It’s been a long millennium, and the Princess of the Night is picking herself up off the ground. She’s been getting closer with Celestia, and she’s finally learning to rely on her emotional support. They are able to talk more openly than they have in centuries.
But a feeling of sadness remains that Luna hasn’t mentioned, one that’s haunted her since her foalhood. She denies its existence as best she can, and certainly won’t talk to Celestia about it. She doesn’t know what it is or why it’s there. Perhaps the time has come to find out.
A transgender narrative. Contains depictions of dysphoria; I tried to be as true as possible to my own experience, but some may find it upsetting.
It has been a long time since I have creatively written like this. So, I'm rusty. Please criticize my work if there is something about my writing that you don't like, and don't worry about sparing my feelings. I want to improve and, if you'll pardon the pun, get back on the horse.
Well if any of my other comments are any indication brutally honest is my only setting.
alright, well I think this is very accurate. there's not really much else that can be said. It's accurate in the portrayal of the struggle to understand something like this so I think you're doing just fine with this and I would like to see where this goes.
6991064
Thanks for commenting! And for the compliment. It means a lot to me.
I have high hopes for this story; I'm working hard on chapter two. I'll get it out as soon as I'm happy with it.
6993472 wow.
That was like looking into a mirror.
I really do like this story, and I hope to see it finished soon. You seem to have gotten the confusion and pain down perfectly, and this has all the marks of becoming a great story.
Thank you so much for writing this.
6993708
I'm really glad you like it. I tried to be as accurate as possible. I've been frustrated in the past trying to explain what dysphoria feels like, because it doesn't follow logic; it's an entirely emotional thing. I like to be able to be specific and logical when I write, but it just doesn't seem doable when you're writing about your feelings. I think that frustration is going to be more evident in chapter 2, with the way it's shaping up.
Thanks so much for reading, and the encouragement. I'll do my best to see that it stays good as it goes on.
Side note: I want to read EVERYTHING in the similar section for this story. It is in interesting company!
Next chapter???? Great read so far.
7008072
Hey, thanks! I'm so glad you like it!
The next chapter is coming. I'm just worrying about it a lot; I'm an insecure perfectionist at the best of times, and I don't want the second and third chapters to let anyone down, you know? I'll have chapter 2 up soon.
7008457 I'm sure you'll do fine!
Wow ... this is a powerful start to what I hope will be one hell of a story. In a way, I'm not really surprised Luna - I'm using that as a tentative current name, I guess - can't really put what's wrong to words. Goodness knows it took me a few years - this is about where I was during the first or second season.
7016419 I know what you mean sister. It was hell for me growing up. I tell you, when I put out a request for a tans Luna, I never imagined that the result would be like this.
7019956 I bet. Sorry to hear you had a rough go of it too. *hugs* I'm glad in a way that I was well out of high school before realizing I was trans - the kids in my turn-of-the-millennium (yes, I'm old
) rural schools tore me apart bad enough as it was. And I'm kinda surprised that there aren't more Trans!Luna fics out there ... it seems like they're always the queer* one. And I'd really expect Equestria to be more accepting than Earth, though this is not my story.
*I hang around in a lot of circles that have reclaimed the word, but if it bothers anyone here, I will edit it out and refrain from using it.
7020595 oh please, I am SOOO queer, not only am I a trans-girl, but I'm also a lesbian, im about as gay as it gets. Anywho, I was also surprised that there weren't any transLuna fics floating around. I actually got into a discussion with another user about it a while back.
LINK
Of course, the discussion was perfectly reasonable and we spent many calm words exchanging ideas in a open and non hostile environment.
Or at least I did.
7020845 LOL, same, actually. Well, Trans woman ... I'm 31, which is too old to really be a girl. And trying to be an activist for my local community. That said, I know there are still quite a few LGBTQ+ folks who are bothered by the term, and I try to make sure that I'm careful about my language. Don't always succeed, but I try. Most of the times I've seen canon characters written as trans, it's been Rainbow Dash (who is the queerest pony out there by far), Big Mac, Caramel, Scootaloo, and sometimes Rarity. And really sorry you had to deal with the trolls there. It seems like they're getting worse again.
7020979 eh, it was fun
7021003 Cool ... glad someone enjoyed tangling with them. Not looking forward to the backlash I'm going to get when I post a story that I'm working on that'll probably piss on more than one third rail.
I'm fascinated, thus far.
7049647
Well, thanks!
7050316 hows the chapter coming (How do you like my new Avatar/Name?)
7132860
I do like your new stuff; I didn't even know you could do that on this site. That's very good to know.
As to 'When am I going to update this thing?', in a nutshell the reason for the delay is I got more interested in other parts of the story and Chapter 2 was not nearly as engaging in comparison. You know how it is; it isn't as much fun to write or think about the chapters where you're still setting the scene. And beyond that, I was genuinely worried that the whole chapter would come off as boring no matter how necessary it was. But just the other day, I got an idea for how I could make the second chapter a little more interesting.
For most of March, I was writing and tweaking later chapters and kind of forgot to get back to Chapter 2. Then April hit, and the due dates for my essays closed in on me. Those are past, now. All I have left to worry about is my exams.
So, in short, how's Chapter 2 coming along? Not great for a while, but better now. Hopefully now that I'm a little more interested, it'll be more interesting to read. As to later parts, there are plenty of bits I'm proud of; I was rereading and tweaking those all month. When I get to put them up, it'll be great.
7133680 well, I'm looking forward to meeting Artemis.
Just remember that not every chapter has to be gold. Even the best of stories have their weak moments.
I am glad to hear that this isn't doomed to be incomplete. That happens WAY too often on this site.
Rather enjoying this, I certainly hope more is coming (I see the last comment was a worrying three months ago). I love the interactions between Celestia and Luna; I'm a huge fan of non-romantic intimacy, particularly since the default setting of the fandom is 'They looked at each other! Shipping confirmed!'
Of course I say this while being major shipping trash but that's neither here nor thereIt's also kinda nice to see a FtM story, since most trans stories seem to be MtF. Certainly not that I have a problem with that in and of itself, and it does make a good deal of sense given the feminine nature of the source material. But still, it's always nice to see something different.
A few nitpicks, if I may. Your grammar is pretty on point, but the apostrophe before Tia is unnecessary. Nicknames never need apostrophes despite being shortened, because they are treated the same as any other name. Consider the name Zeke, short for Ezekiel. Odd example, but it took me like an hour to even think of one common nickname that didn't include the beginning part of the name
Secondly, and you may well be aware of this, but the convention in fiction is to avoid parentheses. The reason for this is subtle psychology; parentheses are too far removed from the rest of the story and can create a sort of jarring effect to the reader, making them loose track of the sentence the parentheses are part of. I would particularly recommend avoiding long parentheticals, like the two sentence one about the record. Convention is to use dashes instead. Note that 'convention' is certainly different from 'rule'. Your use of parentheses was indeed grammatically sound, so it just depends how close you want to stick to conventual guidelines.
Of course, it's your story and you should do as you will with it. While I am a huge word nerd, I'm hardly an elitist. I only point things out in case you didn't already know, and if you prefer to keep them as they are then that's fine by me. In any case, I hope to see a second chapter soon
7397092
Much as it appears to be, it is not dead; I just have issues with writing consistently. Strangely, it is totally possible to prolong a block by thinking about it too much and getting mad at yourself. 
Who knew? But yes, I do get a little frustrated at the relative smallness of the MtS (Mare to Stallion) folder. It makes sense, I suppose: statistically, there are fewer transmen than transwomen, so decreased representation for the guys is just to be expected. Still, like anyone, I like to see my own experience in a story sometimes.
Heh, yeah, it has been a while since I updated this.
Anyway ... That's a good point you make about the nickname; I only added the apostrophe to be thorough, but if it isn't needed then I will take it out. As to the parentheses, I'm not sure that dashes would read well for those changes in thought, but we can't have anything taking the reader out of the story. I think I'll just remodel those sentences. Honestly I wasn't totally comfortable with the brackets to begin with; it seemed like childish writing, but at the time I couldn't think how else to phrase it.
Er ... *pushes favourite ship under the bed*
Well ... that isn't really important to the story, we don't have to mention that ...
Thanks for the comment!
7397605
If you're the type of person who finds it helpful to talk about ideas and stuff to get creative energy going, my inbox is always open
Is this the statistic in general, or did you mean within the fandom? I'm just curious, I've never actually looked into the numbers on that.
Lol to be honest, I was wondering if it was intended to be shipping, but I assumed not since there's no romance tag on the story. Oh well, it was an adorable scene, one way or the other
7397605 Excellent chapter, friend; I look forward to reading more
Regarding the ratio of transmen to transwomen, here's a point to consider: based on my observations, the vast majority of gender roles (and the ratio of males to females) in Equestria are reversed from our world...
pre10.deviantart.net/a2b5/th/pre/i/2012/274/e/e/fluttershy_yay_poster_by_anthroxtra-d5ggyyd.png
7607730 Aw. Thanks! You were really quick on that ... I clicked the 'publish' button by accident about half an hour ago while I was formatting it ...
7607788
Oh. Would you like me to wait to read it while you finish editing?
7607793 I'm done now, you're good. Also:
s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/9e/c5/70/9ec570b5a106272febabb83e20abac7a.png
Have a cookie for being first.
7607805
Thing is, I can't actually read it right now, but I will tonight!
The picture is from Luna Eclipsed, right? I just don't remember that picture from that episode.
7608133
Yeah, it's from Luna Eclipse. It's near the end, when she jumps out of the apple-bobbing barrel. I've seen that episode ... oh so many times ... I just watched it the other day, actually.
This is spectacular.
Awesome chapter. No less than I expected.
Although it seems like some of the dysphoria that was established in Ch 1 one should have had more follow up in this chapter. Luna's pain here had less to do with dysphoria and more to do with general Luna troubles.
DON'T GET ME WRONG, I still loved the chapter and it was very well done.
I give you more with Ch 3.
Trust me I know how much of a pain writing can be but I think it turned out great. Self inflicted psychological torment is a slow build up kind of thing which I think was captured well, along with the philosophy that it's easier to give advice than to take it...all in all well done and I'm going to go read Chapter 3 now so I'll probably say something when I get to the end of that
Alright I know I said I'd say something about this chapter but most of what needs to be said I already have. well written, great exploration of the mind of one of the least understood parts of transitioning. all in all I think your story is definitely one I'm going to keep track of
7607805
The minor complaint I had with the previous chapter does not apply to this one. Excellently done, and a very real interpretation.
Glad to see this updating again
Very exposition heavy chapter. Not necessarily a bad thing, sometimes it's needed to set things up and I think you did it well. Sort of switches between exposition (Luna walking up, describing the nature of her dreamwalking, her reflections on the Tantabus) and more in scene situations (eating with Celestia, taking to Chrome Finish, reading the note from Celestia), which kept things interesting. Still, I'm hoping this has a lot of the necessary exposition out of the way, and the story can continue in a more direct way from here
Not that I'll have to wait long to find out because double update
Eager to read the next chapter, although I probably won't get the chance until tomorrow 
But in any event, good work here. I like how the chapter maintains Luna's depression (that doesn't seem like the ideal word, but I can't think of a better one) while barely connecting it to her dysphoria. I recall two references workout double checking, a vague one about how she felt the earlier with Celestia and a more direct one about not recognizing her reflection. Keeping it minimal at this early point feels very fitting, since Luna herself only knows how she feels with no idea as to why, and (at least in my experience) the negative feelings that come with gender identity issues often don't feel like they are related to one's gender identity.
</rambling>
7608729
Yeah, I get that. That was intentional, though; it's pretty rare that someone only has one thing they're worrying about, and in Luna's case, I knew I'd need to include her other problems. Besides, they're fairly important to the plot. But thanks for letting me know.
7609012
The exposition-heavy parts are most of why I was nervous about this one. They are important, I think, but they take up more space than I'd like. Weaving exposition in has never been my strong suit; I'm still working on it. With a bunch of that stuff out of the way, though, I can keep the next chapters tighter. If anything, I'm worried about rambling on too long.
My experience of dysphoria tended to be that way, too. Before knowing what was wrong, it felt very vague; disassociation, being closed off with people, not thinking much of myself ... pretty much exactly how I describe it here. I never really thought it had anything to do with my gender until long after I considered started presenting differently. It was kind of like 'Huh, I feel so much better for some reason ...'
7608760 That means a lot to hear. Thanks for that, I'm so glad you liked it!
7609053
Huh. I didn't get a notification when you tagged me. Weird.
7609064
7397092
I don't think the exposition was all that bad. It was interesting seeing how Luna rationalized everything that's happened to her.
7609064
I guess Fimfiction's glitching. But I happen to be something of a stalker and was curious if anyone else said anything about this story yet, so I wound up checking back anyway 
7609136
I also haven't gotten any notifications
Anyway, I also don't think the exposition was bad, I'm just more so looking forward to what happens now that it's out of the way. It was indeed interesting and we'll done, I certainly didn't mean to sound like I was complaining.
To hell with that whole 'brevity is the soul of wit' crap. I'm not saying it's impossible to too wordy, but honestly? Some of us like wordy stories (totes including myself in there). Rambling pointlessly? Bad. But so long as you prove interesting and the rambling has purpose, then take your time in explaining what you mean.
Aw yeah I'm a sucker for stories centered around trans headcanons. I'm really enjoying this so far and I'm looking forward to the next chapter
Me: Oh I'll read the other chapter tomorrow
Me: *spends like two weeks not reading next chapter*
Anyway, I've read it now and it's good stuff
The interactions between Luna and Celestia remain natural and make for an entertaining chapter. The idea of Luna diving into her own dream sounds promising, curious where that winds up going.
You seem to have quite a bit of this planned out (if not all of it), any idea how long it'll run?
A few genetically nitpicks (because I'm ever the word nerd):
Should all have a comma between dialog and said tag, not a period. The third one is also missing a period after 'Luna remarked'
I'm a bit confused what the parentheses are for here
I imagine it must be a stylization thing, because I can't think of a grammatical reason for them.
Of course, most readers wouldn't even think twice about these minor mistakes, I'm just very into grammar
In any case, this is another well written chapter and I'll be looking forward to more 
7641227 Alright, you've out-grammar-nerded me. Why ought those be commas instead of periods? They are complete sentences. Is it because the character continues talking after this point without making a new paragraph?
Parentheses around the ending punctuation denote sarcasm in some cases. Usually not in prose, I know, but I didn't think that was a rule, and I wanted it to be clear she was being snarky. I would like it if that came into more common usage; we could really use a widely-known textual representation of sarcasm.
I am trying a few ideas for how the personal dreamdiving is going to work; I haven't settled on the right way to describe it yet, but luckily there's a bit of precedent in the comics I can work with. As to how much of this is planned out, I roughly have the plot for the next five chapters, but that's subject to change if I think of a better way to tell the story.
7641627
The short simple answer is that said tags use commas while action tags use periods.
The longer explanation is that ' “I know exactly what you mean,” she whispered.' would all be one sentence, as said by the narrator. Imagine you're not writing this story, but telling it out loud directly to your audience. 'I know exactly what you mean' may be the entire sentence that Luna spoke, but it's now where you, the narrator, stopped your sentence. 'she whispered' is not a sentence unto itself, it's part of the narrator's sentence as a whole. This is why the 's' in 'she' is lowercase. Still use exclamation marks and question marks as normal, because those both denote something other than just the end of a sentence. Action tags are separate sentences, so those get periods between the dialogue and tag.
That's interesting about the (!), I never knew that. I'm certainly not too knowledgeable on poetry conventions
And I agree, a clear indicator of sarcasm would be nice. I couldn't in good conscience say whether it's a rule or not, given that I've never encountered it before, but it's worth noting that prose has a lot more rules than poetry so it may well be. Personally, I'd show the sarcasm some other way ( 'Luna rolled her eyes. “Oh, thank you!” she grumbled sarcastically' or something like that), but I'm of the opinion that style > grammar, so if you want to use poetic conventions as a style I say go for it.
You've reminded me I need to get caught up on the comics, I don't think I've read any with something like that (I'm very behind on them lol). And awesome, glad to hear we've got a good bit more coming here
I do so prefer longer stories, where we can really see the growth over time 
7642541 I learned something new!
You bang too often on the "for some reason" and "but she didn't understand" drums. Readers can remember; you need not specify it every time.
Else…good chapter. No spelling nor grammar errors detected.
These pictured commoners are used for public AND private functions.
("Contrary to common belief, the grand dining hall…")
As might Orion's pants.
she knew better than to avoid her thusly
I think she's up to what, at least 365,247? :tantabus:
7641227
the editor's curse afflicts me as well.
conscience
7641627
7642541
The irony or sarcasm punctuation keeps being proposed and none ever get widely accepted.
Also, there's a section on the website's writing guide (in the FAQ menu) explaining said tags.
7643639 You have a good point, there.