Epilogue
The screen flickers with static, then the view solidifies into a view of the floor of a dark laboratory. Puddles of water and blood glisten on the floor, Skanky’s corpse lies in a corner, peaceful in its repose.
“It’s on! It’s on! How do I move it? Do I just…”
“I think we can manifest protoplasm.”
The camera’s view jerks, showing the ceiling, then a stool, then settling on to show the far wall of the room. Two pale figures wait there — a pegasus and an earth pony, flickering and pale, but visible.
“Got it!”
“Can they really see us on this?” asks the pegasus.
“Wait I’ll flip the screen around so you can see,” says a voice from off-screen.
“Whoa,” say the earth pony and the pegasus.
“Hi, mom!” says the earth pony, waving her hoof. “Wait, that’s in really bad taste. I’m sorry I died. I didn’t want to!”
“Yeah. Mom. Dad. I miss you!” says the pegasus.
“Don’t get too sentimental. We can swing by and haunt them later,” says a unicorn with bat wings, trotting into the frame. “Okay. So. I don’t know how much of what happened is going to be covered up by the government, or the school, but we wanted to say goodbye. We also wanted to tell whoever finds this that all my videos about Eternal Enigma’s experiments are on my laptop and some USB drives in my room. My password is ‘G0REL0VER666’, all caps, with zeros instead of ‘o’s. If you don’t release it to the press, I will haunt you, your children, and your children’s children. Just so you know. Oh, also, while you’re in there, if you could do me a solid and delete all of the porn, that’d be great.”
“Like, We don’t want to be jerks, but we’re serious about the haunting thing,” says the earth pony. “Also we wrote up some notes about what happened to us in the afterlife and manifested them on Skanky’s hard drive. Being a ghost is kind of cool.”
“Luna told me that technically we’re ‘eternal dreamers’,” says the pegasus.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m a Death Goddess,” says the unicorn.
“Anyway,” says the earth pony, waving them both down, “manifesting, even for the camera, is really hard, so we’ve gotta go soon. But we really are sorry about dying. Seriously it’s not that terrible for us, but I know it’s gonna suck for the ones we’ve left behind.”
“Yeah,” says the unicorn. “We miss you all. But we’re gonna go look for Hearth’s birth mother now.”
“See you arond,” says the pegasus, waving.
One by one, the ponies get up and walk through the wall behind them.
The video continues running until the camera runs out of batteries.
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Grabbing this for offline reading while out at sea. Always a fan of good long reads.
This was superbly done. A few typos here and there, but I was on the edge of my seat once things picked up. You clearly put a lot of thought into this, and I especially appreciated the matrix reference and Pinkie quoting Lovecraft.
9104927
Thank you! I liked writing this one a lot!
And there we are! Definitely a wild ride, especially because I had very little idea of what to expect. I DEFINITELY would run this afterlife differently but, fortunately, there’s possibility for change here.
These are an odd bunch to start going Twilight Sparkle on the local metaphysics like the actual Twilight did in Equestria but eh... equestrian heroes are always an eccentric lot.
10405840
Thank you for the detailed readthrough. Reviews are terrifying for me to read -- "Oh crap I made a mistake!" -- but probably worthwhile? I don't remember this one very well. It annoys me that it's not consistent with the ' Harmonism is Christianity' of Toola Roola. I want to write another story at SCU, but that one's a romance between Dumb Ox and Silvery Rose so I REALLY need to get my head around how I'm going to make that theology work.
And also how to write a romance where no one is trying to take over the universe IDK.
Anyway, if you like this one (I'm actually not sure
) my I suggest Strange Currencies? Not SCU but sort of a similar tone to Toola Roola and this one.
10405940
Yeah, Harmonism and Christianity are superficially similar and wildly different. The biggest problem, I think, is figuring out just what what this particular branch thinks you need redemption from. We are all born Discordant and only through Faust’s Grace (and this particular church who has it RIGHT) are we brought into Harmony? I expect a lot of musical and orchestra metaphors (Faust as the Great Conductor), and a great deal of emphasis on joining the Heavenly Chorus.
As to why we are born Discordant, hmm. You could do worse than straight up cribbing from The Music of the Ainur in The Simarillion. Discord told the lie that everyone could make music alone, with no need for the chorus, and the universe descended into jangling cacophony.
The naive reading of which is a tract against individuality, the sophisticated one admitting that the universe is better for being a jam session.
Anyway, strange currencies? Will have to check it out.
10406411
You are my FAVORITE PERSON right now.
Thank you for that bit of world building! One obstacle to one of my long-dreamed-of-stories down!
10406629
You’re welcome! Hope your writing goes well!
edit: Oh, since you mentioned you weren’t sure if I liked it: I definitely did. I found the setting a bit existentially horrifying but it was, after all, a horror story. I did at times find the storytelling a bit jerky, meaning that transitions could be sudden and there wasn’t always enough time to build up atmosphere or characterization. There could have also been more foreshadowing of her Cutie Mark changing in death during the flatlines, maybe take the one bit of foreshadowing about feeling like she’s got a grub of evil in her and build on it during the flatlines in a similar way, her thanatovore nature getting stronger. But that’s details. Overall really good. The best parts were when things slowed down, like taking the time to talk about the stars on the way to the bunker or the first date with Firmament. Putting out a desperate message to Twilight on the radio show: the fact that nothing came of it means less than that she was in a state to try. The Griffin Roulette scene. That kind of thing. You also did a great job building up engagement with the setting while also having a steadily increasing sense of unease until everything falls apart.
10406637
I'm a terrible under-writer. I'm proud that with my Fallout: EquestiaI've finally written something over 100K words, but I feel like that might still be under-written, and it just has a very large number of events.
Anyway, thank you for the excellent feedback! Very happy.
You can has review!
I really enjoyed this one. It very much became a "I'll just click on this and see what it's like" story and then I ended up not being able to put it down. You did a great job with the dramedy moments and you did really well balancing out the depression aspects with the touches of comedy here and there. You really hit a lot of those feels very nicely and acutely: you magnified both the funny parts with the sad and the sad parts with the funny. And you made a horror of a monster without having to be super detailed about the whole thing.
I like Skanky Biscuits. That's not a sentence I ever thought I'd have to write but HERE WE ARE. Thanks for that.
11891637
Skanky is... I identify with her. A lot.
Anyway, thank you for the comments!
I need the egoboo.