Somepony Rarity never met just died. She never had a chance to see him or truly learn anything about him. And yet she mourns -- while trying to figure out why she's mourning at all.
And if it's even deserved.
(A stand-alone, no prior-reading-necessary part of the Triptych Continuum, which has its own TVTropes page (with new Recap section) and FIMFiction group: new members and trope edits are welcome. )
Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.
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As a Minnesotan, I say this--
You've done our sweet Prince proud.
Wow, two featured stories on the same day! Yay!
A wonderful story, one that perfectly defines Prince and his music.
Oh, this is beautiful.
That was an excellent piece. I don't usually read stories with chapters longer than two thousand words, but I guess I did this time out of maybe respect for the passed musician. Very well written and thought provoking.
... Goddamnit.
Beautiful. Can't upvote this enough.
Who downvoted this.
Great piece. Never really was a fan of Prince, I admit but this was a good tribute.
Very nice
A bit ashamed I didn't realize what this was about until part way through. This was really well done.
Prince didn't approve of interracial marriage?
7149548
Our King is alive and well, though his retirement is sad.
img.timeinc.net/time/2011/civility_forum/keilor.jpg
7150079
Actually, he wasn't apparently fond of gay marriage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/04/21/raunchy-prince-was-actually-a-conservative-christian-who-reportedly-opposed-gay-marriage/
There is an old saying, "Never meet your heroes." If you examine anyone's life, you will find something disagreeable. Everyone has flaws.
Mourn the talent that music has lost. Beyond that... Is up to you.
I must confess, if I have ever heard a Prince song, I wasn't aware of it at the time. Still, a wonderful story about art, artists, and how the distinction between them can cut both ways. (At least, I think that's what you were going for.) The funereal traditions added a nice bit of world-building on top of it.
This is similar to how I felt when Alan Rickman died. At first there was nothing; after all, his movies did not disappear with him. I can still watch Harry Potter and Sense and Sensibility, and there will be nothing less than when I watched them before. But gradually, I came to realize that I was grieving. I was grieving for an amazing actor, for the closest thing Severus Snape ever had to life, for a chance to meet an idol for some unlikely reason I had dreamed up. I was grieving for the person who I heard great things of, and so desperately wanted to meet. But I quickly came to question this grief, as I never did know him. I was not close to him, and he never knew that I even existed. Yet I still mourn.
I know so little about Prince or his music that this story would probably have no meaning for me, but you wrote it well. I can understand what you wanted to convey, because of my experience with another star and his death.
I like the way you use words. I think you are very skillful with them.
7150133
Actually, it's not as clear cut as it seems.
https://www.romper.com/p/princes-supposed-anti-gay-stance-was-a-bit-confusing-like-the-man-himself-9333
I like this. Very much.
7151178
You got that right.
The way he flipflopped between supporting Internet music and notoriously condemning and cracking down on it has been detailed on many a tech site.
7150208
Did you ever watch Tim Burton's Batman?
I've listened to Prince's songs, I know of him, but I don't know him. And honestly I don't care. I never needed nor bothered to know what he thought or what he stood for. I enjoyed his music and its enough for me.
I love this. As a big fan of prince and his realities, thank you for bestowing this beauty on my eyes. I can't upvote and favorite this enough. Very well done.
I'm certain Rare would've loved a guy like Prince, not just for his name. His romantic music, his friendly, welcoming, personality, his clean lifestyle.... the fame and fortune woulda just been the proverbial cherry, lol.
Estee, your name on this let me trust it, and you did not let me down. A good elegy.
I wonder if fanfic writers just sit and wait at the celebrity gossip sites for another famed death so that they can write a fic about how meaningful they were to them and score those sweet, sweet upvotes.
What's with all the fics depicting Rarity as some super depressed, romance obsessed introvert?
Meh, who cares. This was well written, and I personally like when writers try to add realistic thoughts and motions to these characters, something we don't usually get to see considering that the show was designed for children. Once again, not really a fan of Rarity being so glum, but that's probably what I get for reading a sadfic.
Great story though, excellently written with words and phrases that I could imagine Rarity actually saying. Anybody looking to invest in best pony's grieving process should definitely read this story.
Hope you so some more stories Estee!
7152069
(Hey, everyone, look! I'm going to make an Internet rookie mistake by attempting to explain myself on any issue while under the delusion that it'll somehow matter!)
(Actually, I don't have that delusion. I know this is pointless.)
(Hey, everyone! That makes it worse!)
Upvote fishing isn't the reason this story exists.
I've talked about celebrity death on the site before this -- in my blog. Some of those passings hit me harder than others. Terry Pratchett, by all rights, should have taken me out for the better part of a week, but... I knew about the illness, and so I'd been mentally preparing for a long time. Robin Williams, that was the gut punch. But I didn't put him in a story. Because --
(Next mistake: self-quoting!)
So ultimately, I just hashed it out in the blog and associated comments. Because as far as celebrities went, I knew what their existence had meant to my life, and how I would be affected by their absence. Mourn and move on.
Prince was different.
I've never been a fan, not by some standards. I appreciate him as an artist and enjoy much of his work, but I've never felt any need to collect it, I don't attend concerts as a matter of wanting to leave in the same condition I entered, and my odds aren't good. But I would listen when his music played. I appreciated his talent, and that he'd been able to exist as an orbiting body instead of a meteor. In a culture with a six-second attention span, he'd maintained a degree of spotlight for several decades. Nice trick if you can work it.
So when he died... I didn't mourn. Because the false connection we tell ourselves that we have with celebrities? I didn't have it with him, not on a deep level. I enjoyed the music and admired the artist. That was about it.
So I sighed, and I racked up another check mark on the Death March that 2016 has become, and I thought about hitting Spotify and just randomly shuffling through his catalog for a while. And I started reading obituaries, because he was doing this for a very long time and I'd missed some of it. I wanted the retrospective.
And that's when the dissection started.
I knew the music. I didn't know the man.
A lot of historical figures are horrible people: it frequently seems to be the central job requirement. The guy who spoke for freedom? Kept slaves. How about this inventor? Turns out he stole a lot of other people's work. Here we have the world's leading spokesperson for monogamy! Guess how many affairs she had. Aw, go on, guess. President who shaped a country? President who went for genocide and nearly made it.
But they're still in the history books -- and when we're first taught about them in school, the details are very carefully left out. Maybe later, when we're ready for the bad news, right? Old enough to take it. Assuming we get the right class, or investigate on our own. Most don't, and so the delusions are forever, because the dissection has already been done and no one's showing us a fresh autopsy report.
But this death was fresh. Here's your results. And watch those paper cuts: they go deep.
I spent about an hour being @#$$ed off and conflicted as %$!*.
To paraphrase Roy Greenhilt: so I thought I knew someone who had everything I would have wished for in an entertainment career, and I just found out that I really just want to kick him in the head.
We don't know these people. We know the images they choose to present right up until the moment when the mask either slips or gets yanked away. But we tell ourselves that we do. It's a very common lie: watch the dance and understand the dancer -- but ultimately, you're guessing.
I respected his talent. I admired his music. I just might have gotten into a knock-down drag-out the-only-rule-is-that-whoever's-still-breathing-won fight with him.
Love the work. Hate the man.
How can you do both? Does knowing just how badly you would have conflicted with someone ruin any possible experience? Can you divide creator from created, or will some degree of bias and taint forever linger?
I've had this conflict before, but always in pre- or post-mortem. I would know about a living individual's positions before I came to the work, or those of the deceased prior to approach. And I'd make my decision as to whether I was going to proceed. But this was the first time it's ever hit me during the transition. You told yourself a lie. You were wrong. So go ahead, open up Spotify. Let's see that tap. Any minute now. Any minute...
I never opened the app. I just finished my day and went to bed, although not for long. I woke up at two a.m, still thinking about it. And the best way to get those thoughts out was by giving them to someone else.
So I asked Rarity to work it out for me. I wrote the conflict, the self-delusion, the need to tell yourself there's a connection and the backlash when an intangible thread breaks, and the division of creation from creator. That's what the story was about, at least for me, and that's why it exists. The artist? Trigger as much as subject: it could have been anyone who'd had a mask stripped away. It happened to be him.
There's my explanation.
Futility exercise: concluded.
7152103
I choose to believe that she's influencing us from the 4th wall.
Because you just know that that's how she'd want to be portrayed :-P :-D
The part of this that was an actual tribute to a fallen icon was excellently done.
The part where you used half-assed, inconsistent, unsubstantiated rumors that have been circling in the shark pool for over a decade as a launching point for a tirade against famous bigots...is not.
No upvote. No downvote. No favorite. No biscuit.
7152920
I missed lunch.
Artists have been dropping like flies over this past year. Robin Williams, David Bowie, Prince... It's a sad time for everyone really.
You conveyed the emotion perfectly in this story. Great job!
A great story, and an object lesson that having the press dig into the lives of celebrities is pointless at best and painful at worst.
>advertising your patreon pretty much over someone's grave
are you fucking kidding me
7152069 This doesn't seem the case... but have at thee
7153109
A little pronoun editing and I may use that as my new bio.
I've had the account for about two weeks. I edited all earlier stories to include the line. I'm trying to get into the habit of placing it on new ones. I don't think of it as "Let me see if I can pull a little TMZ here." Right now, it's just one more thing I have to do before submitting the story, and that means I didn't really think about it at all. I just pasted.
If you see it as offensive profiteering, then all I can do is say that such wasn't my intention.
7153144
I mean, if you're going to write like a tribute to a famous dude just after his death.
Maybe just
avoid tying opportunities for personal profit into it altogether.
That seems like the best rule of thumb.
7153252
7153109
I've taken the link out of the long description and won't restore it until after the story slips off the front page.
7153252
I think the sarcastic/condescending phrasing is really unnecessarily dickish.
7153252 In that case, maybe the embedded click-bait ads – which appear just beneath the long description field – should also be removed from this page?
7153283
I'd say it's probably a good idea to just leave it out of this story in particular. Like, y'know. There's other ways people will see it if they follow you, easily enough. Avoids the backlash entirely.
7153283
You've completely missed the point.
i kinda felt like this for the first month or two after Bowie died.
i never got to meet him, though it was a dream to meet him, he seemed to exist in the real and the fictional world.
If this is a stand-alone piece and doesn't require any reading in a big verse, then why make it a verse story to begin with? Doesn't it feel kind of unnecessary?
7154505
If you'd like to make this point without sounding like you're being a dick about it, please see 7153908
If not, carry on.
7155006
For those of us who are following it, this story fleshes out the version of the characters that exists in that verse a bit more. It also means we can take cultural background information (like the hanging buntings thing) as canon to that setting.
Earth ponies are Jewish?
I really like where this ends, because "the musician is not the music" is something I've believed for a long time. It helps that piracy lets one not support a musician whose personal life is questionable, but really, we should all separate art from artist, at least when our reactions to both are in opposition.
I reviewed this story as part of Read It Later #47.
My review can be found here.