There's a bad moon on the rise... · 3:26am Dec 29th, 2021
... and it's going on day 4 in the box of shame.
Today at work I was being productive and busy, working on a Robinson 44, when a pilot just randomly walked into the hangar, and gave me some beer and whiskey shooters because "they had been on the plane for a bit too long" and left.
I'm at my dad's, just loaded up the wood burner because the furnace is still fucked.
Lets do this.
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So, before we get into the actual story, lets talk a little about how it came to be.
I was up at deer camp, hung over, didn't know what day it was, and we had been eating food with onions for the last several days to the camp smelled horrible from the amount of gas that was being released.
Pretty sure I destroyed two pairs of underwear.
Anyway, so during one of those freak moments where I got service that wasn't in the outhouse, I saw I got a message from good ol' Shakes.
Good guy, but man I worry sometimes.
So I got my person, and I got my assignment. Nightmare moon romance with human.
Luna, as a general character, I have some trouble with because more so her speech patterns than her actual character. I can get into the old mentality character well enough, and being out of the current times and old school come natural to me.
But it's that damn speech, man. So Nightmare Moon is kind of Luna but more angsty or horny, take your pick. I knew I needed something to make this idea, and story, unique.
Naturally on the radio someone talked about 8 track players, and it got me thinking... man, what if the human was from a 70's Apollo mission? Thus the idea came. I had another idea that I briefly chatted with Fregz about, but lets be honest, anytime I can flaunt how old I actually aren't while also showing how old I am is a win in my book, so I decided to go with that idea.
I wrote down a very quick, general idea, and then went about my day of drinking, cutting/splitting wood, drinking, shooting, drinking, and drinking. After this, and getting home, surviving the drive to home, and then returning back to work where we're understaffed because fuck government handouts, I got busy.
Then, que a week or so before the due date, and I'm FINALLY getting with Fregz to work on an actual outline for the fic.
Now, remember this, because about half of the actual story ideas were used.
So dawn of the 24th, and I realized I was in trouble. I had to bug Fregz to get his story wrapped up, then jumped into mine.
I had a half day that day, so when I got home from work it became write mode for me. I worked on it all evening, and for the first time in a long time, I was feeling really good about myself, and my writing. It had been a while since I'd had such a writing session.
Then I woke up on the 25th and realized I had over 9k words.
Oh. Well, shit.
So I had to decide then and there, do I scrap what I got for the future and write a quick fluff romance, or keep up what I'm doing.
BY that time Pascoite got around to reading and editing because I suck with ye olden languageth. Then I proceeded to pre-read his basically perfect story where I found one typo.
Meanwhile I had 130ish suggestions in my gdoc.
Fuq.
So after a lot of PANIC! and talking with a couple friends about it, I decided to take any punishment I'd get and go through with posting it as I had it.
At 10k... no, wait 12k... no no, 13.5k... fuq fuk phuck... 14.5k words later, I posted on the morning of the 26th and went about my day at my dad's house.
Cutting and splitting wood for the next 8 hours at my dad's house.
And here we are, it's over 3 days later and the damn thing is in the top spot because reasons.
As an aside, I also have gained a lot of followers, to the point I jumped back to position 17, and I'm on my way to 16 where I was for many years before The Abyss went on his rampage.
I think the highest I got was 15, but honestly I only ever care when I'm drunk or don't care, so that's like 90% of my time of the day.
Priorities, yo.
Just threw another couple logs, some empty plastic whiskey bottles, and my dirty socks into the wood burner, so we should be good for a while.
Now, that I'm done with all this drabble and bullshit, lets actually talk about the story, shall we? Onwards!
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So, the general premise of this story upon it's conception was I was inspired by the ideas of a 70's era Apollo mission going to the moon, but then somehow ending up on the wrong moon. First thing I did was some research on the missions that actually happened.
We had up to 17, then stopped. I realized then that I needed to AU tag this, and make up the ideas we had more than that, so I went with Apollo 20. Then came the song the story was inspired with, Bad Moon Rising by Credance Clearwater Revival. I have a couple of their LP albums and 8 Tracks, and this is one of my favorite songs. The idea of having the human served in the Viet Nam conflict was also inspire by their song Fortinute Son.
Seemed fitting, anyway. Plus a lot of aspiring astronauts were in the air force/navy, so it worked out. Probably.
This is when my research started to faulter, because then I started having to sacrafice the time to actually writing the fic. I heavily bullshitted a lot of it, but also drew upon my knowledge of pre-1980's technology and went along with it.
I remember seeing a video of an astronaut in space with a 8 track player, and that stuck with me for a long time, so I felt like that would be relevant, and fun, because I've had 8 tracks since I was in elementary school. I have a large collection, lemme tell ya...
Actually no, it's best we just kinda... sweep it under the rug. Trust me.
I can still hear the haunted echo's of Neil Diamond on my 8 D cell battery powered portable 8 track player that begun to die while I was in the shower...
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Fregz had to instill in me a lot of Nightmare Moon's character, because otherwise I was going to just write Luna, and as much as they're the same pony, they're not the same pony. He's very good at breaking down a character, and what makes them tick. Gotta say that a lot of what Nightmare was in this fic would not have been had he not helped me shape her into the more cold hearted bitch that I did.
And if I'm being honest, I did her injustice by rushing her character change, but you readers are happy so I'm happy.
Luna is a character that's more lost, stuck behind in the times, and scared to push herself back into the lime light. Nightmare Moon is full of herself, headstrong, and in charge, and wants everypony around her to know she's in charge. Otherwise, their personalities are quite similar!
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The green goop was inspired because we made green Jell-O for Christmas, and we had been watching Christmas Vacation and Aunt Bethany is my favorite person in the world, and I'd love to try her cat food infused lime Jell-O mold.
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Originally, I had planned to name Tim's crew mates Church and Tucker in homage to Red Vs Blue, but then I thought that would be too on the nose, so went instead with Neil and Tucker. Of course, not the Neil we know as the first second man on the moon, but instead a different Neil.
I dunno, I thought it was funny.
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So I had to play with the story of NMM a little, both in the show and comics, but I liked the idea that the image of the Mare in the Moon was actually cause NMM was on the moon and feeling vendictive, because if she couldn't rule over what was hers then she would ensure her image would (at night). Then the castle on the dark side of the moon, hence the comics.
Also I only just realzed they probably should have frozen to death, but whatever, que sera, sera.
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Pascoite pointed out an interesting fact to me, that several samples of moon rocks taken had lots of traces of oxygen in them, so it could be entirely possible that NMM was harvesting moon rocks for oxygen.
I didn't fact check this. I'm just going along with it because he's smarter than me and probably right.
Or he's fucking with me and I'm making a fooler fool of myself. Whatever.
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Someone just wrecked outside my father's house. Fucking windows are glowing with red and blue lights. I'd love to share a picture but I'm incapable of taking too many pictures inside this house for it would be against the geniva convention. I'm sure you understand.
Johnny Carson also just came on the TV. Bob Hope is a guest, so this should be interesting so HOPEfully I don't get distracted.
Get it? Did... did you get it? Hope? No? Oh... okay.
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So the big thing this story suffered for is word count, but I mean that other than being too long. It's actually too short!
For the original outline Fregz and I made, and with how much I'd written, this story could have easily been 30 to 50k words, and it's a shame, but this was supposed to fall under some restraint, so I did my best to not skip too many skits with it and still keep it enjoyable.
The big points were Tim visiting his crash site, NMM "releasing" him from his chores, and lastly them dancing. Those were three points I had planned, and written out to the most I could.
And then I came to the point where I wanted to include another band of the 70's, however I forget that Tony Orlando and Dawn were mostly a one hit wonder with Knock Three Times, but I still love the song so screw you.
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Am I rambling? I'm probably rambling. Oh well, another booze bottle into the wood burner!
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I did do some research into the food the astronauts had during the 70's. You can wiki it, because it's interesting, but mostly made by the big snack food companies of the time like Hostis, Jiff, and many others. Glad I never grew up wanting to eat astronaut food.
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A couple people in the comments have pointed out that I'm wrong with the time delay in radio waves from Earth to the moon. I wanna fix it, but then I realized something... I tagged the story AU! I can do literally whatever I want!
(It's actually 3 seconds or so. I flubbed up, probably drunk when I wrote it so sue me)
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So near the end of the dance scene, when Nightmare Moon has her sort of melt down, I felt like it was needed for a bit where her "dark side" came to life. There needed to be that bit of herself shown that questioned everything, figured everyone was out to get her, and just wanted to use her for their own gains.
All real fears I'd imagine Luna had, hence NMM.
All those feelings had to be building up, and it would be a point in which she'd feel actually happiness or joy that it would all come rushing at her.
Then Tim trying to calm her.
Again, one of those scenes that I wish I could have had another thousand words to flesh out and make more honest, more in depth and of feeling.
I don't think I did too bad for shortening it the way I did, no?
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Sorry but I'm not sorry for the ending.
I mean come on, you guys should know me by now, that's my thing. I write a story, it's enjoyable, and then I give you that shocker of an ending. This one was no different.
Surely you all saw it coming.
I didn't want to totally set up the AU for failure, so I had Celestia admit that Twilight still made her friends, they just didn't do the Elements of Harmony. I'm sure they'll figure it out later, maybe with Nightmare's help (and Tim's).
Also couldn't help the little teaser of sex, and them getting frisky when Celestia leaves becaue she doesn't wanna see it. I'm alone. So... so alone, so whenever I can insert that sexual tension into a story then damn it all I'mma do it.
That's probably gonna become a theme for me, so get used to it.
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There's probably a lot I'm missing, forgetting, and missing, and forgetting, but I'm sure I'll remember it as soon as I stop missing the forgetting. Besides, Bob Hope is on Carson, and it's been a toot and a half, so I'mma go finish this bottle that I just found under the couch, stoke the fire, stroke the fire, then go to bed.
IT's been fun, and if this damn story makes it to day 4 it will be my longest running Box of Shame fic to date, and I'll hate you all.
B
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asgfasg
Bah humbug, Merry Christmas, and Go Year your New self.
The second week of deer camp is a phrase that has started more bad ideas than 'This one time at band camp...."
This one wasn't bad at all. And I'll have you know I have a certain number of 8-track tapes, including The Smothers Brothers Play it Straight sitting right here by my desk. Of course the only stereo I have to play it is downstairs in the storeroom, with my reel-to-reel that quit working for some reason and I've never gotten fixed, but... Yeah, I'm old.
Could be worse, remember when that guy wrote a fic called My Little Dashie and people turned it into an icon?
...Congratulations? :D