I’m not interested in making enemies. I told this mare I owed her a favor and an introduction to you. She’s getting both, whether you like it or not.
That hurt? I’ll do it again if you don’t behave.
Spike’s claws dragged along the floor, cutting shallow scratches into it. His face slumped into a sullen scowl. Rarity grimaced momentarily, but soon resumed her practiced smile. “Well, well,” she said, “I’m not disappointed, Miss Sparkle. You have quite the dragon.”
Twilight smiled thinly. “Thanks. You wanted to call in a favor?”
“As it so happens, I do. But first, would you mind if I took a look at—what is its name?”
“Spike,” the dragon rumbled. “My name is Spike.”
Rarity inhaled sharply. “Oh! It talks! Well, isn’t that darling?” she said, walking around him slowly, examining the dragon with a professional eye. “Fascinating,” she murmured, and stroked his abdomen. He flinched, but Rarity didn’t seem to notice. She turned to Twilight.
“And can he breathe fire?” she asked, a bit breathlessly.
Spike smirked, and belched flame at a couch. It erupted in flames. Twilight seemed about ready to do the same thing, but Rarity was entranced. “Oh, my,” she said softly. “Miss Sparkle, how would you feel about allowing me to put Spike on retainer? I can pay quite generously, and let’s just say that my favor would have been more than called in.”
Spike looked nervously at Twilight. “No deal," Twilight said. "I have bits. I still need information.”
“Information?” Rarity asked, absent-mindedly. “Oh, of course! Yes, I think we can come to some sort of reasonable exchange.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
“Oh, I realize why you might be skeptical. I can assure you that you’ll want to hear this, however. Let’s say you give me one night with Spike—”
Spike looked slightly terrified, and backed towards Twilight.
Rarity's mouth opened briefly in surprise. “Not like that, although I can imagine that some of my clients with a taste for the exotic—never mind. In any case, one night with access to Spike, and I inform you what I heard. If you want to know anything else—who said it, or why—and I want Spike on retainer.”
“Not a chance,” Twilight said.
“You want to hear this, Twilight. This is my final offer.”
“If I like what I hear, you can have Spike. Otherwise, no.”
Rarity sighed theatrically. “Oh, very well.”
“Go ahead.”
“I could go into all of the little minutiae of how and when and why I know this, but let's just cut to the chase, shall we, darling? She's back. I think we both know who.”
Twilight’s mouth opened in surprise. “Who told you that?”
“Ah ah ah,” Rarity chided. “All things in good time, my dear. Do I get Spike tonight?”
Twilight nodded.
Prince Blueblood didn’t know it yet, but he was having a very bad night. He slammed down the last of his applejack and tossed the bottle to the side, where it mingled with various other refuse strewn across the suite. He looked around distrustfully. “Goddamn plebs,” he said to nopony in particular. “They didn’t even clean my—” He looked up at the ceiling, which had some sort of mysterious stain on it, and tried to come up with the right word. Having just finished a bottle of applejack by himself, it wasn’t easy. “Room. Suite. Thing.”
At that point, the door to his suite slammed open. Being thoroughly drunk, Blueblood didn’t see anything particularly off about this. “About time!” he yelled, slurring the words. “You goddamned plebs don’t even... things.”
Rarity’s nostrils flared as the stench of the room wafted towards her. She grimaced. “Spike, would you be a dear and clean up this room? Do try not to set the hotel on fire, though.”
He grinned and sent a flame careening across the floor, consuming the garbage before it and missing the intoxicated unicorn by a few inches. The severity of Blueblood’s position was beginning to seep its way into his sloshed brain. “Oh, hello...” What was her name? “Rarity! Rarity! It’s so nice to see you again!”
Rarity eschewed her usual smile. “If I recall correctly, Mister Blueblood, you owe me somewhere around fifty thousand bits. I’d appreciate it if you could pay that now.”
“Pay you for what?”
Rarity frowned. “You know perfectly well what you owe me money for, Blueblood. That was a business transaction, not whatever else your addled mind construed it to be, and I am collecting on my debts.”
“Oh,” Blueblood slurred. “Don’t even pretend with me, Rary. You know you loved every minute of it.”
Rarity pursed her lips. “Spike, would you kindly pick up Mister Blueblood up and bring him over here?”
Spike nodded, and stomped towards the prone Blueblood, who was vaguely remembering that you could do something with a bottle to make it into a serviceable weapon. Unfortunately for Blueblood, he really was very drunk, and ended up smashing the bottle and stuffing his handkerchief into it. “Stay back, you monster thing!”
“Really?” Spike said, and reached for Blueblood’s hind legs. He held the wriggling Blueblood aloft and upside down. “This good?”
“That’ll do quite nicely, Spike. Bring him over here.”
Blueblood came face to face with Rarity, although considering that was by dint of dangling from Spike’s hand, he was at a distinct disadvantage.
Rarity leaned in towards him. “I want my money.”
Blueblood laughed drunkenly in her face. "We all want things."
“Drop him," Rarity said tersely.
Spike did, and Blueblood fell to the floor. He tried to get up, gave up, and decided that groaning would be a better course of action. Rarity sat down on her haunches next to him. “I’ll be leaving now, Mister Blueblood. If I find that fifty thousand bits have been wired to my account within the next four hours, then I will not be coming back, and nor will Spike. If that doesn’t occur—well, let’s just say that a few broken bones will be the least of your worries.”
“Come, Spike,” she called. “We’ve quite a few more places to visit tonight.”
I’d call it a propaganda coup, but that’d be understating it, if anything. Imagine it, Princess! The sun rising above the horizon for the first time in a thousand years, exposing the depths Nightmare Moon’s brought our country to. The decay, the filth—all out there for everypony to see.
That too, yes. It shows Nightmare that you’re still out there, and she hasn’t found you yet. She’ll be infuriated. Infuriated ponies make mistakes.
We told her you flew towards the Badlands. We figured that’d keep her away from ponies.
Pinkie had felt a doozy coming. She wasn’t sure what it was—not yet, anyways—but the mere fact that it was on its way gave an extra spring to her step.
She grinned absentmindedly at random faces in the crowd. She had a feeling—not Pinkie Sense, but something altogether more nebulous—that whatever was coming, it was going to be fun.
Pinkie bounced down the avenue. She bounded to a fountain in the middle of the street, and waited patiently. Well, patient by her own standards, which meant that she blinked after fifteen seconds and began bouncing around, looking for fun to be had.
Fire was fun, but Pinkie hadn’t been able to reacquire any matches since her last run-in with the police, and she didn’t have any sticks to rub together, assuming that worked. Did it? Pinkie assumed a thoughtful expression, and started in on a nigh-incomprehensible train of thought.
She almost didn’t notice as the sun rose above the horizon. The screams tipped her off, though.
One could call Pinkie what they liked—arsonist and psychopath were fairly frequent epithets—but she wasn’t afraid of much. She bounded towards the sun. On all sides, ponies stampeded away from it. Some of them were crushing into a subway tunnel. She heard muffled screams from inside there. Pinkie ignored them. She knew an opportunity, and this was one.
Pinkie was in a world of her own. She vaguely remembered smashing some windows, starting some fires, and ingesting some questionable substances, and chocolate. It was exciting, this sun business. She darted towards a trash can, knocked it over, and giggled. This is fun! She bounced through the sunshine, casting a long shadow through the empty street.
She heard a tired voice, one she recognized. “Don’t hurt the kids. We don’t know anything. Please, don’t hurt them.” It was Mr. Cake.
Pinkie ran towards Sugarcube Corner as fast as she could. The name was a bit of a misnomer—just a little shop among many, and it wasn’t even on a corner. Still, it had been home once.
She peeked in through a window. There was a Night Guard there, a unicorn, grinning smugly as he pointed his gun towards the Cakes, who were cowering in a corner. Mr Cake stood in front of his family in a futile effort to shield them. I gotta do something, Pinkie thought. An idea came to her, perfect in its simplicity. Of course, that was by Pinkie’s standard.
“So, a pegasus and a unicorn?” the Night Guard said. “Looks like somepony likes to have some fun on the—” His taunt was interrupted by a shaky, but determined blow to the throat from Mr. Cake. The Guard knocked him back easily, and held the baker in place with his magic. “That was a bad decision,” he rasped, and raised his gun.
“Carrot!” Mrs. Cake squeaked.
The door opened. “Happy birthday, Mister Meanie Guard Pony!” Pinkie cried, walking in with a cupcake. It held a single candle. “I made a cupcake for you!”
She looked curiously around the room. “Oh, I guess you’re busy right now. I’ll just have to blow out your candle for you!” Pinkie puckered her lips, inhaled deeply, and exhaled.
A jet of flame erupted from the candle, reaching out to lick the Night Guard. He caught on fire easily enough, and screamed and screamed. He tried to turn around, fell, and rolled on the hard concrete floor until he finally went still. His body smoked quietly. The acrid stench of burnt fur and flesh filled the room.
Mrs. Cake muttered “Oh, Luna,” over and over again, holding her foals. Mr. Cake stared blankly at the corpse smoking in his shop. “Pinkie, “ he said, not looking up, “what the hell did you just do?”
“That Guard pony was being a mean meanie-pants, so I stopped him!” Pinkie cheerfully explained, a wide smile on her face.
Mr. Cake turned his blank stare on Pinkie. “T-t-hank you. For saving my family.”
“You’re welcome! So does that mean I get to come back?”
His eyes focused a little, and he smiled weakly at her. “I’m so sorry, Pinkie.”
“I don’t, do I?” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “Why not?”
Mr. Cake sighed. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I think you can work it out from there. How’d you do that?”
“Kerosene in my cheeks! I have stashes of it all around Ponyville in case of... fire-related... emergencies...”
“Kerosene in your cheeks.” Mr. Cake sighed. “Mrs. Cake and I care about you, Pinkie. You know that. But you’re scaring the hell out of us, because you just don’t stop. There’s nothing you won’t do if you think it sounds fun. And we just can’t...”
“Bye,” she said, and turned to the door.
“Please, Pinkie. Don’t hurt anypony.”
There was no response but a sad chuckle, and she vanished into the sunlight.
Thou expected this?
Damnation, Shining. WE WERE NOT EVEN TOLD THIS WAS A POSSIBILITY!
It certainly sent a message. It sent a message that we are dangerous, that we are not to be trusted, and that she is all that stands between them and utter madness and destruction.
We are unconvinced. The sun will stay down, Shining, until we have had the opportunity to assure my little ponies that it shall not harm them.
“I have three questions,” Shining Armor said. “First, why are you on my ceiling? Second, why shouldn’t I shoot you? Third, who are you?”
Pinkie giggled. “Well, first of all, I’m on your ceiling because rooms look super-duper cool like this. And you shouldn’t shoot me because I want to help her. I’m Pinkie Pie,” she said, dropping off the ceiling with a series of pops and landing gracefully on the floor with an improbable midair flip.
Shining looked wary, but holstered his gun. “Help who?”
“The mare that raised the sun, silly! I know she’s somewhere around here.”
Shining’s eyes narrowed. This mare was dangerous, plungers on her hooves notwithstanding. “You’re going to have to get very specific about how you know what you know, very soon.”
Pinkie smiled. “So she is here! Wow, even I didn’t expect that to work.”
Shining facehoofed. “So you—I—”
Pinkie grinned even more widely.
“You said you wanted to help her?”
“Yupperdoodles! Well, not me, really. I want you to help me help somepony—or would that be somebody—help her. Ooh, that sunrise was fun fun fun!”
Shining smiled. “We’ll talk about this. Pinkie.”
Rainbow Dash was unconvinced. "Shining, she's crazy. This isn't even your ordinary crazy. This is 'burn everything and giggle through the ashes' crazy. This is not somepony you can use, which is, by the way, a subject I'm way too familiar with."
Shining sighed. "Dash, we need you to help out with this."
"We don't. You do. Just because you screwed up with the sunrise—and I could have told you ponies were going to go crazy, if you asked. That's on you, Shining, not me! Solve your own problems!" Dash stared at Shining, daring him silently to contradict her.
"You'll do it," he said.
“I can’t. You’re not thinking straight, Shining. I have to stay here with Sparkle.”
“Sparkle.” Shining said the name as if it were a curse. “How do you like your promotion, Dashie?” He chuckled humorlessly.
“It’s funny,” Dash intoned. “I’m going to kill her eventually, and I still like her better than I like you.”
“Really?” Shining asked.
“I’ll do my job, Shining. You want uniforms to get into Canterlot? Fine. But I’m not blowing my op so you can get back onto Sunbutt’s good side. I stay here. You send Fluttershy. She’s quiet and obedient. I bet you like that.”
“Fine,” he spat.
“Wonderful,” Dash said sardonically. “Now, who the hell are you breaking out of Canterlot?”
“Somepony named Discord, apparently.”
Oh o, here comes trouble.
Aww shit, Celestia's back after a thousand years and now Shiny's on a jailbreak mission for Discord. Shit's going to hit the fan, and it's gonna get EVERYWHERE.
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I have no doubt. I still remember your last reply.
Notes on this chapter:
-This took me a little longer than usual to write. Lots of moving parts to keep track of and all that. The next chapter should be out a bit sooner (no promises, though).
-Big Spike is really fun to write.
Shining Armor in this fic is one of those military idiots.... as much as I like Shining as the goofball hero usually- I approve.
Yay!!! This just keeps getting better! And hell yes. Discord. Yes. Yes. All the yes-es for you sir.
Discord and Pinkie Pyro ... what a team they'd make.
Pinkie Pyro, lol
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I look forward to confounding your expectations.
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Thank you very much.
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Ooh, that'll be fun to write.
Very interesting! You know, it's kinda ironic that Prince Blueblood is the only character who acts even remotely close to how he does in canon. He was a drunken lout in canon, and he is here, too!
Also, Pinkie...
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I envision Blueblood in both universes as having his living expenses paid by the royalty because he's in some way related to the Princesses (adoption? beats me), and given a lot of leeway because he's a prince.
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Technically, I did—the scene in the beginning establishes the basic circumstances of the rest of the story. What you're looking for, I think, is a description of what happens after that for the next thousand years.
Hell no. That ruins immersion and doesn't fit with the style of the story.
It's usually meant to be relatively clear who's talking, but not necessarily who they're talking to. It's somewhat harder when the characters don't have obvious mannerisms (Rainbow and Twilight spring to mind) but I've tried to leave at least small hints.
You definitely raise a number of valid points here. In fairness, I have introduced a few limitations to the Stare: they just haven't been explicitly introduced. She has to maintain eye contact and essentially break a pony's psyche to get them to kill themselves. On the other hand, smaller things like handing a gun to her take much less effort to force. I'll admit that I'm slightly making up the rules of this (the depths of Fluttershy's Stare haven't exactly been plumbed in canon) but I'm being careful to keep her from being overpowered. She and Pinkie may talk shop in the next chapter, if that helps.
If you like the story, please don't forget to upvote.
This review is brought to you by Zero Punctuation Reviews
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/124490/through-a-glass-darkly
Reviewers:
Dragacane (Black)
Twitterdick (Red)
Do you like Hitler? Um, I mean do you like Nightmare moon? Nevermind.
Hi, I’m twitterdick. I’m also here.
‘Through a Glass Darkly’ is given to us by SpaceCommie as has much as it strives to make a dark world it falls at character development so hard its nose is now bleeding.
So is my head. What a terrible metaphor.
You might think the I have shown all my criticism points early but I ask you, when you go to a chinese restaurant you know what you ordering but you do know what is in it?
Dead pandas and causes for diarrhea.
A rough description of the premise is that…. well remember how there was that battle and Nightmare Moon wanted everlasting night was banished to moon? In this story Celestia lost and is banished to the sun, better pack some fucking good sun cream.
How kind of you to give them that premise, Dragacane, because it was pretty evident SpaceCommie couldn’t be bothered to. This otherwise absorbing story received a massive hairline fracture when I didn't really know what the fuck was going on for the first few paragraphs. There's a difference between having a mystique about the narrative and not telling your audience jack-shit, SpaceCommie.
Some crucial details are not adequately addressed in the opening, evoking suspicions similar to the origins of chinese food meat. Nightmare escaped the moon by using stars to help her but either Celestia didn’t have help or it is left out. Another one is how do they get heat, oh wait…. well according to the story Nightmare also has the power to control heat my grabbing it and moving it to the forever night places of Equestria but that still doesn’t explain how photosynthesis works with no sun. SpaceCommie also has a thing going where he does only shows dialogue of one character, not only is this confusing by itself but it is in italics what is hard to see the first time you read it and there is talking about the Pinkie sense but you never know who it is and why they are talking about it.
I know exposition is hard to weave into a story, but that doesn’t mean you should omit it entirely. “Through the Glass Darkly” has a rocky opening because there is not enough information granted to the audience for them to understand the plot as it begins. I remember rereading the first few paragraphs to see if there was context I missed, and remained utterly confused until about midway thru the first chapter. Plot points - like Luna overthrowing Celestia, the kingdom being in a state of vicious martial law or there being an active resistance - are all introduced but not effectively established. Moar description, SpaceCommie!
This is there part I look at the better parts of the story like where I ordered my food and I can see the food being brought to my table and I looks good.
Mmm. Dead panda...
Many writers find it hard to make the world around the characters feel somewhat realistic, like if Equestria was really taken over by Nightmare. It is dark, sad the stuff it meant to be and I can say that it does do a good job at that. I did try to immerse myself in this world but I only go so far before getting kicked out from a small conversation what I don’t I have a problem with but the characters who i’m getting to, kicked me out with the force of the real Applejack’s buck to a tree.
SpaceCommie's good with language and despite the brevity of later scenes I never really felt like they were underdeveloped. Keep a dictionary on hands, kitties, because there's more then one fancy-pants word that you're going to have to look up. But I respect their use for they add flavor and paint wonderful connotation within scenes. Conveying an idea in as few words as possible reflects a firm handling of the craft, and SpaceCommie is by no means a bad writer. I’d argue he/she needs more practice as a story teller.
Now the big final of hate of me asking what is my beef really made of.
Dead panda.
Most of the characters are just bland. They act and feel like they really grew up in his dark place but they just don’t have much to them.
They sorely lack juxtaposition. Their base personalities as presented in the context of the narrative are interesting, but they become chained to those base personalities and are permitted no room to grow. If your fat father screams into your face all the time, those screams lose all impact and they become dull and repetitive. The characters as they are presented are enough to upheave your expectations when you first witness them, but they are forced into a plot that doesn’t really know what to do with them. It’s like the story hides behind it’s interesting premises in order to avoid growing or changing to any significant degree. Events are driven by circumstance, not character choice, and it limits the impact of the characters indeed.
Twilight walks around doing what the story wants her to do. AJ is so bland you could compare her to a sheet of paper with two teardrops on it. With Rarity I couldn’t shake the feeling she owns a brothel, with her line of work and she just is a sells of information to Twilight, nothing else. Spike is as much a character as a slave is important, Twilight does show an emotion for spike for a split second thought. Rainbow has the most amount of personally out of all of them, she is strong and independent, what you would need in this world and fits her well. We are up to Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. We are a good way into the story and we know shit all about them or in the case of Fluttershy also her actions but I do think she is one of the terrorists.
Let them make choices, SpaceCommie. Decisions reveal who a character truly is. Their base personalities have been established and follow an intuitive string of logic, but your characters become less interesting because they’re repetitive and confined. The characters exist to serve the plot, and it should be the other way around. The decisions of the main characters, particularly in a story as character heavy as this one, should fuel the plot.
At the start I asked you about Hitler and Nightmare and I don’t like how Nightmare is done in the story. Put it simple she is Hitler but without a motivation that isn’t be evil because fuck you At least Hitler knew why why he was killing all those people, he was still bad but he had a motivation. A villain needs some sort of motivation even if it is that it is fun. I won’t be surprised if she starts killing little bunnies just because the story wants it. She also does the same thing as the real Celestia, when the big job is done she turns up and takes a bit of the glory and to let you know I find that annoying.
What he’s saying is that the man often credited as the most evil human in history is a far more interesting character then the Princess Luna exhibited in this story. There's no string of logic that turns her from feeling under-appreciated to enacting the final solution, and all interest is lost. A villain that runs around slitting the throat of kittens simply because the plot demands they be an evil bastard does not make for a good villain. The audience has to be able to empathize with their ideals and motivations, otherwise all dramatic tension is lost. Its far more terrible and effective to see a character we can sympathize with commit atrocities then one that we can never conceptualize becoming.
Now I ask you SpaceCommie “WHAT IS MY MEAT MADE OF BECAUSE THIS IS DEFINITELY NOT BEEF!”
Dead panda. And failure to establish and utilize good ideas. "Through a Glass Darkly" is a horse that stumbled from the gate, gained decent momentum then crashed to the ground under it's own weight. Get some good characters up in this bitch!
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Thanks for that. It's good to know what I'm doing wrong. I'll probably try to address some of those issues after the next chapter comes out. Exposition in particular.
And I've actually been chatting with my prereader about the lack of characters making things happen. It'll start to change.
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...Then turned out to be two pandas in a horse costume.
I'm deeply sorry. I respect your work as reviewer, but I just couldn't not do that terrible joke.
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Ouch.
For the record, this story has a 95% positive rating and until I literally asked for a "review in the meanest way possible," entirely positive feedback in the comments.
Canterlot's Finest brought me here now, about to read it :D
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Thanks for the fave!
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Yeah, Twilight pulled some strings and promoted Dash up quite a bit.
If I recall correctly, I started out basing the ranks on the Soviet military. That was too hard, and I've been relying on a former (US) military friend of mine to supply the rank an officer commanding the number of people I'm thinking of would have.
I'm aware of how silly it looks when people screw up ranks in their stories, and I've been trying to get it close enough for superficial plausibility.
>center justification
Why...
S-somepony named Discord? Oh goddess, as if Equestria needed more chaos.
When I read the Discord part only two words came to mind 'OH ShT!!!!'
YES.
Oh, god. Pinkie is terrifying (even moreso than I'd expected, because she's still a lot of the things that make her Pinkie Pie, much moreso than Fluttershy here is Fluttershy.) And Shining wants to release Discord? Whose side is he on again? Oh, Shining, you do not know how to run a PR campaign...
It's amazing how you've kept the Mane Six's personalities intact while making them the complete opposite of their Elements. It's a characterization masterpiece, really.
Just gonna leave this here.
i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/166/224/memes-the-most-intersting-pyro.jpg
You really do know how to end your chapters on snappy one-liners.
The small conversations in italics are my biggest stumbling block. Seriously, when you keep changing who's talking in those brief scenes that don't have a reason to exist (seriously, the one at the top of this chapter tells us literally nothing that we can't infer from what happens in the actual paragraph), it falls to the voice of the character to tell me who's talking, and as Dragacane so eloquently put it, most of your characters don't have a distinct enough voice for that.
Discord?
Well, it's time for the Apocalypse now.
Oh this just gets better and better with every line I read
There's a reason Celestia's my favorite pony. Here you go.
You really gotta stop dropping bombs like this, SpaceCommie, I'm gonna start wondering who the real psychotic pyro is around here.
Freeing discord? Shining is really going to regret that one. And NM. And almost all of equestria.
Wow and people call NMM the psycho? No it is
SpaceCommieCelestia, for coming up with the idea to free Discord! At least NMM seems to be keeping some semblance of order!Hmmm..interesting.
It seems our so called *Freedom Fighters* Killed more people than our guards...
And WE`RE the bad guys here.