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Bon Bon visits Lyra at the mental hospital.


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Audiobook by Scribbler Productions.
Reading by Crafty Arts.
Thanks to GaryOak and Reia Hope for proofreading.
Cover art by Mica Halligan.

Reviews:
One Man's Pony Ramblings
Titanium Dragon
The Royal Guard
Louder Yay

Chapters (1)
Comments ( 92 )

Dammit! So freaking close!

This is ridiculously excellent.

Nobody is insane, just different, or enlightened...

Excellent as always.

Bon Bon squinted in the flourescent light and wrinkled her snout at the pervasive smell of disinfectant.

Leave it to Horse Voice to make a scrunchy face seem more ominous than adorable.
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Do I spy a Prince of Darkness reference? I've never actually seen it, but I'm reminded of the samples from it used on DJ Shadow's Endtroducing.

As for the actual plot... you'd think ponies would be used to this sort of thing and have contingency plans. Guess not. Maybe Twilight's legacy in Equestrian governance will be successfully bureaucratizing the handling of these sorts of ironic catastrophes*.

*As if this is a spoiler on a Horse Voice story.

Ah, HorseVoice bringing his lovely brilliance to the table, I see. How did you know I needed a nice dose of dark-fic today?

5623047

Oh yeah--one of the less appreciated, but terrifying, speeches in film. I wondered who would catch it first.

Maybe Twilight's legacy in Equestrian governance will be successfully bureaucratizing the handling of these sorts of ironic catastrophes

I can see, perhaps, GhostofHeraclitus writing a story like that. :rainbowlaugh:

5623135

Why, Skeleton Power, of course. :pinkiecrazy:

Glad to have been helpful. :twilightsmile:

Grab blankets and make sure to have the light on. Trust me, this is required when reading Horse Voice's stories.

I was screaming at my computer the whole time.
:flutterrage: Why won't she listen to Lyra!

"First there was darkness. Then came the strangers...They were a race as old as time itself. They had mastered the ultimate technology. The ability to alter physical reality by will alone. They called this ability "Tuning". But they were dying. Their civilization was in decline, and so they abandoned their world seeking a cure for their own mortality. Their endless journey brought them to a small, blue world in the farthest corner of the galaxy. Our world. Here they thought they had finally found what they had been searching for."

Intriguing story Horse, reminded me of a few things, Yithian mind projection, Dark City, a few other cursory tales...

Short but delicious, I raise a glass to it.

5623277

Cheers! :moustache:

Ah yes--the other movie reference here. I always agreed with Ebert's appraisal of it as the best film of 1998. It seems my readers have good taste in films. :twilightsmile:

5623314

Well you know me Horse, I'm a hopeless horrormantic. :twilightsmile:

A friend of mine linked it too me a year or so ago, fell in love with it and bought a copy, one of the rare films I'd watch repeatedly really. Appealed to me as a I squatted in my primordial gloom, amidst basaltic ruins of ancient pre-human cultures, scratching my gibberings into the walls with old jagged teeth, Ah! Happy times.

I have written a review of this story; it can be found here.

This is good, really good.
It's always enjoyable to read something from you, HV, and this is no exception.
I wonder why the future ponies didn't abort this mission once Lyra was stuck in a mental hospital and tried again sometime else.
Or, hell. Try somepony else at the same time. Make it so that a lot of ponies suddenly start rambling about something happening in the future, surely the Princesses, or someone else will pay attention to that.
Anyway... This was still a nice read.

Oh no. They're the meteors aren't they?

5623277
5623314
So I caught the reference to the movie I hadn't seen but missed the one to the movie I had seen. Oops.

5623158
And I think, perhaps, that he'd be stunned to find such a close parallel between your style and his. But that's a surprisingly plausible reason why his Equestria is a little nicer place to live in than yours -- the powers that be in the Civil Serviceverse have gotten around to realizing that they're in an untamed magical hellworld and learned to govern accordingly. Clearly the doctors (and Bon-Bon) here lack Dotty's sense of genre savvy.

5623527
This is how we know Twilight still hasn't gotten her shit together w.r.t. efficient disaster management in the future.

5623676

The comparison is surprising, given that Bad Horse has specifically warned Ghost not to read my work, on account of the latter's sensitivity to grimdark stuff.

Heeeeeey... I could be Ghost's evil twin! :pinkiecrazy:

I guess I'm in the crowd that's not too fond of this one. It's competent, sure enough, but it's not scary. It doesn't work well playing off of tension because the grand reveal at the end isn't enough to be a worthy moneyshot. It doesn't appeal to horror or terror because too much is quantified in comparison to what is left to be suspense or horror. I suppose that's what is making me so ambivalent about it; I can't tell if it's supposed to be suspense of thriller. It's not exactly scary, yet there isn't enough time for suspense either. It's kinda stuck in that middle ground. There is potential to be had, and Lyra's descriptions of the future do contain facets worth exploring. It's still not enough for me. Well written, but rather uninteresting.

5624029
I was thinking along the same lines, wondering why horror fans waxed lyrical in the comments when it seemed like a fairly blatant stinger... Like, was I missing something more subtle?

Then I realized why Lyra had a seizure and was like oh shit.

Short but ominous, very nicely done.

But this could also be a prompt for someone to write some big sweeping epic, which I'd be ok with, too :p

5624932

Hell, I'd read it!

Hmm, Schrodinger's Armageddon: Equestria may or may not be doomed...

:twilightoops: I don't know what's scarier... The situation as it seems on the surface, or the implications...

I'll be thinking on this one for a while. Still have chills. Have my faves, you wonderful bastard.

Suddenly, it's not clear which thing the title means.

Anyway, nicely done; upvote.

It wasn't until the book being mentioned that I could fully believe the premise of this story. What I mean is that, why would her story be so unbelievable in Equestria? In our world, it would be a given that someone being sent back like this would not be believed... unless they entered a mental vegetable or baby. One of those things suddenly talking like that would garner some attention. In Equestria however, they have magic, time-travel, immortals, a spirit of chaos, an empire being displaced a thousand years into the future, and generally a lot of insane stuff, so the-pony-in-Lyra's tale wasn't too far out there in comparison.

The book saved it though, because someone spouting off the premise of a fictional work as fact would either be crazy or highly unlucky. I'm sure the-pony-in-Lyra spent his/her last moments cursing H.P. Lovecolt.

5630403

Oh yeah. In stories like these, you have to spot all the potential holes in advance, or the whole thing falls like a house of cards.

Thx for reading.

Mental hospital? Interesting, there don't seem to be enough stories set in them. (Most are actually about humans realizing that all pony stuff was just hallucination)

5632204 Read Asylum, absolutely fantastic.

5625124
Hey, do not blame me for this okay?
They should have listened to the green horsey. Or not.

holy shit, that was scarier than I thought it would be... I wonder who-

*checks who the author is*

ohh that explains it.

5653789

Haha, glad I haven't lost my touch! :pinkiecrazy:

5641298 Oh, I already do. For almost year, in fact. That story was a great emotional support for me in hard times back then. :twilightsmile: (Undiagnosed celiac disease can be really depressing since it'll usually be a long time before anyone figures out what's wrong with you)
Since then, I have become interested in them, actually.

5670215 I assumed you had seeing it's popularity, but what if you hadn't?

5670805 Of course, I understand.

I was very much expecting Lyra's insanity to be human-related. Thank for you breaking that (somewhat tired) trope. :pinkiesmile:

Pretty creepy. Also, H. P. Lovecolt :derpytongue2:

BonBon: "It's time to make my job"

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Bon Bon took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and met Lyra's gaze therough the glass.

6602807

While looking for that, I realized how much I used that word in this story. Hrm. :rainbowhuh:

A good horror sends chills up your spine with a traumating event.
A great horror makes you shake in fear with a mere line of dialogue.

"The meteor shower, of course."

We meet again lovecraftian horrors.

If only the visitor had done some mild reconnaissance.

How the hell had I not read this?

7148624

Heck, I thought you had. When I saw the notification, I thought you were going to say you had reread it. :scootangel:

Well... that was depressing...

Creepy. I'm sure I've read this story before because I've left a like but I don't know if I left a comment. So I shall.

It was very disturbing. The implications of those meteors are disturbing.

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