Humans Don't Have Wings - Over Analysis

So, Humans Don’t Have Wings now has over five hundred likes and I think its about time for me to post my impressions of the story. I like to give things a week or two to cool down after finishing a story so everyone who’s going to comment comments and I can talk things over with my fans. This blog post is going to be my impression of how the story did, what went wrong, and go over some of the decisions that I made in the writing. As always, this is just my analysis, and if you disagree or just think I missed something obvious feel free to comment.

The first concept for this story was, in short ‘Lyra is hunting for a human, and brought a disguised human with her’. Some of you may have already spotted my primary inspiration for this story, Anthropology, but the central premise is flipped. Anthropology shows a pony willing to give up everything they have to find a new home on Earth, and the central themes are a sense of wonder and discovery. Wings, is not that story. (Actually, it could be argued that it is that story, but two decades later.) In Wings, I wanted to present the polar opposite choice, where RD is not willing to make the jump back to Earth and a give sense of revulsion at the unknown.

Responses to the story had an unexpected element to them. There was no real message in the story as to which was the correct choice for Dash, but the venom in the comments that she’d abandoned her home was unexpected. This is probably a backlash to RD’s misanthropy and I want to defend this attitude because Dash really doesn’t hate humans. She hasn’t spoken to one in almost two decades and her entire knowledge of them comes from rather dry books. There’s no reason for her to hate humans, it’s purely there to make the choice of keeping her wings easier. It’s misanthropy, but with the tragedy right there in the title. Every action of Rainbow Dash’s is justified, in her own head, by the simple fact that humans don’t have wings. She dresses things up in the story, but they’re childish problems really, she’s far more scared than misanthropic.

Anyway, with that out of the way, onto the main event. There were a number of things that worked really well, there were some things that really didn’t, and a few things I want to mention just because they were interesting. First, the good.

The Good

1) Character. This was a touchy issue, as the story involved major revisions to a main character’s backstory. I got no complaints about Dash acting out of character in the end (which was surprising) and so this was pretty much my number one fear assuaged. Plenty of people disagreed with Dash’s decisions, but no one seemed to think she wouldn’t have made those decisions.
2) Concept. This is a bit of a weird thing to crow about, but I think this story had an excellent grab factor. It was, after all, at the top of the FiMFiction’s feature box for a good day and I put that down to a strong, attention grabbing concept. The touch of controversy didn’t hurt either.
3) The Reveal. One of my pre-readers managed to guess the ending within ten lines, but for the most part I think the story managed to obscure RD origins enough that it wasn’t immediately obvious what was happening, while keeping people engaged with figuring out RD’s motives. There were other pacing problems, but this I liked.

The Bad

1) The End. I don’t think anyone liked where this story ended, it bounced around a lot in the writing going from Dash picking up the hat to Lyra going through the portal to Earth. Ultimately, this plotline doesn’t have a clean ending, as the choice will always remain. Hence, the ending was supposed to represent Dash coming to a decision about her future, but even that wasn’t very clear. In the end I couldn’t fix it, so just went with the best solution I could find.
2) Misanthropy. This is also in the positives, but I do feel this story could have worked without the hate RD displayed. In many ways that would have undermined the tragedy of the situation, but even if I’d been able to explain the source of RD’s rage better it might have gathered less hate. It’s another of those fine line issues, where too much explanation hurts as much as too little, but I’m not convinced I hit the sweet spot.
3) Perspective. It’s a strange thing, but RD was very reluctant to talk about anything in her monologue. This was a deliberate choice on my part, as it kept the mystery and gave the impression that RD hides things even in her own head. However, it obfuscated the story, which is rarely a good thing in this context. Whether this was a net benefit is debatable, but I’m putting it tentatively in the negative column.

Random Facts

1) The Doctor. The Time Turner scene originally ended with Weeping Angels attacking (though Dash and Lyra didn’t notice). There were a number of these supernatural things in the story but this is the one that had to be cut, as it was a way too distracting. Applebloom managed to stay a werewolf though, so there’s that.
2) Lyra! When I first started writing this story it was third person from Lyra’s perspective. This had the focus to unpicking Rainbow’s lies, but ultimately it was the wrong way to tell the story. The shift to Rainbow’s perspective kept things far more focused, and meant I could be a lot more subtle in her tells.
3) Humans Don’t Have Wings was, at first, refused publication of FiMFiction, due to a lack of the ‘human’ tag. Given whether RD’s human or not is the central issue of the story I find this hilarious.

Anyway, that’s all from me. If you thought there were any flaws unaddressed, or a question I didn’t answer, feel free to drop a comment and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Comments

[Canary In The Coal Mine]

Ultimately the story was about humans, had humans in the name even and even if it didn't feature a human per say, it was enough of the central premise I feel rejecting it for lacking the tag was probably correct.

I do agree the misanthropy should have been dialed back. There were other ways to express Rainbow's misgivings or annoyance, I think. Especially since the story worked really well when Rainbow was giving sarcastic commentary, and made the amusing slip up about how humans supplying the cutie mark crusaders might be a war crime.

I felt that Dash could have tried to explain to Lyra why, even if there were hidden humans, they might actually like living here and might not want to talk about their old home, and in that vein (along with some other commentary and rage that Lyra keeps pushing the issue when others want to remain hidden) could have tipped her off.

[Chyre]

I got no complaints about Dash acting out of character in the end (which was surprising)

Dash was perfectly in character. Yes, her backstory was changed, but the way she dealt with those changes was vintage RD. Which brings us to the next point...

Misanthropy. This is also in the positives, but I do feel this story could have worked without the hate RD displayed.

I think the story is actually stronger with it in. Rainbow has a history of covering fear with other emotions, especially anger-just look at her "Are you a spy!?!" moment in the season one opener. Misanthropy is pretty natural for her under the circumstances, and she wouldn't really be in character without it. The complaints on this rather miss the point.

[Canary In The Coal Mine]

3079072

Misanthropy: I think a little bit of it was to be expected, but not to the incredible degree Rainbow Dash shown. She hasn't been able to hide her fear through that strong of an emotional reaction other times it's displayed. I think dialing it back would be appropriate, not removing it entirely (it'd feel weird if it was removed, for the same reason you describe).

[Straker]

I still like this story a lot and would love to see more of this universe explored.

[billymorph]

3079145 3079072 In my head, and not necessarily on the page, the misanthropy is almost entirely reactionary, rather than something that RD holds close to her heart. Whenever someone says that humans are great Rainbow strikes back with equal force. When Lyra is being glib, Rainbow is glib. When Lyra actively tries to convince her that humans are superior, she insists that ponies are superior. This spirals upwards gives the impression that the reader is slowly uncovering RD's true feelings, but that wasn't what I was trying to suggest. The title is the beginning and the end of the issue, RD hates humans just enough for her never to consider going home and losing her wings.

I think a good chunk of people got this, but it seemed to go over the heads of quite a few. I think I managed to hide the big reveal. Rainbow comes to this conclusion pretty much in the argument with Lyra, but it takes some time to really draw it out what with her worry about being revealed as a secret human (which, probably, didn't need to be in the story). This meant that I simultaneously managed to draw out the ending over-long for people who had got the point, but hide it further from people who hadn't. Managing to get the worst of both worlds is an impressive trick, but ah well, it's a learning experience.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

3) The Reveal. One of my pre-readers managed to guess the ending within ten lines, but for the most part I think the story managed to obscure RD origins enough that it wasn’t immediately obvious what was happening, while keeping people engaged with figuring out RD’s motives. There were other pacing problems, but this I liked.

[Waves hand.]

In my defense the title plus RD as a main character just screamed out that twist to me, with how RD reacted to the mere mention of Lyra looking for humans just making that even clearer.

Chalk it up to strange minds thinking alike, perhaps?