Deathly Things
Death is turquoise.
I found this out shortly after fate acquainted me with my... well... with my "gifts," and I've failed to lose sight of it ever since.
I believe it was at a funeral when the color first dawned on me. We were attending the wake for Octavia's ill-fated cousin, and a cloud of turquoise hung over the open coffin, devouring up the tans and blues and ambers from the mourning crowd in attendance.
It was later that I realized that I'd seen the color before. On long walks along the far end of Ponyville, I had spotted it. Hovering. Looming above the gravestones of the dearly departed. Turquoise loves to linger along the edges of cemeteries, hospitals, and the occasional run-down motel where I have to room while traveling on a lengthy tour.
It's a very passive color. Like a shadow, it clings to all of us. I normally don't sense it, because the green hum of the world drowns it out. But when night falls, and the world practices for death through sleep, I see it resonating beneath us all, behind every corner.
It's not even very melodic, really. There's no bass vibrations to it, no underlying tonal quality. Sometimes, I think it's not even a sound—not that it matters. I've long come to realize that my eyes and ears are sensitive to something that extends far beyond the limits of noise. Something deep inside me was irrecoverably changed, and I am forever in tune with the harmonies of this wild, chaotic domain.
I think this is why—perhaps—the tall, crystalline castle belonging to Princess Twilight is an all-absorbing black to me. I've experienced the same monochromia when wandering past the Royal Sisters' Palace in Canterlot. The least harmonic thing in this world is Harmony itself. It's a black mechanism, a dagger that slices necessary swaths across the cosmos in order to force chaos into hiding. I don't detest it, but I am a bit afraid of it. Power is black and impervious, as it should be.
But the only color that breaks through it is turquoise, though it doesn't do so maliciously. Like dust, it settles all over the spires of Twilight's castle. As I go on nightly walks, I see it, twinkling from the bowers, forming tiny soundless songs against the obsidian frame. Give it enough millennia, and I'm certain that it would melt away even the most harmonious of tools our culture clings to in solidarity.
I believe this because of what I see and what I hear, and I'm struggling with the greatest quest in my natural-born life—which is to be at peace with it.
Because when all is silent, and the rest of the world withdraws into its sleepy shells, and even the stars above have receded from their interstellar chorus as they're doing right now beyond the windows of my bedroom...
...the only thing that encompasses... the only aura that fills the gaps—the voids between voids—is turquoise. And it is a beautiful, mindless drift, carrying us all somewhere and nowhere at once.
Knowing this, I can't truly feel sorrowful about anything. The universe was over long before it began. I'm here to make music, and I think I feel another masterpiece blossoming in my mind.
Perhaps I'll compose in my dreams.
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...Wow...lay it all out at once, why don't ya...?
Well, I guess from what's been observed so far (assuming I'm right about blue), it makes a certain amount of sense. Past the spectrum of life, near a state of serenity, then death must be peaceful.
I'm...not really sure what to make of this at all. Harmony is black? I'd think given the fact that Harmony (or rather, its elements) is depicted as the colors of the rainbow, one would think it'd be white, not black.
Perhaps she's looking at it the wrong way. All the primary colors of light combined make white. In terms of pigment, all the colors combined form black.
Yay, House of Wires!
This feels like a true "Skirtsian" chapter, the first in a long time.
Wow, a lot of meat to cut into here for such a short chapter.
For one thing, I was right: The color-sensations aren't inherently about sound.
For another, it seems that Vinyl didn't always see these colors. Also, last chapter, it suggested she wasn't always mute (if memory serves). Were the loss of her voice and the appearance of her "gift" triggered by the same event? And if so, what relation does this event have, if any, to Octavia's having "saved her life"?
6280380
I interpreted the "harmony is black" concept as referring to the fact that harmony, understood as the antithesis of chaos, corresponds to order. And, as chaos is based on change, order would be based on stability. Harmony is solid and unyielding, like a mountain--a monolithic existential presence against which the waves of entropy crash and then retreat away from. Seeing harmony as black, therefore, doesn't seem all that strange to me, even if it isn't as... fluffy as a rainbow.
Loving this!
This is like reading poetry. It's just so beautiful and thoughtful. It's gorgeous.
Man you write such good stuff.
This is like reading poetry that fell from the highest point in heaven.
Nice job!
6280655 Harmony is actually a balance between order and chaos, a middle point between absolute change and absolute stillness.
I think than the black actually stands for a "Null" state that nullifies both.
The strange thing here is that Harmony shouldn't be a nullifying element, because then it's essentially entropy. Some change is required for balance-- as Discord says in An Investigation About Chaos, chaos seeks the weak parts of a system to destroy them, a necessary element that produces improvement of all kinds, from new philosophical schools to evolution itself.
6282498
In my own personal outlook, I agree with you. I'm just trying to figure out what's going on in the story itself. I don't think that black refers to a pure null state. The key, I think, lies in this line:
Harmony, understood as a vast power, is simply... beyond whatever it is that manifests as color in Vinyl's vision. That might even mean that Vinyl's gifts are a byproduct of chaos. I guess we'll just see.
So she's got a magical form of synesthesia which lets her see more than just sound as colors, this explains how we're being treated to such great and colorful descriptions about the world around her which is more than just sounds. Going one step above and beyond, eh Skirts?
6280380
6280655
I too would have figured that Harmony would show up to Vinyl as white instead of black, especially since there's the general perception that harmony as being "good" and chaos as being "evil" which usually have those kinds of color associations of the ying yang symbol. Was Chaos' color already mentioned?
It would appear my earlier theory of the whole "saved my life" bit being not as serious as it sounds is incorrect, or Vinyl is doing a good job at building it up to make it seem like it is. It does seem like we have a mystery worthy of a Skirts fic here, just what happened and how is Tavi connected?
Vinyl seeing Harmony as black also might explain her description of Rainbow's voice way back in chapter 3 - Kind Things as a nod to his other stories with Rainbow.
This story... it's marvellous. I like how it has a very different feel to it than your other daily series. The music accentuates each chapter's mood wonderfully, too. I remember you said in that one blog post that this wouldn't be nearly as long as East Horse or Hopeless Crush Pone, so that makes... what? Four, five hundred chapters?
Jokes aside, though, it really doesn't matter how long this will be; I'll be there to follow it to the very end.
Truth, sistah. That tower is all kinds of scary blackness. o,o
Harmony is flat. No ups or down. Just a perfect flat. The scales perfectly even. There is no love or hate in harmony. There is only stillness. A scray, all incompassing, soul crushing stillness.
OH! look! Tavi's ear makes colors!
Ear twitches are cute. Apparently deadly cute if Vinyl has anything to not say about it!
6284169 maybe she got synethsesia from chaos magic, that would make sense why she sees harmony as dark and foreboding and to me why it hurts her to have her shades off
6284169
I would think that chaos is all of the separate colors, and harmony would either show up as white or black because, depending on how you mix them, all colors combine to make white or black.
Also, I think Vinyl is wrong. Harmony would be white and Order would be black. Harmony can live with chaos, while order would force it into harmony.
So... turquoise is entropy? Interesting and why would the Breaker of Empires be echoing around the spires of the Castle of Friendship?
6404303 Because Entropy, Death, is inevitable and everywhere.Nothing can escape it, not forever.
Everything and everyone Fades away eventually. Even immortals will one day cease when all of time and space comes to a screeching halt.
But the turquoise is a background colour, it's not active, not malicious, it just is, everywhere and anywhere.
Also I apologize I just realized I am doing that thing where I reply to almost every single one of the person who read the story before me's comments.