Notes on the Marchioness and the Urchin · 1:06pm Aug 6th, 2020
It's funny to think that this story begins with me getting involved in a popular D&D Youtube channel last year. It's just a quirky place to start. Well, that and a global pandemic.
Critical Role have been doing some interesting things to continue putting out content and interacting with each other during COVID-19, and if you ask me, Narrative Telephone is the best new thing they've come up with. It's so great, I want to do it with Ponyfics. Here's the video again in case you didn't watch it yet:
While I was listening to this story the first time, the thought came unbidden: "What this needs is more body horror."
Why? I dunno. But turning someone into an inanimate object is a great source of horror, unless you're into that, and the framing for the story came to me all in a single piece: the stage, the empty play, the bitterly accusatory narrator, the blending of character and actress. I tried not to crib too much from the original script -- and took in some of the later versions to color the story also -- but I definitely cribbed a lot. I haven't ponified too many things in my life.
One major thing to note is the original version of this story starred Rarity. I'm not sure why, save that 'turned into a jewel' is at least slightly poetically ironic for her. But of course, the question came up: what did she do to deserve this? And I wasn't sure.
Thankfully, I had all of you to suggest a replacement. :) So this is ultimately your fault, right?
"Marchioness" is the word for a female Marquis. Marquise (hard z at the end) is a type of facet cut for a jewel. I picked the name as a play on Markita Pacata, of course.
And I didn't tag this story Horror because I really don't know if it is. If I had my druthers, it'd be Dark/Random, but I suspect that also doesn't quite fit. So we're going with the easiest tag to agree on. :B
Anyway, I hope you liked my weird, experimental horror story. Thanks for reading.
