Why 'Inquisitor'? Because 'Forty two': the most important lesson I ever learned. Any answer is worthless until you have the right question. Author, editor, critic, but foremost, a philosopher.
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When darkness and despair comes to claim you, it doesn't matter what you fight for, so long as you fight for something that matters.
"War is hell, but this story is poetry. The unnamed protagonist in battle, an uncomfortably parallel to reality, masterfully paints a picture in such a short amount of time. It is, indeed, poetry."
—Flint Sparks, The Royal Guard
---------------
A 90-minute midnight-vignette inspired by The Descendent.
Reading by Scribbler.
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Total duration
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Told ya. :D
A lovely little piece, and you can just hear Luna narrating this as you read.
4273272 Indeed. Though I appear to have gravely overestimated the average readers willingness to accept that this is Celestia...
4273406 Is it the 'eclipsed' thing? Did I mistake the implication of that metaphor that badly?
4273583 4273579
Nope, you just overestimated your average readers intelligence (AKA mine) - I feel like a complete idiot now. I read it as 'Luna with hints of Nightmare Moon' rather than Celestia. I should have realised - an eclipse obviously being when the moon blocks the sun, the golden armour, etc. Argh.
Well, on re-reading it now reads even better now that the whole 'this is Celestia thing' has clicked. It was a nice piece even when I thought it was Luna, but it's a really interesting take on Celestia that fits much better with what we've seen of her character, and reconciling that as a warrior.
4273812 That was the idea. I thought it was a nice twist to juxtapose Luna's jealousy with Celestia's genuine admiration. Almost everything we see of Luna shows her as feisty, passionate—to the point of melodrama—and generally on a short fuse. War is not a place for those who have an extensive and healthy emotional core. Luna's mental instability makes her a superior warrior, and Celestia takes that from her sister to become whole again (or maybe sufficiently damage to survive a bloody war).
That said, the wording is all intentionally vague enough that it could be any two sisters—we know that royalty and alicornication aren't inextricably linked, and this could easily be a pre-Equestrian time period. It takes the metaphor to make the hint, hence my concern that the 'eclipse' wordplay wasn't pulling it's weight.
Not the kind of pony story I'm used to reading, but I decided to give it a try due to PresentPerfect. I'm glad I did
(I mainly got the warriors right due to PresentPerfect telling in his review that there was room for interpretation, BTW; as I read the many references to Eclipse I kept remembering the "Luna Eclipsed" episode, which nearly threw me off, and would likely have made me reach the wrong conclusion if I was not forewarned. But being aware that there was a "catch" I was looking for other details, such as the way each arrow volley was dealt with.)
Hi there. I hope you don't mind, but I liked this fic so much I have put together an audio version on YouTube.
4372240 Mind??? That was awesome!
Thank you so much for doing that. Most days it's hard to be sure if I'm even noticed; to be described as 'very talented' is something of a bolt from the blue. Unexpected, to say the very least.
Reblog incoming!
-Scott
Okay I just listened to Scribbler's epic reading. This was outstanding, certainly the reading didn't hinder how amazing it was but even without her awe inspiring voice the story was phenomenal. I'm not going to beat around the bush on this one, you have earned from me an upward facing thumb and a gold star.
4387242 Well, how can I be anything less than deliriously smiley after that?
It's a funny thing, though. When I first meandered innocently onto the fanfic scene, I used to hate short stories because they just never seemed to have anything to say, so when I first started writing in generally wrote far too much. Over time, I've pared things down repeatedly, yet my more structured stories never quite pull of the underlying power I'm aiming for. In terms of mechanics, I'm pretty confident these days; Ecipsed boasts a variety of techniques that make is just as good to read yourself as to have read so expertly by Scribbler, yet I never imagined I'd pull something like this off in so few words.
The three stories that just popped into my head and manifested in words relatively quickly, however, have by far received the most outstanding actual reviews—that is, discounting likes and views and such. A Certain Point of View was the first story I had featured (Seattle's Angels) and Movements of Fire and Shadow got a reading by Ilya Lenonov. From that, I'm starting to understand what the term genius actually means, at least as the Greeks (and to a lesser degree, the Romans) meant it: an otherness that calls it's host to perform works above and beyond their usual ken.
Far from being the boast it has become on modern language, it was actually a way of deflecting ownership of popular are in much the same way that the Muses were given part ownership of great works in history. The artist wasn't great; the inspiration was great.
I'm far too feet-on-ground for such things, but I see how it came to be—I just see it is a reflection of what creativity can achieve when unchained by doubt, judgement, fear, and self-attack. Each time I do something like this I feel like I am fractionally more free to claim ownership of that success, rather than attributing it to external factors or relying on things like upvotes to generate a sense of achievement.
Of course, it also sets the bar against which I measure myself ever higher, but I think I can live with that :)
-Scott
4388292 Well that was verbose... admittedly that is one of my least favorite things about giving praise. I don't like people thinking I'm putting them on a pedestal. I'm really glad you've got a level head on this one, it makes it more likely that you will not only continue to write, but also continue to grow as a writer.... and that will be something interesting to see.
4388491 HA! I do love being verbose.
Very nice. Very powerful. I could feel the emotion in the words, even though I didn't empathize; of course, me not empathizing is like a fire not being cold. It doesn't diminish the power of the story.
Where that power is aimed, I'm not sure. I felt inspired from this -- "I am no warrior, yet I fight because to to otherwise would be cowardice" -- though I'm weird and feel odd emotions from things.
One issue:
"No one" is not hyphenated.
4631898 Ahh, the joys of the US/European divide. 'No-one' is relatively common over here. I like the unambiguous nature of the hyphenated form, but I didn't really know there was any contention until I had to look it up just now.
Now that I know, I confess than simply doing whatever the Americans aren't used to makes me smile far more than it should. One day I'm going to pay for all this bad karma...
Anyway, thank you for reading! I've been very pleased at how many people seem to to have really gotten into this one.
4632046 I'm almost entirely certain that they don't do that in the US.
Are you sure you don't mean world/Britain divide? British English has an awful lot of differences from English everywhere else, at least AFAIK.
Before anyone digs through my history and sees that I'm American, I am! But I learned English from two European parents.
Anyway, I'll be waiting in the wings for that karma to be the b
h she is.
4632058 I meant that they don't do it in the US. It's a fairly modern English phenomenon (do, do, do-do-do), mostly used by the media for clarity in fragments to distinguish between the personal 'no-one=nobody' and the general 'no one noun' as far as I can tell.
I'm given to understand that it is the less common form, but I think I'm just a natural born contrarian.
4632090 And yet you use English, n-- *sees site rules*
Oh.
Still, it bugs people (?) like me, since I can normally fix things that are errors like that.
And... Really? It's easy enough to distinguish between "nobody" and "not a single one". Context is magic. I'm not saying you can't, but it assumes that people are stupid.
4632124 We are talking about the corporate media here. Assuming stupidity seems like fair game when appealing to the bigoted and ignorant is your game.
Personally, I just think it's nicer. The ins and out of where I picked it up from are more of a shield to hide behind.
Yeah. See me and my lofty intellectual defence.
Still, I didn't know before and now I do. Day well spent in my book!
4632147 You could have just lead it off with "I saw it somewhere legitimate and liked it so I taked it and now it's mines" and I would have totally been OK with it.
But now we brought politics into it. And the fact that corporate media assumes the average person is of less than average intelligence, because we needs totally pull up the average smartness factor that much.
So, in the interest of covering up that mistake with a flame war, I say:
BARAK OBSMA IS STEALING ARE JOBS AND IS EVEL AN HE IS THE ZION FAGET TURRIST AL KAIDA AND IS WORST PRESIDENT BECAUSE HE DEMOCRAP
All typos completely intentional. And incredibly cathartic.
*slinks away from the slings and arrows of outrageous stupidity, to mangle Shakespeare*
Regarding the narrator's identity, I figured it was Celestia, but there were times when I thought I was being mislead (likely that you were using psychology, rather than outright deceiving me). I'd say you made things pretty clear and I was just adding that (very minor) confusion myself
I don't see anything wrong with "no-one". It's kinda like an Oxford comma. And newbiedoodle shouldn't complain something like that bugging him when he's gonna use words like "taked" (though he did say all typos were intentional...)
I wouldn't worry about your karma; it's not real anyways
4372240
yet another awesome reading that gives me a new story to fav
wow. just, wow. i listened to scribbler's reading of this and, man. it shows just the kind of respect celestia had for luna, thus cementing just how much it hurt her to have to banish her later on
Hey, I wrote a review of this story. In case you are interested, it can be found here.
Overall, I really liked the atmosphere, and the reading adds a lot to the effect.
5679175 I read this story because of Soge's review, and it's very good.
yes indeed yet another gud fenfick
nom nom nom Luna iz steal best puny dough!
Describes how pointless war is.
Excellent and thought provoking piece, really well written.
This is surprisingly powerful for such a short peice. This kind of character background piece is one of the great things that only fanfiction can really pull off.
I realized as I reached the end that no characters had been explicitly named, but I read it as Celestia the whole time. There is that one spot where her gold armor was mentioned so I'm pretty confident in that interpretation. The way this makes me feel how she admires her sister while at the same time she could never be like her makes their bond feel real.