for introductions. Ask me anything within reason, and I'll answer it.
This is probably not the question you expected, but you did say 'anything within reason,' so here goes.
What kind of story do you most enjoy reading?
Is a writing's style as important as its content?
What is the most important element of a story, for you?
What is the difference between a tragic and a sad story?
Which is more important, a character's virtues or her flaws?
What are your thoughts on universal reconciliation? The idea that at the end times, all souls, living and dead, who ask for it will be redeemed?*
How do you reconcile being a scientist and a Christian?*
Why do you do the fake-out reviews? I think they're funny, I'm just asking.
Will you be writing more of A Mighty Demon Slayer series? I really think you have something with your idea of an epic western-ish tale... just muddled by the execution of that last chapter.
*I am a Christian, by the by. Just asking?
What type of music do you like?
What is your favorite holiday song?
What is your favorite song for writing?
Do you have a special Christmas tradition? If so, what is it?
Mines eating Chinese food on Christmas Day, love Chinese turkey.
1641630
I don't know if I can answer the first one. I enjoy all kinds of stories, but I find myself gravitating nowadays more toward nonfiction, particularly philosophy.
Style vs. content? Tricky. I've enjoyed stories that were all style and no substance, and I've also enjoyed stories that were great but poorly told. If there's enough of one, it can make up to some degree for the lack of the other. At the end of the day, however, style without substance is shallow even if entertaining.
I don't know the most important element of a story. I write on instinct.
Tragic stories, strictly speaking, are about great men making tragic choices that lead to their destruction. More broadly, they can also be about common men. More loosely, they're stories in which something bad happens. "Sad," though in fan fiction we use it as a genre, is actually a mood, but then again, so is horror, and we consider that a genre.
Characters, to be relatable, should have both virtues with which the audience can identify and flaws with which the audience can identify. Both are important. Some characters may get away with having more of one than another; I find Megan from G1 a striking and admirable character, but she has few flaws.
1641651
The Church teaches the reality of eternal damnation, which is a necessary and logical consequence of immortality and free will. Whether anyone actually winds up in it in the end is not my business. What is my business is remembering that it's a real possibility for me.
There's nothing to reconcile. Science as a discipline exists because Christians are metaphysical realists. Physics doesn't get started until the metaphysical groundwork is laid, such as the principles that nothing comes from nothing and that no effect is greater than its cause, or that consistent efficient causes have consistent final causes, all of which physics must take for granted.
I do fake-out reviews because I think they're hilarious, and because My Little Pony needs more Flash Sentry.
I'd like to finish A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies. I have no present plans to continue it past a final chapter.
1641657
I dunno. I just did. This particular scenario, by which I mean Jack and Lyra, not the Christmas pageant thing particularly, has been stewing in my mind for some time. I never intended it as a disguised sermon, so I haven't written it as one.
I think it's because I simply wrote the story in first-person as a Catholic. Jack is Catholic. It's what he does, how he lives, what drives him every day. So the story is Catholic without being preachy because it simply takes place in a Catholic context.
That's something a reader might miss or misunderstand because of Jack's irreverence or rule-breaking. He is Catholic. He's not chafing at his Catholicism, not fighting it, not angry over it, not resentful about it.
1641683
So, you could fully enjoy paradise knowing that your father/mother/brother/sister/whatever is burning in unimaginable agony for all eternity?
1641658
I listen to metal. I don't especially like holiday music, at least that one finds on the radio. I do like Christmas hymns, and I probably have a favorite, but nothing's coming to mind right now.
I really shouldn't write to music, as it throws off the rhythm of words, but when I wrote "Love on the Reef," I played "Hey Man, Nice Shot" by Filter incessantly.
My Christmas tradition, which never went over well, was to make sure everyone in the family had a toy in his stocking on Christmas morning, because empty stockings on Christmas mornings are depressing. As it turned out, nobody wanted to play with the toys except me, so I dropped the tradition. Lame, huh?
1641695
Everyone, after death, gets what he wants most.
Paradise means attaining infinite good, which means there is simply nothing left over to want. The appetites, all of them, every single one, are fulfilled in their entirety and thus lulled. There is no possibility of further desire, of regret, or even of boredom.
If it sounds a little terrifying, it should.
What do you think about "Christian fanfiction" about the characters either converting to Christianity, or already being Christians, and preaching to each other?
Do you think anything you write here, or any fanfiction you liked, will be worth reading fifty years down the line?
Are you planning to add something to your favorites?
If your "Faerie" world was real, would you like to go there as a missionary if you were in Jack's place? (assuming the MLP show didn't exist)
Do you read any webcomics?
What is your opinion of the TV Tropes Wiki?
Merry Christmas?
Ah wait, that wasn't a question.
I'd like to know about archaeology. How did you get into that? What kind of things do you work on? Any interesting anecdotes?
1641724
I don't think I've ever read one of those. I imagine most of them, like most of any kind of fan fiction, are clunky and forced. I think it would be hard to do successfully, just as it's hard successfully to insert anything into a work that isn't in the source material. You have to weave it in so it feels organic. Learning how to do that needs to be, I think, a major goal of a fan fiction writer.
I've read plenty of stories in which something comes up that simply feels alien to the fantasy world, and it usually involves the author getting on his soap box, so you'll have a story about Colgate's Painless Dentistry, and suddenly there's a paean to socialized healthcare, which makes no sense in the fantasy fairy kingdom setting. If a writer wants a message in the story, he needs to make sure it actually flows out of the story. The story comes first.
If there is a common error in fan fiction, it is making the characters think exactly like the author, whether the author is a Christian or a Po-Mo college kid. I work to make ponies who think differently and behave differently from how I do. Whether I'm entirely successful or not, that's my goal.
Worth reading? Perhaps. Some of it is good fiction. Do I think it will still be getting read? No.
Maybe if I read another story I like. I haven't actually read any fan fiction for a while. I'm too busy reading the Summa, and I was reading the Book of the Dun Cow before Amazon deleted it off my Kindle and I swore off e-books.
I'd like to visit Equestria. Unlike a lot of Bronies, I'm not sure I'd want to stay, and I definitely would not want to turn into a pony, which sounds like some sort of Kafka-esque nightmare to me.
Axe Cop, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja,, and Girl Genius. I was reading MegaTokyo before it annoyed me, but I might pick it up again.
Highly addictive. I think it's an interesting experiment, somewhat like a group-edited Stith-Thompson Index. It's also useful for getting your fan fiction advertised, if you're popular enough to get a page there.
1641978
It's less romantic than you might think. I studied it in college, and I've worked several jobs. Not much job security. I do cultural resource management, which involves survey, testing, and mitigation before ground-disturbing projects on federal or state land. The idea is to avoid, or if that's not possible, record any archaeological resources likely to be destroyed by construction. It's a lot of paperwork and a lot of walking around.
For what reason do you try to incorporate all primary and supplementary pony materials into a single united canon? What drives you to assemble this bizarre, at times self-contradictory jigsaw puzzle of time and space?
Also, what's your policy for other authors who want to write stories set in the Chronoverse?
1641708
Okay. I want my family. I want my friends to no longer suffer. I want the billions of good, decent people who just happened to be Muslims/Jews/Buddhists/atheists/agnostics to not languish in eternal pain.
Sorry. Look, we can drop this, because I don't think you're going to change my mind, and I doubt you're going to change your mind. All I'm saying is that eternal punishment with no possibility of parole or reprieve makes no sense to me. Everything I understand about God—just, righteous, of infinite love—is incompatible with the concept of never ending suffering. Seventy years weighted against eternity, one chance with no do-overs or repeats, millions of billions of trillions of years of unimaginable torture after an objectively good life because your experiences failed to convince you of something that there is no proof of or because you never had it explained to you the right way. Twenty-eight years of soul searching and reflection, and the only thing I can see that as is cruelty beyond measure. That's not right. That's not justice. That's not love.
I'm not saying there is no punishment; I'm just saying that I don't believe it will last forever.
1642591
Because it amuses me, and because it gives me more source material to work with. And also, mainly, because Bronies who complain whenever official material contradicts their own ideas, annoy me.
I have no policy. Fan fiction is already derivative, so I cannot justify telling others my fan fiction creations are hands-off. Credit would be nice, though.
1642773
This is not going to be a debate thread, so I will answer this once more, and that will be it.
Universalism, although appealing at least initially, has never been a teaching of the Church, and it is incompatible with free will.
God does not damn anyone, nor does he force anyone into heaven against his will. He respects free will and allows us to pursue good or to run away from it. Anyone who runs away from it will not have it forced upon him. He will lose it. Everyone gets what he wants.
The will is an intellective appetite ordered toward good. The will is "free," or, more precisely, has free choice, because the intellect is uncertain and our knowledge is imperfect. Thus we can weigh one thing against another and choose one over another. We make errors when we choose apparent goods over actual ones. The choice to pursue ultimate good or oppose it can only be made when we are not confronted with it directly and when we still have imperfect intellects, because anyone with perfect knowledge, presented with perfect good, could not refuse it.
You want your family in heaven? Good. Then teach, admonish, and encourage them.
The question I always wrestle with:
Whenever I try to work Catholicism into a humans-meeting-non-humans setting is: would a non-human civilization need the Church? Since you've answered the question in this story with a "yes," I'm wondering if you imagine the ponies as having had a "fall from grace" moment at some point in the past that makes them heirs to some equivalent of original sin? And if the wages of sin are death, how does the Church deal with the apparent physical immortality of Celestia and Luna?
Mike