Thoughts regarding A Brush with Beauty and Bronycon · 7:28am Aug 15th, 2014
Lordy, it's been a long time since my last blog. Nearly ten months. I suppose there hasn't been anything too noteworthy going on with me (at least, that's relevant to the site) from then until just recently. But within the past month or so, I came out with what's been my most successful story thus far, attended Bronycon, and even wound up on a writing panel, all of which I intend to cover here in this blog. Let's get into it.
First, the story, A Brush with Beauty. If you aren't interested or haven't yet read it—there will be spoilers here—you can skip right down to the next line break for my retrospective on this year's Bronycon.
Paul Matthews is a young man of average height and average weight and fairly average disposition. He is normal, and abnormally so. That rarely seen kind of person who, even in their early years, gives off the impression that they are destined for a moderately successful career in middle management at some cold, gray corporation.
Paul Matthews is about to come very close to something that few people do.
A Brush with Beauty was my entry for Obselescence's Most Dangerous Game contest, using the Human in Equestria prompt. As seemed to be the case with a number of other stories in the contest, though, it was something I'd planned to write eventually but didn't feel a pressing need to until the contest came along. As such, it wound up a bit more rushed than it might otherwise have been (I wrote the lion's share of it in the space of a few hours before the deadline came up), but it actually got written and I'm still mostly satisfied with it.
As I was conceptualizing (before the contest came along) and writing this story, I had one main goal: to present a true-to-the-formula HiE—with many of the key tropes and with other, lesser commonalities—in a way that managed to give each piece meaning and relation to the whole, and in a way that would be as realistic as I could make it. For example, though my human was sent to Equestria via a strange "portal" from his bed back home simply because so many other HiEs do this and I felt I had to as well, the portal itself had a meaning to him (one which he and—likely as not—the reader may not quite grasp, but a meaning nonetheless) and is presented more as a half-asleep hallucination than as anything else, a theme throughout the piece being dreams.
Little things like eating an apple from Sweet Apple Acres and commenting on its superiority, larger things like depression—I picked and chose from the vast pool of HiE themes and tropes, taking what I knew I had a good shot at twisting into meaningfulness and realism rather than your garden variety HiE's wish fulfillment. I did this even to the point that the main character, Paul Matthews, is a self-insert—he doesn't have my name and a few of the details are switched around, but he is in many ways that count the person that I was a few years ago, and is in roughly the same situation as I was. Another of my goals was to make this story interesting for the reader (even, indeed, those readers who dislike HiEs as a general rule) without injecting any sort of cynicism, so I wound up putting more and more of myself into the character and the story, trying to make it as "human" as I could manage so that it might stand above the formulaic HiE (which I feel tend to fail, ironically enough, for lacking a real human element) without the edge that comes from deriding the formula. It made me immensely happy, then, that some people told me that they felt they identified a great deal with Paul. The positive response to the story in general was a bit of a surprise to me, really, and one I'm thankful for.
Now come the real spoilers. Since the contest is over and done with and new readership on A Brush with Beauty has slowed roughly to the point at which I imagine it will remain for the foreseeable future, I want to get a bit into the story's hidden layers. First, though, I need to stress that I purposefully accommodated a range of explanations for and meanings behind most everything that Paul experiences, so feel free to hold to whatever you came away from the story thinking (and tell me!) because the story as presented does not strictly imply the explanations and meanings that are "canon" to me—the explanations and meanings that I went into the story with from the beginning even if, as I said, I made sure to accommodate a range of others in addition.
Here is the largest: the Equestria in this story is not a dream but is also not reality. It is, in fact, a world composed of something like the Platonic concept of Forms. Specifically, a Form of something like perfection or harmony or beauty (hence the title—"A Brush with Perfection" would probably have been a bit more accurate but it sounded bad in my head, so hey). Paul's human mind rejects the pure abstract of perfection, though, and "dumbs it down" in a sense, presenting him instead with a world his senses can understand but which has perfection lurking literally just beneath the surface of much of what he experiences. There is a disconnect, though—the simultaneous impressions that he's experiencing perfection, that he's experiencing something false or nonexistent, and that there's something he can't quite grasp lurking beyond the previous two feelings.
Paul again feels that sense that there is "something" beneath or behind Discord, but also that it is a different "something" from what's behind everything else. Unlike much of the rest of what Paul finds in Equestria—things rooted in the Form of perfection or something comparable—Discord and the chaos that spreads out from him is rooted in imperfection, disharmony, ugliness, and so on. Further, the Elements of Harmony's rainbow is the thing perhaps most firmly rooted in perfection/harmony/beauty/etc., and simply experiencing it up close—this thing that is closest to the unattainable abstract running just beneath everything, that is all but a bridge between Equestria's "reality" and perfection, that is the purest and is the least diluted by the falseness of everything he's seen thus far—is enough to shift Paul's being. He becomes not so much more perfect ('cause that would be a bit much) as he does more in tune with perfection, and beauty, and everything else. And once he's back home, this new relationship with the beautiful becomes a driving force in his life, giving him direction (artistry) where before he was just sort of wandering lethargically.
This sub-story is just beneath the surface of A Brush with Beauty most of the time, and there are other, more minor facets to it that I won't go into here (but which I imagine you're now better equipped to find on your own, assuming my ramblings up above make sense). None of it was really supposed to be required for you to enjoy the main story—it was just something I thought would be a fun experiment, and which I felt fit some of the themes of the story itself. It was my honest hope that the reader might shape their own picture from all of the implications, but I think I failed for the most part in that regard, winding up with something just vague enough that a lot of people seemed to accept the vagueness at face value (though that works in its own way, I suppose). Beyond that, though, I hope you enjoyed the story. I'll certainly see about not taking over half a year before I come out with something else…
Alrighty, let's move on to Bronycon. This is probably going to wind up being a shorter thing, since it's already past 2:30 and I need to be asleep forever.
I attended Bronycon last year, and simply put, this year's was infinitely better, at least for me personally. Last year I was staying with relatives and had to ride a bus to the con center every day (and take a cab back, which was a nice hit to the wallet), and the distance also meant that I wasn't available for much of anything spontaneous if I wasn't already around. Not worth the money I saved by not staying at a hotel.
This year, I rode the train down with Golden Vision and Tayman (wound up not being able to sit next to them, sadly, but we spent plenty of time around one another otherwise) and stayed in a hotel room with alexmagnet, Wanderer D, and Pav Feira, which was pretty much like a continual Seattle's Angels meet-up—in other words a little awkward, oftentimes suggestive, but very fun all around. Got to spend more time around folks like Aquaman, CouchCrusader, PresentPerfect, Capn_Chryssalid, Lord Sunder, CyborgSamurai, Obselescence, Fangwarden, JakeTheArmyGuy, Sunchaser, and a number of others, most of whom I'd only met briefly last year and subsequently gotten to know better over Skype, so this year felt crazy friendly compared to last year for me. I also got to meet Flashgen, Maskedferret (biggest fan of my writing I've met in person, easily—certainly the most vocal), Skeeter The Lurker, Pascoite, ABagOfVicodin, and more, the lot of them great folks.
I came home just a tad disappointed merch-wise this year, though. Bought loads last year (which was disappointing in a more damaging way, I suppose), but this year I came home with comic book signatures, a nice little head sketch of happy!Scootaloo from Andy Price, and some Ponka (print of that, minus the eye). Love what I got, but deep down I think I should've lived a little more. Did spend loads on food, though. In various arrangements, the authors were all eating out, like, twice a day at least, it seemed like, and I joined in for a lot of that. I won't bore you with it since you can probably hear about where all we were eating from any of the other authors, so many of them far quicker to come out with a blog post than I.
In my defense, though, I was waiting for Fangwarden ("Cloudhammer" now, but Fangwarden in my head forever) to finish uploading this:
Am I horseknown yet? Horserecognized?
First panel I've ever been on, and it was quite fun. It seemed to go really well, too—well filled room and hardly anyone walked out, and those that did mostly left at the point we shifted to audience questions. I could've talked more, but I'm happy the contributions I did make didn't wind up embarrassing me (mostly), plus we wound up short enough on time that a question alex had fought for covering during all of our planning sessions had to be skipped. I do hope to be on a panel again in the future—possibly some form of a Seattle's Angels panel the admins at the con mentioned to each other that we might like to try doing.
I think that about wraps up what I wanted to cover regarding Bronycon—mayhaps apart from the fact that I and folks went to see Guardians of the Galaxy twice over the course of the con and I haven't been in love with Marvel movies since Spider-Man 2 and holy hell was this a fun way to break out of that sad pattern—so I'll close this blog out now.
The last thing I want to mention is that I'm vaguely considering starting up a series of blogs of some sort. Likely author help? That might come off a bit pretentious from someone as unknown as me, though, is what I'm worried about. I definitely want to make more use of my this blog somehow, though. If you've got any thoughts on that or any other topic I've touched on tonight, please let me know. Thanks for reading, folks.
I might not be the best person to give advice on this matter, but I think pretentiousness is offset by quality. If you can actually do something well, and make it clear that you're good at doing it, the work tends to speak for itself, at least with honest-minded readers.
Also, writing out your thoughts tends, in my experience, to have a wonderfully clarifying effect on them. I've learned a lot just by trying to write out what I thought I already knew. So I'd definitely encourage you to pursue that, if it's something you're interested in.
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That's a good way of looking it at—also the same theme as the counterargument my less humble side was going with. In all honesty, one of the main motivating factors for me is that I've recently seen some select people who are more well known than me giving poor (sometimes even damaging) advice in their blogs, and since I really do want to use my blog for more than a single post per year, I figure that counterbalancing that sort of thing is as good an option as any.
You were at the Guardians screening on Sunday? So was I! But I guess I never got around to introducing myself to everyone. I was talking with the people I roomed with and some others I already knew.
I'm surprised you haven't liked any Marvel movies since Spider-Man 2, since there have been plenty of good ones ever since Iron Man came out.
Did you see Golden Vision making his plushies dance at Five Guys?
Not to mention, the most damaging to your computer
Was definitely fun seeing you and I think author help blogs are beneficial regardless of author recognition.
Please do a series of blogs. I would love to read what you have to say, because I respect you do highly as a writer and a general writing expert. As good as (I like to think, and am occasionally told) I am, I am constantly looking for ways to improve, and your contributions to my comments sections always help.
One of my biggest regrets being unable to go to bronycon is missing out on meeting some of the people I'm fascinated by in person. Maybe I'll make it someday.
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Yeah, I definitely talked more than I thought I would—had more to say than I said, though, so next time I think I'll try and be a tad more forceful. And if you do give it a read, please let me know what you think. Despite all the positive response, I feel like I could use some more thoughts on it from folks I know personally.
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I believe I was seated two or three seats to the left of you, just past Pav. I'd been told your name, but it only struck me after the con that I'd seen you around the site before. Would've made more of an effort to say hi if I'd realized sooner. Regarding Marvel, I didn't say I haven't liked any, but that I haven't loved any. Loved the start of Iron Man but it petered out by the end, same story with Captain America, liked Winter Soldier overall, liked Iron Man 3 overall, but Spider-Man 2 and Guardians I loved start to finish—Guardians more so, I suspect, but I'd have to re-watch Spider-Man 2. And yes, I was there for GV's dance of the Ponka.
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If you ever can, I certainly hope I'm there when it happens, man. And thank you, as ever, for the ego boost, heh.
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Trenderhoof has Moves Like Jagger.
Might be a bit late, but I'm interested in "author help" blog posts. I'm always on the look-out for that sort of thing, and any more contenders would be more than welcome, I feel.
Do it, you big butt
2589282 Eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy no.
Maybe.
Sometime.
2589299
Do eeeeeeeeeeeeeeet.
2589325 Having issues with scope and redundancy. Not sure how overarching the things I should cover should be, and I'm not at all sure what other, more popular folks have covered, or how well.
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Doesn't matter what they've done. They're not you. People want to hear your thoughts.
2589755 There'll come a time soon enough when I sit and stream of consciousness something insightful enough, probably. Don't hold any breaths, though.
2589809
I'm holding my breath.
You better hurry. I might suffocate
2589885 I actually just sat down and started a blog on dos and don'ts for starting/managing an author help group. Not the original plan, but hey. Also, forget waiting to be on a panel to talk about it.
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We should still have a panel to talk about it. That would be fun.
2590038 Well, yeah. For want of a thing to blog about, though, I'm gonna stick with what I know best for starters.
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I look forward to this.