What is a dream?
How slowly does time pass in a timeless realm? Does it pass like a roaring river, rushing past before you have a chance to blink...? Or does it pass slowly and painfully, long and drawn-out, giving you endless time to reflect on your mistakes?
What could you remember of a land inherently beyond memory? If everything done in a dream is forgotten, lost like a wisp of smoke on the wind, is every choice and action made in a dream all for naught?
Could somepony lose themself within their own mind? Could they become only a figment of their own imagination, a wisp of a memory drifting in an endless abyss? And most importantly...why?
Huge thanks to RandomSketchMan for the cover art.
Chapters (8)
No story with a hundred views should have zero comments, though I can perhaps understand why mine is the first. I don't know how to react to this. In fact, at the moment, I'm not, I'm just saying, Hello, I've read this, this mattered. Stay tuned.
Hi there! Thanks for writing this. Let me take a stab at providing the first proper reaction to the story.
It caught me more than I was expecting; two chapters in I was thinking, "This is grabbing my attention for many of the same reasons the indie video game 'Off' did." (If you haven't played that, i dont know if i can easily explain, other than to mutter about coherent presentation of foreign qualia.) The language was a little odd — but that was part of its presentation, and largely reinforced its dreamlike quality. I even found myself thinking, "I shouldn't be liking this. My tolerance for flowery, verbose descriptions is low and the pace is deliberately languid. But it's still holding me in, so it's doing something right."
Chapter 4: "Mare Cognitum." Actual lunar location. Beautiful. Clever on multiple levels.
The start of chapter 7: THIS.
Unfortunately, as it went on, the writing *really* wore on me, like, story-killing wore. The descriptions went from florid to repetitive, and repeated themselves in ways that were unnecessary because they'd been said a different way before and now were redundantly describing the same thing in an alternate fashion. For example:
To a point, you get a Poe-ish or Lovecraft-esque effect with that sort of digression into metaphor, but when you've already established a "home, a place of rest, a sanctuary" (third repetition) and then spend an entire sentence establishing that they're beyond range of harm (fourth repetition), and then FURTHER, at great length, that it's not violent (5) and gentle (6) and caressing (7) and contentedly relaxing (8), I feel like I've just spent an entire paragraph getting hit on the head with a hammer.
This repetition got especially noticeable in the middle sections, when ponies held conversations, and dialogue got thick with tags like:
Deciding when to tell ("intrigued") and when to show (head cocking to the side, which already implies interest via body language) is admittedly difficult, but splitting the difference and using both to say the same thing is not a good answer to that dilemma. If that were an occasional problem, my complaint would be something of a nitpick, but it's pervasive.
In my opinion, this could be a great story — I mean that; there is potential here to transcend "good" — if you did two things:
1) hack the story size down from 18.5k words to, say, 15.5k, without removing any plot elements or scenes. Trim nothing but the language. Metaphor and imagery is good, but when you use it, use it briefly and boldly, at a single stroke, avoiding repetition. (See how I did it there, too? I could have said the same thing with only one of the three. A second adds emphasis. A third is pushing it.)
2) add in a few more scenes to bring the wordcount back up — beefing up the interactions with the dreamworld, one of the story's strong points; exploring the main antagonist a little more; and thematically tying together the OC and Mane Six elements, since there are some juicy parallels there waiting to be teased out. (I think the implication of the faceless pony's identity is good — Clover, right? — although the final chapter introduces a ton of new characters we never see again and who it's hard to identify. Foreshadowing all of that could give it actual impact.)
Anyway, best wishes with your writing. This is certainly a cut above the usual dreck on the site, and with some reining in of its linguistic excess, could be even better.
Best,
Horizon
I've been trying to decide what to actually say about this so that it didn't come across as just author bashing. I don't mean to shirk the fact that I found this work a struggle to force myself to read; I just think that such a reaction deserves to go hand-in-hand with some specific reasons as to why.
I think I can boil it all down to show versus tell—but from two very different manifestations.
First is the more standard interpretation regarding the prose itself. It was so amazingly overboard that it felt like it didn't want me to read it. It was almost 100% telling, which left almost nothing to get my brain working. Granted, this style was was not only normal but popular a century or so ago, but to modern tastes and literature, it's generally bland and uninspiring.
Secondly—and probably more importantly for me personally—the story presents some concepts as fundamentals without ever giving them explanatory depth. For many things this isn't an issue; you don't have to explain every facet of a world you're creating. However, where it touches on concepts that would be assumed to cross realities, those concepts need to either be explored enough for the reader to understand, or sufficiently close to our reality for assumptions to transpose. What you absolutely cannot do is make assumption that a reader can reasonably disagree with in such a way as the reader is made out to be wrong for those assumptions. This is exactly how I felt when the the text was speaking of the nature of dreams and the 'essential spark of life'. Both were phrased in such a way as to be commentaries on what is real, rather then explaining what is real for this story, and as such, they felt somewhere between annoying and insulting to read. A good story shouldn't try to tell a reader how something is in reality: at best, it should speak within the framework of the fictional world, and preferably show it, rather than tell it. In this way, I found the story to be quite, quite awful. It wasn't interested in exploring the idea—it was beating me in the face with it. (there were many similar factors, like the cause of insanity, that grated as well, but I don't think it helps to rag on them pointlessly)
That said, the author's notes clearly state the purpose of the story and with that in mind fully endorse that purpose. But as a philosopher, I'd have to say it has the feel of someone struggling to answer the question of 'why are we here', rather than realizing the question itself isn't philosophically sound.
-Scott
P.S. I really hope that doesn't come off as just being a whiny bitch. I'm always happy to answer questions and expand on my comments where required.
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"Granted, this style was was not only normal but popular a century or so ago, but to modern tastes and literature, it's generally bland and uninspiring."
Oh, that explains everything. This story was inspired by the writing style of Charles Dickens in the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, and I tried to stick to that style throughout.
Interestingly enough, the reason that I did that was because I was annoyed with the way people view fan-fiction as different from any other writing. I thought, "Why can't we call it 'fan-literature'?". So, I tried to make an extraordinary work of fan-fiction that was also an extraordinary work of literature. Needless to say, my little 'experiment' failed.
Your criticism as far as not having a line between what is real in the story and what is actually real definitely makes sense to me, and I now understand that it would probably be very annoying for the reader to read a story that tries to convince you something as an absolute truth which you might disagree with. However, (and this may be the quintessential problem with this story), I didn't write it to convince the reader of any of those things. I wrote it to convince myself.
"That said, the author's notes clearly state the purpose of the story and with that in mind fully endorse that purpose. But as a philosopher, I'd have to say it has the feel of someone struggling to answer the question of 'why are we here', rather than realizing the question itself isn't philosophically sound."
Exactly. I'm not saying this as a justification (probably more as a regret), but it has the feel of someone struggling to answer the question of 'why are we here' because it IS someone struggling to answer the question of 'why are we here'. As referenced in the opening quote and the ending author's note, the primary reason I wrote this story was to write my way out of an existential crisis...and that might be all that the story is, unless someone found it intriguing or entertaining just as a fan-fiction, which apparently one or two people did. Still, at the time that I wrote it, I thought it also had value as a 'good fanfiction'.
3033053
Thank you for the advice on how to improve. I am currently in the process of trimming the redundant imagery from the story (I'm up to Chapter 5 and so far have deleted ~400 words per chapter, trying to follow your advice). I'm glad to know that you did like the story, even if I stuffed way too much imagery into it--which I am attempting to fix now. Hopefully, by the end of my edits, the language won't wear on the reader so much that it kills the story.
The faceless pony, as well as the seemingly random five ponies from the last chapter...well...I don't know who I wanted the reader to think they are when I wrote it. Heck, I'm still not sure who the mysterious one is, although I am pretty sure that he's me as a self-insert.
Still, I'm glad that you picked up that the mysterious one was good (or at least good by the end) even though he intentionally appeared as almost completely morally ambiguous.
Thank you both for the politeness and depth of your criticism.
3006241 "Hello, I've read this, this mattered."
Given the reason that I wrote this (as explained above)....that may actually be one of the best compliments I have ever received.
...thank you.
3095961
So, after reading this story, I tried to give it some attention, both in my normal journal reviews and elsewhere. The "stay tuned" is the two comments you see above. Things didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped, maybe, but you did get some great feedback there, and that little spike in the view stats back on the 10th of this month makes me feel good. :) I hope it makes you feel good too.
As for me, well, I'm not sure whether this story was "objectively" good or not, but it was definitely an experience, and I think that counts for a lot. I for one appreciate the old literary style you used (though I won't begrudge you toning it down), and I think that might be what resonated with me the most. Like you, I appreciate literary fanfic and anyone who seeks to elevate the medium beyond what most view it as.
Really, this is a story I felt more than anything. Which is weird, since you're supposed to read them and all. But again, that matters, and I'm glad to have read your work. :)
Interesting story, very surreal and though provoking. The thick prose was well used, if a little self-indulgent at times, and the plot was nice, even if it was, at times, convoluted in ways that didn't really help the story. In the end, it was an enjoyable read, and ultimately good, and while its flaws stop it from being great, they are what made it memorable to me.
By the way, the chapter titles could have been the tracklist for a black metal album.
I'm going to echo one o the earlier comments and say tha his story was definitely an experience. I found the imagery to be very vivid and I very much like the plot structure. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the prose, which is purple enough that I got a headache (or maybe it just exacerbated one that I already had), but it did a good job of toeing the line between unbearable and stylistic. I found it really interesting how well you pulled off a style that would have made me fall asleep in almost any other case.
I think this story could have benefitted from a more developed climax. It never really felt like Applejack did anything to change the situation. That might just be because, for that scene, it's primarily just telling us about Applejack's actions without describing the feelings or thoughts behind what she's doing. "Things just happen" is how I'd have to describe that part.
Might I ask what Rarity saw in the mirror? I could figure out the other ones easily enough, but I'm drawing a blank for her. After the failed fashion show, perhaps.
I'm not sure this is a story I could read twice, but it wasn't anything close to a regrettable experience.
4597405 I'm glad you were able to enjoy it.
I can't remember what I had Rarity see in the mirror...I think it was her freaking out at Sweetie Belle, or freaking out after making dresses for all of her friends in S1. And yeah, I can totally see what you're saying about Applejack's investment or lack thereof in her own actions. Still, I am pretty sure that aspect was, like the other weird/unappealing parts, stylistic and intentional to add to the dreamlike quality of the story. In my dreams, I often feel like the character Me is always doing things and I'm sitting back watching. But that is yet another example of my adhering to a personal overly-deep ideas and screwing over the readers in this story. 
All the same, I am glad that this was memorable to you.