Throwback Thursday: A Knight's Aria · 2:32pm Oct 12th, 2017
It's come to my attention that I've written quite a few stories on this site over the course of my three years here. That said, a lot of you reading this blog probably didn't come around until fairly recently, and, as such, have never read some of my earlier work. So, what I thought would be fun would be to do a little throwback to my earlier works of fiction to talk about them and how well they hold up. So, without further ado, this is A Knight's Aria.
A Knight's Aria
Chapters: 10
Length: ~26,000
Genre: Adventure
Characters: Vinyl Scratch, Derpy Hooves, Sir Wub-Wubs (OC)
Date of completion: 6/19/14
Time took to finish: ~1 month
So, A Knight's Aria was my attempt at a light-hearted adventure story back before I really understood what a light-hearted adventure story should be. It follows a blind knight who's powers are all music-based. He is, effectively, a song that has taken a physical form, and he's been protecting the Princesses long before Twilight was born. His appearance changes with the era he's in, since he's personification of music and music is always evolving. The main bulk of the story takes place in modern-day Equestria, in which dubstep is the "new hotness" in terms of music. As a result, this knight is neon-colored and goes by the name Sir Wub-Wubs, since he wished to keep his true name a secret.
He's the defender of Equestria, but he only gets called in for big threats, and hasn't been seen since Luna's banishment. The problem he's tasked with solving now is a blanket of darkness that is covering Equestria and effectively disintegrating anything it touches. Instead of using magic or something, Celestia sends Wub-Wubs to deal with it. He eventually runs into Vinyl and Derpy (who was kind of a clairvoyant?) in the woods, whom he begrudgingly befriends and takes with him on his journey to save Equestria.
Now, I can't say much more without spoiling, so let's talk about it. This story suffers from a lot of issues, one of which being a lack of cohesion. Like, he's a musical knight, but what is he supposed to do against this smoke? Why does he have to be blind? Where does Derpy really fit into all of this? These questions weren't weighing heavily on my mind at the time, because I thought this was the coolest shit ever.
And, to give three-years-ago-me some credit, there are some ideas here that I still vibe with. The idea of music as magic (this came out before Rainbow Rocks, so I had never seen the concept explored to any real extent at the time), the mysterious knight, his weapon (he fought with just a hilt, but he could sing a specific song and a blade would manifest to make it a proper sword). I like the backstory I gave to Sir Wub-Wubs and the Big Bad (Wubs was from an ancient tribe of musical unicorns and the Big Bad was their God who got pissed because of all the wars and decided to start fresh a couple thousand years later). But these cool ideas were lost in the shuffle of quickly explaining lore, quickly giving exposition for these characters, and quickly building relationships that didn't feel very natural. It suffered from a common story-telling pitfall (this is more prevalent in film, in my experience), and that pitfall is the trope of two characters end up as friends (or loves) by the end of the story simply because they're the main characters. There's no real reason for Wubs and Vinyl to end up as friends, but they do. They had known each other for less than 24 hours, but he ends up confiding in her a secret he hasn't told anyone, not even Celestia.
So, that was, in a nutshell, A Knight's Aria, my oldest FiMfiction story (though not the first MLP fanfic I ever wrote). I remember it fondly, and I've considered revamping or rebooting it several times, but nothing came of my thoughts. It's not a particularly good story, but it has some bits and pieces that I think are still decent enough. Maybe I'll come back to it someday, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Does it hold up? Not really, but, if you're bored, check it out.
Wow