TSeraphim

• MLP: FiM
• Drama
• Horror

Ever since her ascension, Twilight has been having the same nightmares. About a pale mare who shines brighter than anything she's ever seen.

• Death
• Twilight
• Celestia

Seer · 5k words  ·  187  2 · 3.9k views

Summary: Twilight has the same nightmare over and over again. This happens shortly after her raise to an alicorn and the story follows her path during this changing times, and takes you along to find out why she has this particular nightmare.

While the nightmare gets extendet and alterated during the story, the main focus is on Twilight during the days when she tries to find out why she has this nightmare at all. This involves her observations while her life changed to that of a princess as well as including a talk with Rarity.

Without spoiling to much, this discovers a conspiracy involving her mentor Celestia, mysterious creatures and old history of Equestria.

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OKay, this is supposed to be a horror story and starts with an nightmare scene from Twilight, the main character. And there is already the first problem. It is made clear it is a dream right from the start, that takes away a lof of the horror. Also it is a bit blunt and cruel, which would require the dark tag in my opinion. (Later scenes also require that) Yes, this is also a form of horror but if you expect something spooky or atmospheric you will be dissapointed. Not that it is wrong in general, but the background idea for this story and how it is build would support a more indirect and spooky approach. But more to this later.

Anyway, the dream she has leads to a certain tension between her and Celestia. Twilight starts to question Celestia's intentions as well as her origins and background. And the further this story arc goes, the better it becomes. Every talk with Celestia, every detail that is added to the suspicion of Twilight and how everything moves along feels right. You will also ask if Twilight goes insane or if she is right and there is something wrong with Celestia. A very good job by the author on that part. And the reason I say it should focus more on the spooky side of things. The bluntness of the dreams and the cruilty does not fit so well to the mystery and bad feeling about Celestia that raises. Also while the dreams are to the point, being blunt and pushy for the storyline, all the little details and few big surprises outside of it are suitable to start a bigger storyline, to take you deeper down into the rabbit hole. Sadly, this doesn't happen.

There is room for so much, much more with this! There are questions that would love an answer to them, topics that glue you to the story and force you to read on. In short, I really was curious what would happen with a certain bigger informations that Twilight found during her research about the origin of her nightmares. And just the image of the tension this knowledge would cause with Celestia... very good stuff for a horror story!

Again, sadly this big revelation is just barely mentioned as a side track of the storyarc. There is not much done with it, at least not in a way that affects the way of the main story. It is handled like a 'good to know' but not really important. Yes it gives a bit of background to it, but that's more or less it. Much potential wasted.

That does not mean the story is bad though. We still have a storyline that motivates to read on. It is just so that the author had to focus on very specific parts to fit this all into a 5k word story.

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Okay besides the content of the story, we should talk about how it is written.

There are two approaches:
The nightmare scenes are starting swiftly, blunt but get repertive over time. While they set thing sin motion and set a tone for the story, there is not much to them later on. Yes they have a meaning and all but how pushy they are at start, as slower and uninteresting they get later on.
The dayepisodes are vise versa, they start very slow, taking time to develop and are filled with sidestuff. But, they get interesting when you crossed the midsection of the story. Tension is build up, scary revelations are made, all is build up to a longer run with a good spooky atmosphere.

You see this two approaches collide with each other. Either you be fast forward and try to scare the reader with all the cruel and dangerous situations, or, you build up the tension slowly and develop from there. Mixing these two is not working so well.

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To sum up my thought on this story:
This is one of the rare cases where more indeed would have been more. Such a good backstory, with potential for a several 10k scary horror story, compressed to a rushed 5k one.

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Rating:
Idea: 8/10 The sidestory is the star in this, it is creative, new (for me at least) and so interesting. The mainstory more or less is the standart in new disguise.
Horror: 6/10 The story can't decide if it wants to be blunt and pushy or take its time to develop things properly. Both are written alright, but don't fit together.
Writing Style 4/10 Wording and scene build are fine. The pacing and flow need work though.

18/30 = 6/10

Thanks for the review mate! :)