Genealogy, Part I · 6:43am Mar 27th, 2014
Introduction
In doing any complex fanfiction series, especially one with stories taking place over any prolonged period of time, the issue of genealogy becomes important.
I. Why Families Are Important to Characterization
The first, and most simple one, is that individual characters do not in reality and should not in fiction emerge from voids and vanish into voids. We are all genetic products of our birth-lineages and memetic products of our upbringing-lineages. Our parents, siblings and other relatives are important influences on our selves. Hence to understand a character, one must understand from whence this character came, and to whence she is going. We are links in lines of continuity that stretch in one direction back into the distant evolutionary past, and in the other -- hopefully -- into the future.
For instance, it is highly relevant to Twilight Sparkle's character that she was conceived and raised by two book-loving intellectuals, who are happily married and who operate a small publishing house, and mentored (almost adopted by) Princess Celestia. It is relevant that she had a dearly-beloved heroic older brother, that he married her former foalsitter who was also one of Twilight's own best friends growing up, and that she played a major role in raising the dragon Spike from a hatchling. If her background had been different, she would be a different person.
The second is that relatives suggest stories. Only a terribly alienated character doesn't care if their parents are honored or die, if their siblings marry or have children, or what happens to their own children. One loves or hates ex-lovers or spouses -- one is rarely indifferent to them. Individuals are part of webworks of connections which stretch beyond their friends-of-the-moment, or even their lifelong friends; and they are also connected to the relatives of their better friends.
The whole reason why the events of A Canterlot Wedding are so important to Twilight Sparkle are that they involve her beloved older brother and her former foalsitter, who are getting married, but that said former foalsitter doesn't seem to quite be herself any more. This personalizes the issue. It's not just that Equestria will take a terrible blow if Chrysalis succeds; Twilight's family is threatened. Few of us have played a prominent role in defeating an international invasion, but most of us have had friends and loved ones. We can empathize with Twilight's position.
And Twilight's own identity is threatened even before she knows what's going on, in some very personal ways -- Shining Armor and Cadance are two of her models of male and female excellence, respectively. It hurts her deeply to see what she thinks is Cadance turning into a cold bitch, and Shining so mesmerized by her beauty that he doesn't seem to care or notice. This threat -- to Twilight, somepony we've come to care about -- personalizes the evil of Chrysalis in a way that merely speculating about how Changelings could destroy families would not, even if Twilight produced a big stack of charts and statistics.
Finally -- both in historical fiction and science fantasy -- lineages provide ways to link characters of the past with those of the future. Even in the real world, families can last and maintain characteristic tendencies for several centuries -- think of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough in the late 17th to early 18th century; Randolph Churchill of the mid to late 19th century, and his famous son Winston Spencer Churchill of the late 19th through mid 20th century. In fantasy, of course, we can romanticize this even further, and imagine family traits traceable for centuries or even millennia.
This doesn't mean that one has to do Generation Xerox characterization -- this is unimaginative writing and best avoided. For one thing, one does not inherit all one's signficant genetic traits from just one parent -- one inherits traits from both, and possibly ones from even remoter ancestors. The chance that Applejack's great-great-grandmother was just Applejack in slightly-different clothes and using less advanced technology is practically nil. She would have been an entirely different Pony -- though there might be haunting points of similarity (for instance, courage and combat ability may run in the family -- why not?).
Characterization that acknowledges the existence and importance of familial origins and relationships is "mature" in the most meaningful sense of the word -- which is to say, not a matter of explicit sex or gore, but a matter of characters who have lives that started somewhere and will go somewhere, who literally relate to other characters. Instead of being teenage wish-fulfillment fantasies of "I'm the lone hero and here are my adventures," they are about adults who come from their parents and families, and may become parents with families of their own.
II. How Lack of Family Is Important To Characterization
And if they don't? If a character is an orphan, or estranged from her family -- if she is utterly-uninterested in every marrying and having her own family, this TOO is grist for the characterization mill. How does she feel about being an orphan? Alternatively, what estranged her from her family, and is a reconciliation possible, or desired? Why doesn't she want to marry? If she wants to marry, why doesn't she want to have foals? If she wants to have foals but never marry, then why? Each of these questions suggests past histories; and character conflicts, flaws and goals which can also drive drama.
Characters whose familial relationships -- or lack thereof -- to other characters can be explored, have a depth to them which characters who simply lack all relationships but have the lack never commented upon. This can also be a way to increase the depth of a character who hasn't had this lack explored.
For instance, my inspiration for Fluttershy Is Free came from noticing a few interesting points about canon Fluttershy:
(1) She never mentions her family. She shares this attribute with Rainbow Dash -- so it may just be a Pegasus thing for the children to become very independent once they grow up -- but Rainbow Dash at least has them mentioned in a book. Fluttershy's are a complete mystery. Nopony ever asks her about them, either -- and this includes the two ponies who know her best, Rainbow Dash and Rarity. It's almost as if they're a sensitive topic, and they know this.
(2) She has very clearly suffered severe emotional damage in the past -- and this must have started very early because she's already acting like this in her flashbacks to fillyhood -- when we first meet her in the series, she is well on the way to becoming Ponyville's Crazy Cat Lady, kept from it mostly by the friendship of Rainbow Dash and Rarity.
(3) Fluttershy -- when she trusts somepony enough to talk to them -- has the word-patterns and mannerisms of the upper classes. Not the affected imitation of them that Rarity displays, but the genuine article. Her speech is a lot like that of Twilight Sparkle's -- who is upper Canterlot gentry. Fluttershy clearly comes from a very good family -- that same very good family that neither she nor anypony else ever mentions.
(4) Fluttershy lives rather well for someone whose apparent main source of income comes from running an animal shelter and perhaps doing some veterinary work for the local farmers. This combined with (3) makes me think "allowance," and combined with (1) and (2) make me think remittance. Fluttershy was rejected by an old, rich family who pays her a stipend to stay away from them.
I put all this together and got Fluttershy's bastardy -- and since this was a fantasy world, I could get fantastic and give her a Lovecraftian sort of origin. I also thought about the kind of family which would reject somepony as sweet as filly Fluttershy for something not at all her own fault, and I got Commander Windvane and Dr. Ill Wind as her uncle and second cousin respectively.
(Admittedly, they didn't have to as nasty as they are shown to be in Love Amongst Monsters, but, hey, this is melodrama. Why have a merely dysfunctional family when I can make them Fantasy Counterpart Nazis including a murderous Mad Scientist?).
Next, I'll discuss issues of genealogical symbology to include keeping track of Kinds, lineality, locality and naming customs.
Interesting read. But then, anything that makes you think about the whys and hows of your character - why they act like they do in a given situation - rather than have them as interchangeble tools to drive the plot with, is a good thing. Food for thought, here.
I was reminded of a role-playing campaign I participated in a few years back, where I decided to give my character an established family. Said character was a tiefling, aka a demonic 'bastard', so I had an accomplished former-adventurer mother who had endeavored to raise me properly with love and care, and an extended 'family' in the form of her old friends. As the game progressed, the GM took advantage of my having a solid grounding and used it as a foundation for the plot, culminating with the Big Bad turning out to be my estranged half-demon father and my long-lost thought-to-be-dead sister playing an important part. Meanwhile, half of the rest of the party consisted of essentially walking statistics sprung fully formed into the world, and were completely forgettable. There was, shall we say, a bit of contrast.
On another tangent, your prior mention of inheriting traits from ancestors (but avoiding xeroxing). There's one fan theory that suggests that Trixie is a descendant of Starswirl the Bearded. (I rather like the idea, because it gives Trixie more character.) If this were true, what would that say about Starswirl, and what would it say about Trixie?
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Indeed. And this is true of any genre of fiction. For instance, in action-adventure, one cares much more about the deeds of Clancy's Jack Ryan than one does about the deeds of Joe Nobody in some random formula adventure story, because Jack's a real person to oneself. In erotic or romantic fiction, one cares more about a character who has been given real personality and history and goals than one does about a character who is merely a mixture of sexually-attractive bodily traits. (This is true even if it's almost pure porn). And so on.
Heh -- oddly enough I recently made a genealogy for Trixie (she's an important character to me) which mashed together that theory with the family Alex Warlorn gives her. And not only did I do that, but I also picked up on the hint that she and Twilight Sparkle are very distant cousins.
Starswirl canonically had trouble with friendship. So does Trixie. And I actually do think that Trixie is Great and Powerful for real, but that she sabotages herself most of the time through her own bad attitudes. So yes, there are similarities.