TA Requiem For Lost Libraries
MLP: FiM
Mystery
Some mortal clay retain the shape of the life that lived them. Even when that clay is bound up with the roots of a dead library-tree.
Death
OC
Other
Mitch H · 2.7k words · 164 4 · 2.1k views

Unexpected Art · 7:09pm Jan 2nd, 2020

So, I was informed today today that someone had commissioned - or just plain painted out of some volunteer spirit - some art for A Requiem for Lost Libraries.

This is almost certainly about a request I received back in March of last year for permission to translate and reprint the story in a Russian-language pony anthology. I wasn't informed at the time what the anthology was going to be named, but given the text in the deviantart page, they apparently called it Эквестрийские истории 2019 or 'Equestrian Stories 2019'. From the translated text of that linked blog page, apparently it was published in time for a convention in Russia in late November.

I am now realizing that I never passed along the author's notes/essay that they asked for while they were asking for reprinting permission. Since the book is now in print, I figure I might as well pass along the original English text of the essay, below. Whatever got published in the book, would have been translated into Russian, along with the story. And apparently included this art!

It's pretty, and subtle. I don't think I'd have had the nerve to publish under cover art quite that oblique - especially given how much feedback I received on the subject of the cold and distant persona of this story's future-Twilight.

I don't consider fanfiction to be a lesser form of art than original works. All genre operates within strictures and rulesets, with character types, tropes, and expected act structures which you can and should, if you can, subvert or embrace as the muse takes you. 'Literary' or academic original fiction is as much a creature of its tropes, types and structures as the most templated Harlequin romance; the same goes for 'original' fiction in opposition to fanfiction.
Personally, I like the more straightforward genres, like space opera and Regency romances. There's a sense of social contract fulfilled between the author of a Regency and her audience when they both pass through the stations of the story together. You won't find a Jack the Ripper cast in a Regency as the love interest - or the heroine!
Or won't you? That's the charm of fanfiction. What I just wrote about Regencies and serial-killer heroines is utterly false when you're talking about My Little Pony fanfic. I know, I've read them. Many such experiments fail horribly, and repulse more than they attract. But there is room to fail in a genre like ponyfic, and great latitude.
I wrote A Requiem For Lost Libraries in a moment where I was taking dares. "I bet you can't write a gritty Elmore Leonard style crime story about this cute picture of Twilight driving her niece to kindergarden" was one dare I was working on at this time; the resulting short novel proved to be the closest I've gotten to a 'hit'. Another was Requiem, which was an attempt to write a story without a protagonist, just a setting.
When setting out to climb this particular hill, Cold in Gardez's Lost Cities is the trailblazer and the exemplar. I wish this was that good of a story; heck, I wish I'd been able to get across the idea of a place's story without resorting to any characters at all. But in the end, talking about death is inevitably talking about people. Places can't die - they can only change.
And serve as receptacles of the deaths of the people who passed through them.
We call these memories, 'ghosts'. In this sense, all places are libraries - libraries of the memories of the people whose lives once touched this soil, that door - that ever passed over this threshold or out of that doorway into what lies beyond.

Now I need to see if I can figure out who else got published in this anthology...

Report Mitch H · 368 views · Story: A Requiem For Lost Libraries · #translation #Эквестрийские истории 2019 #surprise_art

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