Retrospective: Ghost of a Rose

Since the opening of the Golden Oaks Book Club discussion on Ghost of a Rose, I've been thinking about what I wanted to say. Grand Moff Pony's comment cemented in my head what I wanted to cover. Not my thoughts on the quality, errors, or general reception of the story. I do love this story, but I'm also very aware of some of the issues within it. Instead of covering those, I wanted to cover the story itself. The ponies in it, the lore behind it, and some of the inspirations behind it.

My thoughts on the quality of the story are irrelevant to my reader's enjoyment of it. Think of this as a sort of behind the scenes look at its creation. I hope you all enjoy this look at an after the fact, affected by hindsight, author's thoughts on the creation of a story. This is broken into four sections: Characters, Lore, Earth Ponies, and Non-Character Plot Items.

Characters are plot, and plot is about characters is my view. That's why I have "Non-Character Plot Items" this is items (or events, or settings) which are not characters, but nonetheless play an important part in the story. Lore is the little fiddly bits that add a flavor to the story. The earth ponies section was originally a subsection of lore, but I decided that it was big enough on its own to be its own section.

Warning! Spoilers ahead!

Characters

The characters of Ghost of a Rose drive the plot, and they are the core of what makes this story work. From them springs the plot, and they direct the plot. At least, they allowed me to build a solid guide to the plot.

Roseluck

Roseluck. I'm not sure how to describe how she came about the way she did other than she evolved as the story got written. Her personality was drawn from the little bits we've seen of her in the show. Prone to fear in unfamiliar situations, but otherwise a calm, steady mare with a talent for gardening, and the patience and common sense to run a business of sorts. Friendly, but also a bit timid - an offshoot of her tendency to be afraid of that which is wildly out of place in her world. Yet, she also has a certain verve hiding under the surface. A bit of a wild side that she lets come out from time to time. Perhaps, given a different upbringing, she would have been an adventurer or at least a more adventurous pony.

More, as a pony with her hooves on the ground, with patience and common sense, she is very practical most of the time, when her emotions aren't at play. This is nowhere more evident than her relationship with Swift, and her ability to let go of her animosity so quickly. Similarly with her jealousy over Post's past relationship.

Her naming story is given in the story itself, and its inspiration came of Raspberry Rose's own naming. Along with some of the lore and ideas for how ponies are influenced by their mother's magic while still in the womb. (discussed later)

Post Haste

A mail carrier. A pony with a need to move around, and a touch of wanderlust. But only a touch. Perhaps something he got from his mother, and her long ranging flights to deliver packages and mail to far off places. What we've seen of him in the show is that he's kind, but also a bit silent, and easily forgiving of minor, unintended slights. A fair trait for a mail carrier to have, going from pony to pony, delivering sometimes poor news. Don't shoot the messenger, and also let the messenger not blame the recipient for the reaction - so long as it's not intentional. He evolved as well, and is more adventurous than Rose, but only just. His inspiration came from the quiet father type - the strong one who does what he must. But that's boring, mostly, even if it is fairly true to life for many of the father figures I've known.

The question about his cutie mark, and his reason for having it, informed me to the rest of the puzzle. He loves stamps. Not for the sake of the stamp itself, though. For the history and the story behind it. In an earlier version of the outline for this story, he had been a dead letter investigator, fascinated enough by the stamps and their origins to want to learn enough about the sender and recipient to either get the mail through or to return it to the sender.

Lucky Day

Rose's father, who knew his failing health meant that he wouldn't be there for his daughter as much as he would have wanted, pushed her to spend time with her friends, the flower maidens, and go to college where she wanted. To be her own pony as soon as she could, and live well on her own. And, to his thinking, be well settled by the time his health failed.

He is a simple character with simple motivations. His character is fairly one dimensional. This is not a bad thing. He wants what he wants, and that's that. He has reasons for wanting those things, but they largely go unexplored.

Swift Delivery

Post's mother, the mother-in-law who butts in trope given a personality, and a reason for wanting to butt in. Unlike Lucky, Swift survived the Pony Pox plague without succumbing to the worst effects. She remained strong, and was there for Post. Before he went off for college with one of the Wandering Colleges (discussed later), Post and Swift lived together in, not exactly close quarters, but had become comfortable with just each other in the house. She was happy to see him go off to learn, but quickly found herself alone at home when she returned from her far ranging flights. She did not want to pressure him to come home just for her sake.

When he graduated and returned to Ponyville, he returned to the way things had been, and Swift settled back in, too. Perhaps she knew it wouldn't last, but wanted to keep him in her life as much as she could. She was lonely in her home. She is the most dynamic parent of the main cast, and the one who changes the most. Lucky does not change overmuch throughout the story - he has a set goal, and his Rose is already on route to achieving that.

Swift has goals that come into conflict with each other. She wants grandchildren, just as Lucky does, she also wants to be a part of their lives, just as Lucky does, but she also wants to make up for lost time with her son. Ultimately, she is tired of being lonely at home, and that blinds her to the discomfort she's causing Rose - who is used to being independent.

Mirror

Mirror changes perhaps the most of any of the characters in this story. And the background of her story, and the way it came about, is rather simple by comparison. She was always going to be one of the Pinkie clones. She was always going to believe, at first, that she was the real Pinkie, and that her friend Twilight made a mistake. One that cost Pinkie her life. By the time she entered the story, she had been trapped in the Mirror world for years. Two or three. She had long since forgiven Twilight for the mistake, and spent most of her timeless time reliving the memories of Pinkie. Not as vividly as Rose, but reminiscing on times past, and watching from the other side of reality as the world moved on without her.

She is the reason this story is tagged sad. I actually wrestled with the story being a tragedy - it fit, in a way. Pinkie/Mirror clinging to her belief that she was the real Pinkie to the point that she drove away her only friend in that world. Only... she still carries the burden of being Pinkie, without actually being Pinkie. And Pinkie would not hurt her friends intentionally. Or want to see them hurt.

Being around Rose hurt her, though. Rose became a reminder of all that was in her head was not hers. She was not who she thought she was for so long. Even her age is false. So much about herself is a lie (in her mind). And, in her world, reflections are lies (more on that later).

Mirror, then, chose to name herself that in a fit of depression. Only, she didn't want to hurt. Rose was a constant reminder. From Pinkie, she got the desire to be happy, and to help her friend. There was one course that led to that, even if that meant she had to forget everything that Rose had brought with her. Even if it meant she would be alone, living a lie, forever.

It's interesting to note that this was hinted at, in a joke Rose tried to pass in the first chapter, and the ultimate resolution hinted at, again, by Rose, in the second chapter.

She is the most difficult to nail down for reasons why she is the way she is. Her role evolved the most, as well. I wasn't certain about her final actions until the end of the story, when I had gotten through the last confrontation with Roseluck where Mirror could not stay in the room to push Rose farther away. The screams during giving birth were too much for her kind heart to take. To hear her friend in such pain, and not be able to do anything.

It was in this argument that I saw what I would do with her, and was able to build towards that ending from the turning point of this subplot.

Lore

The lore sprinkled throughout the story is, I hope, subtly enough worked in to make it flow with the story. There are no info-dumps on lore that didn't come about naturally of the characters encountering plausible reasons to discuss them. These are also points that reveal more character information, not just lore.

I wanted to give this story a very pony flavor on the lore. This might make it seem a little alien to my readers, but I wanted the world to be their own, accommodated to the fact that they are ponies living in this world. That means that little things like sit down toilets, twisty dials for water faucets, doors, and other things don't exist for any but unicorns.

Talents, In Vitro, and Magic

I see ponies as having multiple talents. Rose's primary, for example, is her magic and the ability to care for flowers and plants in general with more skill. It's not because the magic grants her a special ability. It's because she understands the magic of the plants at a basic level, and knows how to match instinct to action.

For Post Haste, his love of stamps is something he learned and found to love on his own, independent of his magic. His magic is tuned to that of moving, the surety of hooves on the ground. Like Applejack, his endurance is his own.

Applejack, I think, has a touch more of the strength of the earth pony, with the same insight into plant magic as Rose, though attuned to trees and apple trees in particular. Her endurance is her own, hard won.

As seen in the minor subplot of Rose's and Berry's naming and hinted at talents, I hinted that Rose, using her talent, was influencing Raspberry Rose in the womb. The spark of magic is ignited early in the womb.

Swift Delivery, for example, is a long distance flyer. Post's magic lends him towards the same kind of magical talent.

This has interesting implications for, say, Twilight Velvet's talents. Of course, there are special circumstances and personal will that tend towards talent and magical ability as well. Not everything is predetermined at birth. It just lends a natural tendency towards a certain magical path, not a carved in stone path for a foal to take.

Wandering Colleges

The Manehattan Wandering College is something of an anachronistic institution, but one that a few other cities also hold dear. Ponies, being herd derived and initially very nomadic, would still have some of that wanderlust locked up inside for a time.

The wandering colleges are caravans of learning that travel the wilds and the old roads from city to city, taking on students and depositing graduates at their destinations. They are open to ponies of all types, but primarily attract pegasi and earth ponies.

Full courses are taught there, though the learning tends to be more towards the practical end and less focused on the earth pony art of gardening or growing crops, though the wagons do have planters along the outside rims that hold flowers, berries, and other foodstuffs beyond the basic oats, hay, and other dry cereal grains.

Days of the week (colloquial)

This is a reposting of a blog I did a while ago, edited to fit this format.

Rainday is usually a heavier rain than Wetday - which is normally just a drizzle - enough to get things wet. Rainday is also the day that ponies get their rain barrels filled - usually by special order - a heavy raincloud will be dropped into place over the rain catch-barrels and fill them over the course of the rainstorm.

Marketday is usually when the best deals are. It's just kinda been that way for a while. Merchants trying to get rid of stock before the heavy rain on Rainday turns roads into mires. Sunday is usually the sunniest and least cloudy day of the week.

Weather management

It's no surprise that the weather is managed. We've seen this in the show. We've seen the weather factory. And the ponies managing it are only ponies, and mistakes happen. Schedules get swapped, and all of a sudden, there's no rain when there should be.

There is a reserve team for more active storms than normal, and to cover for the regular members of the weather team when they want to go on vacation. The pegasi in Ponyville are almost all a part of the reserves, a volunteer group that receives training once a month for a day on the latest weather practices.

There is, however, a group of elite reserves for the weather team that can be called up individually in the event of a weather emergency - Swift Delivery is a part of that team, as is Bright Eyes. Bulk Biceps is a part of the regular reserves.

Economy

As a business owner, entrepreneur of sorts, Rose spends much of her day either in her garden or at market, selling her flowers. She must have a functional idea of when to bring flowers to market and when it's more useful to stay at home and tend the garden to bring more, and richer, flowers to market.

Monetary denominations

This was a tiny detail in the story, passed over quickly. That scene was an interesting one. I wanted to show that life had become rather hectic for them, and didn't want to drag the reader through a huge sequence, confusing to follow. So what is it that says life has become hectic after a baby? Money, and the concern for it. And, having a discussion about money, and we only have the "bit" which is a piece of tack, but also commonly used in scifi and fantasy as currency in and of itself. The basic denomination like the "Credit" or the "Unit" or the "Dollar".

I wanted something with a bit more depth, something more familiar. So, dollars, yes (bits). But also dimes (spade, a part of a bit), pennies (buckles, the smallest piece of brass tack), and larger denominations like the hundred dollar bill (stirrup, the largest single piece of tack made of metal).

Jokes could be made about bits being something to lead ponies around, and bits (money) leading ponies lives around. They probably have been made already. "Don't let the bit lead you by the nose."

Flower economy

Flowers are a part of the economy. For some, a basic food, and for others, decoration. Roses appear decorative while other flowers have other uses. Perhaps the petals, or the stems or the stamen/bud/etc have nutrients that are hard to get otherwise. Perhaps they're fleshier than ours. Perhaps they're a magic supplement. Who knows. I don't. But ponies sure seem to love eating their flowers.

Earth ponies

This is a story featuring a cast of primarily earth ponies. Swift Delivery is the only major character who is not. Thus, I spent a lot of time thinking about, and exploring, earth pony culture.

Society

Earth pony society is an inclusive one, with ties to friends and family paramount. I tried to show this in the small ways that ponies talked to each other and included each other easily in their lives. Rose includes the nurses, her doctor and Bright Eyes easily in her life, and the lives of her family. Rose's relationship with Swift was something of an oddity, more of a clashing of personalities than the norm. I wanted that to stand out for how it looked from both Rose's perspective, and how it stood out against the other relationships she had with almost every other pony.

Play Groups

The play groups are a part of that inclusive society noted above, but something that stretches across pony society. Play groups socialize the young foals and give new mothers a chance to see how other, more experienced mothers handle their children. The spreading of this kind of experience is a social experience, for both the foals and the mothers. Similarly, it gives the mothers a chance to take a break every now and then when their children are with someone else.

The bonds formed in a play group often stay with a pony throughout their young lives. I see Sweetie and Scootaloo having formed such a bond before they even met Apple Bloom. AB, being a farm pony, spent much of her early life with her sister, brother and granny.

The play groups are handled by a circle of mothers who volunteer for the duty. The fact that fathers haven't joined is more a matter of tradition than one of absolute negation. Fathers could join, if they wished, and not be laughed at. Most don't, though. For various reasons, mostly because of tradition. That's just the way it's been, so that's the way it should be done. Post, I think, because he's also something of a traditionalist.

Marriage Ceremony

The marriage ceremony between Rose and Post was something that was referred to as a traditional earth pony wedding in chapter six. The inspiration from this came from Rose, who is a gardener. The earth ponies are tied closely to the earth, to growing things. There is a strong undercurrent of harmony in the speech that Mayor Mare gave to the gathering as a part of the benediction. The play part of it, the storm, the growing grass, and the choreographed motions of the groomstallions and bridesmares parties were holdovers from herd dynamics where the herd came together to protect the new couple in their earliest moments as a new couple.

I admit to writing the vows on the fly, following what felt right for the society I'd been describing. A society where gender didn't matter, and both mare and stallion would say their vows at the same time, showing their commitment to each other.

Dating, love poem:

One rose, from me to you.
Do you like me, too?

Two roses, one for you, one for me,
Sharing a love that's meant to be.

Three roses, two by mane, one by kiss.
Come, let me show you bliss.

Four roses, for the love we share.
We live our lives, an eternal pair.

This isn't the original. I lost that somewhere in my copious notes for this story, but it's very close. The roses, being plants, lend this to be a rather earth pony tradition. Perhaps it doesn't even hold much sway outside of the towns centered around earth ponies and the growing of things.

It is from this poem that the Rose Crown festival was imagined. The saucy one that happens behind curtained off walls in the forest. Perhaps it is a bit saucy and racy for a human town, but for ponies, whose noses lend their lives to be more scent aware than us, having a day to just let go of what some of those scents mean and follow deeply buried and mostly under control instincts lets the ponies relax and indulge in a tradition that has moved come down through the ages more or less intact (albeit a little more discreet than it used to be).

There is a reason there was so much attention focused on the sense of smell within the story - a pony's scented landscape is far richer than our own. I tried to convey that.

Non-Character Plot Items

Most of the plot of the story is derived from the characters themselves, both inside and outside of the memories. There are a few minor plot items, however, which were external to the characters - environmental factors, in other words. The way the world worked at the time of the story.

Everfree storms

Everfree storms ultimately played a big part in the end of the story and were first hinted at back in chapter 4, with Rose and Post spending a (not so quiet) night together in their living room while a blizzard raged on outside.

The reason for the storms is not known, nor is it terribly important. But more than just the tree of harmony was affected by Discord's plunder seeds. Perhaps there's an artifact, or a spell, or something, keeping the weather in the Everfree from invading the rest of Equestria. Perhaps it's even tied to the mirror pool. Probably not, though. This is one area where I might see fit to put an adventure side-story focused on the mane six as they hare off to save Ponyville once again.

Mirror pool

The primary setting for the first two chapters, and the intra-memory scenes with Rose and Mirror. Part of the reason I spent so much time setting up the mirror world is two fold - the settings do exist in the real world, so describing them and giving them flavor there negated the real need to re-describe them later, when Rose is in her memories. Just to add color, scent and sound to a place the reader has already visited through Rose's eyes.

The mirror pool, a mysterious pond in a cave deep in the Everfree forest is not anything many ponies know about. Pinkie knows because her aunt knew. Presumably, the myth has been passed down from pony to pony in her family for generations. Perhaps to serve as a warning, though the warning lost its bite over many generations and became a tale to tell to the little fillies and colts over a campfire.

The book Twilight has may be a treatise on the mirror pool from those who first encountered it, unicorns obviously (otherwise there wouldn't be a spell to banish them.) Perhaps written by explorers who encountered a strange tribe of clones long ago, and found the clones to be singularly hostile to outsiders.

Or something. There's a lot of theories I have on why the book is there and why it has what information it has.

My own theory is that the clones are limited in life span if the spell to create them is not properly performed as a ritual observance. Pinkie didn't have the details of the ritual and thus her clones would have faded away after the first full day and night. Perhaps something that was farther back in the book Twilight had. However, when given a solution to an immediate problem, how many would try to research further?

Granted, the consequences of failure in either direction appeared dire. A horde of Pinkies, living there forever, or one of her best friends sent into the pool to an unknown fate. She should have researched the problem further once seeing there was a dire consequence if she cast the spell on the wrong pony.

Circles, The Garden, and Colors

The keen eyed reader will notice that the story began in Rose's garden in the mirror world, and ended there, too, in the real world.

Mirror's journey ended in a full color mirror version of Rose's garden. A keener eyed reader will note that at the start, the garden was not gray in that first scene. The garden was faded. It was only after the fog started to roll in that the color began to fade, and it wasn't until Rose was tending to her garden again - with a singular purpose in mind - that the color returned for Mirror.

It went unmentioned, because it never got addressed by Rose, but the world was always gray to Mirror. Why?

Nopony was sending magic into the ground that was mirrored and maintaining it, thinking of her. For Rose, part of her memories were bleeding into her view of the world. The more she forgot, the more the colors bled away. Mirror had no memories of her own to let bleed into the world.

The reason Mirror was so bright was that she was a part of the mirror world, made of the substance that made it up. She colored it when she passed through the first time, and was the only clone to retain enough of a belief that she was Pinkie to A) survive the passage a second time, and B) retain the memories of the host in their entirety. She retained that color on her passage back into the mirror world.

When Rose began to work her garden with the specific intent of remembering Mirror, the magic bled over into the mirror world, carrying with it the love and affection that she had for a pony that nopony else would think to care for. For Mirror, it is a safe haven. A place where she can feel welcomed and loved, instead of feeling apart from the world around her.

In the garden, Mirror was just as colorful as the plants, the dirt, and the stone. She fit.

A note on the tears.

Since the stone was bought, tended to, and resides in a garden that is full of the love Rose had for Mirror, the stone had a special connection to both of them. The tears Mirror shed upon the stone she had such a strong connection to, bled over, albeit in the opposite direction.

Those are my thoughts, anyhow. If I write a sequel, focusing on Mirror, the stone, the garden and Rose will all play an important part.

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That's quite a lot of stuff. Let me know what you think. These are my views on the story, and may not be what you saw in the story. I'm always interested in seeing what thoughts all of you have on my stories.

Comments

[Minds Eye]

And this is why the story deserves all the praise it has and more. Your dedication to this was awe-inspiring. The book club picked a good one.

[Meridian Prime]

It's amazing to see all the ideas, details and thought processes behind such an amazing story. I especially liked your "Days of the Week" chart - I wish I'd thought of it!