Setting the Mood: Sadfic, Angst, and You · 7:43pm Jan 23rd, 2017
Not so very long ago, Mr. Numbers attempted an experiment with his story "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi". According to him, it began as an attempt to basically jam as much sadfic trope into one place as he possibly could until it hit critical mass without doing any additional work as far as polishing or improving the product. He then unleashed it on the unsuspecting readers of Fimfiction, who promptly sent it all the way to the feature box. This is not the first time I've been disappointed in the life choices of others. "Sic Transit" is never going to make my favorite stories list. It suffers from being satire with no bite - contrast this with Lucky, fanfiction author Farla's thirteen-chapter half-performance-art evisceration of a similar over-popular fic sub-genre in the pokemon fandom. "Sic Transit" is completely sincere in its artificial sadness train, down to having a title in a dead language because it sounds sadder and more epic.
Incidentally if you were impressed by that title, I hope you're equally impressed by such ground-breaking works of art as "Logos Naki World", a song whose title literally translates to "world without words" and is mostly slurred nonsense. Don't get me wrong, it's a fine song, but using a dead language in its title does not somehow elevate it into a transient state of being.
Despite its faults "Sic Transit" attracted more than a little praise, even after people were informed about the joke. Readers were lining up to inform Mr. Numbers that he had somehow written a good story. Insofar as I am capable of making any sort of judgment in this matter I can outright say that these people are wrong and should feel bad about themselves and their life choices. I am the arbiter of taste. I know what's best.
But these people being wrong doesn't mean that they were completely insane. Almost by accident, "Sic Transit" did stumble into doing something any good sad story absolutely needs at its core. And I think we should talk about that - and why that wasn't sufficient to carry it into good-story territory.
Edgar Allen Poe once said that every short story should build on a single theme or mood, and he should know. My collection of Poe's short stories is large and heavy enough that I have been informed by airport security that I can no longer take it on flights, as it has been classified as a dangerous weapon. Poe's best and best-remembered stories deliver on that philosophy in spectacular fashion. "The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Fall of the House of Usher" exemplify this, with Poe's macabre sensibilities informing every step his characters take. As an inveterate wannabe-smart-person I wish I could take the time to say similarly nice things about some of his lesser known short stories, but I think the world is better off forgetting "The Man Who Used Himself Up". The point remains - good short stories take a mood or theme and laser focus on it.
"Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" actually delivers on this part of the recipe for a good short story quite well, if only as a matter of density. The mood is sad nostalgia. Princess Luna walks through the graves of the mane six, remembering each one in turn and her passing. There are some fine little flourishes here and there, and Numbers injects just enough levity to keep the story from turning into a painful and arduous task. It would have been a fine sad story if not for one minor problem: it is barely sad, barely personal, and can't decide whether it wants to focus on the romantic or personal aspect of this tragedy.
For the purpose of this exercise, let's arbitrarily divide sad stories into two groups based on their mood, methodology, and goals. Our first group will be sad stories focused on tragedies that focus on the loss of something ephemeral and timeless, a quality or a state rather than any one physical thing. We'll call these "romantic" tragedies. The second will be on the loss of something specific and 'real'. We'll call them "personal" tragedies. These groups are, as stated, arbitrary in their nature and imperfect, but that doesn't matter for our purposes. We're going to use them to make it easier to see the distinction between two equally viable methods of writing a sad story.
Romantic tragedies are often about the loss of some real thing, but they're less concerned with the loss of the thing and more with the loss of what it represents. If you've ever heard the song "The Day the Music Died", you've been exposed to a romantic tragedy. While the song was inspired by the tragic death of early rock icons such as Buddy Holly, it's barely concerned with the death of the actual figures and more with the fact that something bigger seems to have died along with them. "Sic Transit" belongs to this group in no uncertain terms based on its premise. It's about "the passing of the world's glory", the last lines state that the tree of harmony is dying, and the loss of each of the mane six is framed in terms of what it means for the nation rather than for any one pony.
On the other side of the scale are personal tragedies, focused on the keen loss felt by one character when they lose something they care about. Estee's "Five Hundred Little Murders" is an obvious example. While the story as a whole is framed around Flitter building a grudging sense of empathy for Fluttershy, a pony who she previously despised, the cutting pain at the core is Flitter losing her pet. Who is also, coincidentally, the one living thing she really cares about. If we're keeping up the song analogies then if "The Day the Music Died" is a romantic tragedy, "I'm Sorry" by Joyner Lucas is a personal tragedy. Also, it's a song that shifts from the perspective of a person committing suicide to their surviving friend and it's really intense, so actual heads-up warning this is not comfortable to listen to.
So what does any of this have to do with "Sic Transit"?
Well, let me ask you a question. Remember when I said romantic tragedies are concerned with the loss of something ephemeral and timeless beyond the immediate personal loss? Please answer me this: what is the ephemeral thing we're losing in "Sic Transit"?
Is it the age of harmony? The story seems to say so. There are constant references to the Tree of Harmony fading and falling apart, which makes literally no worldbuilding sense (does the death of a fruit now kill the tree, or a child their parent?) but which I'm willing to play along with. The final lines of the story state that Equetria is entering troubling times and will not have its greatest heroes to guide it. The events of the story take place within a combination tomb and museum, suggesting that the mane six are in some way a national artifact.
Okay then, what is the age of harmony?
Most romantic tragedies don't tell you exactly what the ephemeral, timeless thing is that they're mourning because it's ephemeral and timeless. "The Day the Music Died" is vague almost to the point of frustration. The best romantic tragedies overcome this by giving you a sense of the emotional pain this loss brings along with it, a sense of the sheer number of people who are affected. But "Sic Transit" never really gets that far. Princess Luna is our stand-in for all of Equestria here and she moves from corpse to corpse so quickly and with so little actual anguish that I feel like I'm sitting in on a stuffy museum tour of all the sad ways the cast could die.
Is the problem perhaps that Equestria has lost the literal magical power of the elements of harmony? But that's something specific and physical, not a timeless, ephemeral something. it's hard to feel a romanticized sense of sadness when the major consequence is that we've had dramatic losses to a country's national defense force. Is the problem that Equestria no longer has people in it who exemplify the spirit of harmony? Closer, but the story takes place entirely in a closed-off location, and we aren't privy to what losing the mane six means.
Really, what "Sic Transit" actually is about is this: MLP is now Tolkien and the elves are going to diminish and go into the west and Frodo has saved the Shire but can no longer enjoy it. Every single cliche in here is Tolkien. It's Tolkiens all the way down. And I don't care how much you love Lord of the Rings, trying to write a romantic tragedy about the fading of the world working outside Middle-Earth requires some serious alt-universing and worldbuilding on a level "Sic Transit" is too short to contain. When most of your story is a walking tour of sad deaths that are sad because oh hey I know that character from the show, it's hard to feel a sense of the loss of an age. The story has a mood, but it can't deliver on the scope of its sadness.
Were there other ways the story could save itself? Yes. Some stories work by elevating the sting of a personal tragedy into a loss that feels transient all on its own. Take... half of what the Mountain Goats have ever written, but especially "No Children". It's a personal tragedy in that it's about the degenerate and broken relationship of the singer and his wife, but the lyrics elevate that sadness by mixing in the dark fantasies of the singer as well. "I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow/I hope it bleeds all day long". Jesus.
And if it hadn't been for the barely-works-with-the-material Tolkienism, I think "Sic Transit" could have viably taken this approach. Drop the weird this-tomb-is-off-limits from the public thing. Drop the weird tree-is-dying nonsense - in fact, have the tree be choosing new ponies to wield its power. Drop most of this. Keep, perhaps, Discord giving up his immortality just for the sheer sappiness value. Then write the story structured as Luna remembering the loss of six friends in turn - which it is - and looking out at Equestria and even as an immortal, feeling the pain that comes from the end not of the age of all Equestria, but the end of the age of Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Princess Twilight Sparkle. Let her personal loss be felt as the loss of ponies who children may never know kept them safe, assured their lives, built the world they live in, and who are now sitting at barely-visited graves centuries later. Then you might have a story.
Until then, well, the glory of "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi" has passed with its exit from the featurebox. And I hope it won't come back any time soon.
Yes, that would make the story a more effective tragedy, and I appreciate the meditation on the genre. However, that wasn't what Numbers was going for. What do you think would've made it a more effective satire?
4393746 Not immediately falling victim to Poe's Law.
In any case, it isn't nearly as sad as "The Saddest Sadfic Ever": http://www.fimfiction.net/story/192477/the-saddest-sadfic-ever
4393751
It falling victim to Poe's Law was rather part of a larger point. Don't worry, I'm here to agree with you.
Originally this was meant to prove a point about the Writeoff, where it tied for fourth with a much better story I cowrote with Ivory Piano. The point was that if you throw enough angst at a wall and they'll call it art, even though everything you've written here is absolutely correct. And so they did. It was the best a story of mine had done in that competition.
I wrote it to be a specific kind of bad sadfic. To check all the boxes to make it a functional sad story -- core tone and idea, overarching narrative, hints at a larger story, a character arc of sorts -- none of those things are particularly difficult. So people in the comments would think to review its construction well. But the larger plot is only hints without a genuine idea for where it'd go. The character deaths are as maudlin and as tropey as possible without a deeper emotional grounding, and banking only on the audience's knowledge of the characters to have an impact. If this had been original fiction, none of this would fly, could fly.
The idea was that the stuff that most people would look for would make it a 'good' story, but everything below the surface was hollow and empty. More of a Potemkin Village of a sadfic than anything else.
So this is why I get internally frustrated when someone tells me my biggest problem was that I made it too good.
And then it worked as a sadfic, and I felt awful about it working, and my explanation after just made me look like a huge cunt because I enjoy being a comedian too much, and actually making people sad as a result of this -- even if it was a cathartic kind of sad -- was a genuinely painful experience for me.
As a side note, my favourite Poe tragedy would have to be Hop Frog, about the dwarf who was forced to drink, and I think a better sad Mountain Goats song would actually be Dance Music. Though "Cotton" has more brutal lyrics again, Dance Music kills me because of the overt happiness to it, the facade of upbeat optimism covering up the story of the words underneath.
If I was ever going to write a genuine sad story, that's what I'd write. Not this.
4393795
I read it some time back on someone else's recommendation, and found it left me flat for more or less those reasons, particularly the maudlin bits. I think a large part of the problem is context. In the greater world, the deficiencies would probably be more obvious; but in the world of FiMFiction, even as a deliberate badfic it's still quite a bit better written than most of what's out there.
4393795
I mean, I'll be honest - this kind of not-explicitly-a-parody structural parody is hard to pull off unless you have a ton of potential contempt. When Farla pulled it with Lucky, she did a full on cover operation. The story was uploaded under a separate account who made posts on the original form just to keep up the illusion of reality and activity, behaved like a typical new but decent author for that kind of story, and basically incorporated the reviews into her final reveal. Her big unveiling moment was coupled with an ending that subverted everything that had happened previously (though all of it was set up for, subtly, in previous chapters) and was followed with her noting that nobody was able to call the story out because it hit all the standard "good" marks. Structurally it was still terrible, but there was no easy buzzword you could use to call it out. So most people who didn't like the story said nothing. Pulling that required her to be absolutely heartless though (and also got her banned since that kind of dual-accounting was a direct violation of Serebii's rules). Sometimes you have to be kind of a cruel bitch to your readers if you want to pull that kind of prank successfully. i mean, it's essentially just betting on people to like a story for cynical, shallow reasons.
Insofar as being "too good", that might be the real problem with "Sic Transit". It wasn't too good, but when you write a story that's hard for people to call bad because they don't know where the bad is... yeah. It's not that the story's too good, it's that all the badness is hidden under the surface. There's nothing there to call attention to except the fact that if you read the story and really think about it, it just doesn't work. And it takes some time to unpack all the bits that don't work. I ended up using it as an example mostly because it's very good for purposes of illustrating that kind of structural story failure, even if in this case you pulled it on purpose.
There's also just the Poe's Law-ness of it. It's a caricature of broadly popular sadfic archetypes that is itself fundamentally just a broadly popular sadfic archetype. With nothing subversive at the end, there's really not a great 'bite' moment.
4394007 Totally a real story Poe wrote, you should be able to find it if you look for it. Not highly recommended, the punch line is that every part of some guy turns out to be fake. And not in a scary way, in an "lol that is so silly" way.
Poe liked to try his hand at being a humorist with mixed results.
4393795
The thing is, being evocative is a big part of what makes a story work. If your story actually evokes the target emotion, then you have, on some level, succeeded beyond the level of many other stories, even if it fails on higher levels.
I have yet to actually read your story, though, so I can't really comment on it in particular.
I'm a very soft hearted being and cry easily so I recall Numbers making me read this and even my response was "I'm crying and I hate you as this is garbage but I'm still sad"
4394117 Make of your heart a stone, my gentle ferret. Make it a stone and crush your enemies with it.
It won't actually make you feel better, but it does feel cathartic in the moment.
I was one of those people :C
4393795
This makes me feel better, tho. <.<
I haven't read the fic in question, but songs like The Day the Music Died and other romantic tragedies are often morning the passing of the past. Nostalgia and a yearning for the "good old days" are very powerful forces that can stir up some quite potent emotions, especially when the future seems uncertain. These stories and feelings may not connect as well with those who are optimists and hold hope for the future (e.g. that the Tree will pick new heroes), but many do not feel this way. Remember that the candidate running on the message "make America great again" defeated the candidate whose logo was an arrow pointing forward.
4394601 And remember that it was a narrow victory and even then occurred in spite of the popular vote. :P
I think you misunderstand the point of my blog if you're trying to justify romantic tragedies. There's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with being a romantic tragedy. I quite like a few of them myself! As said, I don't think "Sic Transit" is fully developed enough to be considered one. If talking about the past is all it takes to be a quality romantic tragedy then telling a knock-knock joke is sufficient to become an accomplished comedian.
4394117 That's a good way to describe it. It's like that video Twilight is walking with Celestia and Celestia is all sad and then Twilight has statues of her friends, does some big magic thing, they come back to life and Twilight isn't an alicorn anymore. It's meant to hit all the high notes but mostly is sad for the sake of being sad. I mean you get 'Twilight misses them so much she gives up forever' as a theme, I guess, but it's also shitty since it's very clearly a 'Celestia desperately wants her to stay and she's giving her a big fuck you'.