Behind the Story: Raining.

This story sure took a while, didn’t it?

Well, it’s uploaded now, and despite its disappointing reaction, I’m still going to talk about it.

Sometimes, you’ll write a story that hits the highest marks on your own personal grading scale, and that’ll become the standard to judge future stories by until you write another story that exceeds is. For me, Raining. is that story. I feel like it took everything I had formed my writing identity around, and just did it the best.

And I’m really excited to dive into the behind the scenes parts with this one.

So, this story was written for the QnS Back to Basics contest (which it eventually earned first place in). Prior to the speedwrite, we were given a couple prompts, I didn’t quite know which ones to use and how to use them, though.

From what I recall of that day, I decided to watch some F1NN5TER, and someone in the comments mentioned that he was a great source of r/egg_irl memes because he passes so convincingly as a girl (despite not being one).

So naturally I looked at a ton of r/egg_irl memes.

All this happened shortly before the contest, and as I was browsing the r/egg_irl memes, I realized that a lot of them were really relatable. Upon looking over the prompts again, I settled on utilizing ‘Sunlight through the storm’.

I thought of this whole entire overarching metaphor about how this storm would represent my character’s feelings throughout the thing. The storm would serve as a framing device regarding their thoughts.

I decided to pull from The Wind Cries Mary, and follow that song’s choruses. First the wind whispers, then it cries, then it screams, and then it cries again. I always liked that effect, and how it served to intensify the singer’s thoughts until the last chorus, where he reservedly accepts that his lover’s name on the wind isn’t going to make her come back. I decided to aim for a similar thing with my pattern, which is raining/thunder/pouring/raining.

The rain, much like my character’s thoughts, would become a torrent, before they finally calm themselves down with a reassurance that everything will be just fine, they just need to make it through the storm.

I pulled a lot of the family relationship out of my own life. For example, the arguments said to be against my character getting marelike things, whilst slightly dramatized (like the rest of the story) are actually things my parents have said about the entire thing.

Most egregiously, the phrase, “Why do I have to be stallionlike?” and the response have literally been said, with slight changes to the wording, by me and my mom. The original tradeoff was similar to this:

“I hate seeing those deodorant ads that tell me that I have to be manly. Like, why do I have to be a man?” (Me)

“Well, there’s a fine line there...” (My mom)

A lot of the other brain musings are mainly meant to establish a hopeless situation slowly turning into a hopeful one.

As a random fun fact: the last line before the break was originally, “Just to be safe, the unicorn decided to sleep in the closet tonight,” I was told it was a bit too on-the-nose, I agreed.

Anyways, let’s talk about the part after the break.

Shoutouts to my boyfriend for allowing me to use his name and giving me his preferred race in MLP, because I wanted to create a character like him to emphasize how much he’s helped me feel good about myself.

The thing about Dice, though, is that we never actually met at school. So it swerves a little a little away there.

The idea behind the post break section was to make it at some unspecified time in the future to show that Rose had gotten over her dysphoria thanks to the help of Dice. The idea was that figurative storm was over, as was the literal one. The scattered showers would just be minor episodes of gender dysphoria that she’d get over easily.

I added the rose as a framing device, first showing a rose cast against a storm, its beauty all gone, much like Rose not being able to live her best life due to fear.

Then, I’d show a rose shining and beautiful against a clear sky, as Rose would also be now that she’d gotten out of the storm.

The ending was a little something I added on when I got there. I thought about the tried and true idea that if parents treat their children badly, said children would have no reason to ever correspond with them again, unless amends were patched somehow. I felt like Rose throwing away the letter at the end really emphasized the fact that she’s her own pony now.

I also deliberately switched the tenses to emphasize the now. Rose is living life now, and she has no need to be stuck in the past.

As for other influences on this story, I have no idea. However, my original fiction style bled in more than a shaving nick. There’s probably so many subconscious influences besides the ones I’ve brought up already, but I don’t know them perfectly.

So, that’s really about it, it’s a story I loved writing.

And until next time; be awesome!
-Dashie