Sometimes, when I'm writing, I get upset. I have occasional psychiatric problems, and my creative work means a lot to me. When it doesn't go just right, I can get very emotional very quickly. Enough that sometimes it worries my friends, and they ask what's going on in my head.
This is a story about how it feels, as told by little horses.
Something hasn't been right about Rarity since the Inspiration Manifestation spell. Maybe somepony should check on her.
Now with a reading by Dr. Wolf!
Chapters (6)
"Mostly" The power of a single word.
The feeling of perceiving something beautiful in the aether, but being unable to manifest it...is there a word for It? Weltshmerz is the closest in my lexicon, a world-weariness from realizing the imperfections inherent.
Good read.
This was a very relatable read. I've had my mind bounce around through various subjects with almost no rhyme or reason, and it's just my lack of drive that prevents me from doing what Rarity does here. Sometimes, though, it can really get up and go, such as my (quarter-way finished) attempt to build an entire Star Trek ship crew. And I think I understand the extreme emotions, too. Like a 'did everyone go blind and that's why nobody else is seeing this obvious problem' thing. That's mainly due to my own condition. And I'm really glad I don't go as far in my life as Rarity does.
Short and sweet, I want to thank you. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who thinks like this.
GaPJaxie... I'm just... wow. After reading this story, and your last story about changing your sense of self, I'm just floored. We've discussed this previously--you have such an alien perspective to mine, but since you write with such a bold, exquisite style, I get sucked into your stories anyway. I don't think I've ever read such stories where I've simultaneously thought, "Wow, this is incredible!" and "Wow, I do not understand this position at all!"
...Now I want to write a story about my depression version of this: the Glass Block in my head that deflects all of my attempts to write. Where I come up with a great idea, get eager to write about it, and then when I apply a modicum of effort towards the task, it just slides off the Glass Block, and I end up watching YouTube videos instead. Of course, it couldn't be as good as this, and anyway, I'd have to overcome the Glass Block anyways to write it.
Well now this could be interesting.
The only way to survive ruling Equestria for a thousand years is to get genre-savvy.
INDEED.
Christ.
The most significant thing I ever realized about the art of writing is that the reader doesn't get to see what you pictured in your head, only what you managed to get down on paper. And that sounds completely obvious and banal, but it's tremendously important.
Because whenever you're looking at your own work, you compare it to what you had imagined beforehand, and the finished product is always, always inferior. But when you're looking at other people's work, you can't look inside their heads and see what they had imagined, but only see the product itself, and judge it on its own merits rather than in comparison to its platonic ideal.
Parts of this story just made me think of that.
That was a powerful read. Thank you for it.
Rarity, you may have a problem.
Like 8070547 I very much enjoyed seeing that Celestia's school has proper precautions about dark magic in place.
So... this is a case of 360 degree creative saturation, then?
Uh-oh.
Seriously uh-oh.
wow, there is/are lesson/s to be learned in here.
Oh I bet Rarity would kill for a virtual Reality gear right now.... If it exist.
8070741 I agree.
uhhh... rares???
Well if the story is about how thoughts become actions and those action is your way of delivering to others, then this story of yours and your will and thoughts conveyed by your writing certainly delivered it to us readers.
Well not really the whole meaning of what you are trying to tell us or even the whole image, but we scraped and digested what we can and thats something and its better than nothing.
8070309
There are people who are not like complete zombies out there. I always hated the " you must follow this trend or be left out " and people like that are predictable is a certain way ( to me at least) and changing their self to suit the world around them, I mean being able to adapt is not a bad thing but if we try to break the norm we get left out or viewed differently/badly.
Even now I think we Bronies are alien to the norm hahaha and I like to see the confused faces as they ponder why.
Be guided not blinded
while thats an actual word, I cant do the definition justice in a succinct way.
I still havent read that other 360 degree story...
Temptation leads to ruination.
Wait.... what did she smother to death?....The ideas? Or her Friends?
8070222
As far as I'm aware, there's no word for it. That's a large part of why I wrote this story -- a chance to express how it feels.
8070247
You're not alone.
8070309
Well, as long as you're able to enjoy it despite being confused. Like watching Lost! Or Battlestar Galactica! Or that episode where Daring Do turned out to be real.
Still not sure WTF was up with that.
There's a Patrick Rothfuss quote I quite like. I ran into him on a recent JoCo cruise and he talked for a bit about writer's block:
"There's no such thing as writer's block. Imagine you were a cabinet maker and went into work and you said, 'I can't make cabinets. I have cabinet block.' They'd tell you to shut the hell up and do your job. But imagine you walked into the cabinet factory and said, 'I can't make cabinets. My arm is broken.' That they might understand.
Writer's block doesn't exist as a distinct phenomenon. It's just a catch all for, 'there's some reason I can't write.' That means there's no cure for writer's block. Before I can tell you what will fix your writer's block, you need to tell me why it is you can't write."
It's helpful advice.
8070565
Dungeon Dimensions much?
8070727
She's got a few problems.
8070737
It's an homage. I really liked that story.
8071781
Mm. John Green said something similar in one of his videos. His version was, "Coal miners don't get miner's block." I don't want to say I'm a special snowflake and that "doesn't count," but... I've had moments where I was laying down on my bed, and I couldn't lift my own arm. My point was to contrast it with your desire to create, to see things made manifest. To feel so little motivation... to feel your soul losing grip on reality... Listening to Hamilton, I'm jealous of these lines in "Non-Stop:" "Why do you write like tomorrow won't arrive / why do you write like you need it to survive?"
Hmm. This is definitely non-Canon: Celestia teaches Twilight a bit of dark magic in the first Crystal Empire story, and doesn't go on at length about its dangers, although she discourages overusing it. But I suspect this will make for an interesting story - on to chapter 2!
8071884
Yeah, I took some small liberties there. Glad you're liking it so far!
Wow. A kill shed? I thought it was her obsession and desire feuling it...
I relate to Rarity in this.
Stay out of my shed.
Well, that was certainly an interesting story. And it makes me want to pose an interesting question: is the universe's dark magic morality perfectly aligned with pony morality? After all, different people think different things are moral, and yet here there is clearly a way to use evil actions to power good ones- taking a numerical approach, if the good generated is greater than the evil used to power it, that's a net gain for the world- or at least for those in that morality system.
Now, I think we can all agree that murdering people is wrong, and for most people murdering animals is the same. Yet, few are against eating animals, and even ponies have been shown to accept meat-eaters. If one could power these dark spells with, say, a giant vat of algae- would not most agree that it is the moral thing to do to murder millions of innocent plants if it improves the lives of people? If Rarity had somehow managed to make an agreement with Fluttershy and only killed animals that were about to die and then after they were killed were used to feed the meat-eating ones, she has done an "evil action" that could power dark magic yet has done no real harm to the world. She could make "the cures for diseases" in exchange for some animals. How many animals is one pony life worth? (A non-pony fic which explores this in a rather blunt manner: The Sword of Good.)
---
I do have to question about why Twilight didn't at least send a message to Celestia. There were months between the first warning signs, the more significant ones, and the fall. She was so genre savvy at the start and then just didn't follow up almost at all. Heck, she even got confirmation that Rarity was handling the aftereffects badly and apparently did nothing until it got even worse. I suppose that would've been a much less interesting plot though.
To be honest I suspected that she was powering it by slowly killing herself- it seemed thematically appropriate to have the author stand-in literally be killing herself to make her works perfect; a horribly destructive mindset but one that seemed to be what she was getting to as she broke down. She found her ideas to be more important than anything else; her job, her friends, her very own life.
I really enjoyed the work though- you can almost feel the emotions coming from it. It had a great build-up and a satisfying if slightly rushed climax. Thank you for writing it.
God, this is what it's like being a programmer. When you have this magical machine before you that can do anything you can imagine if only you are willing to feed it enough time. Feature creep is like one of those things from a horror story that gets twenty feet closer every time you take your eyes off it.
Rarity's last comment is where this story truly earns its dark tag.
Started out beautiful, but it seemed as if you just rushed through the final chapters.
There seems to be some similarity between these two:
Three Hundred And Sixty Degrees Of Saturation
If Only, If Only
Great minds think alike
8081577
It's intentional! If Only, If Only contains a reference to Three Hundred And Sixty Degrees Of Saturation. But, it's just an homage. The two don't have any real common plot elements.
This is from Estee's story, yeah?
Interesting twist on it.
8087131
Inspired by, yeah. Thanks!
Aside from Twilight's casual homophobia, I thought this was pretty fantastic. My only major criticism is that I think you could have foreshadowed Rarity's animal killings—as is, it sorta comes out of left field. Maybe one of the things that Rarity misses out on when she locks herself away is all her friends helping Fluttershy look for missing animals, or something?
8096792
Thanks! The homophobia was intended as a background gag. For some reason, I keep finding it hilarious that the "Princess of Friendship" needs to check her privilege, so a lot of my stories have jokes about Twilight being racist or sexist. For instance, in With Kung-Fu Action, Twilight is considering an action figure of herself and this exchange occurs.
Action Figure: "Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned that changelings are bad news! Don't make friends with shapeshifters."
Twilight: "Oh my gosh. Why is this thing so racist?"
Rainbow Dash: "...Twilight. You said that last week. You actually said that to Thorax's face."
Twilight: "Uh, Rainbow? That was obviously ironic and also he's different from them and I probably have lots of changeling friends."
Magic is the solution for nearly all problems.
For the rest, we have alicorn-level violence.
Haha, 360 degrees of Saturation leads to MUURRRDDEERR
8096927 Casually racist/sexist/whatever Princesses is one of the things I admit finding fun to write too. Particularly if it's Sun or Moon because they're, y'know, the paragons of purity and giving them such a flaw is fun.
This is how you feel? No offense, my friend, but you have some serious OCD issues. I have Asbergers Syndrome so I have to deal with my share of writing issues, but it's nothing this severe. I feel bad for you, brother.
The story was good btw. Very well written.
8120114
Nooooo. Really?
The story is dramatized a bit. But yeah, it can get pretty bad!
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
8120725 As long as your not sacrificing animals, I'm sure we'll get along great.
......You're not are you?
So... was it after The Clock that Rarity went full murder-shack in the forest, or after The Mirror?
Because I'm sort of thinking that line in the penultimate paragraph of The Mirror:
might be indicating that her power in that chapter had come from emotionally hurting her friends, and it was after that that she'd broken through the ethical barrier of murder.
8103038
The subject of alicorn-level violence often reminds me of the old Romane word for brawler in Codex Ex Equus' story, To Dethrone a Princess.
Celastiar
Oh my goodness. Without blood or gore (until the revelation at the very last minute) this story was so dark. It made a nightmare out of completely inoffensive, harmless things.
Also...”mostly???”
“I don’t know, it just feels awkward?” Twilight sighed as she refilled her cup of tea. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with Moondancer being gay. Dash is gay and I’ve never felt uncomfortable around her.
........................nope. Not continuing.
Man.
That feeling of simultaneously knowing that Rarity using dark magic was definitely wrong, and wishing that it were real so I could use it like that...