Emergency plug for an old story: Bouts of Forgetful Artistic Destruction · 12:34am Sep 3rd, 2016
I had Bouts of Forgetful Artistic Destruction on my Read-it-Later list, with about 500 other stories, and made time for it because HoofBitingActionOverload says he'll unpublish all his stories sometime this week.
Which I guess is rewarding HBAO for unpublishing his stories. 
In a nearly empty library, a pegasus librarian with a blond mane the color of a sunflower’s petals sat behind an information desk and tore pages out of a hardback book. The library was called the Canterlot Public Library. The librarian was called Gale. She couldn’t remember why she had started tearing out the pages. Maybe she was angry. Maybe the story hadn’t played out how she had wanted it to and now she destroyed the world and everyone in it and herself because tearing apart the words was the only way left to feel in control of fate. But she didn't feel angry, only tired and cold. Her wings twitched but stayed close to her sides. She pressed her hoof to another page. It felt dry and stale, and she pulled at it without reading the words and tore the page out of the book and tossed it onto the floor with the others.
How can I persuade you to read this story? 
Well, it's really sad... Wait, come back! 
Why do I like this story so much?
At first glance, you might say it's just a story about something very sad happening to a pony. But there's something different about this story, something which now seems like the obvious right thing to do, but which I can't recall ever seeing before.
SPOILERY. But read it if you think you're not going to read this story RIGHT NOW.
Something terrible is happening to Gale. The story slowly reveals what it is. The action of the story, though, is Gale trying awkwardly to interact with Twilight Sparkle. At the end of the story, when you realize what's happening to Gale, you also realize that something similar--not the same, just similar--is happening to Twilight, and that Gale's strange actions were her recognizing this same process at work in Twilight, and reaching out to try to help her. The story is about Gale responding to her own tragedy at first with self-pity, but then by being more sensitive to the suffering of others, and trying to save one other pony from a similar fate before she succumbs herself. It's mysterious, tragic, heroic, a little bit funny, and just a little bit optimistic.
Also, it's full of creative ideas, and beautifully written.
TL;DR: Just read it, m'kay?
Yeah, the concept of Wing Lock is a really neat idea as well.
People totally need to read it.
I'll read it.
In case anyone reads this after the Great Unpublishing, here's a cached version of the story.
This is one of my favorites of HBAO's stories. It definitely deserves a re-read, if for no other reason than it's fitting to read the story in the moments before it disappears into oblivion.
Apparently i read it already.
I don't remember reading it.
Poetic, i suppose.
I recognized it as i reread it.
Barely, as i would recall yesterday's lunch.
I usually don't eat lunch.
Always a bit sad to hear this.
I'll check it out, thanks.
I really don't think Twilight's studying... well, new things. Gale kept Twi's books on the table instead of putting them somewhere to be sorted out. When could she have reached her peak? Is the peak of he learning abilities being repeated every day, but degrading with each iteration?
The self imposed, yet almost unrealized isolation worsened conditions, making them slowly fade away. That's what I found to be the most saddening. The obliviousness to a condition that couldn't be helped, caused by a fracturing of the mind.
Everybody's self-destructing and /anfandoming and I'm just sitting here ripping blow and scribbling shit nobody reads.
Can confirm recommendation. It's one of the few in my Superlative Stories shelf.
Geez, thanks for the heads up, Bad Horse. I'm not a giant HBAO fan but there's at least one thing in his ouevre I need to preserve.
Nice. Curiously apposite. And there's a universal appeal in unrequited love (because we all like a good requite now and then).