It's a familiar nightmare, one Sunset Shimmer has experienced frequently since her defeat at the Fall Formal: her friends fail to stop her, Princess Twilight falls, and she invades Equestria with her zombie army. This time, however, the portal is destroyed before she can use it and she finds herself trapped in Canterlot High, along for the ride and out of control as her demonic self goes about its own egotistical way.
And this is, after all, a dystopia. The night is young, and the city is full of scoundrels to be attracted by the promise of power, discord and cheap thrills. Able to do nothing except talk with her goofy, sardonic host, Sunset will have to find a way to stay sane until she wakes up... assuming this isn't already reality.
Written for NaNoWriMo 2016. Set post-Seasons 5 (shortly after Friendship Games).
Cool!
Pretty creative Sunset Shimmer story. The mystery was well kept and I really wanted to know what was really going on; had to read all of it in one sit. IMHO your action scenes are a bit too long, maybe you should leave a bit more to the reader's imagination, but it's ok, still fun.
Thanks for sharing your story.
This was SUCH an amazing story- I loved it so much!
Kinda sad it had to come to an end, but all good things do, don't they?
This deserves more attention. I would've expected it to get at least over 10 likes.
7946098 I'm glad someone enjoyed it all the way to the ending. Thanks!
This is hardly the end, though. There will... eventually be a sequel, though things are a bit in limbo at the moment. As for the attention, I've been avoiding adding it to groups or doing anything for cover art until I know it's finished and I'm happy with it, and that makes it fly somewhat under the radar.
The blog post intrigued me. The first chapter does, too.
Correction
soffered without malice.deodorant
had lain
The plot thickens…
CLUELESS. Heh.
impostors
bad jokes
I see an acrostic! And she's doing the sensible thing and calling for help—a sure sign of change.
And the trouble just piles on and on.
rein
complimenting
poring
how could they tell if she didn't tell them?
borne
Well, I liked it…though the exact duplicate cutie mark seems unlikely. Perhaps a sun, stylized wih points, and six stars about it?
Some things I'm still not sure of: Why was she only able to manipulate some objects? What enabled her to leave the body? If it was all a dream, why does she take as read the stuff happening therein telling what her mark could do? After all, one's doubts can have literal force in a dream. How could the diary reach an outside line and get answers? I suppose Starlight may be blamed for causing a portal that could bring Twi into the drream
The action scenes were a bit long, but I liked it.
the ktnhchehek speech was a bit excessively used. It might work better in animation.
8130051 Sorry for the somewhat late reply. Much of the reason for things that were left unexplained is that I originally intended for this to have a sequel, focusing extensively on things like how the Cutie Marks worked, how Starlight's spell worked and exactly why Starlight hated Sunset so much.
..."Originally" as in "supposed to be 35k, then grew a ton, then decided 60k in that it would stand better as a completely separate story that doesn't even include Sunset." It'll still be a looong time before I have that one ready for publication, and even when I do it won't have much of anything to do with this one, or even be continuous period. So, alas, some of this lore will remain unexplained forever, in case I want to reuse those ideas down the road. I'll probably do a blog about that story once it gets a little closer to completion, though.
Before I read this, what is the Dark tag for ?
And how bad does it get ?
8351890 Explosions, existential crises and lots and lots of angst. Maybe some other stuff I've forgotten about, too. But when I say explosions, I mean about half the story is spent trying not to get smashed or roasted, and the angst is to the degree that pretty much every line Sunset says is either yelling at a villain, wallowing in self-pity, or telling someone else to cheer up. To be fair, her situation merits it, but... still...
It does get pretty bad. Some have apparently loved it, and there are a few scenes and ideas I still really like, but I'll be the first to say this story really isn't that great. It can't decide what genera it wants to be, it has no sense of dramatic pacing, it was rushed, and in general it's way more ambitious than I was able to handle at the time I wrote it. It also ends on a cliffhanger/sequel tease that's never going to get resolved, and probably needs a Sex tag, too.
Read it if you want, but that's my warning. This is far from my best work.