“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.” - Patrick Rothfuss
The Crystal Empire is falling.
King Sombra is desperate to retain control of his kingdom - the crystal ponies under him are just as desperate to escape his tyrannical rule.
Not everyone will get what they want.
An entry for the Depth In Innocence contest.
Featured 6/11/2020!
Page generated in 0.112 seconds
Total duration
980 users online
46,217 hits today, 2,244,100 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Citrine's lucky that Sombra didn't adjust the helmets for mass production.
In any case, excellent tragedy, and the text effects at the end were a lovely subtle touch. Took me a good length of it to notice the fade. Thank you for a gut-wrenching tale, and best of luck in the judging.
I’m reminded of a Star Trek novel, Ship of the Line. Being thrown into the future is worse than being thrown into the past. By being thrown into the past there can be, If it’s recent enough, a chance to eventually come home - or if it’s too far back, at least some way to send a message forwards. But being thrown into the future? There’s no way to see the people you leave behind or contact them ever again. They’re gone, and you are gone from their lives.
...
...fortunately this is a world that has a canonical means of holding someone in stasis for many years in the form of willing petrification, so I can imagine a happy ending to this story anyway in spite of your best efforts to bring me down!
No, but in seriousness, this was great. Sad, yes, but you did a good job with getting the tragedy of the situation across. And the dual narratives was a great idea and very well implemented. Kudos.
The text fading really doesn't work if the site you're reading with the site in night mode like I was, lol.
10281644
Yeah, that was the downside. As I said, I have no idea how Scampy pulled it off in hers so I kludged it here. I'm still very much learning formatting tricks to experiment.
I adored this idea - you seem to have a knack for coming up with neato stuff if the stories on my RiL are an indicator. The text effects and choice to write about the crystal ponies were awesome since there aren't enough stories with them, even in 2020. The names were all quite clever too. I wish we had gotten to see more of the Crystalline culture and contrast of the nation they lived in, but that might have broken the contest rules, if the blog is anything to go by.
I would really like to see the scene you mentioned in the author's notes as a sequel. I can totally understand it not being included here, but it feels far too good to put nowhere at all!
10281749
The removed scene's actually half-written already. I'll likely be adding it as a 'bonus scene' later on after the contest's over. I don't think it's got quite enough heft to it to stand alone as a story.
Also the names were a major problem. Steven Universe took all the good ones!
10281767
Gimme anyway; I'll take it however you decide to post it.
Huh, I never thought that would be much of a problem. They're totally different fandoms.
10281781
They are, but there's enough crossover and enough cultural penetration that naming a character, say, Garnet? That's going to have some potential connotations. (Or maybe that's just my inner author shouting NEIN! DO IT BETTER!)
10281794
Sounds like a 'do it better thing' since I usually go for whatever gemstone names work. For single names like Garnet, I'd probably just slap a second half on there. Make it Garnet Glisten or something, y'know?
hh, I suppose the fade only really works if you don't run the site in dark mode like I do. But, because I wear glasses and am susceptible to glare...
At any rate, this was a good story. Rather sad; even with the extra scene I feel like it'd still be very much bittersweet.
Reading this on a phone sucks.
10281663
Check out this link: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/838904/bbcode-updates
Use the opacity tag instead of the color tag and the effect should work in either viewing mode.
(It may also alleviate the jarring effect I felt because Fimfiction's default text color isn't quite black, so at the beginning of the split, Cordierite's paragraphs were actually darker than Citrine's.)
10285008
Oh, that's so much better! Thank you, I had no idea that was available in the BBcode.
Reading every Depth in Innocence Contest entry: Story 2: Cleaved by TCC56
Well that was heart-wrenching. A tense story with an emotional gut punch right at the end.
While the text fading was a neat element, I was much more impressed with the split narrative thing you did. I've never seen that be done before, and you pulled it off fantastically. The parallels between the past and the future scenes are great, and add to the emotional weight. I'm really impressed by this entry.
That bit got me.
Ah, this was so short, but a delicious bit of extra to have.
A lovely optional extra. The story works well with or without it, and i appreciate both alternatives. Thank you for providing it.
Just a tiny bit of extra happiness. It's not much...but it's something.
Good luck, Citrine.