Interview: naturalbornderpy · 3:48pm Dec 7th, 2015
NOTE: The following is an interview conducted by my good friend the dobermans, who requested that I host it on my blog as well. Be sure to check out his stuff, as well as that of the author we placed in the spotlight here.
The interview itself may be found after the break. Enjoy!
Hello ye shining exemplars of love and tolerance! Oh, how you sparkle in your crystalline perfection! I am honored to present to you the rarefied thoughts of a warrior noble and true, a defender of personal freedom, a wielder of the powers of both light and dark, and a member extraordinaire of the elite all-lowercase consortium: naturalbornderpy. Pay attention – the King’s talking.
Your Majesty, please remind your adoring slaves who their overlord is.
K. Sombra. Don't forget the K.
Click above to be owned. And even pwned
As everyone knows, the ponies we read and write about have been geometrically and chromatically optimized through years of market/psychological research to deliver the maximum endorphin load to the brain upon contact (with the unfortunate side effect of shortening the human lifespan via early onset diabetes). Why poop their party by putting them in horrifying, hopeless situations?
Because they deserve it, perhaps? No. I think a lot of it has to do with wanting to test those we think can never fall. We like to see what they're made of and if it's sterner stuff than most. If we never had something bad happen to us to weigh against the good, then I don't think we'd truly appreciate the times when things go in our favor.
Can comedy coexist with horror, or even reinforce it?
I really hope it can, otherwise I'm kinda screwed. One of my favorite films of all time is Evil Dead 2, and I think that hits the right balance between comedy and horror very well. When someone scares someone as a joke, what's the first thing they usually do once they realize there's no threat? They laugh. Uneasily. That might mean we like to release all that built up tension horror creates by laughing every little while alongside it.
Is the feedback you get generally positive? Does it vary by genre?
Most of my feedback is actually pretty positive. The most flak I get is when plot points don't add up or characters don't act like themselves. But never has anyone said I've written a truly awful story. I leave it to myself to tell me that.
Genre's a very big part of it. It's hard to strike out with comedy, or at least in my case. If something makes you laugh, however they go about it, usually that means they succeeded in doing what they were supposed to. With horror or dark subject matter, it's a lot more difficult to win people over. Readers will question whether a character would do that or not -- whether a plot like the one you set up would ever really happen. I think it's a little trickier when it's MLP material you're trying to turn dark.
But that doesn't mean I haven't found success with dark tales. I'd say about 75% make it away without any horrific damage. Good enough for me.
What’s the deal with King Sombra?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Which is why I like using him so much.
The first story I ever posted online, I used Sombra as my secondary villain for two reasons: 1) To prove that MLP's "weakest" villain could be something more. 2) Because he basically came as a blank slate that I could spin in whichever direction I wanted and no one could tell me that wasn't true to his character. As long as he was bad, he still was Sombra.
To put this in perspective, by this point in time I've turned the Sombra character into a whole list of various archetypes: the standard villain, the redemptive hero, the sarcastic dick, the cuddly pet, the saddened father figure. All to various degrees of success, mind you.
Now on to the royal writ. In Please Open the Door, due to circumstances beyond her control, Applejack must assume that everyone is an enemy, and must struggle to maintain even her family bond with Apple Bloom. To what extent does this play off the interpersonal dynamics of society (i.e. competition, predation)?
The main goal in this story was turning friend into foe, going down level by level. Turning someone that might've originally made you sigh with relief, but now quiver with concern. The first visitor was Twilight, but due to the short flashback it should've seemed too good to be, true both to readers and to AJ. The second visitor was a complete stranger, so the outcome was less obvious. I remember talking with my editor on the story about who else to include and why -- throwing out darker and darker choices as we went. Family members? More of the Elements, perhaps one of them injured severely and in need of aid? Someone from town lost in the fog and calling for help?
In terms of society, I think it has something to do with trying to be civilized until there's no chance we can. Like that old Twilight Zone episode involving the bomb shelter and the neighbors that wanted in. None were allowed and after the nuclear scare was called off, was there really much chance of returning to a normal life once you glimpsed the more basic nature of your friends and neighbors?
Many stories that put the characters through extreme circumstances tend to lose sight of the canon personalities and pony culture. Were you consciously trying to keep the characters’ behavior in-universe? If so, how did you achieve this?
I did and didn't do this, from what I understand. Unless I tag something as Alt-Universe, I am actually trying to keep everyone as in character as I can. I just happen to do this poorly. (I like original characters, so sue me.) Some readers have told me they liked AJ's slow descent into madness and thus far no one's complained about Apple Bloom. The biggest upset was the treatment of the changelings and there even was a backstory in place for them. One that ... sadly couldn't be included in the story without seeming like some random info dump. So it basically came down to "Do I change my story to include normal changelings or do I change the changelings to fit my story?" Obviously, it was the latter. Although I still don't consider them as out of character as some readers have said. We've only seen them in a single episode, so it's hard to say what they could be capable of on the brink of starvation and with rogue changelings no longer under control of their Queen.
Thanks to a certain persona non grata here on FIMFiction, two versions of the story are available. What are the differences between the two?
Just the removal of the last scene between Chrysalis and the leader of a band of rouge changelings. With the scene included, readers are most aware of why AJ was attacked the way she was and of events completely outside her knowledge. I included the scene to help better explain to questioning readers just what the hell was going on.
With the scene gone, it leaves several questions up in the air, although hopefully not too many. The simplest answer is that Chrysalis came and scooped AJ up and that's that. Another answer is that perhaps AJ has lost her shit to such an extent that she imagines Celestia all in her head and she's actually still stuck inside her house. This ending also leaves the motives of the changelings unknown, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on who's reading. Some people like all the answers. Some like to speculate. Hopefully either ending lands somewhere in the middle of those two.
At one point in the story, AJ needs to ignore the truth in order to keep going. What does this mean for the Element of Honesty? To what extent would you say that stories, in various senses of the word, are necessary for human survival?
I actually hadn't thought of that until this question. In truth, I used AJ as the central character because she seemed the most likely to weather the horrors and still keep her head on straight... or for as long as she could. AJ used her Element as best she could, telling her sister and herself the bitter truth that she was also forced to swallow: that we can't trust anyone outside those doors, no matter what they say. Early in the story, she might've wanted to lie to herself at least a bit -- claim that ponies she knew might be okay and surviving. Perhaps that's the drawback to her Element. Then, later, when she understands what she did to Apple Bloom, does she not want to accept the truth anymore, effectively tossing her Element of Honesty to the side. She can't even tell herself the truth, not when the lies fed to her are as sweet as they become.
In "Open Door", AJ uses stories to pass the time and calm both her and her sister. I think in real life we read stories to do the same -- to escape from our lives for a little while and just go somewhere else, even if that place may be a far darker place than our own. Most people like to live vicariously. It makes us feel better about ourselves when we have things to compare our lives to.
Perhaps that's why Second Person and Anonymous stories are so popular on Fimfic. That main character can be you without much thought at all and it allows readers the simplest way to just "disappear into the page".
Sombra the Highly Unmotivated is a mid-to-long format story that delves into high adventure. Your Majesty, please describe your subjugation of the human Steve, and what you had to go through at the hooves of the vile Elements of Harmony.
Steve was a tricky one. Still is, I might say. During my reign as King, I was able to destroy the higher thinkers in my kingdom just by speaking to them, destroying them with mere words and barbs. Steve... I believe his mind had been destroyed long ago, leaving him a vacant, hollow shell, living from one day to the next without a care in the world. Destroying his mind proved near impossible. So, in the name of survival, I was forced to instead befriend the oddity rather than turn him a slave. Although being a friend of mine and being a slave of mine are hardly that dissimilar.
The Elements of Harmony? I don't even know what you're talking about. Those colorful mares that kidnapped me just to blow me up again? I knew what they were planning the moment they arrived. I only played dumb in order to help those lowlifes. And did I ever get a thank you in return? Nope! Not even a single Feel Better card!
Sombra is the only character known to have been both de-fleshed and executed on-screen. Did that have anything to do with how he is portrayed in StHU? Is Sombra, as you’ve written him, a sympathetic character?
This goes back to the first Sombra question. In my first Sombra comedy "Regarding Falling Villains", I made him a sarcastic dick that still wanted to be bad. In "Unmotivated", I made him more akin to a dog that got into a fight that he didn't win, but felt that he should have. If questioned if he still wanted to return to a seat of power, he'd still claim that he would. But, truthfully, having lived an easier, cozier life with Steve, he'd become more worried about his chances of success in the art of villainy.
Sympathetic? I think to a degree. By turning him into a pet pony that liked getting his head scratched, I was able to still give him the dickish lines and get away with it. Sombra's manipulation of Steve was basically the author's manipulation of the readers.
Are any aspects of the story meta, or referential to the fandom?
Besides the fact that most MLP viewers would love to share a condo with a talking pony? I really don't think so. Or that wasn't the plan, anyways.
How important is trust in this story? In what ways does it drive the plot?
Trust is a big part of this story. So is mistrust. When Steve and Sombra first meet, neither of them trust the other. When Sombra finally softens to Steve and believes the Elements have been dealt with, his trust is rewarded by being taken back to Equestria.
Steve trusts Twilight almost immediately, because he associates her and her friends as being on the side of good. That was one of the points in the second half of the story -- to make the Elements the villains and Sombra and Steve the accidental heroes. Several times in the story, a trust between two characters is established, only to be broken later on. Twilight and Steve. Steve and Sombra. Discord and Steve. Even Twilight and the rest of Alt-Equestria. Without these little threads of trust nudging our hero onwards, then the story would never move at all. But I think that just has to do with being human: I think deep down we want to trust others, until they take that ability away from us.
For the last story, Tyrant Celestia’s Trip to the Moon, please indulge your humble servant by answering a short quiz.
1. Fill in the blank: Giddy swan + lazy moonmare = 36 hours of poor decision making.
2. Sunny Skies, a Nightmare Moon impersonator, and an equine Aphrodite meet by happenstance in the correct answer to #1 above. Who wins the ensuing crazy-making contest?
Pinkie Pie, by jumping out a pie with a bucket full of human pinkies.
3. Are cheese omelets fluffier when prepared in low-gravity environments? Such as, let’s say, the Equestrian moon?
Far fluffier. The only hard part comes when you flip the eggs in the pan and they never come back down. Thankfully George Clooney's there to help. He's been stuck on the moon ever since his space station was destroyed. Something to do about an annoying actress...
Thank you so much for your time, Your Majesty. Any parting thoughts or wisdom you’d like to share with your much-better-off-than-if-they-were-ruled-by-crazy-murderous-alicorns slaves?
Yes. Stop being happy. Right this instant. Hope makes me bloated and I don't like it. Oh, and vote for King Sombra in next month's elections. You can either vote for me or for slow torture and death. Vote or die, literally.
