Story Notes: The Wizard and the Griffon King · 6:46pm Sep 22nd, 2022
Another piece of the great work is complete.
This blog is going to be rather unstructured. I’m not sure how to begin.
I had the idea for this story already when I wrote the griffon assassin subplot in The Education. Earlier this year I was editing a chapter of The Seven Trials of Clover the Clever, got stuck, got inspired to write this instead – and kept on going right to the end.
It was a very roundabout process. I wrote the legends as I got ideas for them, not knowing at first how they would fit together, jumping from place to place as I fleshed out the story progression, dreamed up these characters, and found out what they all could do. It was hard at times, but on the whole this story and these characters were always willing to cooperate with me.
It turned into something much bigger than I expected, in the end. And in the process I made this strange, unique, experimental thing that I really love, with so much going on in it. I love every part of this thing and I could talk about all of it for ages.
But also now that it’s done my brain is kinda fried and it’s hard to find words anymore. So here goes.
I have to give my thanks to my characters. To King Blaze, who I have kept waiting in the wings for six years, who went along with every damn thing I asked of him, and who has impeccable comedic timing. And to Grindaxe, for everything Grindaxe. And to Gouge, and Gloriel, and even young Gregario, whose scene didn’t make it into the story.
This story is about a lot of things, some specific and some enormous and generalized. It’s about stories and storytelling, both fictional and historical, and what stories mean to us. It’s about Star Swirl the Bearded, of course, and Clover the Clever, and all the rest.
It’s about griffons, and what empires do. It’s about the struggle for survival. It’s a story where Star Swirl is forced to continually wrestle with the past to keep the present going, and if that’s not a fitting summary of the pony entire I don’t know what is.
It’s also about Luna, but you all know that everything is about Luna so that’s no surprise to you.
But mostly this is a character study of the pony himself, Star Swirl the Bearded, my special magic boy. A collection of stories about him, from wildly different perspectives, giving wildly different impressions, trying to see through him and dissect his soul while he stays stubbornly opaque. Each more outrageous than the last. Because Star Swirl the Bearded contains multitudes.
I wanted every scene to be its own little complete story. My big hope is that people will appreciate all the small parts of it, and not just the totality. And at the same time I hope that it hangs together and doesn’t fall apart under the weight of its experimental structure.
I have been very nervous about this story, and whether it would make sense to anyone but me. I literally had a nightmare about this story going out before it was ready.
I have done my best to make this story… maybe accessible isn’t the right word. I'm under no illusions that this story isn't niche. But I don’t want people to be put off by the fact that this is a sequel to two novel-length fics, one unfinished. I tried to make it so that you don’t need to know anything the story doesn’t tell you itself. But at the same time it wouldn’t do to put it all on the surface level. Like Spike says, the stories shape each other, and the more you know the deeper you can see it goes.
And, hey! I wrote a Rashomon. Now I can cross that off my bucket list.
But also it seems that for some reason I just can’t stop writing about fantasy diplomacy carried out by horribly unsuited figures.
Something I found interesting when I began writing this story is that I think this is the first time I’ve ever written from an idea that sprang not from something else, not from an episode of the show, but purely out of my own other stories. This story is about my version of Star Swirl the Bearded, an incident in his life that I made up myself in my own story, all about his encounter with an OC of my own creation.
That might not seem significant but to me it kinda is. I wrote a story based entirely on lore from my own other stories.
...Is this good? I can’t tell. Is this a sign that my stories are rich and imaginative, that they have creative power? Or is it the first step on a road to becoming even more incomprehensible to outsiders than I already am?
It would be silly to get too anxious about this (but I am very silly). It’s just particularly interesting to me because I think a lot about how stories age. And I’ve thought a lot about this particular thing: the moment a story matures enough that it’s no longer reacting to the zeitgeist, to something outside of itself, but instead to its own history. The moment it stops bringing in new things and starts remixing what it’s already done. The moment it starts deconstructing or even parodying itself.
In the past I have dubbed this phenomenon “generic recursion”. I don’t think I’m in danger of losing myself just yet, but this was the first time I saw myself doing it and it stood out to me.
This story has two faces in a lot of ways: the history, and the legends. Balancing the two against each other was hard.
I have a vague memory of reading something many years ago, I think on Neil Gaiman’s blog, which said something like this: A novel does many things, and it’s okay if some parts are not as good, while a short story only has to do one thing but has to do it extremely well.
And by that standard I’m afraid this story is a failure. Because this story does two things.
The first is as I said above, it’s a character study of Star Swirl. Those are the Legends, and that was the starting point. But along the way it became harder and harder to ignore the fact that this is also a story about how the world seems to be ending and wondering how on earth do we grapple with that? And that was the History.
In spite of what I said above there was one other thing outside my own ideas that weighed on me as I wrote this: the war in Ukraine, which absolutely dominated world affairs when I started writing. I was watching the eruption of war in Europe, wondering what this meant and where it would lead. As I wrote the first draft I brooded on everything, and listened to somber atmospheric music on a loop, and somewhere along the way I realized this was a war story.
It is a time of fear and uncertainty. The pony tribes are divided and weak, and a militaristic empire is flexing its muscle. The fear of invasion and conquest looms over everything. And one pony is given the impossible task to prevent it from happening.
He goes to a fortress, a griffon ducal palace that’s swarming with soldiers. The sky is thick with flying griffon troops, the air is full of the sound of cannons and horns. A griffon aristocracy lives in opulence and dreams of conquest and triumph. Everything is oppressive, hungry and ready to strike. And above it all looms the specter of the evil emperor, Griffon King Blaze.
How, when things are so dark and the pony in question is so flawed, can we hope that it can turn out well?
Taken all together like that this sure sounds like a grim period war story. But that kind of flipped the story entirely on its head. It was both a story where Star Swirl is a closed book that everyone else is looking at, and a story where Star Swirl is the viewpoint character watching a grim history unfold around him.
I tried to balance those two, seemingly opposite approaches. I hope I succeeded.
Let me share a concern I have, one that I don’t expect many people to share but that bugs me.
Like I said, this is an old idea of mine, that sprang out of other old ideas of mine, and they haven’t changed much in that time. Like all stories it’s about individuals, their lives, their strengths, their flaws. Star Swirl and King Blaze.
But in the years since I had the idea I’ve grown increasingly alert to the limitations of individual deeds in a world of huge systemic problems. To the point where a story about exceptional individuals shaping the fate of the world with the sheer power of their wills felt… distasteful? Dishonest? In real life, I’m afraid that all the best efforts of individuals to make things better, even exceptional individuals in high places, mean little when all the systemic and institutional forces push back against change.
So what was I doing writing a story where one pony can stand against an empire and force it to stop? Was I betraying my own best judgment? Telling a dishonest story I couldn’t believe in?
I can do a lot with Star Swirl but I don’t wanna lie to him.
In the end I tried to channel those fears into the story itself. Every character in this story is not just an individual, although they certainly are characters. They are also subject to and representative of the forces pushing the Griffon Empire into war. King Blaze is only the first and foremost among them.
All I can say is, he tries his best, flawed as he is. Even when his solutions are themselves badly flawed, he always tries his best.
Thank you all for reading this far. Please, share your thoughts. I would love to hear if my story did something for you, or if my thoughts here did.
Anyway. Now that this story is over it’s time to get back to work on The Seven Trials.
Clover the Clever taps her hoof sharply on the floor, glaring at me.
Look, I said I’d get back to you.
“You left me in shackles in a dungeon. Being interrogated. For five months.”
…More like six months, since I wasn’t getting anywhere with that scene for weeks before I switched.
“Not helping.”
Ahem. Right. I’ll try to get back on that. And hopefully make more progress now that I’ve been doing something else for a long time. At least I gave Clover another story about her mentor slash idol to entertain her along the way.
Special thanks to my prereaders, who listened to me ramble for the last five months, who told me when something wasn’t working, and when it was.
iisaw,
SIGAWESOME,
Naughty_Ranko,
Cormalindo,
And my mom.
This just crossed my feed and I thought it so appropriate for this story that I have to include it here. By the recently departed Hilary Mantel:
pbs.twimg.com/media/FdX0WdsUoAAQCqd?format=jpg&name=large
Thank you for continuing this world. I get a lil funny vibe every few months or so, and when I introspect it carefully I realise it's a craving for more Star Swirl and I should really go and check my Fimfiction feed. You're the only author I follow on here that's actually still writing to my knowledge, but your stories are enough to keep me coming back.
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Thanks for reading. It's a lot, and every bit of encouragement helps.
I am always happy to see this world continued, and I always find myself going back to them. Hope to see more in the future! (No pressure though ;) )