Random Ramblings LXVI

IN WHICH THE STORY WRITES ME
I knew going into it that Lows & Highs would be the most difficult story for me to write, simply because it's about a girl dealing with severe depression. But I never expected how it would trip me up. That and more non-related story ideas below the jump.

Every time I try to write Sunset's dialogue where she rants about how pointless and hopeless life is, it somehow segues into regret for how she made everyone's lives hell for so long. That's all well and good, but it's not where I want to go.

For the time being, I've shifted some rejected passages rather than delete them, since I might be able to rework them into the narrative as something less awful later. Here's the first exchange I tried, after Sunset asks the point of leaving her room and going to school (that she technically graduated from years ago anyway):

"Well… to learn, graduate, get into a good college so you can have a proper career?" answered Rarity.

Sunset scoffed at this. "Why bother? I've been studying my whole damn life. What has it brought me? Exile. A dump of an apartment. Living a lie. Everyone's hateful glares – don't you dare tell me you don't see it."

"I… uh… well," Rarity sputtered.

Sunset continued. "You five, plus Twilight, are all about forgive and forget. But that's not how the world works. It's naïve to think it. I've screwed up too much. People may act nice now, but it's all a front. You know it."

I kinda like the "Why bother?" line, but everything else is crap. As I tried rewriting, the following exchange just sort of happened and I didn't realize until a ways in how crap it was:

No they don't," Sunset shot back. "I'm this city's pariah and you know it. Nobody really cares what happens to me. And given how I made their lives miserable for years, I can't blame them."

"Well, yes you did," said Rarity, "But you've turned over a new leaf. I think Twilight explained it as you 'reformed', so—"

"And that magically makes everything better?" Sunset interrupted. "You think just because I regret what I did and that I'm trying to improve, that it washes away my sins? You, of all people? I tried to destroy you. I wanted you to suffer. I wouldn't have cared if you'd killed yourself. I…"

Rarity stood stock still for a moment as she unwillingly recalled her short but brutal rivalry with Sunset three years earlier. Images of students' taunts and hateful gazes came rushing back like a flash flood, filling her mind. She choked back a tear and spoke again, her voice quavering.

"No. It doesn't. No matter how much we try, we can't erase the past. You hurt me. I'll never forget that."

Rarity sat down on Sunset's bed, close to her but not uncomfortably so.

"But I can forgive you," Rarity said as Sunset looked up at her.

Here I kept part of the "pariah" line but excised the rest. I don't want Sunset to dwell on such minor things; she's fed up with life itself. She's looking to the future and sees only despair, no light at the end of the tunnel, no hope. Yes, she's weighed down by regret, but there's more to it than that. I want her words to completely disable Rarity for a bit. No pithy platitudes can save Sunset. But at the same time, Rarity's the only one who could make a difference in this case -- the others' personalities are poor fits for this type of problem (and Twilight's got her own issues).

In between failing at writing this story, I've come up with ideas for two more short stories. One came to me while listening to Vince Guaraldi's "Little Birdie". It involves the Dazzlings goofing off in a park. Not really sure where if anywhere it'll go. The other just came to me today. It's a new chapter of Mayor's Break Time. Spike has a dream where every pony he knows (except the Mayor) becomes an Alicorn – note that I do NOT write post-Ascension Twilight (except for in one story I haven't started yet) – and feels the need to write a contingency plan for stopping the "scourge".

Well, that's all the news that isn't. Bye for now.