Horse Words: You Decide Edition! · 6:57pm Sep 22nd, 2017
Hey, guys!
So I threw my hat into the Sunset Shipping Contest ring last month, and if you haven't seen yet, the contest results are up! No, I didn't win, nor did I expect to. Dark stories tend not to fare well in these sort of contests where happy and d'aww-abetes flourish. Plus, the romance was more auxiliary than it should have been due to the word count. Oh well. There’s a whole slew of good stories in here worth your while. Go check them out!
Despite not placing, I'm happy with the story I got out of it. That said, though, I am not content with the story I got out of it.
There's a lot I didn't have the opportunity to bring to life due to the word count, both in the scenes that did come about and in those that didn't. I have tons outlined, and I'm actually expecting this story to break my current wordcount record of 66k that I set with Transcendence way back in the day.
Fair warning, Compati's full version will be much darker than the abridged. I am a terrible human being who likes to push the limits of what he can accomplish (and, sometimes, what he can get away with) writing powerful stories about pastel equines and all their virtues, vices, and the struggles that come with that.
That said, I've had another story in the works for some time now.
It’s a Luna story. (Obviously. It’s me we’re talking about here.) More specifically, it’s a Tantabus origin story. Taking place immediately after the events of the series pilot, it is an exploration of Luna’s reintegration into society and her place as a ruler. It’s crammed full of deliciously archaic first-person introspection of a world unsure just what to think of her. It is a suspenseful, thrilling, roller coaster of trust, familial love, and the tensions that can pull them apart at the seams, and so much worldbuilding that I’ve got it coming out my ears by this point.
It’s going to be my best story yet. I can feel it.
As a bonus, I already have 9 chapters written and pretty much ready to publish, plus a side story I’ll release concurrently with the appropriate chapter.
I love both stories equally, but I'm really not sure which I want to focus on. So I'm letting you guys decide! Comment below which of the two you’d like to see me pump out first.
P.S. since Compati already has an abridged version for you to sample what the full version will be like, it’s only fair I give you guys a sneak peek at the Luna story. Here’s an excerpt from chapter 5 (mind the formatting... it's direct from phone).
No matter what anypony might have assumed, I had never once entered Sister's dreams.
I knew her all my life, been by her side just as long until the night jealousy finally took me. I had never a reason to intrude upon her subconscious, as integral to her waking life as I was. I had no right to break that barrier, to remove that final bastion of privacy.
Not that she would have ever denied me entry. Sister was, is, and ever will be the pinnacle of cordiality. But I could not bring myself to step on her hooves in such a way, even as I careened down that unending spiral so long ago.
It sometimes made me wonder if things could have turned out differently had I broken that self-promise, how we might have avoided that final altercation if only I had been less scrupulous.
Such thoughts, however, were not healthy. The past was immutable, no matter how I wished otherwise. Twas wiser to focus on the present and what was to come.
I found Sister's dream among the universe of dreamspace. One might have expected it to resemble the grand, blazing sun of all astrological bodies. It brought a smile to my face to see it rather coalesce as a little cloud of stardust, naught more than a faint sparkle amidst the nebulae. I would have afforded myself a moment to muse over that thought had my presence not been urgent. I touched the veil of her consciousness and became one with an incoherent wash of color.
Twas the essence of dreams, for those first forming. Rarely did they begin in a solid state. As the mind eases into the seat of my realm, memories and the like come together to form a chaotic mixture of colors, fueled by the dreamer's most recent waking emotions.
Sister worried of what was to come, for the soft blues that churned like water upon a river's shore, but hope made itself known in the pale yellow dotting what became the horizonline of this dream world.
The blues recessed into the angular shapes and patterns of buildings. What was supposed to be Canterlot rose from the shadows, caressed by the soft light of the waking hours.
Twas rare that dreams filled in completely and intricately. Often they existed in a state of limbo, of hazy images and the suggestion of objects or ponies that the subconscious knew existed. Only when the dreamer came near did they sharpen and take their true shapes as the subconscious and conscious worked in tandem, those they left behind falling back into blurs and interpretation.
I stood atop the highest flagpole of the highest parapet. All Equestria lay before me in the pre-dawn. I smiled for how Sister dreamt so clichelély.
I closed my eyes, breathed in the glorious nothingness that was the veil separating me from the physical trappings of this dream. I may have been in the dream, but as I was, I was not yet a part of it. I remained a ghost, an observer, until I deemed it necessary I made my presence known.
As such, an observer was not if she was not observing. I dove. Soundlessly, I fell between the tall towers, and I spread my wings to catch a nonexistent wind.
I swept around Canterlot Castle's northern bastion and over the lower-reaching walls that hugged the cliff face. The gardens below took an indefinite form--blurry shapes that held the color of flowers and hedge bushes.
The vague suggestion of ponies tended to the gardens and held their posts at the gates. Not here. I dove and landed in the grand entranceway.
Here the dream took on sharper definition. Stained glass knew distinct shapes, and the pillars lining the hall had their spiral cuts. The tapestries lining the walls had individual threads to them, but those quickly faded to flat color. Sister had been here recently.
The throne room was nothing more than a blur, so I doubled back on the entrance and tried the left wing. There the portraits stared on in their stately nature, the little details of their frock collars and military ribbons and the like well defined. Closer, yet not quite.
Smell was the final and most proximal sense in dreams, and I could not yet perceive the floral scents that permeated this castle oh so delicately in the waking world.
However, I was close enough to feel Sister's presence within my breast. She was near, within the castle walls. Somewhere… below.
The thought trailed an icy finger down my back. I had never been to the lower reaches of Canterlot, but the symbolism of 'below' itself lent due omen. I hurried for the nearest staircase.
Down, down, down the spiraling stairs I ran. With every step, the pictures lining the walls became clearer, the scuffs in the velvet carpet more pronounced. The beating of my heart beat for two as I came to a stone landing, spartan as the long-abandoned outposts of the northern wilds. Twas a true dungeon I had stumbled into, and I feared for what was to come as the scent of mildew found me. Sister's tether pulled taut, into the creeping dark ahead, so I marched on.
As always,
Onward and Upward!
I vote new Luna
I'm a fairly even split between them, but my vote would be for a full version Compati.
Oh, full version!
Best princess versus EqG waifu. You aren't making this easy.
I'll abstain, but only because both sound good.
By this logic, everything I write should be about Sunset.
Hmmmm.
:thinking:
4675607
I think given the way you phrase this I have to inform you that Compati is best Princess and EqG waifu.
4676015
That one, then!
4675616
Implying you write anything
Dude, your writing was so engaging in that story, I'm kinda down it didn't win, but for what it's worth it's definitely up there on my list of awesome Shimmy fics