Sometimes writing a letter is considered the "easier" way to communicate, but despite all its comparative "ease" it can also be one of the hardest things you ever do.
There are a few things to forewarn you of. This story deals with anti-homosexuality in a political/religious setting that closely parallels some of contemporary society. If you don't enjoy stories that mix ponies with politics, are ethically targeted or introduce elements that wouldn't fit in show-like Equestria, then this probably isn't the story for you.
Cover art graciously provided by: http://vittorioderenardi.deviantart.com/
Chapters (1)
Damn.. Damn it all. I promised myself I wouldn't cry yet here I am with faint tears going down my cheeks.
This was powerful, it moved my heart for our fellow men and women that suffer for being what they are. You've quite accurately portrayed the emotional turmoil, worry and panic that most people experience when they're locked in a situation like this; the fears and doubts that plague the mind while they live in a society that begrudgingly accepts them.
One thing about this story that personally touchs me is how cruel and vile people can be without truly knowing it, Whisperwind being the prime example; in his crusade against homosexuality he allows it to destroy the life of one he holds dear.
Despite how tragic and heartbreaking this story turned out it was nice to be given a faint glimmer of hope for Dawn Runner, I can only hope that he moves and manages to live his life to the fullest.
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Thank you very much Ruxen - your comment here is really encouraging. I'm glad to see that you picked the elements I was trying to portray in the story. You really got it spot-on. Thank you!
I may get my thoughts together/get more time to write about this(too much work!) later, but for now, all I'm going to say is that it was good.
Alright, coherent thoughts time.
Before anything else, there's something that always comes into my head reading stories like this...
"Did this need to be MLP? Did this need to take place in Equestria, where the author will need to change and twist the existing fiction into something dramatically different in both content and tone to fit their vision? Or should it have been an original piece, fiction set in the real world, where situations like this already do exist, or a new fictional world with a tone to fit the story?"
But it might not even matter. At some point, regardless of how different it is from the source material and the dissonance that that may cause, stories like this hit a certain point. It's relate-able for anyone who's had trouble coming out to someone close to them, and those stories are among the more genuinely emotion-filled kinds of stories that actually happen often enough to be a part of public consciousness. People know what you mean when you say "coming out story", they know the kind of drama and emotion that can and often does go with that, real life or not. It catches, somewhere in your mind-emotion like this stays the same regardless of setting.
So although I often look down on stories for going so against the mood of what they come from(read: almost all of the heavy-handed, unsubtle angst on FiMfiction), I can't really criticize this for that.
Kudos.
This story was extremely well-written. Parts of the narration sometimes felt a little intrusive, though, so watch out for that. For example, Whisperwind's reaction to the letter was a tad overdone. I realize that you wanted his misery to seem extremely powerful, but the effect can be achieved in fewer words. Also, the letter sounds a little odd at times. I'm mostly willing to suspend my disbelief regarding Dawn Runner's epic letter-writing skills, but his vocabulary occasionally seemed kind of advanced for someone who's struggling with such a monumental task as this. Still, I loved this story! Great characterization, believable drama, and just plain good writing. I hope it won't be too long until I get to read another story by you!
This was...it just describes.. so much
Congratulations on getting featured on EqD!
Very, very well-written. If you ever get the chance, publish this as a real short story(of course, you'll have to change a few details, but...).
Just so you know, it's Hearth's Warming, not Heart's.
Although I didnt cry I was close to it I may not be homosexual myself I still can feel the struggles this character must have gone through all of the fear regret and pain Its such a beautiful story and it truely reflects How cruel society can be
The fear and spite and loathing of society is truly a tragic thing, for all of us. If only we could all be a little more tolerant of one another. As Martin Luther King Jr once said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can; hate cannot drive out hate, only love can." - And that is something Dawn Runner I think would espouse. Fantastic character, btw. It takes allot for me to care about OC's and you've done it in a one-shot.
This fic also sounds like it was written with some hint of experience or at least a good deal of understanding gleaned from observation. As someone who's gay but has never had need to fear his understanding family's perceptions of him: My heart goes out to all who suffer.
Thank you for writing this, I truly enjoyed it.
Having gone through a fair bit of this myself, let me open up by saying ow!
I find that when one writes about this sort of stuff the amount of emotional force thrown around tends to be somewhere between "dynamite" and "hydrogen bomb" and what you've written here definitely falls more towards the nuclear fusion end of the spectrum. You have stoked my emotional fires and inspired me to dig in to my own work with renewed gusto.
That said, I cannot leave without mentioning that this type of writing is pretty antithetical to my personal style. You've clearly shown that you know how to write here, but I have to say the story falls into a pattern that I've seen a lot in similar stories, a pattern that I've seen so often that I'd almost say it's become a genre. Basically, it's a story that focuses so much on the conflict of what it means to struggle to find oneself LGBT in a society and family that despises LGBT people that the characters and story suffer somewhat. Thus, the story is traded for emotional power.
Let me give you an example, the paragraph that engaged me the most by far in this story was:
"I began to realize that you weren't just talking about some nebulous, distant group of people. You were talking about me. You were saying and believing all of those things, about me. You were protecting children from me. Every targeted accusation against homosexual was being levied against me. Me, your son - the little foal you raised and taught to fly. The one you made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for growing up. The one who used to make play-huts out of the tallgrass in our back yard. The colt that loved to catch tree frogs and lizards off the windows to keep as pets. The one who emptied out his meager bank account every Heart's Warming so he could see you happy. The one who had spent days and nights with a heart twisted in pain and fear over the heartbreak you would feel if you found out. I loved you! And you were saying all of those things about me!
The reason I liked it so much was because there Dawn Runner was asserting himself as a person and not a wounded minority. It made the conflict more heart wrenching by making it more personal. You often described in detail how he felt being trapped in his terrible situation, but because those feelings are so (hideously, disgustingly) common to many LGBT people, until that paragraph I couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't really emerging as a character.
I'm really not trying to be discouraging here, I loved the story and I think you're an incredible writer, but I just couldn't bear not to bring that up.
I just have to say that this was profoundly moving, heartwrenching, and beautiful. I wish I could write more words on that.
Brother... I am in the US Infantry. My job requests, borderlining demanding I do not exhibit emotions. My Little Dashie was too boring, Final Dreams of a Filly was touching, but still not to the point of real emotions. I have read countless fics, seen countless images and comics aimed to invoke powerful emotion and they have never got beyond me admitting it being well written and powerful. However this story is something entirely different. The last story to make me feel at all was Bridge to Terabithia, which I have read 38 times.
I am gay myself, with conservative parents. This hit way too close to home. Hell, this was a 155mm mortar crashing through my living room. I... dammit man, I felt a tear forming during it. Thats more than I can say for anything since my first go through of Bridge to Terabithia. I recognize so much of it from my own life. I love this fic.
Fuck man. This is something glorious. Thank you for reminding me what it is to experience true emotions.
I'm a new member here. I signed up for an account just so I could comment on this story.
Anyways this was amazing. Eloquent, sad, and heartbreaking. The language you used flowed beautifully. It also provided me some insight in how gay children often struggle with parents who are conservative and would never accept them for who they are.
I confess, I got a bit misty eyed towards the end.
I know that this is only a one shot but...perhaps you could do a sequel where Windwhisper and Dawn Runner find redemption years later, and Dawn Runner's parents accept him and love him for who he is, and stop their crusade against the "coltcuddlers." But maybe that's too much to hope for, but there's a part of me that thinks "It can't end like this!" I wish that the rift between Dawn and his parents could be healed and that they could someday reconcile. Maybe his letter will spark a change in Windwhisper's heart.
Anyways, just let me say well done. You write with a delicate, sensitive touch and capture emotions wonderfully.
Bravo, Sir or Madam. (I'm going to assume that you're a Brony of the male persuasion?)
I just have no sympathy for Dawn Runner's parents at all. I cannot comprehend, in my heart, why he should care one jot that they hurt in the least. I understand that he cares for them, that is normal and natural - just like his sexual orientation is normal and natural. But to care one whit about their pain, a pain caused purely by willful ignorance and poisonous arbitrary belief, a pain that has no legitimacy and no reason to be whatsoever, no. I have zero sympathy. Less than zero. Let them suffer in the hell of their own, chosen creation.
Dawn Runner is wise to get out and go. Leave the trash behind. I can only despise the narrow bigotry of those that turn their back on reality for the sake of evil, destructive, hateful mythologies.
And I say this as a Queer person, who has suffered much under the hammer of such warfare against peace, kindness, love, and equality.
When my father put his gun to my head, while leaning on my chest, preparing to blow my brains out for being Queer, in that moment, he ended any reason for me to care one bit about his issues.
His gun was real. But the metaphorical gun put to Dawn's head, and the head of all Queer youth, is no less loaded, and no less evil.
I say this with all sincerity - to hell with such parents, and may they burn there where they -and they alone- belong.
Keep up the good work, author.
Damn you for making me cry.
I don't cry when I read. I don't!
I thought this was ok. The picture for your story was little miss leading. I thought it was some kind of love story and how death had driven them apart. But that wasn't the case oh well. However my thought on sexuality to that it doesn't matter what you are. I'm not gay or anything however I did have a friend who was and I supported him for he was. I think it silly to judge someone on there sexuality.
Bravo. Just... bravo. I have read this story three times through, and I am in awe of your work. you captured the spirit of a coming out story masterfully, and did so with the utmost class and good taste. There's really nothing else quite like this on this site.
In all seriousness. This is perfect. You made us identify with your character to the point that we feel like we know him personally. He's a real person/pony to us now, and we'll always remember his story. Thank you for a beautiful story.
Well actually i cant say anything new...im late and with not many words
Still that doesnt mean i can praise this awsome story
Just found this story. I can't believe I missed it with it floating around here for almost a year. Oh, well. I'm in a better position to appreciate it now, having done many more comings out in recent times (though none of them were to known haters and even on the scariest one, the chance of it going down badly was less than 0.5%). This was very powerful. The fact it was a letter rather than an argument contributed to this, and we only got to see the letter after his father sees it and reacts (ordering things the other way around would not have been as powerful). Even though some of his struggles were so foreign to me (I never had such struggles against my sexuality and my parents went out of their way when I was young to let me know it was OK to by gay or bi), you made me feel them.
Oh, and one small non-grammatical error I noticed. His mom is a unicorn yet is described in one paragraph in the letter as having wings.
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Thank you very much CyborgPony - I'm grateful for the compliments :) And heh, allow me to say I'm very glad your situation is/was such. I've read through to try and find the error you're mentioning, but I can't seem to find it. If you could let me know where you spotted the error, I'll have that fixed asap. Thank you again :)
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Here is the paragraph with the sentence in question bolded.
I've been thinking about this story quite a bit today. I really feel for Dawn and his letter really made what he was feeling and his whole process so vivid.
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Thank you very much! It's been corrected - it was an artifact from an older version of the story. I'm not sure how it hid away for so long.
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Little things like that are easy to slip through the cracks. I do that sort of thing all the time, especially with dangling grammar (re-arrange a sentence but don't remove connecting words).
There will always be stories that mix ponies with politics, and if you can't write an ethically targeted story in this fandom I can't imagine where else you could take it.
Actually, I do kind of have one issue with this sort of ethically targeted story, though it seems fairly petty: it's always about homosexuality, never asexuality. Not that asexual rights is nearly so big of an issue; everybody already has the right to not get married. But, as much as I'm very in favor of gay rights and as much as I feel it is the defining social issue of my generation, if one exists, I'd like if there was at least enough attention paid to asexuality that people would know it exists. We are 1-2% of the population, apparently. Just yesterday, I was quite offended by a comment on a story calling a character who was categorically uninterested in sex "unhealthy," and much as I enjoyed thinking nasty things about him, I knew better than to say them because I know he was simply ignorant that anybody could consider that normal for anybody. I myself knew on some level that I was asexual for years without properly recognizing it, because I didn't find out it was a thing people could be until I happened to stumble upon the information halfway through college. And that's just too much obscurity.
And that's far more than I thought I had to say.
When I realized why this story is called "A Love Letter," a little into the letter, it broke my heart.
I don't know if it's just me and my frame of mind at the moment, but that heteronormativity is coming across as unusually against all other sexual orientations, as opposed to just being opposed to homosexuality: "you should be attracted to fillies," not just "you should be attracted to fillies." Am I making any sense?
You're from California, aren't you? I don't think the progress of the "homosexual agenda" would sound so familiar with an author from just any state.
That should probably be "hooves."
I don't see why this is only rated as four stars on EqD.
308344 I know, it's tempting to want a happy ending. But that's not what this story needs; pastel ponies don't stop it from being a story about real life, and real life doesn't get happy endings just because we want them. Jewel and Whisperwind will probably pray for their sons' souls all their lives, because from their point of view that is the right thing to do; when the afterlife is on the line changing your mind simply isn't an option.
308520 Respectfully, I have to disagree with you. Based on what you said about your father, you seem very much justified in hating him, and I wouldn't expect to change your mind about anybody remotely like him, but still I feel I must repeat the mantra of "love and tolerate." Ignorance is something that should be pitied, not despised; those who harbor it should be helped to free themselves from it, not hated. Even those who are willfully ignorant and those who do terrible things out of ignorance would ideally invoke only regret that the proper functioning of society requires that they be punished, sadness that they cannot see what is right, and hope that they can be helped to be better. I cannot claim to be good enough to practice even the first part reliably, and I'm pretty terrible at the second, but it's something to aspire to.
And the biggest irony is that Dawn's parents could probably have written most of that, and the only real difference is that they start from different axioms about what is right and what is wrong. Sometimes, ethics just looks like taking your best guess at a starting point, and then condemning anybody who guessed differently. Sometimes I wonder if the concept of ethics only exists because it's slightly less nonsensical than the idea you can have a functioning society of more than a hundred or so people without any concept of ethics.
2211100 In fact, I think you could write almost exactly this story, except with homosexuality replaced with ignorance, or something similar, and it would probably make just as much sense. I want to try and describe it, but I can't. I'm too biased. I couldn't say what would be truly analogous. And it would be very easy to write such a thing as a comedy, but it wouldn't have to be, and if we're paralleling this story we'd have to make it sad of course. And perhaps somebody should do that: write a story just like one of the many about how homophobia is wrong, except that the thing not being tolerated is homophobia. It'd be very difficult, I imagine, to present things so that it would be recognized as what it's intended to be, and not either "some weird story with no apparent point about a homophobe being justly shunned and not learning anything" or "an offensive story by a homophobe trying to push his theocratic agenda," even by the most attentive and astute reader. And no matter how well you wrote it, there would be a lot of people who wouldn't get and would be horribly offended and hate you for writing it. But if you made some people think, and anybody who got the message would be forced to think, it would be worth it.
Oh good lord
Wow, way to tug at my heartstrings. Oh man, I know that feeling, that of hostility your family has to something that's part of you. It's made me remember just how thin the wall keeping me safe is
Very relatable story to Colt Cuddler who's grown up in a household hostile to homosexuality
Very heartbreaking. I'm working on a fic myself that deals with very similar themes. This story gave me a lot of inspiration to help get me through my current roadblock that I'm facing. This was a very beautiful story and I hope others can connect with the message.
I think my heart just exploded. Beautifully written, keep up the good work.
Absolutely fantastic, not to mention heart shattering. 10/10, would read while crying again.
I'm overcome by an emotion I don't recognise. I think it's a feeling of emptiness, bitterness, annoyance, sadness and a teensy spoonful of sugary contentment.
I hate you so much for I'm disappointed that this was a oneshot rather than an on-going story. Still, I enjoyed it. I'd very much continue to enjoy this, over and over again..
If only hypocrisy could be so obvious to those who fall into its elusive traps!
You shall seek and you shall collapse,
into such a beautiful anger,
blinded within that foolishness.
Fallen hooves stretching toward the sun,
forever more embracing a selfless despair.
Your search for a clearer path remains in vain,
for no longer is there harmony left to cling to.
Excellent work, dear Author!
May words never fail ponies as hapless as he.
I don't think I've ever seen something so detailed, and so well written, on this subject. I'd write more about it but the story has left me stunned.
I don't think I've ever enjoyed a letter so much. Wonderfully written and close to home. Thank you for this.
It feels just a smidge rude to admit, but I found this story pretty mediocre. The intro scene was great, but the letter, while emotionally evocative and resonant, felt like it fell short in the execution department. It just really didn't feel like a letter written by a teenager in the moonlight after procrastinating until the last minute. It was way too wordy, for one thing, lapsing into vocabulary, phrasing, and sentence structure that felt far too complicated for the circumstances, which kept drawing me out of the story every time it came up.