//------------------------------// // 2 // Story: Betwixt Dreams and Reality // by GeekyGami //------------------------------// Equestria, PonyVille, one thousand years after Nightmare Moon's defeat. The stars converge towards the Mare in the Moon. Her silhouette disappears from the moon. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... Dreams. I had dreams once. Alas, much like real dreams, they fade away, slowly if not entirely forgotten. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Ah, the lines stopped. Better clean my station.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'd always had an interest in drawing. From the moment the first illustration I ever saw hit my eyes, I knew I wanted to make more like it. Thus were made my first two drawings; A badly drawn Odie, and an attempt at drawing Garfield. Both were terrible, and even at the time I knew that much. I didn't understand how to make a line that didn't go where I didn't want it to. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Hey John, why'd we stop?" "Ribbons got stuck all over the belts! We're gonna have to clear that out before we can start again." 'I see, the conveyors got stopped by caution lines. Got stuck around the wheels of the conveyors.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I looked up how to draw Garfield, and from there, I kept on learning. I would only find out years later that I had been a one trick pony. It took the graphics of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to bring back my passion in drawing. For two years, all I drew was the Master Sword and the Hylian Shield. I was fascinated by their designs. To be fair, it was the first time I had ever seen live 3D graphics. Being a kid, I extrapolated from there, and everything looked way more realistic than it actually was. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Damn, Midnight's in a hurry, opening that door this quick.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I learned about light and shadows after witnessing the Master Sword as it was depicted in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. It looked absolutely magnificent, in comparison to the version from OOT. It sparked my inspiration, made me realize how much room I had to grow. I trained and trained, until I could actually draw it perfectly, with lights and shadows. I then stopped for a good five years, satisfied in what I'd managed to do. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Oh my god, it's like he's fighting against a monster made of caution lines! You'd think he was a bad chef in a cartoon fighting against mutated food, what the hell!' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During that time, I hadn't learned what I needed to to properly be able to get back into drawing after long periods of time. It was around 2013 that I finally had the inspiration I needed to get back into drawing; My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I kept seeing the show pop up all over meme pages, and at one point I got annoyed and decided to see for myself what the fuss was about. I was instantly hooked. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Ah, the triple siren is blaring, time to get back to work.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My first attempt at drawing a pony had gone horribly wrong. One of his forelegs looked like an elongated pimple, while his wing looked like it hadn't managed to grow. Instead of looking like it was made of feathers, it looked more like a fish's fin. It looked awful, and it was then that I realized that I had let myself go. I looked up an endless amount of tutorials on drawing ponies, and I saw one thing come up very often; Proportions. Fractions of things were where other things were meant to go. That, coupled with some knowledge of perspective I'd learned in high-school got me through that hurdle. I could now draw ponies decently. They were far from perfect. In fact, I put the wings in the wrong place on multiple occasions, but it was a start. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Ah, time for the break.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I tried drawing ponies with shading. It somewhat worked, as long as I had lines to rely on, but I found out very quickly that that wasn't enough. I could see that something was missing when I tried doing shaded drawings without lines. Everything looked flat. I tried adding light, but everything still looked flat. I had to figure out how to build creases out of light only. It was while I was painting an illustration of Luna wearing stockings that I stumbled upon the answer: Reflections. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- '... Tim Hortons' ? Why are we having donuts?' "Hey Veronicka, are those donuts for us?" "Yeah, Big Boss is planning a meeting during this break!" 'Oh, cool, free donuts. Don't mind if I do.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That was no surprise, considering how much I relied on videogames for my knowledge of lighting. I only learned around that time of ray-tracing. I hadn't known how many steps games skipped to make their lighting work. Once I added reflections, everything made sense. My illustration finally had the depth I had been looking for. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Ah, there's the boss.' "Hello everyone. I'm sure you all noticed the food laid out before you. Think of it as a reward for your hard work. Just the other day we reached a number of 161 bundles of recyclable materials! That's the highest amount we've produced in 7 months! Thank you all for your hard work!" '... Huh. He did a meeting just to tell us that. That's nice...? Eh, whatever. Getting free food. No complaints here. He can do what he wants as far as I'm concerned.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I tried drawing humans around the same time. Faces came out fine, but even with proportions, I couldn't quite figure out how to properly connect everything, and the arms looked like elongated balloons. It was far from pleasing. It was then that another revelation came to me in the form of anatomy. I hadn't realized until now how important it was, but the moment I properly learned it, I felt silly for not doing so prior. I practiced my anatomy, found proportions for where muscles connected to the bones, learned which overlapped which, and from there, I honed my skills with proportion, started to make them more vague and relative than they were prior. At this point, my skills were at a level where I already knew where I wanted to go in the future. As an artist, as my father had told me, work is not guaranteed. It's a very competitive field, and the pay is extremely unstable. It's not a safe job to pursue on its own. Fortunately, I had found a solution; If I were to become a concept artist, I could make over 52 000$ CAD every year! I could be paid to sit on my ass, think, and draw! The perfect dream career! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Ah, going to conveyor C-23 #1 next. That's nice, hardly need to think at that one. Just pick up the trash, put it in the trash compartment.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alas, the graphics design class I had chosen to complete to simultaneously get the credit I needed to get my high-school diploma taught me otherwise. The conditions for workers were stifling. Everything was just a product. Draw this, draw that, we need to attract people to our product here, convince people to buy that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "Hey WillHelm, we need someone at optic 45!" '... Fuck, I knew it was too good to be true. Gotta go to the shittiest place in the factory. It's no wonder they officially call it the prison.' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I learned the hours were pretty terrible too. I would arrive home, and no longer have enough fuel to even want to draw. The only companies even remotely close to my home that I had a chance of joining were Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, both companies being infamous for their shady business practices, and too big for their own good. I could tell turning my hobby into a job would spell the end of my love for it. My dream was swiftly crushed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 'Fuck, I'm so glad the day is finally over. I feel like my soul got sucked onto the conveyor.' It was finally time to go home. The ride back was the same thing as usual. Pete (The guy giving me rides from work and back) started talking about what it was really like dealing with the boss. You see, Pete's been working there for a while. He was one of the specialists that would take care of the lower area of the factory, and had been working there for over 7 years so far. He told us something interesting: The boss allegedly said that every worker in the factory was entirely replaceable. Quite the contrast to the rewards he gave us today. Allegedly, he was also always thinking in terms of raw materials, and did not participate in the factory, beyond telling people to not do this or to do that. He had no idea how the bloody place worked, no idea what the workers went through. Our conversation was cut short. We had arrived to my destination: Home. I did the same thing I did every day. Eat. Shower. Internet routine. Working on personal projects for no more than 45 minutes. It was time to go to sleep. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... A corridor. It was quite dim. There were no lights, yet I could somehow see. The walls were a putrid green, not unlike the Hero's clothes, and there was old, worn tapestry on the floor. Both ends of the corridor were pitch-black. I remembered. I remembered having this dream before. Originally, I moved forward, thinking that I wouldn't be surprised if zombies appeared. Of course, in dreams, when you expect something to happen, usually, it does. Very rarely did they do something you didn't expect. So it was that I ended up in a room, seemingly an underground parking lot. There were zombies everywhere, all of them from games I had played before. Redeads, headcrab zombies, you name it, they were all there. I was stuck between them and a wall. All I had to defend myself with was a spiked bat. Of course, I started flailing it around. My heart rate increased, and I woke up. Well, that's how the dream originally went. '... Fuck that, I'm going the other way.' I thought, following up by actually doing so. This time, I chanced upon a factory. It was very tall, and the walls were lined with gigantic presents. I decided to move forward, and looked around. Of course, the last elementary school I had gone to somehow melded with the inside of the factory. I already knew what my school looked like, so I didn't go that way. Instead, I chanced upon a door. Very simple frame, white. It reminded me of an empty canvas, waiting to be painted on. I opened it, and stepped through. In front of me was a void, with doors lined up on either side. They all looked unique. Some of them had chains. Others had emblems. Some had windows, some had blinds. I passed by what seemed to be the gate of a prison cell. Through it I saw a figure. It was a pony, about my height. Ethereal mane, black fur, eyes similar to those of a cat. It was Nightmare Moon. She was looking right at me. She narrowed her eyes, glaring daggers at me. I decided to simply let her be and move on, after calming my heart rate a tad. After that, I was expecting there to be more ponies. I didn't see any, but I did see a very peculiar door. It was entirely black, with an emblem of the moon on it. It was at least twice my height. I didn't think too hard on it, I decided to open it and go on through. It was the moon. 'Who would've thought a door with an emblem of the moon on it would lead to said rock.' I looked around, but it was fairly barren. Of course, what was presumably Earth was as close as ever. It was a wonder the side of the planet facing the moon wasn't strictly water, tides and all. I was surprised that the mere thought of that didn't cause tides to happen, but I didn't give it much thought. I decided to look around a bit more. I heard a gasp from my right. When I looked, I saw a figure. It was Luna. She didn't look as tall as last time, but she didn't look like a foal either. She arrived slightly below my chin while standing on her four legs. She looked quite perplexed. Unsurprising, considering the gasp from earlier. She looked down at her snout, directed her hoof to it, seemingly fascinated with her shoe, before she lowered it and looked towards me. Her emotions seemed to be conflicting quite a bit. She was seemingly offended and curious at the same time. That wasn't helped at all by the fact that her head was tilted to the left slightly, not unlike a dog, while her brows were subtly creased. Her ears were facing forward, not unlike a cat that has focused all its attention on an object that may be a possible threat. "Hello again Luna, fancy meeting you here." I told her. A slap would've seemingly not had as much effect as the words I spoke, as far back as she brought her head in surprise. She stayed out of arms' reach while moving around me, seemingly looking me up and down. After finishing her examination, she came back to face me, still out of reach. "WHAT ART THOU DOING HERE? WE DON'T REMEMBER YOUR SPECIES BEING PART OF EQUUS" she all but yelled in my general direction, as if through a peaking amplificator, whilst raising her right foreleg. ... I didn't expect that at all. It was incredibly surprising. It's a wonder I hadn't woken up yet. I took a few deep breaths, and did a few spins for good measure. I didn't want the dream to end in such a pitiful way. I now knew I had to expect loud volume, so I braced myself for such. I tried summoning earbuds from the corner of my vision, but nothing happened. Things were like that sometimes. She didn't continue her speech, thankfully, so I had time to reply. "This is the moon" I said as I pointed to the moon. "That is Earth." I immediately followed, pointing to "earth" Of course, I was speaking by mumbling while projecting the idea of what I wanted to say. Actually opening my mouth could potentially increase blood flow, and thus, bring me closer to waking up. She did a double-take. "ART THOU NOT AFRAID? THOU SHOULDST BE COWERING IN FEAR, LIKE THE REST OF THEM" Even though I expected that high velocity, I was still left dazed by the sheer amplitude. When I was able to focus again, I raised my left eyebrow to signify my skepticism. "... Why?" I asked. She raised her leg as though she were going to yell again. I put my hands on my ears, hoping the noise wouldn't be able to get through. She opened her mouth, closed it, and lowered her leg. I'm not quite sure what she intended to say, but she probably answered her own query. I grew tired of the distance between us, so I took a few steps forward. She took a few steps back, and looked at me disapprovingly. I hadn't entirely expected that, but there were really only three possible outcomes. Either she moved forward, stayed in place, or she moved back. I decided to go lay down on the edge of the moon, like in the previous dream I had. She followed behind me, but kept her distance still. She didn't lay down. I stared at "Earth" again without really looking. "WE GROW TIRED OF LOOKING AT EQUUS. 'TIS BUT A BAD MEMORY." she yelled to me out of bloody nowhere. I jumped a little, I hadn't anticipated that. I had to calm down. I took a great intake of breath and rolled on the floor. It was a strangely good strategy to remain within one's dreams. "Well I'm getting tired of hearing you scream, will you stop being so loud?" I told her. She glared at me. " 'TIS TRADITION TO SPEAK TO OUR SUBJECTS USING THE ROYAL CANTERLOT VOICE!" she bellowed as she hit her hoof on the ground for emphasis. "Well I'm not your bloody subject now am I! Git outta here!" I countered. That traditionalist attitude was getting on my nerves, it served no purpose whatsoever. Oh boy, now she was pissed! She was coming right at me! I figured it was time to go, so I tried to phase through the moon, as if I were no-clipping. It didn't work! I tried imagining that the world around me was moving as I stayed in place (an effective way of basically flying in dreams.) It didn't work either! I was out of options, she seemed to be preparing to blast magic at me! "Oh, fuck! Shitty shit fuck!" I yelled, before attempting to scream. She shot a beam of energy at me. I felt a great chill overcome me. I gasped for breath. I immediately woke up. I checked my phone. Five minutes before waking up. 'Why does this happen every damn time...'