So. I wrote a thing... · 5:48pm Dec 13th, 2012
So, yeah, I've been in a situation lately where I get a lot of time to daydream about writing the fic I want to write, but not much in the way of actual quality time to write it in. The problem is, I really only seem to write well when I get at least a few hour's free time in a big block. Dribs and drabs just doesn't cut it. So when I actually do try and sit down and write, having daydreamed about it so much, everything has to be perfect.
Yeah, that's basically the recipe for writer's block.
Well, you know what the cure is supposed to be, right? Write something completely random! So I did, and for some reason I feel like sharing with the class. More after the break...
Tags would be: [Alternative Universe][Adventure][Twilight][Rarity][Everyone]
The weather was, all things considered, good. Warm enough without being sweltering with a decent tailwind and no rain clouds in sight. For Rarity, this topic would have usually been something to bring up in inconsequential conversation, but, as she had picked up over the last few weeks that while on the boat, em, ship (the sailor ponies were rather insistent about that), this far out to sea there was nothing inconsequential about the weather. For the sailor ponies, the relevance of the weather was of a constant that infiltrated into every aspect of their lives. It would determine how hard they had to work, how soon they could see their loved ones and it could even, sky forbid, become a matter of life or death.
So Rarity was glad of the good weather. Really, the ship rocked about too much already.
“You feeling well?” asked a familiar voice.
Rarity smiled. It was just Lady Twilight Sparkle checking up on her hoofmaiden.
“I’m fine milady, I just need to watch the horizon a bit,” she replied. “Please, don’t interrupt your reading on my count.”
“Oh, I’d just finished a chapter anyway,” Lady Twilight said, smiling back. “Perhaps I’ll watch the horizon with you for a bit.”
Rarity turned back and gazed over the sea. The up and down motions of the ship really were not agreeing with her constitution, especially when indoors (er, below deck?) but thankfully she had gotten the hang of knowing when it was getting bad enough for her to take steps, so hopefully there would be no more embarrassing incidents.
Rarity had been in the service of the Sparkle household nearly, what, ten years now and she’d spent most of that time as Twilight’s hoofmaiden. In that time... well, they were still Lady and maid of course, that was only proper, but their relationship wasn’t exactly typical. Rarity counted Lady Twilight as a friend, and a good one too and it was a feeling Twilight seemed to reciprocate. Sometimes this left Rarity feeling very awkward, especially when the gossiping with the other servants, but the scholarly unicorn was just so, so, likeable, somehow.
Though not often well dressed if left to her own devices.
Rarity wondered if that was the reason Lord Sparkle had assigned her to his daughter. Where Twilight’s talent lay in the scholarly arts, hers had always been for bringing out beauty. Milady’s mane currently hung down to her neck where the ends had been tastefully curled, much to milady’s long suffering tolerance and Rarity’s not so secret amusement. She also wore her nice blue overcoat with the yellow embroidery.
She wasn’t wearing her hat though. Rarity frowned slightly. Knowing Lady Twilight, she’d taken it off and “forgotten” it somehow. It really was a shame. The hat suited both her and the coat and they worked well together to give a nice nautical theme.
Rarity was just wondering if she could think of a way to bring up the hat without being too obvious about it when Twilight raised a hoof and said, “look at that.”
The hoofmadien looked up to where her Lady was pointing. There, in the sky off to the left (port) were three or four angry looking dark clouds. They certainly hadn’t been there a few moments ago.
“Would you fetch my telescope, please?” Twilight said, sounding a bit distracted. Rarity nodded and cantered off to the back (stern) of the ship where her Lady’s quarters were. When she returned a few minutes later, black clouds seemed to have multiplied and the wind had picked up enough to blow her mane about (typical!) The pair of unicorns were not the only ones to notice, several of the sailor ponies were pointing up at the sky and Captain Whisky had come on deck to take a look.
Rarity floated the telescope over to Twilight, who picked it up with her own magic and extended it.
“I don’t like the look of that at all,” Twilight said quietly enough for only Rarity to hear. “It has to be magical. Take a look.”
Rarity had to lean back slightly as a telescope was levitated right in face. She squinted through the eyepiece, but initially she could only make out a bigger image of the black clouds. Then she saw it, a flash of purple lightning, nowhere near the right colour to be natural.
“What are we going to do?” Rarity asked.
“I think we should get out of here. Fast.” Twilight answered.
So, um, yeah. I guess the idea here is a world with no Celestia or Luna, but that doesn't really come up much in this opening. It's mostly Lady Twilight and Rarity. I have no idea why Rarity is Twilight's hoofmaiden, other than I guess I always find the idea of Twilight basically having everything Rarity wants (the princess's ear, access to high society) and what Rarity might think of that is terribly unexplored. Also, I just find fictional asymmetrical but amicable relationships (think Frodo and Sam) interesting.
However, as soon as I started writing Rarity in the role, I felt really weird about it. I'm not sure Rarity approved, in fact, I think she might have been glaring daggers at me. I had to promise there would be at least one scene where she gets to wear a really awesome dress before she would agree to appear in anything past chapter one.
"With two full paragraphs of description, mind, and frequent references in the text henceforth."
Um, yes Rarity, please don't hurt me.
Moving on, Lady Twilight herself is an interesting study too. Without Celestia to focus her, this Twilight's scholarly interests are a lot broader than the Twilight we all know and love so don't expect epic magic from her, but on the other hoof, she's a lot less screwed up than our Twilight, who had to endure years of trying to live up to Celestia's expectations of her. Or more accurately, her expectations of Celestia's expectations of her. Of course, her considerable intellect and charisma remain unchanged.
I'm not sure what to do with this. Publishing on the main site would be a bit of a tease, because I'm not sure where I'd be going with it, so it would end up on hiatus immediately. I don't even know if there will ever be more than one chapter. It's really just a random idea. I will link the google doc here when I finish though.
I like the style. I'm curious about the AU, though. No Luna and Celestia makes for a very strange Equestria[1].
My advice is to write it out and publish it[3] if at all possible. Even if it is only chapter 1 for a very long time. I find that showing people things I wrote has a transformative effect. Mind, this effect is as often good as it is bad. Sometimes the reaction is otherwise than I'd expect and I go all writer's block-y[4], at others, it's as if I needed another pair of eyes on something to see how I can make it sing. And, of course, comments can make the story better or, at the very least, make you think about things from a different angle.
If you like, and can put up with a nattering pedant with no free time, I can offer help. I can pre-read, or I can yammer at you in an effort to jog pony words from your mind.
Do you Skype?
[1] Perhaps this can figure into the mythos of the world? Perhaps they are truly as gods, and do not appear in person. Perhaps, again, they are lost or trapped somewhere and Twilight seeks them out? Oooh oooh, perhaps this is all an alternate timeline spun off from the main world by taking away Luna and Celestia and the plot can, among other things, revolve around Twilight meeting or being made aware of out Twilight and having a big crisis over paths not walked and so on. She is happier now, it seems, but the other Twilight is so magnificent -- the savior of a world several time over, favored student of divinity, and...perhaps also more personally, a friend of Rarity as an equal[2]. Has she taken the path of least resistance? Has she failed? Has she traded her chance at greatness for, not even happiness, no, for happiness has a fierce joy of its own, but contentment, mild and meek? I can see her breaking down, you know, wanting to be forgiven for this and finding nopony who can. "Of all sad words of mouth or pen, the saddest are these: it might have been." as Whittier has it.
[2] Cross-class friendships are difficult, are they not?
[3] Well, if you want to get readers, your best bet is to get to the featured box if at all possible. But there's no law that says it must be the first story you do.
[4] Like now. Worse case I can recall, in fact. Like my mind's been set in concrete.
607700
In a way, that's what I was doing. But I can be such a Fluttershy sometimes!
Not least of which is the fact that there is no day and night cycle, just perpetual half light. I'm actually recycling this mechanic from a Celestia and Luna origin story I started. In any case, the world where Equestria would be is a very much less friendly place. I wouldn't be aiming anywhere close to gimdark, but that knowledge that no matter how bad things got, Celestia could probably fix things, isn't there. Basically, it's probably more Brandon Sanderson than George R R Martin.
It's actually really interesting that you take that route. Why don't I PM the rest of the of what I've written so far? In any case, those are some very interesting thoughts about where to go with Lady Sparkle. I honestly haven't really thought about where to go with her in terms of internal conflicts, and those are good ideas. I've mostly been thinking about Rarity (hey, she was the one glaring out of the page at me).
607846
PM (or, better still, mail. My gmail address is on my userpage) away, good sir!
As for the general tone, I favor much the same. I don't like dark, but if "Celestia will fix it" is a potential solution for anything and everything that can possibly happen, you can't really have much happen. My choice was to hobble Celestia politically and morally. Politics as a limiting factor is old hat -- Celestia can do all manner of wonderful things. What happens next is the big question. And moral limitations are even more fun, I think. Fantasy often has characters who are very relaxed about murder and mayhem on an industrial scale. I prefer to have my Celestia be horribly conflicted about what she can do. She doesn't have a "make everything better" spell. She does have a "set you on fire with my mind" spell, it's just that she never ever wants to use it.
As for the internal conflict of Lady Sparkle, it's my custom to write everything around character conflicts. I can't say it's worked well for me, actually, but it's how I work. And in this little snipped of yours Rarity has conflict front-and-center, which is good, but Twilight has none[1]. A character with no visible conflict is an invitation to either put them trough hell[2] or to imagine that behind an almost perfect facade of contentment they are seething. Seeing Lady Sparkle as she is here, I thought the best way to shake her up was to show her that she may well be described as complacent. Wake up the obsessive we know lurks within. And this time, there's no Celestia as an ultimate arbiter of what she should do. And there you go. Conflict in buckets. Also, playing with alt!Twilight and our!Twilight is a very good way to make use of the whole 'alternate' part of 'alternate universe.' Naturally, don't feel bound to my ideas, I'm just spitballing, seeing how it is altogether much more fun to poke around your story than to stare dejectedly at the wreckage of mine. Writer's block is worst block.
[1] I recognize that this is a brief little segment of a, potentially, grand tale, but what I have is what I'll kvetch about.
[2] Though I personally prefer emotional turmoil to just doing horrible horrible things to my characters. I certainly don't like killing or maiming them, mostly because of a, possibly wrong, opinion that past a certain threshold of negative emotion all nuance is lost. If you kill Spike (Celestia forbid!) Twilight isn't merely sad, she's broken past capacity of mending.
Sorry, didn't see that email address until now. I already send it via PM, but it's sent by email now too.
So, ah, listen... I really hate to screw with the flow of your story... But Rarity is aware that the only situations that could justify somepony in her (in-universe) position wearing such an awesome dress pretty much mandate that Twilight be wearing an awesomer one, right? Hoofmaidens, unfortunately, do not get to go to events that warrant dresses which in turn warrant two paragraphs of description without their Lady present, and as far as I've ever been able to tell social protocol dictates that hoofmaidens not look better than their liege -- if anything, it's their job to make their liege look good. Can't do that when you're upstaging them.
(Maybe you could plea-bargain multiple
suchsimilar scenes with a paragraph each? I 'unno, I'm just throwing out ideas down in this part.)919813
Rarity says that, ah, apparently she doesn't see how that's her problem. She gets lots of offers to work in fan fics, you see. Ah, they joys of pony-divas, eh? But it could still work. Perhaps it could involve espionage? With Rarity pretending to be something she's not in order to... I don't know. It could make for a really poignant scene, don't you think? Here is a pony who has spent her life making others look good, and for this one night, she can finally be the one who looks good.
920467 Oh, I'm not saying that it's her problem. I'm just pointing out that it's a problem. How you handle the problem is a separate issue. (Heck, if she doesn't care, then that counts too. I don't think that's likely, but it would work.)
Hm, espionage... Rarity and Fluttershy would make an excelent team for the party side of that part. Of course, that puts Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash on the infiltration team (assuming you have everyone meet up), which I can't see being a great option. Those two get along great, but it tends to involve snakes in cans and buckets of water over doors and the like. Generally not what you want on an infiltration mission.
It doesn't have to involve espionage, though. You just need to justify Rarity going to such an event without somepony over her, which could be anything from being elevated in position (not likely in-universe) to Twilight being dead (please don't).
921352
Sorry, I just realised I forgot to reply to this. The first part of last week was rather hectic and it kind of slipped my mind.
Slightly tongue in cheek accessions about Rarity aside, I'm afraid I have not idea how I would finish this fic. I still would like to include the Rarity and Twilight changes places bit, because I think it would work. I have no idea how I would get to that bit, or what the ending is, but I have a few plans.
Anyway, if you're really interested, I could send you a link to the full chapter 1 on the understanding that: 1) there has been no redrafting or editing and it could be rough and 2) there may never be a chapter 2. I mean, I have ideas and I would like to continue, but it may well not happen.
Hey, listen--
I'm flagging you down because this very snippet came up in the discussion on a recent blog post, and especially with you following Bad Horse I though you might be interested.
1065280
That's some fascinating discussion. I will probably jump in later, when I've gotten RL work done.