Random Ramblings CCCLVII · 3:10pm Mar 29th, 2019
IN WHICH I FORGOT LOTS OF STUFF
It is what it is. In the meantime, enjoy. It's from the same guy who produces Perfume, who I'm gonna see live next weekend.
So, yeah. Even with all my rambling yesterday, I left a lot of stuff out. If you’ll follow me
This post is going to be actually relevant to Annie in its entirety. In fact, I’m writing it out the day before y’all will see it, while these ideas are fresh on my mind. I want to address some things I accidentally left out of my last blog, some of which my reader (yes, singular) has commented upon.
All of the Missionaries of the Moon take their names from Saturnian moons. Saturn doesn’t have as many moons as Jupiter, but it has a couple dozen. From there I decided which ones would work as character names, whether those characters would be male or female (usually looking to the original etymology for guidance). After that, I designed the ponies. I tried to imagine what colour schemes would look decent. I also tried to have a balance of the three races. The LACK of such in the rest of Equestria at the time is kind of a big deal in the story.
Oh, another thing mentioned by Japetus is that the Moon Cultists "abandoned their slave-names". This is sort of an oblique reference to how transgender people around me (and activists in the media) tend to act. I don't get gender dysphoria, although I certainly am opposed to how the current government -- fuck Trump and every elected official who supports him -- actively discriminates against Citizens of an "unpopular minority" who just want to live their lives. That said, one thing I'm also opposed to, which has put me in conflict with other leftists, is the move to delete "problematic" history. It's impossible to erase who you once were, so getting butthurt about someone using the wrong name or normal pronoun (if it's not malicious) doesn't help anything -- I refuse to justify any made up bullshit pronoun sorry-not-sorry. I understand why transfolk have such a chip on their shoulder, and they're often justified in it, but being angry all the time is no way to go through life. Being depressed isn't much better but it's easier on the blood pressure.
For the record, I'm a slightly below average height overweight dude with long hair and a wider hip ratio than most guys. I get called "ma'am" a lot if someone only sees me from the back. They usually apologize when they see my (obviously masculine if I haven't shaved) face or hear my 'Redneck Garfield' voice. I just take it in stride. You have to.
I know my two readers are looking forward to Chapter Five. I’ll give a preemptive apology for it. It’s mostly an infodump. One that needed to happen, granted, but still. I tried my best to make it interesting, but who knows if I succeeded.
In terms of word count, it’s not much longer than Chapter Four (4500 vs 4300). If I really wanted to put y’all to sleep, I could have done much worse.
Okay, let’s talk about the unusual look of the ponies who live near the Heart of the Corruption. Their coats are faded to charcoal grey and their eyes have become black sclera with gold irises. This look is actually a homage to, of all things, a Knuckles The Echidna comic where one of K’s ancestors (who, like that entire universe, no longer exists, fuck you Ken Penders) was blinded during a fight and had to have bionic eyes implanted to see again -- they were black-n-yellow.
Simply calling the pall over the Everfree Forest “The Corruption” is sort of a nod to the original comic version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind where what is known in Japanese as “腐海” -- Fukai, literally “Rot Sea” and called “Toxic Jungle” in the English dub of the movie -- is translated in the English comic as “Sea of Corruption”.
The idea of fallen stone repurposed into ramshackle shelters probably takes its cue from either a Sonic game or World of Warcraft, though the “Used Future” is a trope in many series, including Nausicaä, Alita, and Akira (I had not read the latter two until months after I finished Annie).
It should be obvious by now that Annie is narrating this story to someone. She occasionally slips into speaking directly to the reader, who is not you or me. You’ll learn who the reader is later. Like with the Thousand And One Nights, we’re not technically reading or hearing the stories directly; we’re experiencing it secondhand via the Mad King listening to Scheherazade.
That’s something that literally just occurred to me, and you can be forgiven for not knowing that reference.
I swear I’m not very cultured. Most of what I read that isn’t Pony or news is comics, manga, and graphic novels. Some of my friends read High Fantasy. I don’t get into it much. I don’t even read Low Fantasy (which is what Annie sorta is) often.
I guess what I’m doing with Annie is sort of a take on the classic Hero’s Journey, though you can rest assured I’m not adhering to it as strictly to it as George Lucas did for Luke Skywalker …or Meghan McCarthy attempted to do for Twilight.
I’ll cop to a mistake right now. I never really elaborate on WHY Ruby has a legend surrounding her. She told us what she does (try to keep ponies out of Sunny Town) and how she fails at it. That doesn’t mean every individual she failed to help died in the village like she did. It’s possible, even probable, that many victims escaped before they got “blanked” and news of Ruby’s existence spread, especially among the Moon Cultists who’d be most likely to encounter her.
I should fix that omission, but the story is already “locked in” for word count and I’m reluctant to mess with it. Maybe I should re-re-edit Chapter Five before it goes up. Since it’s a massive infodump, it was difficult as hell to write.
Well, I’ve got until Monday. Guess I’d better give my story another look-see.
Peace out!
I’m enjoying Annie as a slow-burn mysterious adventure into the unknown. It’s “whimsical,” though not in the cutesy sense that the word often gets used in. And I love it that the central quest or struggle is just to get her soup ladle back.
The bits with Ruby and Sunny Town are a reference to something, right? I could swear that I’ve run into elements of those in other stories by other authors, though I’m not sure I know what the original source is.
5034697
That soup ladle, I swear…
Yep. Waaaay back in 2011 or early 2012, some guy named Donitz made a MLP creepypasta fangame called Story of the Blanks. Here it is:
As you can imagine, being the first MLP creepypasta fangame, it spawned fanart and some stories.
I'm looking forward to chapter 5 tbh. I don't know much else of what to say. I think you should definitely add the legend in though.