[Unpublished stories cannot be embedded]

Twilight Sparkle, the princess of friendship, the element of magic, the one that has beaten many villains and saved Equestria multiple times, has a troublesome question.
And the more she progresses over her path as an alicorn, the more the question gets brought up in her head.
And this is not the kind of question she can resolve with a good book; this is a question that could change her view of the world.

And the only one that can give her the answer to that question is Celestia.

So, after gathering enough valor to ask, she confronts her about it.

She wasn’t ready for the answer.

Or the consequences.

I don't have a fun intro prepared. It's been 39 hours since I last slept and I'm tired :P Let's dive into it.

Plot and Setting

The story opens with the titular question, which, upon first glance, appears to be the age-old question of, “are alicorns immortal?” In reality, it’s a bit more complicated. Twilight asks Celestia a question sometime in season 9, determined to figure out the one thing that seemed out of place in her life: the apparent immortality of (almost) everyone ever in the show.

The answer? Dream theory.

No, I’m not kidding The terrible truth is legitimately dream theory. For those unaware, “dream theory” is a niche(?) Internet term for an interpretation of a story where the most, if not all, of the plot can be explained away by saying, “It was just a dream all along!” A very famous literary example where the literature itself decided to analyse itself is The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy wonders at the end if her journey through Oz really happened or if it was all just a dream.

A Simple Question, A Terrible Truth relies heavily on the revelation that Twilight’s entire journey had been a dream constructed by Nightmare Moon after the latter’s plans to conquer Equestria worked a little too well.

While it’s certainly an interesting concept, the execution of it leaves much to be desired, as the dialogue is bare-boned and it practically chucks exposition into our faces. Its short length doesn’t help much either since, although there are only three or so story beats, The Sleepless Beholder glosses over potential plot points and opportunities for character development and moves on to the next line without a second thought.

The last major thing that stuck out to me was the horror tag. The story was entered into the “Halloween in April” and “Nightmare Night in April” contests, but it didn’t feel like a horror story to me. The horror genre focuses on fear, but A Simple Question, A Terrible Truth seems to focus more on despair more than fear. If anything, I feel like the story would be better tagged as drama (between Twilight and Nightmare Moon) or tragedy (as Twilight realizes that her entire life was a lie).

Section rating: 4/10

Character Exploration

As mentioned before, A Simple Question, A Terrible Truth is quite lacking in several aspects, including character exploration. There were numerous plot points brought up within the second chapter where we could have delved into the tragic and resigned mind of Nightmare Moon or sift through the shocked and reeling thoughts of Twilight. Take the following excerpt from the story:

“I saw you win when Starlight used her time travel, you didn’t destroy the world in that timeline.”

“A hopeful dream. One impossible to achieve.”

“Not with that attitude, we will find a solution to this, we will- “

“-find a way to bring back Celestia? Use Starlight’s time travel spell to fix everything? Use the elements? Discord? We have tried and failed, every time.”

“What do you mean every time?”

“Do you think this is the first time that you woke up into reality?”

Twilight’s blood run cold, her brain trying to process the implications of the question.

Apart from the last line, how do the emotions change throughout that conversation? Is Nightmare Moon raising her voice? Does she sound tired from having to repeat herself over and over to Twilight? Does Twilight sound determined? Confused? Is she whispering? If you squint really hard the last line could be construed as an action tag, but even then, it’s so hard to picture the scene as The Sleepless Beholder wants to portray. Descriptors help us solidify the mental image we build as we read and let the story take us along for a ride, but here, we’re left scrambling to pick up the pieces and cut new ones to make them fit, which can ultimately break the immersive reading experience.

Section rating: 3/10

Grammar, Formatting, and Consistency

There are several odd formatting choices throughout the story, mostly to do with the start of new lines. For whatever reason, there are random blocks of text that appear to have been written using the shift-enter line, such as the following (surrounding text is included for comparison):

“Yes, and I imagine you remember how it used to look like.”

“Used to look like?”

They arrived at a balcony, and Nightmare Moon simply directed her to look over it.
Twilight slowly made her way to the stone railing, and what she saw chilled her bones more than the cold winter air.

If they really where in the castle of the two sisters, she should be able to see the Everfree Forest, but instead of that, she found a barren land.
All the trees had whither and died long ago, covered by a thick blanket of snow.
In the distance she could see Ponyville, or what was left of it.
Houses had been crushed under the weight of tons of snow, and it looked more like a ghost town that what she remembered.
Another thing that she discovered was that the Golden Oak Library wasn’t destroyed, it was one of the only buildings still standing, and the Friendship Castle was nowhere to be seen.
And it didn’t stop there, all she saw in the distance was snow and cold under the night sky.

“What happened?” She asked, confused and horrified.

“I won.” Nightmare responded simply.

“No, we defeated you, with the elements.”

Why was this done? I could not tell you. There are other small spelling errors made in the story, such as misspelling Starswirl and a leftover quotation mark. Otherwise, the grammar and consistency are tolerable.

Grammar: 6.5/10
Formatting: 7/10
Consistency: 8/10
Section rating: 7.17/10

My Little Nitpicks

Reading before reviewing
Fun fact, I actually read this story and its first sequel before it was ever submitted to the group. Funny how life goes

Horror tag
…Alright then.

The Question
Not exactly what I was expecting, but let’s roll with it.

The Answer
Intriguing… But ouch, this has a lot of telling and not a lot of showing.

Final Thoughts

A short and dramatic story that ponders the reality of the show we’ve come to love and appreciate, although the ending might leave a few unsatisfied. There isn’t much here, but it does have two sequel stories and one of which (A Little Request, A Final Goodbye) will also be reviewed at a later date.

Final rating: 4.72/10

7262093
As expected, it was something I simply wrote to get out of my mind without much thought. I think I even wrote it in two hours.
Which made me extremely confused as to why the f*** it got so popular?!
The reading StrightToThePoint made gave it much more life.
I don't believe the sequel will be much better, but good luck with it.
I hope to give you something better in the future (It will be long thou)

PS: get some sleep!

7262093
A good informative review