"Hey, nice cover art!" · 3:53pm March 21st
An explanation of the design and themes of the covers for all of my fics. Contains spoilers for the stories discussed. Will be updated as I publish more fics, if I remember to.
This cover art is an all-out allusion to the cover art for the album "Her Wallpaper Reverie" by The Apples In Stereo. The fic in general is very influenced by this album in basically every regard, so it made sense to allude to it in the cover too. The album revolves around an exploration of a relationship, with brief instrumental interludes that both gave the chapters their titles and also influenced the structure of the story.
We can never explore the relationship in full, we can never see a life in a complete objective sense, we can only be given access to these scenes and understandings. It's especially true of other people's relationships, but it's also true of our own. We have only our memories to go off, no perfect understanding. That's what the fic is about. It's about trying to find an understanding of yourself through others and trying to understand that you can't understand others.
For specific details in the image, the colors were picked from two of the international variations of the album's cover art (it had the same design but with a different color scheme in each region) to try and represent Applejack and Rarity, the orange/yellow for Applejack and the teal for Rarity. The wallpaper design section on the left is constructed of (sort of abstracted) versions of the two character's manes.
The design for this alludes to one of the covers for the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the orange color was directly picked from that cover, the layout of the box and text above it also came from the book's cover. I chose to allude to this book because it influenced the story, especially with the style of the prose, but also with the common themes of individuality versus fitting in, the constant pressure to repress who you are and be "normal".
The image inside the square is an illsutration of a scene from the fic, Big MacIntosh and Braeburn's kiss under the night sky. It is one of the few hopeful moments in the story, one of the few moments where Braeburn is not scared and alone. It's important to him, it's one of his few moments being "true" so it felt important to show here. To note, it is closely cropped to where we do not see their full faces. Just their maws. This suggests, at least to me, the constricting feeling present throughout the fic and also the limited nature of this moment. It's brief, it's not whole. They have to continue to exist beyond it, back in reality.
Minor note: the drawing of the night sky behind them was re-used from an older drawing of mine.
This fic does not have a cover, a deliberate choice (alongside the vague title and description) to put more of the aesthetic attention to the poetry itself. To not suggest any specific purpose or interpretation to the reader, and let them come to their own understanding of the work. I wanted the fic's profile in general to be unassuming.
Being a follow-up to "colts don't cry", the cover art here mainly alludes to that: it exists as a deliberate inversion of the original cover art. The blue used is the inverted color of the orange from the original, Braeburn here exists outside of the confines of the box (now scattered across two of the corners of the cover), the text is a hand scribbled white instead of the deliberate typefaced black of the original. The story, in a lot of ways, serves as an inversion of the original - both in the story's events and themes but also down to the structure of the story itself. It made sense to represent this in the cover.
Outside of the original "colts don't cry" cover, the scrawled nature of the title's text and the inclusion of a semi-transparent rectangle behind it is a reference to the original album art for The Wall by Pink Floyd. When the album was released, the scrawled album title was a physical sticker over the cover rather than being part of the cover art itself, which noticably led to a semi-transparent rectangle behind the title. I chose to allude to The Wall, because it shares themes with Nervous Young Stallions of emotionally isolating yourself from others and, more importantly, eventually opening up to others. Braeburn, between "colts don't cry" and Nervous Young Stallions learnt to build a wall of his own and then started to take it back down.
The top right band of yellow is supposed to allude to Soarin's Wonderbolt uniform. He doesn't physically appear in the cover but I still wanted to suggest his presence.
In the top left and bottom right corners are the remains of the boxed in frame from the original "colts don't cry" cover, here displaying the river Braeburn finds himself by twice in the story. It's an important place to Braeburn: a place of reflection and calm. It felt right to put here another nice place for Braeburn, a place where he can be happy and calm. Ultimately, that was the point of this fic: to give Braeburn a happy ending.
Braeburn himself appears in the bottom left corner, this time frowning instead of smiling. He exists outside of his moments of calm, he exists in moments of stress and unhappiness too, but just with "colts don't cry" these are not his whole, his entirety. He is learning to take the good with the bad.
Firstly: I did not make this cover! This is the only one I didn't make myself, and it's directly taken from the car seat headrest album of the same name.
I chose this for quite a simple reason: the car seat headrest album is a collection of rejected songs and odds and ends, and that's exactly what this fic is for my writing. Rejected fics and little bits and pieces that don't go anywhere else. I was already using the title, because it perfectly and poetically explains the nature of the fic, so I figured I'd bite the bullet and take the cover too - it's already the "odd one out" of my fics, so it made sense to have the cover be that too.
This cover is my first photographic cover, rather than being done in CSP as my others have been. I chose this because I really wanted to mirror the title - "found object". We're presented with three objects meant to represent the poetry collection, and these three objects are all 'found objects' in the sense that they are unaltered by me and pre-existing. In fact, out of a display of cosmic apathy, I had them all on my desk already.
The rock - a lake superior agate - is meant to represent the through of the 'rock poetry' in this collection. Like the poem agate suggests, it has sentimental value for me.
The Applejack figure is from the Pop Mart 'Leisure Afternoon' blindbag series. Of course, it reprents the fact that the poems are all about MLP, but I think the fact that it's this specific figure - her holding onto candy - does speak to the nature of the poetry. A fair few of the poems included are very sweet to the taste, a fair few are not. A fair few are more like trying to eat a rock.
In the background we have a national trust greeting card with a scene of horses - if you look at the description's "poems about ponies, rocks and humans who used to be ponies", that would leave this representing Equestria Girls, what with the horses being actual, real horses and not cartoon ponies. This was, admittedly, mostly just chosen to have a nice background to the image, but I still think it's appropriate to the poetry. Horses in a serene, calmful location. Not especially relevant to the cover, but I thought I'd note that the card is empty inside. I just bought it for myself because it was a nice photo.
Being an alternate ending to the fic Blue and Gold, the centerpiece of this cover is a traced version of the original's cover art, in stark, basic black and white. This traced drawing (alongside the text in the image) is mirrored from the original - I don't feel the need to explain the significance of it being mirrored if you've already read the fic.
The cover was partly inspired by the covers for both versions of Twin Fantasy by Car Seat Headrest - the stark, simple black and white doodle, the fact that the 2018 version is traced from the original, and the fact that the 2011 version's vinyl release has a mirrored cover. Twin Fantasy, like One last trip around, for you, focuses on someone's obsession with a dead relationship and trying to make it live on again (through fantasy or otherwise).
Not much to say about this - it's a drawing of Derpy. It's a repurposed version of an older drawing I did because the original cover art I drew for this fic wasn't good. So far, the only (original) cover to not include my username.
Stylised drawing of S1 Princess Luna - I chose the S1 design because, to me, the feelings and themes of the poetry reflected more here season 1 appearance, that scared, sad, regretful Luna coming back from something awful she doesn't understand and seeking comfort, along with the sister who missed her for so long. It's that sort of bittersweet feeling, regret and and guilt and anger and sadness from both parties but also hope and the knowledge that it's going to get better. The text on the side is meant to resemble an obi strip included with a vinyl record. I wanted to have the cover resemble an album cover without text (the sort of 'it speaks for itself' approach I also used with the title/description), while still having the information about the title and creator, which is usually done using hype stickers or obi strips. More specifically, it takes inspiration from the obi strip that Rough Trade uses, a record store / label in the UK.
