shortskirtsandexplosions
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There is a poem and a dark tag.
I'm scared to read this.
2527441 As am I.
2527445>>2527441
Me too... something tells me skirts has reverted back to his old ways.
Well, that was interesting.
I feel...
Disgusted, freaked out, confused, frightened, angry, saddened...
Oh hell yes. Tracking immediately.
2527441 you aren't the only one....
That was... interesting. Definitely following this one.
Zombie pegasi?
What in the blue blazes is going on?!
Why the golden fuck not?
A creepy poem a Dark tag it's 11:30 PM and I'm alone in a big house with the wind howling outside.
Challenge accepted.
I had expected something a little more stark and introspective at the start to really sink in that feeling of off-kilter wrongness that might accompany a dark mystery such as this. Bodies everywhere works, too, though. Good luck, Ponyville.
It can't get much worse than that. Right, guys? Guys?
Well, this is dark. Extremely intriguing thus far, can't wait for the rest.
2527618 Huehuehuehue
Oh man...
This is fucking crazy!
I like it... Keep going!
I don't know what is going on, and I love it!
But god damn is this dark, those descriptions are pretty nasty.
ohhh sheeet
shits going down
i cant even type correctly thats how dark this is
damnnnn
Well, that was gruesome. And scary as hell. What a twist, too...
Ho-lee sheeeet.
There are no words.
You probably could have spent some more time at the bookends of this one. Fleshing out the isolation and dazed confusion of Cup at the start and calling back to that with some clarity at the end. The middle sections follow along like a standard horror narrative should, so not much to say there other than that those sections, too, could use some fleshing out to move them from "standard horror" into something a little more psychological in nature. Otherwise your characters stick to their singular roles, Twilight included. That said, the inclusion of Time Turner is a big plus as it helps spread the load of Twilight's purpose. Of course, the "borrowed" idea of falling bodies really helps in the "fucking terrifying" department, here. Something like Left 4 Dead meets The Ring.
If you decide to do horror again, or submit it to EqD, I'd let it sit for a day or two before posting and give it a few revision passes.
This is the darkest thing I've ever read. Holy cannejus beezus, Skirts.
Wow, you really do crank these stories out. Impressive.
Will I read it? Absolutely. Right now? I don't know. I fear the dark places this story will certainly lead. I think I'm going to wait until its dark to break into this one.
I believe you mean "Then".
Ah, dammit... Not the Weeping Angels again!
Wow, this was a pretty good story and I liked the way you disguised Cheerilee's and Twilight's murders with suicides, but unfortunately it feels just a bit lacking to me. It felt weird to read and notice that Twilight just seemingly brushed off the fact that her best friends were gone. Hell, Rainbow Dash's mindless husk tried to kill her and Mrs. Cake, and she just seemed to forget about it ten minutes later. Another thing that bothered me, although not as much, is the fact that the two foals just seemed like plot-devices, and not actual characters (Yes, I know that they meant more than that, but that's what it felt like).
I could go on, but I'm not going to nitpick all the little things and ignore fact that the good overshadows the bad in this story. All-in-all it was certainly a great read, but definitely not your best.
Wait. What? That looks terribly important.
'Birds' + zombies?
Oooooh. Looks like Mrs. Cake has something to do with the pegasi killing everybody.
Holy shit.
Alright. Colour me utterly spookified.
The whole grabbing and dropping thing really took this one step above the normally far too zombie-centric scenario. Though I can agree with some previous commenters that the kids could have gotten a little more characterization, and even though I'm not usually a fan of memory-losss or self-deluded characters, I throughly enjoyed the story. And who should you steal from, if not the masters? Even though I have read most of Ito's work, I can't say that it seemed too familiar.
As a thank you, have this link. It's Not Entirely Unrelated.
If this had happened to the Iranians, I would be very pleased.
Alas, it had just been more gruesome pony deaths. Blah.
I'm a biologist. I see more internal organs than anyone but an organ surgeon and a medical examiner. I ain't shocked by gore. Give me a story that's logically sound.
This is... This is just... Wow.
Oh, my god. Oh... Oh god........ Why do I read "dark" fics?!
In the description, I'd ask you to consider removing the periods and the quotes to make it more poetry-y. Although, I suspect I'm wrong to suggest such a thing.
Ch.1
I am certainly enjoying this. I know you want and try to write comedy (we can talk about that some other time if you want), but I personally believe your niche is in grimdark and evoking feels, especially when it comes to horror and toying with the mind, and I hope by now you know that too. It certainly shows here.
And, for the love of all, Cup Cake? I can't really think of another character that actually has a canon life but is so there they're almost in the background and I have given so little thought about. This is certainly going to help paint a picture in my mind of her, one way or another. I must say that character choice for the environment is superb. My only solid complaint to raise is why is she not thinking of Pinkie Pie, but that's a trivial thought right now. I'm loving this, and I will read more.
Ch.2
Best pony makes her debut, nice. I must say, I really love how you portrayed her. Heck, her, Caramel, and Twilight especially. You got the calm and mindset leader, the one who's more frustrated than anything that he's basically useless and openly vents it, and the one who tries to follow the leader but under her façade she's just as frustrated as the other guy, or in an even worse state so it seems. Cheerilee and Time Turner don't really click with me for whatever reason, and I'm thinking they might exist simply to fill the roles they play. Not to say that's bad at all. The characters are solid and keep acting how they were originally presented to us. Not to mention the plot and goal is effortlessly given and seems natural with how it was presented.
You know, I swear I've heard this concept somewhere before. A crude twist on the rapture where the angels descend from heaven to wreck havoc on the lands, which I speculate might've been your inspiration for this story. Or you could've just gone into a Dr. Pepper-induced coma and started seeing things.
Ch.3
In the chapter title, there's two L's in "You'll."
Alas, poor Lyra, we hardly knew thee. And that poor Cheerilee forgot her parachute.
Rainbow Dash! How nice of you to join us. I like how you made her be the one to drop Big Mac, putting emphasis on exactly what the party was dealing with. Rule #32, man. Rule #32.
I've heard about how your fight scenes are... dragged out, but I think this one with Rainbow Dash was executed just fine. The scene with Ditzy was horrific and I felt very much pleased with it. Time Turner's and Amethyst Star's deaths might have been a tad cliché, but they were well deserved and satisfying. I especially loved the whole "she was there one second ago" aspect of Amethyst's death, not to mention she was pulled out grotesquely and through a doggy-door of all things. Cheerilee's death was unexpected to say the least, but it didn't necessarily shock me. I don't think it needed it to, but it would've been nice for me the feel that. Then again, a fan of the grimdark myself, it just might be my psyche.
Ch.4
This is getting added to my favorites for sure. That's all I can really say about how I feel right now. Hell, I think this is just as good as if not better than Last Tears. I'm assuming you wrote this in three days, and I hope you're proud of it. Because this is a great story. It might not be chilling in the same aspect that Home Is Where The Harp Is was, and certainly not as seemingly hopeless as Unfinished, but this sort of horror is something to respect. It's admittedly a bit cliché, what with the story's hero finding a party and having them all picked off one-by-one until the protagonist is all that remains, but as I like to say, clichés be damned. I don't care how overdone an idea is, but it if it can be adapted, molded, and executed in an original and engaging way like this story was, then it's most likely worth reading. Which this story is.
The one thing I really appreciate is the complete and total mystery of everything. Heck, we don't even know if this was all some macabre dream. You don't answer questions—like where the crystal came from, the books, what happened to Caramel—because they don't need to be answered, and instead stick solely to hovering over Cup Cake's shoulder. Doing it from that perspective, in my opinion, was probably what made the story. Well done, good sir. You've made me horrified once again and I couldn't be happier.
Huh. So that's what reviewing is like. I think. I did just do a review, right?
One of the best Tomato In The Mirror stories I've ever seen!
Particularly liked what happened to Ditzy. Becoming a monster is one thing, but it's extra-horrible in her case considering her sweet nature beforehand.
Warning: This comment contains massive spoilers. If you don't want spoilers, DON'T read this comment!
I'm very conflicted as to how my thumb is going to go for this story. On the one hoof, this is one of the most intense, shocking, gripping stories I've ever read; on the other hoof, there were quite a few technical problems I had with it that really hindered my enjoyment of this. I'll split this comment up into positives first, and then I'll talk about what I didn't like about it.
Keep in mind, as I give critiques for this story, that I'm an idiot that has a hard time coherently and cohesively putting together his thoughts. You are free to ignore the critiques. They are not meant to insult or discourage; they are meant merely to offer suggestions as to how you may improve in the future.
With that out of the way, let's begin with the positives:
The most striking part of this story is that it is dark and terrifying. I'll admit to not reading the poem you have linked at the end, so I don't know if the poem gives the story any significant context, but on its own, the mere thought of pegasi acting crazy and lifting earth ponies and unicorns up into the air just to drop them to their deaths making me shudder.
The way the plot progresses is creepy as well. I like how it begins with an action scene almost immediately, after searching through her house, she is not immediately attacked by the pegasi, but once that starts up it becomes an uphill battle for survival. As the all-the-way survivor group is formed, and dwindled, more mystery is formed along the way, and the reveal at the end was... well, I'll mention that later.
The character dynamic is fantastic in this. Having two conflicting parties, one that hates the pegasi, and one that sympathizes with them, not only comments on the external conflict, but also creates internal conflict within their own society. I definitely like how the group dynamic changes as characters are killed off; that tells me that you had a firm rein of your characters in this story, and I appreciated that.
The setting itself was skin-crawlingly vivid. I don't think there was a single unwanted detail in it, and everything painted a bleak, frightening picture. I don't have much more to say about it; I think setting is one of your strongest points when it comes to writing, as you seem to know how to make it come alive.
The final positive is the point-of-view. Telling this from third-person Mrs. Cake's POV allowed us to explore a lot of oddities about her life, and I thought that was interesting. If I'm not mistaken, Cup Cake killed both Cheerilee and Twilight, but we don't realize it, really, from the start. Telling it from her POV allowed you to hide things well, making the intrigue both with her and the situation much higher. I think you chose a wonderful POV for this.
In conclusion, You handled the characters' roles, the setting and the concept well to create a truly gripping story.
Now for the technical crap, or what I didn't like about this story:
I think your biggest weakness
as a writeris that you have a lot of dead similes. I don't think a single animal-related metaphor—the snake's hiss, the dog wiping its face on the ground, the prairie falcon swooping in on its prey—works to your advantage, as they all just distracted me (the barracuda one was particularly bad).Another bad one was in chapter 1:
So what? What image is that supposed to conjure up? Why do we need to know that it's like that? What does it do for the tone that describing her exertions cannot? I don't think this sentence did anything except take up space.
The worst of them was in chapter 3:
Why? Twilight is trying to rally her remaining friends after they witnessed death and insanity up-close, and she actually adds an image of a candle to describe her device getting a signal? Is that to symbolize hope? If so, then I think it's much too clunky to work here.
Moving away from similes, there's the bit about time management that I feel needs to be addressed. Two things in here particularly confused me:
1. How are they able to sustain themselves for two weeks? It's clear that the food has gone bad, so how do they eat? What do they eat? Going out is a suicide mission, so I don't think they could ransack the farm. And does their plumbing work? If so, do they get drinkable water? Or do they get muddy, bloody gunk? I feel like these needed to be addressed, since they survived for two whole weeks in this hell.
2. How large is Ponyville? As far as I can picture it, it's a relatively small town with a not-so-large population. This is a comment on at least one body dropping every hour, which I find hard to believe, since this has been going on for two weeks. They'd have run out of bodies to carry up, right?
I just feel like the ramifications of the dilemma at this set time had some holes in it that made it less believable than it should've been.
These, however, may just be me being an idiot and missing something evident in the text. If that's the case, I apologize for that.
I believe I have one more complaint, and this is about the dialogue. Some of it doesn't make sense given the situation they're in, and some of just doesn't seem to sound right. There are five examples that stick out to me:
I thought the immediate issue was the large crashing, as well as the ringing and Carrot Cake being missing. I just don't see why she'd immediately ask for the time. I personally see the immediate question as "What was that?" or "Where are you?"
She just tried to take off a plank off of a window, and she's wondering why it's dark? I think the more immediate question would be "Why are the windows boarded?" Or "Why is our window boarded?"
I'm sorry, but after receiving the news about deadly crazy pegasi, and finding out Twilight may have a solution, I can't imagine her being gentle through all of this. I'd more imagine her being either shocked beyond words, frantic at the living hell, or frantic to grasp onto this salvation. I can't imagine her saying that she saw her tinkering with something (in the way she's saying it in the story) and I definitely can't see it being done gently.
How, in her frantic attempt to escape and her unconscious period afterwards, does she know that she's been out for a half-hour? I know this could be excused as guess-timation, but I'm questioning why that's in there at all. For me, at least, it blunts the panic that happened in the previous scene, somehow making Mrs. Cake observe something that wasn't in the immediate threat (if that makes sense).
This is probably me being a nitpicky bastard, and I apologize for that, but why "half"? Why not "most" or even "all"? The way "half" is being used here seems to blunt the overwhelming despair that's settling in at this point.
In conclusion, your word choice could use some work, as well as your similes.
And there are my thought on this story. My thumb can't go either way, unfortunately... but I'm going to favorite it. I really felt for the emotional parts of it, and what works is phenomenal. There were just too much technical stuff that bothered me to really "like" it. I will be favoriting it, though, so that I may look at this and perhaps learn about what makes such evocative literature as this.
And I'd like to stress that none of my criticisms are meant to be taken as insults or discouragers; they are suggestions from a moron about how you may improve your future works.
I wish you the best of your talents with your next story!
EDIT: I took out the phrase "as a writer" in referring to your weakness, since I've not read everything you've produced, and therefore wouldn't be able to truly ascertain your greatest weakness.
Well, I just finished reading this and it's now currently 1:20 AM. Also, I'm hearing strange noises outside as I type this. Lock and load, it's gonna be a loooong night.
The ringing in her ears, the apparition of her son...I just remembered that the Pegasus was on Mrs. Cake's side of the family.
Oh fuck, you wrote THIS story? D: I'm going to wait until I've got a few hours of daylight to read this one, Skirts. Remind me to begin your "happy story" training soon, too.
Amazing fic!
Somehow, this fic reminds me of Resident Evil by the reason T-Virus were made and consequence of the action (except for the twist of course).
And my head suddenly hurt now.
whats the story about?
Oh shit, what's going on here?
10 things.
1. Why did Cheerillee kill herself? She was just saying children, and then commited suicied.
2. Why did twilight killer herself? Cupcake had not been a threat so far, so why kill your self because your with an earth pony quarter pegasus?
3. If Pound cake died a year and half ago, why was he in the nursury?
4. What happened to pumpkin?
5. Was the fact Cupcake couldn't remember anything from the past year and a half * I suposse she lost her memory after the night she sent pound to bed, the night he died * because she is quarter pegasus?
6. What happened to the fillies and colts that were pegasus? Surly the younger pegasia haven't ALL died?
7. Why didn't they just leave Ponyville? Sure Amethist's sister died trying to do that, but why not try again? Not like it'll happen every time you try escaping.
8. Why was the signal so strong in town hall if it was in SugarCube Corner?
9. What happens once you are above the clouds?
10. Was is JUST in Ponyville? If so, why just there?
2528589 How so?
2531306
Well, reading the story as a whole, it looks an awful lot like I was dead on with it. But in the context of just three chapters, it was a guess based on all the weirdness surrounding Cup Cake. Her waking up after two weeks, somehow still safe, her memory of Pound Cake differing from everybody else's, and the stark difference between normal, peaceful Ponyville and stormy, chaotic Ponyville that seems to revolve around her.
2531266 Cheerillee and Twilight didn't kill them selves it was Mrs Cake who killed them, obviously Cup Cake dug up Pound Cake's grave
, Sugarcube corner is near town hall and remember twilight's tool isn't pin point accurate, the rage of the crystal doesn't go on forever...seems you were skipping sentences.
2528172 Why on Earth would somebody downvote you for pointing out a spelling/grammar issue? It helps the author!
Well, skirts, what can I say about this...
I really did like it. Something at this level of grimdark usually isn't my thing, but you kept me very interested throughout by keeping the tension at maximum and, more importantly, keeping the mystery hanging over our heads. It kinda felt like an episode of Twilight Zone in that respect, and given that I consider it to be the greatest show of all time (next to MST3K, of course) you absolutely had me wanting to read more.
There was a nice balance between tense action and exposition, and the exposition never felt tell-y. Given how we only have a few chapters to meet them, I think you did a great job with characterization, especially with Amethyst. Cheerilee felt like Cheerilee, which is always a plus in my book.
My only issue with the story... at the end, I had the "Ohhhhhhhh!" moment, and was able to sort of connect all the dots. My only problem is regarding one of the swerves... namely, Pound Cake being dead. You hinted at it, but the hints almost seemed a bit too obvious. I was able to figure out that swerve basically after one hint was dropped, but then several more were dropped throughout the story. Through figuring out that one swerve, I sort of had an inkling that Mrs. Cake was behind it all, which was right on the money. Not that that's a bad thing! Finding out you're right makes you smile and enjoy the story all the more sometimes. But sometimes, the best kind of swerves are ones where there was a very brief hint, disguised as flavor text, that the reader doesn't notice until the swerve happens, then they go back through the fic until they find the hint again.
But that may just be me. Big thumbs up to this story, it was dark and disturbing and tense, exactly what you want out of a story like this.
And extra points for Mrs. Cake turning out to be the psychotic antagonist. Every story I've seen with her, and even one I've written, involve her being a happy, friendly, motherly character to everyone. It was refreshing to see her in a different light.
2531612 But how did Mrs Cake kill them?
Yeah, guess I did miss some lines...