Jinglemas, Jinglemas, Jinglemas Rock... · 8:12pm Nov 16th, 2020
Blog Number 115: Gifthorse Edition
The past week has been a fine piece of work. Barely seven days after the publication of Heartbreak Hotel, I manage to get out another fic: Still Waters Run Deep.
Fact is I've been on fire lately. It's a real pity I'm not officially on a NaNoWriMo 50k target this year, 'cause I'm leaping and bounding over it. 
I might write some more, actually! 
Still Waters Run Deep: Below the Surface of a Romance Fic
Speaking of which, a quick tangent on my latest fic before we discuss the main item.
(And yep: the cover image was a big part of the inspiration).
With Still Waters Run Deep, I think I might have cracked how to do this romance malarkey after all. I've made no secret of the fact that my prior fics were dubious entries, in that regard (since the romances were easily interchangeable with friendships), but this is the first fic wherein romance is unambiguously, whole-heartedly on the table.
It helps that, like White Lightning and the Elite Pony, the romance element is less "OMG! My OTP! I must make Pinkie and Twilight kiss so OOC!" and more "Gee, I got scraps of canon to work with, let's do something different to make them stand out". White Lightning's relationship with Ponet was based on a few seconds of background in "Hearts and Hooves Day", and Sassaflash's relationship with Caramel likewise originates from there.
I'd been looking for an opportunity to get back to my Time Action Glory Challenge goals for a while (taking lesser-known and/or lesser-used character tags such as Gladmane's and giving them more fics), and especially for those character tags at the bottom of the story count rankings.
Sea Swirl and Sassaflash gained their tags only within the last few months, but I'd already used Sea Swirl before and so was quite keen to pair the two up, thus making a unique character combo of my own. Well OK, not that unique: Nitro Indigo had already done it earlier this year. It's still an extremely rare pairing in fanfics.
Giving them distinct personalities wasn't the hard part, though as usual there were only scraps on the wiki to guide me. Sea Swirl's personality was mostly intact from my prior work, Quenchless Fire, but with more emphasis on her tendency to let her mind drift. Sassaflash I mostly got by way of contrast: emotional where Sea Swirl is calm, aggressive where Sea Swirl is passive, normal where Sea Swirl is weird. Caramel was tougher, but most of his personality also ended up as extrapolations from the show: his ineptitude in "Winter Wrap-Up" and his cameo during the ceremony for "A Canterlot Wedding" (alongside Cherry Fizzy and Noteworthy as groomstallions for Shining Armor: start speculating, people!).
The hard part was figuring out what the plot would actually involve. Three distinct characters don't automatically make one workable story.
In the end, my precedent with Quenchless Fire opened the way: just make Sea Swirl a romantic.
See, Sassaflash and Caramel were the "official" couple (give or take that this is fanfiction we're talking about), and Sassaflash and Sea Swirl were definitely friends. Depict Sea Swirl as secretly in love with Sassaflash, however, and we have ourselves a conflict. A love that isn't reciprocated (romantically, I should stress), a love directed towards someone already attached to someone else.
There's a lot that could go wrong with that setup, mostly cliches. Making one member of the love triangle (namely, Caramel) a jerk or somehow obviously "wrong" is too easy, and isn't particularly satisfying as a method of character creation. There's a distinction between the nature of romance and the nature of the kindnesses and loyalties of friendship (Sassaflash and Sea Swirl do love each other, but in this platonic sense; it's a plot point that Sea Swirl confessing her romantic feelings would be something else entirely).
And for better or worse, Sea Swirl's not getting a convenient happy ending this time.
The point isn't to do nice things to a character (though to be fair, nor is it to dump them in Hell and call it a story). It's to make them confront unwinnable situations and watch what side of them comes out.
So Sea Swirl would both be driven to help Sassaflash's romance for Sassaflash's sake and would not be backhandedly "rewarded" by "getting the girl" at the end for it, which is one of those narrative cop-outs that sounds nice, but which would defeat the whole point of the story: the test of character, with actual consequences. Sea Swirl recognizes she's not entitled to Sassaflash just because she has feelings for her and they're both good friends. Whether or not she's healthy to suppress her own feelings, she's ultimately acting out of genuine loyalty and good intentions for Sassaflash, even as it's so far from her own dreams that it's effectively killing them.
Let me put it this way: whether I'm successful or not with future projects, I don't want to wade into romance with a lot of tradition-baked unfortunate implications, or cheap cliches that only sound nice without thinking about them (keeping in mind I might not be nice to the characters themselves: tragedy and sad, yo).
I'm not confident enough to say I'll succeed utterly there, but it's what I'm aiming at.
Although next time, I might write a romance that's a bit cheerier. More broadly, I do like the idea of writing more feel-good fics. Tragedies and tearjerkers are fine places to visit for the drama, but it's the comedies, the slice-of-life stories, and sometimes the sense of adventure that dance to the show's tune.
No one objects to a bit more positivity in the world, do they? 
Jinglemas, and Why I'm Not Taking Part (But Also Want To)
Anyway, Jinglemas.
In the unlikely event I'm somehow the first person to tell you about it: the event involves signing up for a Secret Santa, but with fics. You go in and request a fic by indicating generally what sort you would like; in turn, you will receive someone else's request. You don't know who gets yours, and the person whose request you receive doesn't know you've got theirs. Once you have their request, you write the fic for them, submit it to whomever's running the project, and wait until Christmastime for all to be revealed, including the fic meant for you.
There are complications, sub-clauses, and more specific rules, but that's the gist of it.
I've only taken part once, back in 2017 (that's how Why the Gift is Given, A Very Merry Commission, and Upside-Down Cake came into being), writing DragonGeek's request (speaking of: he must have deleted his account since, but I have no idea why, so can anyone clue me in on that?), and receiving the delightful How Lily Longsocks Spent Hearth’s Warming Eve on the Moon from Pascoite.
2018, I was nearly having panic attacks over my novel-writing. 2019, I just felt like I was crawling my way out of a pit. And now we come onto 2020, which may yet see the greatest number of writers taking part.
Not me, I'm afraid. One reason is that I don't believe I'm quite ready for that kind of commission work yet. I've still lots of old projects and commitments cluttering up my mind, and though 2020 has (in the writing department) been a massive improvement over 2019, so far it still falls short of my glory days from 2017 and early 2018. I'm getting back in the game, and back into writing shape, but neither are getting there that quickly.
The other reason is I just feel I'd be too picky to be much fun to work with. Back in 2017, I was still only mostly caught up on Season Six, so despite my firm preference for the early seasons, there wasn't much to object to. Fast forward to 2020, and so much has changed since - including my selective enthusiasm - that I'm still well behind a lot of people (e.g. I still haven't seen most of Season Nine or chunks of Season Eight, and I'm still ignoring Pony Life and just waiting to see what G5 brings).
Bluntly put: I'd be handing out lists of things I don't want and potentially refusing a lot of requests, which is against the spirit of the exercise. Some elements of continuity might as well come from a completely different show, the way I treat it. For the fans of those elements, I wouldn't be much fun to work with at all.
Overall, I'm not feeling up to it. I'm bowing out of this one.
A shame, because I quite like the way so many fanfic writers come together as a community. There's a wonderful sense of something bigger and more collaborative around events like these. It's something I find (in a highly localized and limited form) in Loganberry's flashfic contests, and was something I quite liked in prior contests such as the Sunset Shimmer Shipping Contests and the first Imposing Sovereigns event.
Meaning I won't be doing it, but I'll be watching it. You know, hanging around the margins, just being interested. Being around.
I mean, maybe I could push myself a little and write some Hearth's Warming or Christmas-themed fic this year, as a substitute in spirit. After all, 2017 got me Why the Gift is Given and A Very Merry Commission, two fics that I'm pretty chuffed with (Upside-Down Cake I discount for being incomplete, and a bit meandering too). I'd like to write something for the occasion.
Maybe.
Nothing set in stone, mind: I'm thinking about it. Christmas is about as pony-esque a time as humanity gets to celebrate: the good cheer, the shameless optimism, the feasts and parties, the family focus, the generous gifts, the obsession with merchandise, and the task of keeping the cold dark threat of death at bay with loads and loads of central heating.
So! If you've got more confidence than me (good on yer, mate!), and somehow haven't signed up yet, head on over to the Jinglemas group to find out more about how you can participate in this year's event.
Remember: you don't need money to get yourself a Christmas miracle! Just some basic writing skills and the ability not to mind you're doing the whole thing blind.
Impossible Numbers, out.
I wish I could participate. But the writing chaos that coronavirus and depression brought me this year don't allow me to add yet another "break" for my currently active multi-chapter stories. I probably wouldn't be able to deliver if I decided to participate, so I will probably have to relinquish this event.
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Prior engagements is another reason I'm not taking part either. I've got enough moving targets on my To Do List as it is.