Letters from a Senior to a Junior Changeling · 5:13am Sep 27th, 2012
My newest story, Letters from a Senior to a Junior Changeling, is now live. If you haven't yet read it, I hope you'll chose to. Also, I hope you'll leave some sort of comment on it. Whether it's positive, negative, or mixed, it's always nice to receive some feedback.
Of course, I'm one to talk. I'm still just awful about leaving comments on stories I've read, myself.
I've worked as hard on this story as any other I've ever written, and while I'm not so naïve as to think that exertion is a guarentee of (or worse, an excuse for) quality, I hope that that effort shows in the finished product. I've drafted, re-drafted, edited, re-edited, and for the first time, had a reviewer come in to help polish the story. On that note, my thanks to Pascoite; if anything in this story resonates with you, then he probably had a hand in its phrasing. And if anything sticks out in a bad way, it's most likely because of a suggestion of his which I ignored or unsuccessfully tried to incorporate.
Anyway, there's some commentary/trivia I kind of wanted to share, and this seemed like the best place to do so. So, if you're interested in that sort of thing, it's your lucky day! In no particular order:
-Although I'm not a christian apologist, I've long thought C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters to be one of the most insightful pieces of religious writing which I've ever read. The idea of doing a changeling-centric fanfic using that story's structure is one which has been bouncing around in my head for a long time, and just as Lewis tried to share his religious views through missives from a creature of literally pure evil, I hope I've managed to express something meaningful about friendship and love via a being totally uncomprehending of either.
-Fun fact: Pascoite pointed out the overabundance of colons and semicolons in my story (okay, that's not the fun fact, it's just the setup). While I was already aware that I was overusing these fairly specialized forms of punctuation, I didn't realize just how ridiculous it was until I hit ctrl-f: in less than 10,000 words, I'd used 57 semicolons and 21 colons! Needless to say, that's been dialed back a bit in the finished product, though this story is still (deliberately) relatively heavy on both.
-As soon as I started writing, I knew I was going to use the name “Earwig” for the junior changeling. I wanted to stick with an insectoid theme for the changelings, and Earwig just sounds like a changeling name, doesn't it? Add in the fact that real-life earwigs get their name from the old wive's tale that they burrow into your ear and devour your brain, and the extra layer of symbolism made it an easy choice.
-Maxilla, on the other hand, came later. I'd originally given her the placeholder name “Mantis,” since I liked the meta-connotations of that (the praying mantis gets its name from way it folds its arms as if in prayer, when in fact they're one of the more vicious classes of insect. I doubt I have to draw any comparison between that and the affable yet malevolent letter writer in my story, do I? Plus, mantises eat earwigs...), but I didn't like that as a name and had no obvious alternative. Eventually I came up with Maxilla: a name which, in addition to (I hope) having an appropriate sound to it, is a mandibular mouthpart used to manipulate food. Yes, I think about these things far too much...
-I don't doubt that you, the reader, will be able to recognize shades of myriad friends and aquaintances in the various suggestions and observations which Maxilla offers up. I hope, however, that some of what I've written will also inspire a bit of introspection. For myself, I know that I'm very prone to falling into some of the traps she outlines in her third and fifth letters. To my mind, the best stories are the ones which are entertaining to read, but which also give their readers pause, and perhaps force them to think of something they had not considered before. If I can accomplish as much with Letters, I'll be happy.
And if not, I'll remind myself that we're talking about a My Little Pony fanfic, and I really shouldn't get so melodramatic with my expectations. What can I say? I want to aim high.
Regardless of what I did or didn't manage to do with this story, thank you for reading it. I don't “publish” very many stories, and I have no illusions that I am the most talented or skilled author within this fandom, never mind in the world at large, but there is one thing I am concieted enough to say of myself: I take seriously the trust shown by those readers who surrender their time to me when they sit down to read one of my stories, and I work hard to make sure that time isn't wasted, nor that trust breached.
Whether I succeeded or failed this time is up to you, of course, and I hope you'll let me know either way. There is no better motivation to produce than praise, and no better motivation to improve than criticism. But even if you “pull a Chris” and leave no feedback at all, thank you for reading my story.
Why doesn't it have the 'crossover' tag?
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I chose not to label it a crossover because at no point do the characters or universe of The Screwtape Letters enter into this story; the similarities lie in story structure and writing style. I suppose that falls into something of a grey area, but I would be inclined to say that this story isn't a crossover any more than It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door or The Rummy Business of Old Blooey are, to name two examples of fanfics which did similar things with other pieces of literature.
I was actually stumped for what to label this, but Pascoite suggested [Dark][SoL] when he reviewed it, which seemed to me to be as good a fit as any tag combination.