Spectrum
The Team
TheIdiot
“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.”
– Noam Chomsky
DoctorFluffy
ZA WARUDO
VoxAdam
Sledge115
RoyalPsycho
TB3
Kizuna Tallis
ProudToBe
Interlude
Through Ragdoll’s Eyes
* * * * *
“Eckhart saw Hell too. You know what he said? He said the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life. Your memories, your attachments, they burn them all away. But they’re not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. Relax.
So the way he sees it, if you’re frightened of dying and you’re… holding on, you’ll see demons, tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the Earth.
It’s just a matter of how you look at it, that’s all. So don’t worry, okay?”
— Louis the Physician, from Jacob’s Ladder“Vidi well, little brother! Vidi well!”
— Alex DeLarge, from A Clockwork Orange
Off in the distance, there is a clock ticking somewhere. It runs as well as it can, with all cogs meshing together. Doing its job to tell the time for anyone who wishes to know. Of course, clocks have become a tad redundant in this new century, with the advent of smartphones, those triple heirs to the digital watch, the camera and the mobile. At the very least, the ticking is her sole comfort these days.
“She’s looking in our direction again,” she imagines someone saying, from behind the monitor they’ve hidden in her cell.
Obviously, the ticking could just be a figment of her imagination. She’s never seen any clock ever since she was committed here. It’s hard to try and look around when you can’t really move. Still, she focuses on the ticking… on something working as it should.
“Do you think she’s responsive?”
Another voice speaks, another figment of her imagination.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
“Nah. Only time she does anything is when she starts converting again.”
Tick. Tick...
“Again?”
Tick…
“Yeah, something that just happens with her. Something about that potion she made not being stable? I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”
“That sounds… terrible. Is there anything we can do?”
“Probably not. But even then, she deserves it, the bitch. Greatest irony of the decade for her to suffer from her own poison.”
…
She wishes she could speak. She wishes she could tell everyone, everyone from Earth to Equestria, that she’s been framed. She wishes she could say one sentence to someone and that they would listen to her.
‘I’m innocent, my name is–’
“Caitlyn.” A voice whispers into her ears. “It’s that time again, Caitlyn~”
‘No! No! Leave me alon–’
* * * * *
It’s been like this ever since she converted herself.
Not with the usual ponification serum, no. Instead, it was her own variation, to try and avoid the side-effects that seemed to plague all the recipients, based on the reports she’d read. Even then, she had no choice but to convert after the injuries she sustained from the attack.
At one time, Caitlyn North believed in the cause with all her heart. She had witnessed, if always from a place of comparative comfort and an eye on the world which was still not given to everyone who lived on Earth, even at the height of the global Internet Age, the slow decay of mankind. The corruption, the fanaticism, the apathy. The ceaseless grousing over how someone ought to do something, never followed by the statement “And that someone is me”.
Even before the visitors arrived from another world, Caitlyn was one of perhaps a very small handful of humans who sought to make a change for the better. Be it the championing of good healthcare in itself or an improved social-safety net, or the cause of the planet’s green lungs, Caitlyn was what they called a campaigner. She has seen every walk of activism imaginable. Always without sanctimony, always fuelled by sincerity.
She was one of the first to join hand with hoof in friendship, nay, in reverence when the visitors came bearing their gifts. Now she is all that is left. This is all that is left.
Her tormentor speaks from just outside the walls of her inner sanctum.
“We’re about to be joined by someone, Caitlyn. Another convert, bound for sweet release. It’s thanks to your efforts that we got this far.”
In this expanse, the body has no meaning. Caitlyn’s essence floats, weightless in this void, this sunken place. She couldn’t tell you if she has hands or hooves, for here she has neither. Soon, she may even forget whether she had one or the other, when she was banished here.
The exile is of her own choosing, however. For behind the shimmer that marks the line between her inner sanctum and the rest of her – or now, as with all converts, the great chain that unifies all souls with Her – there is a perceptible shape.
Wisp and shadow. Equine, but not equine.
“I’m not going to let you in,” Caitlyn spits. She’s lost count of how often she’s said this. “I’m never going to let you in.”
“Don’t speak so hastily,” the wispy figure replies, serenely. “Anyone who uses ‘never’ hardly lasts after saying it. But please, give me the incentive I need to prove you wrong~”
Her name is Caitlyn North. She is, or was, the Head of the Ponification for Humanity’s Healing. Her aim was to use the ponification serum that Equestria gifted to mankind, as a cure for illness, for amputation, for physical disability. Although turned into a quadrupedal, colourful equine, the recipient would be made whole again.
Unfortunately, as she has long since discovered, Caitlyn has been played as a pawn by Equestria. Unfortunate that none will believe her, seeing how all her colleagues are dead by now. Or worse.
NEW SUBJECT IDENTIFIED. SEARCHING FOR UNITY. UNITY PARTIALLY AVAILABLE. SUMMONING GUARDIAN ANGEL.
“Ahhh, here they come~” cooes the wispy figure. “I must get myself ready, so please, entertain our guest until I arrive.”
And now Caitlyn is alone.
Alone in her box, a cramped chamber of her own mind’s making, caught in the massive network where this wraith and its ilk monitor the converted.
She’s here because she was one of the first to recognise long-term faults in the serum’s recipients and because she took an audacious step. She believed she could do better than the Archmage of the Solar Empire. She attempted to create a serum of her own to nullify those same mental faults.
The truth, however, was far more sinister than she could ever have imagined. Those early converts were not suffering unforeseen side-effects – they were the deliberately delayed, the ‘Slow’, the frogs in boiling water. And this is a nightmare that shall last until she gives in. The wraith will gladly give her a front-row seat to it, again and again and again, until she gives in.
Time once more to be a captive audience to what she unknowingly helped bring to Earth.
In the nothing beyond her walls, there is coalescence into something. The victim appears. A woman the colour of coffee, lying on her back, fully-clothed in a tank top and jeans. Her eyes open up, full of hope and wonder. Two traits that speak clearly of someone who believes in the fantasy of Conversion. That it is the key to new life, a new beginning.
She doesn’t know what she’s in for.
“Run!” Caitlyn calls to the woman. “Run if you can! Please, run!”
But the woman does not run. Caitlyn has no mouth. Thus she has no voice. Nor does she even have ears to hear, or eyes to see with. All which she beholds is sprung from the will of her tormentor. While she remains in her box, or circle of protection, or inner sanctum, call it what you will, the wraith cannot truly burn her – yet its touch can still blister.
Alas, it is the look in the woman’s own eyes which says it all. This one came here willingly. To think, there are still those who believe… Surely she’s witnessed it for herself, the perversion, the wrong they have wrought, mutilating not just people, but half a planet? Yet these are the eyes of faith. They see what others cannot. What may or may not be there.
And Caitlyn is there, yet not there.
“You need to run–”
A white light appears above the woman.
GUARDIAN ANGEL SUMMONED. DEBUTING CONVERSION.
“Why, hello there,” her tormentor’s voice speaks, calm and pleasant. “Rio Deneter.”
Too late. Always too late.
Like always, the wraith reappears. A pegasus mare of an unthreatening pink coat, dark magenta eyes, and a rose-coloured mane with light violet streaks. Her bearing is majestic, yet her words are modest, all to allay the subject’s fears.
“I’m ready…” the woman says, joy in her voice. “I’m ready to join you. Please take me…”
‘Don’t. Please don’t–’
“Oh, a willing convert!” The pegasus smiles, hooves clapping together. “Those like you are a true rarity these days, Rio. It makes such a nice change.”
Surrounding them both, the woman’s mind opens up, moving images within windows, manifest in the void. Her life’s memories, of course.
Patiently, the pegasus examines the windows with analytical coolness, taking note of some over others – all to see the general sum of the subject.
Caitlyn stays trapped, though, squinting, she’s able to look into one of the windows. It shows the woman in a maternity ward. She is helping to deliver a child.
‘Oh, cruel irony, that is not fair.’ Caitlyn thinks. ‘What has she done to deserve this?’
Caitlyn watched as the woman’s face scrunches up, trying to remember something. Then it comes. She is staring in surprise at the wraith, having just fully taken in its features.
“Princess Cadance?” she asks. “When did you rejoin the cause?”
“I’m not Princess Cadance,” the wraith responds to the woman. “I’m your friendly guardian angel, a utility spell within the ponification matrix designed to help find your role in our society.”
“I want to remain a nurse,” the woman says, though it requires effort. “Can I still be a nurse? A perfect, happy pony nurse… helping others…”
“So, you were a nurse? That’s interesting...” The wraith pauses. “How did they hurt you?”
Upon hearing this, the woman says nothing.
“How did they hurt you?”
The woman trembles.
“Why…” she whispers. “Why must you ask me this?”
“Those who convert willingly,” the wraith states, “nearly are always those who were hurt deepest, and who understand it.”
Yet as the woman stares, tears brimming in her eyes, Caitlyn knows the wraith’s true game.
Most of the time, they are unwilling. Few remain, indeed, who are willing converts. Some of them are kicking and screaming. Some try to hold their heads high and spit in its face. Others fold in on themselves, unresponsive, as if hoping there’s a deeper place they can retreat to. But there isn’t, not here.
The unwilling come in all shapes and sizes, from the elderly who’ve lived their lives as humans and yet won’t die human, to the very young who never had the time to know one from the other…
There are no saints or sinners. Only those who adamantly refute their sins when brought to face them, however much weight they may hold. And those who, as they are enveloped, are led to wonder in this final moment if humanity’s virtues do outweigh its sins.
“Nightingale…” the woman says softly. “That’s the name of my true self. Nightingale, a kind, gentle pony nurse, unburdened by everything that’s gone wrong in the life of Rio Deneter. She’s who I want to be… Nightingale won’t cry herself to sleep, grieving for the loving husband the army stole from her… Nightingale won’t have to live not knowing if her son… her wonderful, kind, kidnapped little boy… is even still alive.”
The wraith tilts its head. “They tried to steal him from you before he was even born, if I recall?”
“A mad woman with a knife, crazed that she could bear no child of her own…”
“It’s not a unique story, alas.”
“And then, years later… Marty was taken from me. Humans’ cruelty had taken Raphael, and then they took my boy. It was only postponed, the first time…”
“Yet, just prior to our Great Work’s beginning, you did not come to us right away. You sought to rediscover yourself elsewhere.”
“I was a nurse,” whispers the woman. “Wherever I went. Doctors Without Borders, the Congo. That was when the new strain of ebola broke out, a few months before the Barrier.”
Two tears roll down her cheeks.
“They didn’t want to be helped. They set hospitals on fire and they cowered away from the needle, filled with hatred and superstition.”
“And so you saw the root of the problem, in time for the Barrier’s expansion.”
“Yes…” the woman says. “Yes, it’s exactly the same. They need our help… All of humanity needs our help. Even if they don’t want it.”
The wraith nods knowingly.
“Then this is what you want? To become a pretty pony, happy and free?”
Those words are honeyed and sweet, but to Caitlyn’s ears, they carry the acrid tang of a thousand dead flies buried in the ointment, just below the gelatinous surface.
The woman’s memories float overhead. Her wedding day, her son… her grief. An endless outpouring of grief upon grief, of unmarked, unknown graves, and of empty beds. The constant shadow of a nameless, faceless ripper stalking her dreams.
“Please…” she says. “Just take it away. Make me better.”
“As you wish,” the wraith says benignly, leaning in to give her an affectionate nuzzle.
It scrolls through arcane webs of light, until finally it settles on something.
“Here we have it… the perfect use for your raw emotion. Plenty of room for intelligence and creativity too, within parametres. Take a look at your future form and tell me what you think.”
The image the wraith conjures, in another of those windows, lies beyond Caitlyn’s field of view. Undoubtedly, her tormentor wishes to preserve some element of surprise for its audience.
However, the woman appears to find comfort in what she beholds.
“I should warn you…” the wraith adds, closing the image. “Your soul shall now be touched, for the first time, by the undiluted Voice of Harmony… you may feel considerable discomfort.”
Despite her faith, the woman is still able to read into these words.
“If you mean it shall be painful…” she whispers, weighing her every word. “Just say it. It cannot be any worse than… than the rest of it.”
The creature in the guise of Love’s sovereign considers her.
“Epiphany is never a gentle experience,” comes the acknowledgement. “It will be painful.”
* * * * *
And then it seems, like many times before, that Caitlyn sees with eyes behind the eyes.
These are hands, but not of her skin. Although human once again, she is not Caitlyn. This mortal shell is a darker shade than she was back in life, criss-crossed by callouses that bespeak actual physical hardship. The only similarity lies in the fingers, which display the fae-like, thin quality of a moderately-built woman.
She looks down, and sees, to her shock, that her hands have fused into solid, blunt hooves. Soft, peach-orange fur has already formed a coating over them, and swarms up her arms. Her shoes rip apart as her feet follow suit. It hurts like nothing she has never felt, her muscles torn and reformed, stretched and pushed further than they ever should have been.
Tipping her head forward, she sees a thick, spiky fringe of pink-and-red mane fall forward over her eyes. She can feel her hairline pulling in tighter at the back, short and spunky. Hyperventilating, she feels tears come to her, grief mixed with joy.
She is going to be a pony…
Sprawled on her side, as tiny needles stab into her body, penetrating somewhere deeper than flesh and bone. Cold knives are inside her memories, and she feels as if she is being placed under the scalpel and suffering a concussion all in one, shredding all she held dear. Above her the memories swim in their orbits, blurring and washing. Some fade away, while others begin to glow red, pushing into her mind until they sear like they never have before.
She is Caitlyn. She is the woman, Rio. She is both and neither. She is something else.
Pain… rage… hatred… hatred for the people who all her life have hurt her. All the humans who have hurt her. The longing to make them pay, make them suffer, make them share in this torture… driving, sinking, embedding.
“Hurt… them!” she cries, an equine screech ripping her throat. “Let me hurt them!”
“And there it is,” the wraith sighs. “Dig deep enough, and the beast always wakens within them… Would this be a dagger you see before you?”
It kneels down, stroking her forehead as, with a tear of flesh and bone, a bloody horn bursts through. And as it pushes out, she feels something else press in, flowing along the path of needles until it reaches her center, digs its claws in, and starts to cut and slice.
The wraith did not lie. This is deeply, deeply painful.
She is crying.
“Why… why does it hurt so much?”
“Because you are human. Hurt and violence lie in your very nature,” the wraith tells her solemnly. “These violent passions... have violent ends… Nothing we can do to change that. But the end of your humanity need not be the end of you.”
It cradles her head and lifts it.
“Let me show you. That’s the strongest, happiest memory of your childhood.”
Herself, five years old at Christmas, dressed in a nurse’s costume. She is cradling a doll, a baby doll. A smile on a face she couldn’t remember.
Some lingering spark of resistance flares up in her.
Why must she give this up?
“Once we have cut out the beast, this is what we shall build around… All we need now is a name.”
“Nightingale…” The words come out in a whistle. “My name is Nightingale.”
“No, I fear that won’t do,” the wraith says, regretfully. “Our names are unknown to us, and I can’t give you that. But I see your soul, and your true name… I know…”
Words blaze across memory, dredged up and mixed from long-lost school lessons.
“These violent passions have violent ends.”
“In modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying… You will die like a dog for no good reason…”
“The Andalusian dog howls, for someone has died!”
“You wanted to forget, and you wanted to share what you have. Your old self dies, here on this table, for death must precede rebirth. Let us make this occasion sweet and fitting… Like a razor, I cut down into your eye as a cloud passes the Moon… Until you are reborn, my dear Andalusian Ardor.”
“I... am… Nightingale…”
“You are Andalusian Ardor,” the wraith says simply. “And I believe you may have earned it to be recreated in my image… Here… we… go…”
The memory bursts into blazing shards.She screams as she feels herself shatter in kind. The rage and hate and loathing burn bright, and everything else of her essence is reduced to fragments orbiting a red star of festering emotion, slowly drawn by its gravity into a new shape, a shell to encase what has replaced the core of her very existence.
Information pours in, forming a filigree of wire on the developing husk.
Her mind is inexorably bound up, locked in and chained down. Somewhere, deep inside, there is something screaming for release, begging to have a shred of awareness in what she is going to become.
But what’s the point, another part of her asks, though it is unfamiliar. Won’t she be happier? Why would she want that? She can feel her thoughts twisting, her worldview warping… becoming clean and simple and bright…
As it does, a new image begin to forms overhead. Screams and howls fade into a low background buzz, and she begins to feel calm. All the emotion dulls and dwindles as she beholds the new rock upon which rests the throne of her soul.
Just as her guardian angel presented her earlier, there is still a doll in the picture. A beautiful pony doll with an orange hide, short pink-and-red striped mane, and eyes of the softest grey, if dull as the edge of a blade.
And holding her, lovingly playing with a favourite toy, is the giant form of an alicorn filly with a flowing, rosy mane. With a flick of her horn, the filly raises a felt-tip pen, and on the sole of the doll’s hoof, in permanent ink as pink as her mane, she writes her name.
Celestia
It’s more than a filly’s name on a sole. It’s the Voice of Harmony sounding through a soul.
The filly hugs the doll tight.
… Perfect, wondrous, radiant, divine. Her One! Her All!
The toy is Nightingale… Andalusian… Ardor… She just cannot remember. Cannot reconcile, as her last bastions of self fight against the growing void within her soul. The doll was that nurse from her childhood. The doll was the beautiful pony doll, eyes made of nonreflective grey buttons. Or was it?
Tittering, the filly glances under the dolly’s tail, and finds a pull-string. Slowly, She bites onto it with her pearly-white teeth and...
Yank.
“Hi there! I’m the Pretty Pony, Miss Ardor!”
Hot fire explodes in between her nethers and she bucks, her mouth spitting out the same words as the doll. Her eyes roll back in her skull at the heat, the intensity, the raw pleasure that is inviting and somehow dark, all-consuming...
She is a pony. No matter how she struggled to believe that she was not, that is the truth of it. To associate anything human with the idea of fulfillment is heresy. The beauty of pathos in weltschmerz and sehnsucht, certainly. But pure joy? Never.
Her seventh birthday. A brownie sundae instead of a cake, she hadn’t wanted one. A set of child’s fake tools, which she’d used to play doctor as all little fillies did. No, not a–
Yank.
“I love you, Tia!” bleats a voice she knows to be her own.
A great tsunami of Other crests and splashes over her, and the memories wash away as she writhes in the afterglow, bits of herself running out with the tide.
Yank.
“No!” screams a semblance of that hateful Other. Pathetic. As if it deserved that mercy. “This isn’t me! It was never she who was me who was she who was–”
“Then who were you?” the wraith asks.
“I… was… a healer...”
The words are spoken with great agony.
But there is more than one Other within her.
… An Other who was a healer, too.
‘Damn it. Caitlyn thought as desperation filled her as it had countless times. The feeling of helplessness she’d had to experience every time the wraith dragged her here. To be stuck experiencing this hell. To…
… She cannot be a bystander. Not this time.
‘I’ve got to do something.’ Caitlyn thought, braving herself for the consequences.
And so, Caitlyn North opens herself for just a moment. A moment that has to contradict itself; last long enough for her to act, but be so brief that it cannot be exploited.
Caitlyn reaches out and takes hold of one thing. A single piece of the woman – Rio, the piece told her – and placed onto it a single word to act as a protection.
Remember.
And–
‘No.’
Fear clutches at Caitlyn as she sees something else there. It sees her, it–
‘No. Stay away from–’
* * * * *
Yank.
“I’ll always be with you!”
Her entrance into high school. Awkward, gawky, another face in the hundreds at her school.
Another girl, no, a filly, no, a girl, a best friend she had known all her life, whose name is escaping her, suggesting that they would be great friends. Invitations to parties. The two of them smiling on the river together among other friends, drunk with her best friend’s older brother, telling what seemed like great and terrible secrets in the bright light of the–
Yank.
“I live for you!”
What need is there for such secrets? For the darkness of the human world? No, she can look up to another, other… brighter light, like the Sun that lit Earth, but brighter somehow. She cannot stop smiling inside. And her smiles seem better, fuller, wider. What point is there in resisting?
Yank.
“I’d die for you!”
She is… was… she was somepony, that is for sure. She might have been somepony who wasn’t Nightingale before? But even saying she was somepony seems wrong. No, she couldn’t have been human, could she?
Yank.
”Everypony should be a Pretty Pony! It’s so much fun and you’ll be happy all the time!”
What use was there in resisting? If humanity was so great, surely she’d remember something of it. Something other than pain.
Yank.
“Hi there! I’m the Pretty Pony, Miss Ardor!”
With each draw of the string, a rush of alien emotions and sensations, rushes of not-quite memories she knows to be of life in Equestria, conditioning her to fit in almost seamlessly with the rest of happy ponydom. A surge of feeling that floods, drowns her mind, swamping all resistance and doubt.
She came, and spoke, and thought… only when the string was pulled.
Regular, conditioned… programmed.
Gazing up, eyes wide, entranced and glassy, taking in this vision, the new mare feels the muscles in her cheek twitch. This was her, she was a doll. A happy pony dolly to be loved. The epiphany is that none ever move of their own volition. The strings were not strung, they were always there. But even though she knew she was a doll, she felt alive, because that was how She saw her.
And wasn’t that just wonderful?
Her soul is free at last, from her past, from her pain.
Free from thought. Free from conscience. Free from choice.
“There we go…” croons the wraith-like pegasus who had helped her, stepping back so she can climb onto her hooves.
A tall and strong unicorn mare, muscular and lean, ready to die if need be…
Yank.
Death does not frighten her. She has died once already. Death comes before rebirth.
Heed these words and ye shall be saved. Simple, elegant… perfect. She is perfect now. “How may I serve?”
The wraith trots forward. “Just share the love, my dear…”
And then she pulls the Newfoal into a kiss.
The freshly-baked mare responds with programmed enthusiasm, her eyes wide open and mindless as her mouth and tongue sucked and hummed. All there is in what remains of her mind, her every thought, is of how to heed the Voice...
… And another voice, too, a screaming, distant voice in the back of her consciousness, pleading and begging to die. But she ignores it. Even as her tongue works with sensual skill inside the mouth of the wraith, the twitch in her cheeks grows stronger, drawing her lips into a wide expression of adulant joy, the bliss of a toy fulfilling its purpose.
Ardor looks upon her reason, her meaning, her soul, and she sees it was good.
She is Harmony’s loyal pony dolly.
And it’s playtime.
* * * * *
Caitlyn lets out a harsh breath.
Her eyes zig-zag about the sterile room and are greeted by a relative comfort. She is still in her cell, still herself, despite not being human...
“Too close,” she mutters between her laboured breaths, “too close…”
What was that thing she’d seen? It wasn’t the wraith, no. It was… different.
‘Just what was it?’ Caitlyn wonders, trying to calm herself. ‘Some kind of spectre?’ Another thought crosses her mind, making her snort. A bizarre, braying sound to her ears, even now. ‘Or maybe the woman does have a guardian angel, after all...’
She’d felt afraid when she saw it. Wings and a horn, on a silhouette basked in the ethereal light of its long, flowing mane, are not signs she’s come to find reassuring.
Yet whatever it was, Caitlyn feels it hadn’t seemed hostile. Quite the opposite.
White and blue of purest dark, those were the colours of the alicorn sisters. And one might have theorised there should be grey to strike the balance, if one were so inclined.
Caitlyn has only seen the tone of its mane, and the tone was golden.
Could it be that–
“I can’t remember the last time we got a willing convert. Do you?”
‘Go away. No matter how many times you try luring me out to stop this monstrosity, I’m never letting you in.’
Caitlyn can practically hear the the wraith tutting.
“Weren’t you listening? Anyone who uses ‘never’ doesn’t last. But worry not…”
She yelps in pain, frantically pressing her head as she’s beset by the feeling of something pressing itself against her mind
“I saw what you did. You did open up for a little bit. And because of that, I can feel the walls are thinner than before. It’s only a matter of time at this point.”
“F-Fuck you–”
“Language~” The wraith tuts again, “It’s not nice to swear. But then, you aren’t really getting into the spirit of things, are you? We all have our part to play. And while I can’t address your poor performance yet, I can help you in other ways.”
She braces herself. She knows what’s coming next.
“Let’s try for some wings this time, why don’t we? It might lift your spirits.”
Caitlyn North screams. She screams as her body twists and shutters once again in the throes of conversion. This time a pegasus, maybe from a new template.
It won’t matter who is there watching. Because, by this point, it’s the same old story. Caitlyn North, Head of the old PHH and traitor of humanity, getting what she deserves. An occasional painful conversion into another variant of Newfoal.
And nobody’s the wiser for it.
Feels weird to see a spectrum chapter with only 4000 ish words. Still, it's perfect for what it wants to portray.
Oooh, and speaking of Calm before the Storm, any chance we'll see a Spectrum version of that? I loved seeing the reactions of the various factions to a sunny Equestria.
9667260 Well, what would you consider is the best part of this interlude?
Huh, I knew I recognized the name somewhere.
This universe is so large, I'm really thankful for the AN.
Xenolestia is truly evil.
9667342
Hmm, the part where the mind magic takes hold. You'd expect that to be the moment of realization, where the dreamy vision turns into fear and panic and lots shouting of "oh god!" and "no please!" ensues.
Except it doesn't happen. Even the part of the person that realizes what is happening and is screaming in terror is locked up and shoved into a corner. It's there, screaming terror, but only in the back of your mind. The rest of you just... feels good.
It's insidious. And that makes it brilliant, in a horrible way.
I do wonder what Red did. Must’ve been awful.
9668103
As another commenter put it in the post-cancellation comments of the original Spectrum, it's a long story. Probably long enough, no exaggeration, to fill a book.
I'm not one of the people from the old Team who holds the deepest feeling of hurt over Red, and I feel like I buried the hatchet with him to some degree - yet it still does hurt at times.
If I had to summarise it, I'd put it thusly; Redskin has had a lot of pain in his life, and I've forgiven him for many things, but one thing I can't forgive him for is acting like only his pain matters.
P.S.
9667774
That's just the comment we'd hoped for, Keroko.
9668103
There's a lot of bad blood remaining and I don't think I can accurately summarize it nowadays. Five of us (Jed, Vox, Fluffy, Kizuna, and myself) wrote blogs on it, but it's a hefty read on its own. Essentially there were a lot of creative differences that grew and grew, accelerated by a few problems Red and us had with one another, and one day it came to a head and... well, here we are.
9667260
Calm... perhaps, but we'll see!
9668436
Thanks for the comment. And tbh, I like this version a lot better after reading both the old and new.
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The simplest answer is that he pissed us off by steadily alienating us and abusing us exponentially more and more over the course of two years. It's not entirely unlike what happened with #changethechannel behind the scenes.
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Which is funny, cause I had like the second or third most reasons to hate him... and he might as well have never have been my friend for all I think about him. The key to really cutting someone out of your life is to come to terms with how little they truly give a shit about you, to realize that they'd never change even as you did your best to grow and become a newer better person, and they'd outright laugh at you for even attempting to change.
You just have to look at yourself and ask: Can I look myself in the eye, talk to my friends with a straight face, just letting this keep going?
Also there's less mass murder being portrayed as unambiguously heroic, so that helps
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Well, damn. Thanks! We aim to please on that score, because there's a lot that we feel didn't work in the original version.
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Thank you very much We hope you'll continue to enjoy the ride!
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Well, to be fair most of it still works even in current Spectrum with little change needed except the occasional reference to Marcus. It's already got a less monotonously evil HLF and a more morally grey PHL, too. Only the PER part isn't really compatible anymore, given the blatant Doctor Who crossover that entire segment was (speaking of which, I love the new Time Turner. Less Doctor Who but instead playing up his love for science and technology as something extraordinary and vital to PHL).
Hmmm, now I'm having a brainbug of a Crystal War veteran PER pony whose entire convictions get turned upside down when he learns of Sunny Equestria, and runs off only to encounter Sunny Cadance and get all his convictions blown up even more because hello here is an alicorn that should not exist saying she stopped the Crystal War before it even happened.
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As they say, so much "yes" to this whole comment. Including the use of the term "Sunny Equestria" to differentiate from Imperial Equestria.
I recall that in a previous comment, you'd also noted that we kept in the OG Spectrum detail of TCB!Cadance having never become an alicorn.
I'm not going to spoil anything, or even highlight the passages in the last few chapters pointing to it - yet as some of the characters themselves have begun to notice, the divergence this time might be connected not only to what we know from OG Spectrum, but also to that one paragraph from Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell recounting Cadance's ascension after her encounter with the sorceress Prismia.
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More that I noticed you kept the Cadances as unicorns rather than pegasi, though I did notice the lack of ascension as well.
Those two meeting would... not be a nice event. If last chapter's flashback was any indication, alicorns are somewhat of a touchy subject to Alter Cadance. Seeing a version of herself who got everything she never got to have (alicorn, a loving husband who isn't brainwashed, her birthright of the Crystal Throne) would not go down well.
Well, that manages to convey how disgusting it must be. Dead flies are no joke.
*shiver*
I hate this. It’s bad enough when they can’t truly be themselves, but their real self has to watch behind mental bars, or as the case may be, held down by vines.
And yet I have to admit I love that it’s written good enough – or rather, bad enough – to make me hate it.
I just re-read “For Whom the Bell Tolls” I’m dying of pure sadness and angst.
Not being able to tell the truth when you really want to is dejecting to me. It’s one of the things I really don’t like.
No one can save you
You can’t even save yourself
You belong to us
9670070 Actually, both Cadances were Pegasi before their faithful day(s). What separates them, and both universes originally, is the fact that Canon!Cadance ascended into becoming an alicorn. TCB!Cadance only got the unicorn aspect and not both unicorn and earthpony.
As for her reaction to Canon!Equestria... well, you'll have to wait and see.
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*blink* They are? That's... not the impression the story has been giving so far. As early as chapter three Sunny Cadance was shown being very reluctant about flying, to the point where her inner monologue outright tells us the first time she has ever flown was when she escape from her prison during the Canterlot wedding. That gives a very solid impression of a unicorn who grew wings and never really got used to them, not a pegasus who grew a horn.
Meanwhile Alter Cadance is described as a unicorn with a Lyra-like build, with her main distinguishing feature being her stunted wings, which she has learned to bear with pride, but seem more like the mark of her incomplete ascension from a unicorn into an alicorn than a sign of her heritage as a once pegasus.
If they were pegasi, shouldn't Sunny Cadance be having problems with her unicorn magic rather than her flying, and Alter Cadance have a stunted horn rather than stunted wings? Though if the idea is to signify Alter Cadance lacks the earth aspect, perhaps making her gangly and frail might better suit that.
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Much of Cadance's backstory in Spectrum 2.0. is a cross between the backstory TB3 wrote for her and said outline from Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell. You'll likely have picked up that TCB!Luna explains to Alex in the flashback portion of Chapter Five that Cadance is a pegacorn – like Lyra, incidentally, who can walk on clouds – implying a combination of unicorn and pegasus traits. That's what both Cadances were originally, pegacorns, but only one fully ascended.
Precisely, TCB!Cadance does not have the earthpony aspect that'd complete her and make her an alicorn. I have skimmed through the earlier chapters again and you're right, we didn't emphasise the frailty in her physique other than her wings, but while I was working with TB3 in 2015 on The Beatification of Lyra Heartstrings, he'd been planning to bring new attention to Cadance's fragile, pallid state. So that'll likely come up in future.
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9670975 And even then, she grew up orginally in a village of earthponies.
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This is true, but so did Fluttershy, and even though Fluttershy isn't a strong flier and even a pegasus who has admitted to being scared of flying, she can still fly and she still has regular wings.
If I might suggest a bit of tweaking, what if in chapter 3 Cadance is not nervous about flying, but nervous about her magic? After all, more so than flying, her fellow alicorns are known for the greatest feats of magic in ponykind. Not to mention that Cadance spent almost all of her alicorn years in unicorn central, under the watchful eye of the immortal ruler responsible for day and night itself, and inadvertently surrounded herself with extremely talented unicorns in Shining Armor, a unicorn with powerful enough magic to cast a shield that protects an entire city, and Twilight Sparkle, who became Celestia's personal student and protege. Then Luna returns on top of that and boom, another alicorn who aside from raising the moon also guards the dreams of every pony in Equestria.
I can easily imagine 'Cadance the former pegasus' suddenly having to deal with a horn and being surrounded by all these amazing spellcasters growing herself a huge inferiority complex regarding her magic. Especially because she's an alicorn, and Celestia and Luna are the only standard she has to measure herself to, and one she assumes others will hold her to as well. So instead of lamenting her vertigo, she could be beating herself up for failing to keep the Crystal Empire's defences powered and needing Twilight, Spike and the girls to bail her out at the last minute. Because "a real alicorn wouldn't have had trouble with something as simple as powering the defences of a city for several days straight."
Meanwhile for Alter Cadance in the chapter after that one, I'd say than rather than have Alex's attention fall to her wings, have his attention drift to how frail she looks by pony standards, even for a refugee, yet still seems to hold her head high and exude an aura of grace and power, like an ember that just needed one more log to become a proper fire.
Or something along those lines. Less attention to the wings, which by all rights should just be regular pegasus wings since she was born a pegasus, more attention on her body. It's a bit more tricky since earth ponies don't have an easily identifiable feature, I'll admit, but the wings are a key pegasus feature, so making that the weakest part of her makes it seem like it's the pegasus aspect she lacks, rather than the earth aspect.
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If Cadence never flew for years, they could conceivably have atrophied.
Interesting... very interesting...
Thematically, something about this figure reminds me of the Gravemind.
Isn't that one of the greatest tragedies? To act, believing yourself to be doing the right thing, yet unintentionally causing untold damage and devastation?
All she wanted to do was help, but instead they turned her into a monster.
My blood ran cold when I recognised where this character came from. Satisfaction that the character would have a better interpretation and execution -- oh dear, I don't think "execution" is the best word to use here. Either way, I'm filled with dread to see what's going to happen..
and yet i must read on, for I am filled with a morbid curiosity
Is it? Could the same be said of a lion, or a wolf, or even one of our fellow primates? I feel a deep sense of wrongness in my soul, but the part that disappoints me the most is that by some examinations, this being is accurate. It is not entirely correct, because there's more to any creature's life than violence and death, but there's still more than enough evidence that would support such a conclusion.
... but there's still a lot of evidence that refutes that conclusion, too. It's the little things. The small kindnesses of ordinary folk. The selfless actions of a few brave individuals.
Unfortunately, no one who has the power to affect change in our world is willing to let it change, for they benefit from retaining the status quo.
That is certainly a creative way to represent the process. It also might belie a more tragic angle as to the fate of the alternate Celestia.
You can do it, Caitlyn. I believe in you. Even now, you can still help, still try to make things better.
You never know how much you can do unless you try.
*shudders*
This is a perversion of everything I hold dear. I hate it.
... what colour is Galatea's mane, again?
Well, as my first step back into reading Spectrum after a lil hiatus, this has been quite stimulating. It made me think. It made me sad. And, of course, it's setting up details that must be important later on, as the Spectrum team expertly does.
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Ì̸͈?̴̹̽ ̶̫͊Ï̸͎ ̶͎̄a̶̩͛m̴̱̀ ̴̺̑a̵͎̚ ̷͖͂m̶͈͑o̸͙͑n̵̢̚u̶͂͜m̵̘̏ȅ̸̦n̷͙̽t̷̞͗ ̴̤̽ṫ̷͙o̸̕͜ ̸̨̈́a̸̭̓ľ̷̟l̶̡̆ ̴̠͑y̷̘̅õ̸͙ụ̷͒r̷̹̈ ̵̛͇s̴̛̼i̴̦͘n̷̬͝s̷̅ͅ
"I was saving you. I only wanted to help. I only wanted to help. I only wanted to help."
Perhaps it's in our nature to commit violence, and yet is the drive not to commit violence a testament to our will?
Kindness takes effort, and it's an effort that's worth it.
Ink black, heh.
Just a little tease, and all. Welcome back.
Whoa, major Changeling: the Lost vibes from this.