Self Interview Blog · 9:15pm Dec 17th, 2020
Applezombi, a friend and inspiration to me, recently did one of these. I thought it may be fun, and it’s incredibly quiet at work today, so what the hell. Read on for a little self-interview.
Unmarked Pegasus Device spoilers are below.
1. Tell us about your current project(s) – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?
Right now I’m working on a small fluff story about a recently deafened pegasus learning sign language from his lifelong crush. The first draft is done, but I want to make sure that it’s not insensitive to the Deaf community. Part of writing this is to learn a bit more about them and be able to empathize better.
It’s also quite an experiment for me; normally I write in third-person past-tense, but this story is first-person present-tense, told through the train of thought of the main character.
What I love most is that due to the nature of the story, there’s no dialogue. That’s always been my strongest skill, I feel, so to write a whole story that depends purely on descriptive narration and do it well is an accomplishment enough on its own for me.
2. Tell us about what you’re most looking forward to writing – in your current project, or a future project
I don’t want to get into it too much, but let’s just say that Rainbow Factory turns 10 next year, and it has nothing to do with PD: Reckoning. 😉
3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)
It has to do with Subject of Revenge, which never got even close to coming up to this scene. The whole thing was supposed to be an ongoing, massive story about Trixie’s rise to immense power and overtaking the throne of Equestria, and then the second part would be the Mane 6’s ongoing underground movement to defeat her and free the kingdom from her rule.
The scene in particular would be the day Trixie finally makes her move on the castle, assaulting the battlements with her cult-like followers while she teleports in under the distraction and handily defeats the Sisters. Twilight, who is organizing the defense, stops in the middle of giving orders when she sees a Lunar eclipse darken the world; Trixie’s signal that she now has complete control over the Sun, the Moon, and the World.
4. Share a sentence or paragraph from your writing that you’re really proud of (explain why, if you like)
“Flight. Soaring. Pure bliss. Unequivocal happiness. The unblocked sun heating her primaries, the wind bristling her secondaries, the buffeting air rippling and teasing the underside of her wings so perfectly it was practically sexual in nature. The entire kingdom of Equestria below her hooves, so small it was nothing, featureless, or obscured by a stray low-flying cloud.
Each downbeat of her wings drove her forward, doubling her joy, chilling her hooves and whipping her mane in a brilliant, though short, massage. It was orgasmic.
Then a change. The wings vanish, atomized into dust on an unsuspecting downbeat, gravity’s merciless claw bursting from the ground like a demon and clutching its prey, her, and ripping her out of the sky.
Falling is not the same as flying.
There is no joy, no bliss, no sensual encasement, only chaos and fear and time to contemplate your own death.
And then the ground.”
-Pegasus Device, Chapter 2.
5. What character you’re writing do you most identify with?
Cloud Cover, by far. I haven’t been subjected to the same prejudiced hatred as she has, but a lot of her circumstances reflect how I feel. I and so many others are constantly jostled and played with at the whims of massive companies that do what they do with no regard for compassion or human life. Cloud Cover keeps finding herself having to fight against this company that essentially runs her life and her society, and she needs to find a way to fight back without losing her life or livelihood. Unfortunately, she doesn’t often succeed.
Maybe one day we both will.
6. What character do you have the most fun writing?
Contrail! Even when he isn’t crazy—and believe me that was a lot of fun to write—he is a really interesting character to examine.
He was so exaggeratedly insane in Pegasus Device that it’s easy to consider the concept that he absolutely was faking it as a way to cope. Society created the circumstances of his position, and that combined with his own hard work and choices lead to a point where he had to justify what he was doing.
I think at first he couldn’t do it, and so he snapped as far as he did. Once Pipe Wrench died at the hooves of a failure, he became convinced that what he was doing was, if not morally acceptable, at least naturally acceptable, and he straightens out. Come Reckoning, he’s a hardworking mechanic, tired from his years, but just doing his job. The stallion has done a lot of thinking, contemplating, and changing, and I love him to bits.
7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree?
Dialogue is what I do best. I’ve had many people say that my characters come to life when they speak; I’m able to capture natural flow of dialogue and the little non-grammatical weirdness that we usually use when we talk well enough that even if the character is Ax-Crazy, they still feel more than 2 dimensional. I hope others agree! I think they would, anyways.
8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?
There is no overlap here. I like positive, predictable, feel-good fantasy stories like The Belgariad and anything by Christopher Moore. I write dark, downer-ending stories, and do my best to shatter expectations in my writing.
9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?
I’m not really sure where I fall on this. I like the concept of telling large stories over long periods of time, but I’ve only been a little successful at it. Recently I’ve been enjoying doing the shorter stories, though it does make it more difficult to express deeply meaningful thoughts. I’m probably closer to the drabble.
Definitely a plotter, though. I’ve found that if I don’t know what’s going to happen, I can’t motivate myself to sit down and write. This is why I’m taking part in speedwrite contests now; trying to practice and get better at that.
10. How would you describe your writing process?
It starts with an epiphany, usually. An idea appears in my head, and starts to fester and itch until I get some of it down on paper. If it’s strong enough, I’ll get a general idea of a plot down. That becomes my outline.
With PD: Reckoning, because I was coming back from a long time of not writing, I spent a lot of time figuring out the main scenes I wanted to show and then how the characters would get from scene to scene inbetween. When I had a really detailed outline done, I started writing, and didn’t stop because I never had to think about what was coming next.
The few things I’ve done since then have been less rigorously planned, but I still wanted a concept of what the whole story had to be before I started writing. With that out of the way, I open up the document, start a timer (for motivation to just get words out), and write. When the timer goes off, if I’m feeling the story by then, I keep going; else I set it aside for the day.
11. What do you envy in other writers?
I really feel that my descriptions of settings are lackluster or boring, repetitive even. I really admire writers who are able to take a setting, from a room to a town to a country, and write it so well I can picture it as if I’ve been there.
12. Do you want your writing to be famous?
Well, I’ll be honest- it feels pretty good. Yes, I would. It already kind of is, at least within the context of a fandom, but eventually I’d like to be known as a published author.
13. Do you share your writing online? (Drop a link!) Do you have projects you’ve kept just for yourself?
Yes, here only! I keep almost nothing a secret, either. Once I have an idea it’s almost impossible for me to keep it to myself; I want to share it and get feedback on what others think of it.
14. At what point in writing do you come up with a title?
Usually before I start, but sometimes in the middle or end. Not having a title bugs me.
15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?
Summaries by a mile. How do words make long thing short?? How do???
16. Tried anything new with your writing lately? (style, POV, genre, fandom?)
Heart of Hearing, my latest project, is almost all new for me. Like I said in the first question, it’s a different POV and tense, I’ve never written romance before so new genre too… the only thing that’s typical about it for me is that there’s a pegasus.
17. Do you think readers perceive your work - or you - differently to you? What do you think would surprise your readers about your writing or your motivations?
Absolutely they do. I think quite lowly of Rainbow Factory in terms of pretty much most of it. Sure, it’s got more of a plot and attempt at explaining the world than many gore fics, but so much of it is randomly shoehorned or inexplicable. The descriptions of death and violence are alright, and the dialogue isn’t awful. But I really don’t get why so many people think it is one of the best horror stories they’ve ever seen.
That is actually a huge motivator to me, though. I want desperately to write what I consider to be a real horror story, and have it do as good as or better than RF. Pegasus Device was my first attempt at it. PD: Reckoning is a second attempt, though it could be argued to be more of a drama/thriller than a horror. There are some other scraps of ideas I have floating around, too, that may one day see an attempt done. Time will tell if I ever pull it off, or if my most well known story will forever be a fever dream written while high on NyQuil.
18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterizations?) Tell us about them.
No, but I’ve slowly been building up the Pegasus Device universe behind the scenes. I’d like to explore it more, go into its history and examine some side stories that expand and detail the universe greatly.
19. Is there something you always find yourself repeating in your writing? (favorite verb, something you describe ‘too often’, trope you can’t get enough of?)
A former editor once asked me “what the hell is with your fetish of commas?”. I think it answers this question pretty well.
20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)
Oh boy. Let’s start with Rainbow Factory. Keep in mind anything symbolic in there was accidental, but it’s important to recognize them for future works. The biggest thing that I think of when it comes to RF is the idea that, in our society, immense pressure is put on students that if they don’t succeed in school, their lives will be over. Another interesting tidbit someone recently pointed out is that Rainbow Dash is as much a victim of society as Scootaloo is.
Moving on to Pegasus Device, the main motif there is the refrain “Flying is not the same as falling.” I’ve always dreamed of flying, soaring over the world. One of my favourite things to do in Minecraft is just cruise around with elytra. On a deeper note, this can be interpreted as “Success is not the same as failure”. At face value this seems obvious, but PD presents some arguments to think otherwise; what determines Success? What about Failure? Can you be successful while having lost? What about losing but coming out better for it?
In PD, I present both the foals and the worker’s perspectives as “main characters”. The de-vilifying of the workers was not some attempt at promoting facism or genocide; I want everyone to understand that I believe that what they are doing is absolutely wrong.
But I wanted the readers to see that both sides have their own versions of “Success” and “Failure” that are directly counter to each other’s. That the workers have their reasons for believing what they believe, and doing what they do; and that the actions of the “good” characters impact them negatively when viewed from a different perspective.
Finally, with PD: Reckoning, there are a lot of little callbacks and easter eggs. There’s a different underlying symbolism with it that I won’t expand on here because, for what’s published as of writing, it doesn’t quite exist yet. I will say (and this may be a minor spoiler) that I do still examine both the protagonist and the worker’s side of things, because I believe it’s important in any story to have your antagonists truly exist beyond being some cardboard goal post for the protagonist to reach and defeat.
As far as future scene clues, all I will say is I look forward to Chapter 8 being released, where we get to say hi to an old friend. 😁
21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as? (film, webcomic, animated series?)
PD: Reckoning would be great as film, I think. I usually envision scenes in my head when planning them as a movie, anyways. Pegasus Device would probably be sweet to see as a webcomic, done in a graphic style like V for Vendetta.
22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?
Normally no, but the whole recent “come back” of mine, and the entirety of PD: Reckoning, are a result of me stumbling on Pegasus Device and realizing that I enjoyed it, and I could be proud not only of my work, but of the impact I had on others, and the value my writing had brought to my life. So I feel pretty good about them; even Rainbow Factory.
23. What’s the story idea you’ve had in your head for the longest?
The whole idea of a sinister bureaucratic entity that controls the weather doing something decidedly evil and world-affecting has stuck with me ever since Rainbow Factory was written. I still want to figure out a way to make it work outside of MLP fanfiction.
24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?
Every day it’s a little bit different, as I read others, and practise more. I would be upset if it hadn’t.
25. What part of writing is the most fun?
The Chekhov’s Guns/Brick Jokes. A friend recently told me they loved my “PD Moments” where, upon a certain scene or sentence, a prior comment or action suddenly takes on a completely different tone or meaning (usually towards a dark or sinister end). Writing those small bits that are connected deeply underneath the paper that a reader would really only notice on a second read fills me with glee.
This is a very nice interview. I like all the little things you shared.
Cool idea! It's always nice to see some BTS.
As for why Rainbow Factory is considered the best horror fic for most people, I guess it's because back then it was mostly passed around by word of mouth, reaching a lot of people who probably never read a horror fic in their life, let alone gore. Along the lines of "look at this, this is messed up!" Though no offense, to me that reaction was definitely evoked Cheerliee's Garden more than anything else.
To add upon 19, I vividly remember you using the word "lay" a lot—as in, "he lay there." Dunno why I still have that stuck in my mind. I think it's because back then I didn't know that lay was correct past tense. Oh well.
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Interesting on #19. Though now you mention it, I looked it up; “Lay” is 3rd person present tense.
Heck and consarnit. I’ve been using it wrong for so long! 🤣
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Yo, if you want to try your hand at an original work. You could try taking the ponies out of your RB franchise once you've finished it. (If you want an idea for a setting, it could be elves with a Magic Test)
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Fantasy is alright; I’d probably go with some sort of angel race if I went that route. What I want to do though is more a sci-fi, 1984 kinda style work. But there’s much that doesn’t translate easily to real world from the PD universe, and so I’m still pondering on that.
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You could always do them as separate stories: the angels get the death camp, and the sci fi played with weather manipulation and caused the Reckoning.
This was a real treat to read, glad you did it!