Regarding Rainbow Dash · 4:22am Feb 12th, 2020
Given that my newest story will be featuring both her and Lightning Dust in the leading roles, I thought it was a good time to really delve into why I write Rainbow Dash the way I do.
Those of you who have read Dead by Sunset and Featherfall, where Rainbow Dash had a prominent role in both, know that she tends to get the short end of the literary stick more often than not. I've had more than one person comment on how I use as a bit of punching bag, this is in both a negative and positive manner as some people think she deserves it, while others feel like it's unwarranted.
The issue here is that as far as I can tell no one has really caught on to the fact that I love Rainbow Dash as a character and as a person, and I'm not using her as a punching bag, I'm writing her in a manner that just... kind of looks that way. The reason it looks that way is because of how Rainbow Dash is defined as a character in my stories.
You see, Sunset and Gilda, who are characters that run more along the classic lines of the hero, are defined largely by their ability to overcome their mistakes and their flaws. Both characters overcome their baser natures, Sunset deals with her insecurities and self-worth, while Gilda slowly learns to deal with her anger issues and the toxic habits her foster father instilled in her.
Rainbow Dash, on the other hand, is a character is who is defined not by overcoming their flaws, but by how her flaws overcome her.
If that doesn't make sense, let me tell you about a man named John Constantine.
In the comic series Hellblazer, by Garth Ennis, the character of John Constantine is a man who has almost no redeeming qualities beyond personal charisma and quick wit. Most of his friends regret ever befriending him, he uses people, mostly makes mistakes, and his decisions routinely come back to clap him across the head and more often than not hit his friends in the process, taking them down with him. Every story arc revolves somehow around John's generally terrible life choices, either because the story regards one of his previous choices coming back to haunt him, or it involves him making one of those choices that will beat him down later on.
Often it's both at once.
Rainbow Dash is much the same. She has a lot of qualities that draw people to her, but ultimately... she's selfish, prideful, arrogant, temperamental, and makes a lot of choices that she feels are the right ones in the moment. I love writing her because she is a character who will probably never be great at being good.
She is someone who actively struggles with being a good person because, at her heart, she sort of isn't one. She wants to be, and she knows her flaws, and she doesn't even try to hide them, but none of that really makes her a good person, just a self-aware bad one, and that's a lot of fun to write.
Anyway, assuming anyone read that brick of text, yeah... there you go, some insight into my mind as a writer.
Cheers,
I-A-M
Interesting; thanks. :)
Though is this mostly-to-entirely about Pedestrian Rainbow Dash, or both her and her pony counterpart more equally?
Yeah, I was one of those guys who couldn't quite figure out what you actually felt/thought about the poor girl. Excited to see what's to come when she's the focal point of one of your stories!
5201757
This is regarding her presence in my EQG stories.
5202097
Yeah, there were quite a few that seemed ambivalent about how I used her in my stories. I love writing her though, specifically because she comes across as so fundamentally flawed. That’s exactly the kind of character I enjoy writing the most.
5202129
Thanks!
And glad you so like writing her!
(For what it's worth, by the way, I don't recall thinking of her as a bad character or person or sign of author dislike; this blog post has in fact made me more aware of her flaws (though at the same time made them more interesting, so I'd say it's a gain :)). I mean, you know, she obvious had some avoiding-spoilers-troubles in Featherfall, but I didn't see that as meaning what apparently some did. Though I also still haven't gotten to Dead by Sunset; perhaps she looks worse there.)