Sunset doesn't know what she expected from the snap decision to go back to the town where she was born. It certainly wasn't this.
People left and right knowing her name.
Somebody pretending to be somebody pretending to be her.
The apparent existence of a world of magic and unicorns.
And in the middle of everything, a girl who looks like her, sounds like her, and has stirred up a whole mess of trouble and drama just waiting for anyone who happens to be named "Sunset Shimmer".
This is an Anon-a-Miss story, which means that it takes the 2014 comic My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Holiday Special as it's jumping off point. As is generally the case, if I write this properly it should be self-contained and thus completely accessible to people who have never read laid eyes on the comic.
The idea behind this story is that the point of divergence from the comic is human-Sunset's arrival, and that is the whole of what has changed from the original premise. As a result you won't see many of the the things that have become common in the genre as a result of the influence of Dainn's version (the sirens showing up, things escalating severely, Gilda, so forth.)
Why not call it The Sunset Zone instead? Seems reasonable. Also, that line made me laugh.
Wait, a comic? What comic?
I love it when human Sunset meets pony Sunset
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I should have made that more clear, I'll edit the description.
There have been two tie-in comics made for the Equestria Girls universe. The second comic, which was known as "My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Holiday Special", is the comic in question. If I do my job right as a writer, it won't be required reading, but if you'd like to know what happens in it:
It is a story in which Sunset Shimmer is framed as being an online personality known as "Anon-a-Miss". All that Anon-a-Miss does is share secrets. (Usually embarrassing ones.) Some of them are secrets that just cause teasing, some break up friendships, some damage families, and through it all Sunset gets the blame.
Sunset gets the blame in large part because Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy accuse her and denounce her in a school hallway while other students look on. (This leaves Sunset on the floor in tears.) With the people who know Sunset best and defend her most convinced she's guilty, most of the rest of the student body just falls in line and gets on the "Blame Sunset" train.
This takes place after Rainbow Rocks (explicitly so), which means that she's left to watch as all of the goodwill she earned by saving the school (and the world) goes up in smoke. Without any friends to turn to . . . well, it's not pretty.
If you want to read the comic, you can either buy it, or visit youtube where someone made a video that shows the comic's pages.
It was a good first chapter but I always have one major concern when it comes to these kinds of stories. Will Sunset's friends be demonized to "out of character" levels? Or will they be a complete non-presence in the story considering the lack of tags?
That made me fucking snort aloud.
I might be missing something, but could human!Sunset not tell who pony!Sunset looked like based on the hair? The bacon gene is not widely shared...as far as we know.
Either way, I certainly intend to keep an eye on this. Call me enthused, curious. Two Sunsets. Who doesn't like fireworks?
So, this is set DURING the Anona-miss incident?
Feels strange that I get mentioned now in other stories
I can already see that this goes another way than my own, time will show how much different. Now I'm curious where you are going with this
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Maybe not the bacon gene in particular, but this is EQG we're talking about. Traveling as much as she does she's probably seen all kinds of weird hair colorations, and between the snow and everything else it was probably nothing more than somewhat similar.
Besides, Sunny's hair color changes occasionally, too. You of all people should know that.
8593151
Yes.
There's a period during which we don't see Sunset where first "Days Pass" and then there's an eight-bit montage covering an unspecified amount of time. This takes place during that no-Sunset gap.
So it's after this:
4.bp.blogspot.com/-aUlbQrvaIoM/WigCArYS6UI/AAAAAAAADn0/GhhT5CEgJvUBOiNzxQYnW1G2bbfusFGRACLcBGAs/s1600/Sunset%2Bon%2BFloor.png
And before the next time she appears in the comic.
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I think there was some sort of bleach incident. Maybe a failed dye-job attempt. I think 2000 or so words could come of that
Hm. This is interesting to me.
0.0'
I can imagine EG Pinkie Pie asking, "So Sunset, you gonna go back to your Equestria now never to return in spite of the friendships you've made here, and human you will just slip into your role and we all pretend pony you never existed after telling Flash Sentry never to think of you again?"
You have my full attention
That title,
Wait, is this the story where pony Sunset meets human Sunset?
Yes. More. Please!
ooh Sunset meets Sunset. I'm eager for more.
Er...Dainn?
8595455
Not the dwarf from Norse mythology, not the hart from Norse mythology, nor the Shadow Immortal named after the hart. Instead the Fimfiction writer named after the Shadow Immortal named after the hart from Norse mythology.
(The rutting caribou who befouled the name in certain works of fiction need not be spoken of as a caribou is neither hart nor dwarf.)
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It's always a good day when one hears Bill Withers.
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I don't know if it's the story where that happens, but it's certainly a story where that happens.
8595679
I have read... *starts counting all stories where Dainn is mention or included* ...about 6, 7, or more stories with that a**hat in it.
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Okay this got my interest. I'm just imagining what happens when they both walk into somewhere together. They are so gonna confuse the hell out of everyone
8592777 Oh, I thought Anon-a-miss was an "Anon in X" thing, which had me a tad... well, I like the idea of an Everyman, but straight calling them Anon always rubbed me the wrong way.
8595679 Wait, what about Caribou? Why is this writer coming up?
8602157
Honestly, stories with "Anon" as a character have always rubbed me the wrong way too. I'd probably be more comfortable calling a character "[redacted]" since that, at least, makes a degree of sense: they do have a name, you're just not allowed to know it. Not that I'd recommend that, there are better ways.
It's not like stories can't be written that just sidestep the issue of a character's name. The narrator in Fight Club never has a name mentioned. Doctor Who, which seems to have stories in every possible fictional format, has existed for 54 years (and 18 days) now and we've never learned the name of the Doctor. (And never will.)
(part you can skip if you want to get straight to the point)
To your second point, as I said Dainn is a name the originated in Norse myth where there are two entities who share the name. (Hardly unusual, I have met so damned many "Chris"s.) For our purposes the character that matters is one of the four harts that feed on the branches of the world tree, Yggdrasil.
(Hart is a word that refers to male red deer.)
The Boktai game series (apparently, I have not played) uses a lot of motifs from Norse mythology in the first three games, one of them is the name of the character (Black) Dainn, whom the author Dainn uses as an avatar.
(you can skip this too, if you want to get straight to the meat of the point without the context surrounding it.)
Once upon a time there weren't that many Fimfiction stories that related to the holiday special comic (just a handful, really), and the ones that there were all took things in directions Dainn wasn't enamored with, so Dainn wrote Anon-a-Miss, and that changed everything. Part of why is because Dainn gave permission for people to use or remix as they saw fit provided credit and notice were given.
The rest of why I'm not completely sure about. Definite'y Dainn's version had quality on its side, and it left a lot of people wanting more (I myself am writing a sequel with Dainn's permission) but not every story that has that and does that defines a genre.
The number of holiday special based stories exploded, and now there's an entire group devoted to collecting and cataloging them. Because Dainn's story was so central to creating the genre (they're called "Anon-a-Miss" fics, not "Equestria Girls Holiday Special" fics) a lot of things in Dainns story are found throughout the genre, even in stories that aren't directly Dainn's version at all.
For example, Dainn's version brought the Dazzlings into the story when there's no hint of them in the original comic. (In Dainn's version Sunset tracks them down and confronts them because she incorrectly thinks they're behind Anon-a-Miss, believing it is a petty but effective attempt to get revenge on her.) Now they're a fixture of Anon-a-Miss stories.
Another example is that in Dainn's version the violence against Sunset escalated beyond things seen in usual high school bullying (being tripped in the halls was an example from the comic.) Gilda, a character who doesn't even have a human version (yet) in any official stories or merchandise, was the ring leader of the group that escalated the violence against Sunset. She shows up in a lot of Anon-a-Miss fics even though she has precisely zero connections to the canonical Equestria Girls universe. Why? Because Dainn.
The point in me bringing up Dainn is that this story isn't going to be drawing on the narrative soup that surrounds Anon-a-Miss fics, a mixture that draws heavily on Dainn's story; it's instead going to take the original (official) comic as its jumping off point. And take that alone.
If anyone wants to see what I do with a Dainn inspired fic, I've got a direct sequel, and may later add to the Hell and High Water multiverse by doing a story that asks the question, "What if Rainbow went through the portal in chapter 4?". Hell or High Water is Dainn-inspired, so if I do ever make the story it'll be recursively Dainn inspired.
For this story, however, I'm not looking at any of the fan made additions whatsoever. This looking only at the comic, and the only change is the arrival of human Sunset. That one change will change everything, of course, but it won't be following into the established tropes of Anon-a-Miss fanfics because it won't change everything in such a way to mirror the things introduced by Dainn's fic that have since become standards.
Finally the caribou. The less said about it, the better, but since it's out there I felt like it was important to note: Not That "Dainn".
There is a genre in which Dainn the caribou (reindeer) king invades Equestria, trounces it in spite of that seeming unlikely in the extreme (Equestria is easy to knock down, but it always comes back up, usually in 40 minutes or less) and turns everything into a slavery, rape, and assorted misogyny fest.
So . . . that's a thing.
I'm guessing that the use of the name Dainn comes from someone who doesn't know the difference between reindeer and red deer taking the name from Norse myth. I'm guessing that because caribou-Dainn is a deer (thus probably based on the deer and not the dwarf/dark elf king of the same name) but doesn't (to my knowledge, I avoid stories he's in) do anything that relates to myth-deer-Dainn beyond being a deer who is male.
For whatever it's worth, there is another genre in which Dainn the caribou king gets the shit kicked out of him for doing the above. This second genre generally manages to be just as misogynistic as the first genre. So: yay.
Now you know about the caribou in question. Let us never speak of it again.
8603640 I have heard of the Caribou, mostly with a sense of disdain from those mentioning them. Honestly, considering the general mood and themes of the show, if taken at face value and not just because it's a kid's show, something like the caribou is almost inconceivable. Though the changelings in Fiendship is Magic come close with some of their past exploits.
Fanon is a pretty powerful self-sustaining force, for good or bad, so I'm not surprised at the perpetuation of certain fics' tropes and characterizations throughout the fandom.
8603640
:D
My attention has been caught.
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The changelings?not the Umbrum?
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I can't quite remember the specifics of what the Umbrum did, other than Sombra specifically. Apparently Stygian is also an umbra pony? So, not innately evil either? But yeah, the changeling special in the Fiendship series was literally a list of cities murdered or attempts at murdering them to stripmine the ponies of love/life essence a la The Mummy. Of course, some of these were legends and stories told by "Chrysalis", so their veracities are questionable.
8713510
Yeah...Heck no...stygian got some freaky alicorn shaped darkness that attached to him....And they banished that to limbo.
As for the Umbrum...think of the Lich King from Adventure Time....in pony form....And mass produced by the thousand.
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My mistake about Stygian, he was previously listed as an umbra pony on the wiki. Which I thought was weird, but they fixed that or whatever tripped me up before didn't trip me up this time.
The umbra kinda remind me of these guys, just pony-pixied.
Great as usual!
wonder what the proof would be?
Much appreciated.
(Though my biggest issue with the rebooted Khan is that Benedict Cumberbatch didn't exude the sense of charisma that Ricardo Montalbán did, and that charisma was a big part of making his backstory plausible.)
What if someone from CHS, the Rainbooms, or the CMC saw this? This would turn the tides very quick
Interesting. Where can this go.
I think you set up the purpose of Shimmer’s off-topic ramblings well in-story: calm things down enough that Shimmer isn’t freaking out about Sunset. In other words, I’m still following this.
Is this chapter title a reference to the song ‘RE: Your Brains’? Is so, awesome.
I like it, and personally do not find any of the dialogue irrelevant. There was some of the text that seemed a bit unnecessary to me, but honestly, I think that's strictly a personal problem.
The back and forth between Sunset and Shimmer unexpectedly took the form of a dialectic, even though it wasn't in any sort of strict (or even loose!) sense, and I really liked that.
-2 Hours Later-
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Well, I migth've trimmed down the Twillight's zone dialogue a bit, I did not need such a detailed summary of the episode to understand your purpose.
Still, not a problem, I can chalk it up to style and leave it be.
If I do leave the boat, it is probably not going to be a factor.
well I still here and looking forward to the next chapter.
The dialogue worked well for the scene, I think. It smothers a lot of the tension, which fits what is going on in story at that moment.
I think you’re worried about the wrong stuff in this chapter.
That is to say, you set up the reasoning for all the “irrelevant dialogue” very well. It wasn’t all that irrelevant, anyway. It was a bit long-winded, true, but it was also pretty natural, and it advanced the story.
I think you need a little work on the writing outside of the dialogue, though, as it can get mixed up and come off feeling a bit stilted, sometimes (though other times, it’s just fine). Some of it’s probably due to dealing with two Sunsets.
So far I’m interested in what I’ve read. And I’m happy to have found another Anon-a-Miss story that I won’t accidentally cut my hand on.
Chill man. It’s fine. No need to stress yourself too much.
Should be:
Should be:
Missing quotation mark at the end.
As for the story itself, I thought that having the filler dialogue tie into the doppelgänger issue and Shimmer's worry to panic at finding a clone of herself in her hometown worked pretty well. It was a good mirror to what Shimmer must have been thinking about the matter, so at least from my perspective it provided an interesting way of getting a degree access to her relevant thoughts as well, beyond just Sunset's.
Probably didn't need the whole episode in the dialogue, but you made it work well enough.