Jed On: What Is AOA? · 2:48pm Jan 20th, 2015
My regular readers, of which I can safely say I have at least a few (hi!) will hopefully forgive a little self-indulgent rambling on my part. But recently, I've come up with a question I needed to ask myself.
What is AOA?
Bit of an odd question, ain't it? It's a fanfic. It's a fanfic on fimfic by a fanfic writer. Beyond that though, I find myself having to - or at the very least, wanting to - examine what I'm writing. After all, it's nearly finished now (this part at least...) and I actually don't know what it is.
Let's start with the obvious.
AOA is a story about nine ponies coming to a war-torn Earth ravaged by alternative or parallel versions of themselves or their fellow Equestrians. It's a story about those ponies' trials and tribulations. It's also the story of a man, a man with a destiny that asks much and gives little, and about that man's struggle to face up to that destiny, to accept it, to survive it. It's a story about loss and damage, about heroism in a not-very-heroic time. It's a story about people (which includes ponies) and I very much believe that is what all the best stories - certainly, all of my favourite stories, both in original fiction and in fanfic of various sorts - are about. People are the concern of storytellers, and I flatter myself that I am a storyteller.
Now here's a question. Is AOA a Conversion Bureau story? I started out attaching that label to it and there are key themes that appear in TCB stuff - the Conversion of humans into ponies, brainwashing of said converted, PER, HLF, the bureaus themselves... so yes, in that respect, it is. Do I classify it as that?
Well, no. I'm not sure that I do.
AOA started out as a tribute act to The Other Side of the Spectrum, which is definitely a Conversion Bureau story. Since then, however, AOA has begun to reflect themes that aren't really so present in Spectrum and (to the best of my knowledge) other TCB fics but are themes that I, myself, have as a writer. It's a high fantasy in some respects, even a mythic fantasy, with explorations of Arthurian legend but more than that, explorations of themes of Good and Evil writ large, of heroic fantasy and destiny and sacrifice. There are questions about the nature of Good and Evil, what separates them as concepts or ideologies. There's also a mythology that's been steadily building, one that will hopefully be built on by future works.
These are themes that I'm very fascinated by, and increasingly I've found that they've drifted away from stuff that I'd consider to be TCB topics. If AOA is TCB, it's TCB with such a severe case of Adaptation Expansion or Adaptation Drift (if that's not a thing it should be) as to be laughable, and I'd be hard pressed to label the post AOA stuff I'm planning (yes, I'm planning post-AOA stuff) as TCB simply because the stuff that makes AOA TCB in any way ceases being a major concern in most of it.
So what then is AOA?
More and more - and possibly a little lot arrogantly - I believe AOA to be the nucleus of a new genre or mini-genre.
AOA has a multiverse. That multiverse can - and without telling you too much about what's coming, already has - contain anything. The central concept is all that matters: Good vs Evil, writ large as a defining, central core, with single, powerful figures as their figureheads and champions. Other than that... well, anything goes really. Seriously, there's some crazy-ass shite in the making.
And you know, it isn't all me. If anyone - anyone at all - wants to make an AU for AOA, then feel free to throw me a message. It's a multiverse, after all. Anything can happen...
Anyway: I've been very up-my-own-arse with this all. Best stop that, people might start thinking I think highly of myself. Ha.
Take care all.
Jed.
Oh, I never thought the story was going to end with Solamina getting dead; they've got a world to put sort of back together afterwards and that's going to be worse than the war.
2735762 oh trust me, my friend: there's far more than just that to consider...
2735792
Does it have to do with the Avatar considering the eternal matchup between Light and Dark? Solamina was the Dark, The Avatar was the Light, and those two are paired; he considered all the ways the matchup could be the opposite too, and canon Equestria has yet to reach its own paired battle. Thus far canon Celestia is Light...
We've seen the worst of ponydom, twisted by Darkness. It would only be fair to see the worst of humanity to contrast.
2737240
You might be some way on the right track there, yes. You haven't guessed all of it, but definitely on the right track. That preoccupation with Light and Dark is definitely a key player.