Random Ramblings CCCXIX · 1:59am Sep 22nd, 2018
IN WHICH I DISCUSS INSANITY (not mine for once)
Yesterday was Ayano "Nocchi" Ōmoto's 30th birthday. In her honour, here is Perfume's latest video!
At the same time, they uploaded a dance-only version. I'll post that one down the line. But now, please follow me…
So I uploaded my "Rarity Is Madly (in more ways than one) In Love With Sunset" story that was made up entirely of English- and Italian-style sonnets. I wasn't sure how something so insane would be received, but the majority of the few who have read it seem to have enjoyed it. That's a good thing. I gained back the follower count I'd lost thanks to my various "Orangeglow" tirades over the past couple months, so that's nice too.
Readers pointed out that many of the dozen poems reference events that occur within the context of Sunset's Recovery Arc. That's no accident. I needed Rarity to have a frame of reference to ground her in her feelings. The feeling that our alabaster & purple fashionista is becoming progressively less sane was also absolutely intentional on my part. And that's what I really wanted to write about tonight.
YANDERE
What is a yandere? Well, it's a Japanese otaku term, but it does have kind of a formal definition. Here's Wiki's:
A person who is initially loving and caring to someone they like a lot until their romantic love, admiration, and devotion becomes feisty and mentally destructive in nature through either overprotectiveness, violence, brutality, or all three combined. The term is a portmanteau of the words yanderu (病んでる), meaning (mentally or emotionally) ill, and deredere (でれでれ, "lovey dovey"), meaning to show genuinely strong romantic affection. Yandere characters are mentally unstable, incredibly deranged, and use extreme violence or brutality as an outlet for their emotions. Yandere are usually, but not always, female characters.
Exactly one year and three weeks ago, I wrote a treatment for a short story that would have a yandere -- in this case a male -- stalk and murder his former lover during a moonless Fall night, told from the first-person.
I was very pleased with how my one-page handwritten draft turned out, but I was too chicken to actually submit it to any horror publications because I have no faith in my own abilities. So instead, I repurposed the story into an Equestria Girls fanfic with Rarity as the POV character and uploaded it on Halloween as One Does Not Deny A Lady. Reactions were… interesting.
Reader X: …
Reader Y: "I hate you for this"
Me: You're welcome!
By that time, I was in the middle of my "I Need A New Computer" hiatus and was writing more than ever but rarely posting because I needed to go to the public library to do it, which I did in this case. During this period (Summer/Fall 2017), I completed the initial drafts of the final two Recovery Arc stories plus an as-yet unpublished story along a different timeline where Rarity and Sunset finally hook up.
It became clear to me that two years of jerking Rarity around on the romance front had made her go a bit unhinged. Of course, the canon Rarity (particularly her Pony version) isn't all there to begin with, so it's not a stretch to put her in the role of a jealous wannabe lover.
The point is, I've been giving Rarity some yandere tendencies for awhile now. As that Halloween story is explicitly non-canon and I've declared it in-continuity to be a nightmare Rarity had, I still needed to show that Rares is slowly going nuts, so I used teenage girl poetry to accomplish that. I think it was the most effective way to do it. As the poems go on, Rarity becomes increasingly possessive and explicit as she vents her frustration about the lack of progression in her relationship with Sunset.
I can promise you the "canon" finale to this romantic dramedy of errors won't end in a murder, at least not of Sunset. However, I cannot completely guarantee Sunset's safety -- she's probably going to have a headache (and perhaps sore naughty bits) when all is said and done.
An idea popped into my head immediately after I posted WOTH. Another non-canon story where Rarity murders someone. This time, though, it'll be me. I've made Rarity suffer so much that it's only fair I suffer too. The real question is: Do I have her kill me before the finale so she can finally confess without me screwing it up by making Sunset dense as a brick? Or, does she kill me after out of spite? I'm thinking "after". What do you think?
Of course, I really shouldn't write anything new until I've cleared my plate of stories I already have. In other words, the mysterious "Annie" story that I've been talking about for years. I'm officially asking if any of my readers who do world-building in their works would be interested in giving it a second look after I finish editing the draft to make it suck less.
This is one of those stories that will probably get no readers, as it doesn't feature any popular canon characters aside from Celestia (and she only appears in 3 of 9 chapters). But it's a story that's been gnawing on me for three years. It's so close to publishable form. It just needs more TLC.
Well, that's all I have going for tonight. I'm not sure whether I should go to the gym then eat or eat then gym. I'm sure I'll know once I end this post.
Peace out!
I thought 'Whispers' was a nice change of pace. I know absolutely nothing about poetry, so I can't comment on it from a technical standpoint, but the buildup throughout was engaging, and the references to your other work were fun. I'm sure you'll agree, Rarity is easily one of the most fun and interestingly diversifiable characters to work with.
I, and probably many others, can't wait to see how it all ends.
I don't think you need to make yourself suffer for Rarity's glee. :P