What's with you and gratuitous abuse of ponies?! · 2:15am Sep 5th, 2016
Granit, a long time reader asked me this. And, with a bunch of possible spoilers about my various stories, I'm going to answer why I write the gritty stories that I write. So...
What's with you and gratuitous abuse of ponies?!
ROTFLOL. Seriously, I owned one—her name was Daisy—and she did her best to kill me by rolling over in a creek with me pinned in the saddle. (I only like cartoon horses.) While I cannot disavow I'm not influenced by my experiences, the other reason is that I like to write through issues that tear at my soul.
The homeless issue was a throwaway in Rediscovering Harmony and Bedroom interlude until Starlight stumbled into the alley in The Enforcer and her Blackmailers to bleed onto the page some of the finest prose and content I've ever written. Even subsequently in Celestia's voice in Celestia and the Battle for Sunset, I could not find solutions for the ethical and moral dilemma that inflicts me to this day. I've studied the homeless encampment outside my wife's business and the laws that allow and govern it; I tried to say something that might enlighten without preaching.
So, that single aspect of the greater whole in mind, the reason I love (love love) MLPFiM is that from the beginning Faust planned it to be a feminist utopia, to present female empowerment, and to emphasize female decision making. I am a feminist. I would consider it the greatest honor if my SF could win the James Tiptree award, not the Nebula, not the Hugo. (Please look here and return.) I am very attracted to the MLPFiM, was from the first few episode I watched on Netflix, and consider rewatching episodes a bath to cleanse the debris of the world from my mind.
But, I will point out the gauntlet Faust threw down—even to the point of reverse discrimination—pertains here. I feel I need to fill in the mortar between the bricks with a feminist cement full of lime, because, as Kim Stanley Robinson once told me, you must write about what you know and what (and this part isn't an exact quote but an interpretation) makes you crazy. (Insert Twi's voice in S1E1 here.) I do that. I see a greater reality at times, the discussion of the applicability of the AU tag aside. Starlight in S5E1-2 could not appear without a long history. I gave her an after-the-fact context retconning in Lesson Learned—please read that now if you haven't, I judge you'll like it—and the Full Monty (in all its connotations) in my subsequent Starlight stories, giving her and Our Town a reason to exist and a capability to be workable as a stealth canon. (Yes, Granit, we disagree on if my stealth canon can exist.)
My minimal study of royalty—and the sociopathy implied in modern terms by the state of being absolutely privileged—proved the glue to present Sunset in all her glory in Celestia and the Battle for Sunset while messaging about the horrors of an absolute ruler while further demonstrating how Celestia is so much better than she could have been, and by strength of character, better than she thinks she is. It is not to excuse the romanticism swirling around princesses in popular culture, but cautioning to be aware of the exceptions in any population. Note Starlight's ominous remark about Cadance in Starlight and her Double Diamond Affair* as well as the darkness it emerged from.
And, while Celestia's curse has been a McGuffin to hold Celestia's 1000-year reign together narratively since Sisters in all but Blood, I now am starting to see it as purposeful by the tree of harmony to generate Equestria as a harmonious improvement on the feudel disharmony shown in MLP canon's origin story for Hearthswarming eve. If you want a god in MLP, it's the tree. Retcon. Yeah.
Ok, enough inside baseball. Did I answer your question?
*Because R-rated Starlight and her Double Diamond Affair is tagged M, to read it by site rules, you need to select Settings and turn on View Mature, before you can see it on my user page. I am not allowed to post a link as it defeats the link protection.
