The end is rainy cafes and half-empty teacups.
The end is rusty playgrounds with clouds overhead.
The end is whispered conversations swirling around you.
The end is storm sirens screaming in the air.
Rarity knows the end.
That doesn't mean she's come to terms with it.
A birthday gift for an amazing writer and one of my best friends, Seer. Stay awesome :)
Preread and edited by themoontonite, Silent Whisper, and wishcometrue.
Coverart graciously done by mushroompone! Get the full res here!
Inspired by Phoebe Bridger's Punisher and Perfume Genius's Set My Heart on Fire Immediately .
Chapters (3)
You keep making me feel things. This sent shivers down my spine and really rang true with me in a few places and was just wonderful. Wonderfully vague, too, not that that's a bad thing. Existential crises ahoy!
Figured I should also point out a typo so you can fix it.
10655626
blinekd 128 is my favorite band
ty will fixThat’s cool cover art!
10655752
It is! So happy with what Mushroom came up with and unbelievably impressed that they were able to put this together just from a bunch of my rambling and stock photos of rainy locations. They definitely deserve major credit for it!
It was gorgeously chilling when I first read it, and it still fills my head with a distant melancholy when I re-read it. Your writing for this fic is ethereal and I know Seer shall love it!
This will most likely sound weird, but I do mean it in a genuine and well-intentioned way.
It's hard to like these kinds of stories.
Oh, for sure, I enjoyed reading it, and Red, you have a knack for the short, and for the atmosphere, for sure. But these kinds of stories that teeter wonderfully on the edge of ambiguous direction and moment-setting, they themselves are hard to like. In a way they reflect their own emotions too easily or too strongly - it's hard to say which - and one gets the sense that something vague in its mystery both helps and hurts.
Of course, the "vague" story is going to have this kind of effect regardless of the many efforts of an author, because that genre is ridden with more questions than answers. I liken it to some of the weird stuff that someone like Jorge Luis Borges wrote - good stuff, but damned if I fully understood any of it. Then again, that may be because these kinds of stories do not position themselves as needing a concrete foundation, a plot that is solid, a direction that is straightforward. Much like poetry, they aim at a certain feeling, a certain evocation.
So, yes, I enjoyed this story, but I found it hard to like, but maybe that's how I'm supposed to feel anyway.
10655769
A counter- not-quite argument to your not-quite-critique: atmospheric writing isn't about the traditional narrative, and I'd argue that it's supposed to provoke thought more than just tell a story. It leaves you with more than a plotline, it's supposed to be read and re-read with the reader getting different things out of it each time... and that's not for everyone. I know that I'm not always in the mood for something with deeper meaning I have to sit down and muddle through in my head, and that's perfectly okay. I don't know if it's truly hard to like, since that implies it's something one doesn't like at all, but perhaps it can be hard to enjoy in the sense that it isn't everyone's cup of tea when they're trying to unwind.
I don't know. "Your writing is hard to like" would probably hit me kind of hard if I read that as a comment, and I think it's more nuanced than that. Red's writing style is fantastic no matter what sort of story he's telling, but sometimes a reader wants questions answered instead of having to wonder about it. That doesn't mean the writer shouldn't have written it, it just means it might not have been the sort of story the reader needed in the moment.
10655781
I appreciate your point! I also enjoy a lot of Red's stuff, but I guess what I mean is that I'm often ambivalent about whether or not I "liked" a story in the traditional sense.
I can enjoy the writing for what it is and what it accomplishes, but as to whether or not the story is something that I liked, well, the distinction starts to emulate itself, and I can't quite find an answer for either side. Hence, "I enjoyed this story, even if I'm not sure how I felt about it, if I liked it or if I liked it." In that confusing sort of way that language and stories tend towards, I mean.
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10655781
Well honestly I'd say you're both right. This is the type of story that's inherently meant to be confusing and not exactly clear, as it first and foremost is a gift for someone who enjoys that kind of writing style. Obviously that makes it hard to parse out for people who may want to go deeper beyond the prose or who want some more concrete answers, which this story doesn't really provide.
So I think it's more than fair to say you didn't like the story or if you're unsure how to feel about it.
I have more thoughts about this story that I can, or maybe even should, try to organise into a cogent comment.
What I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that this is a marvellous and haunting piece that ranks among the best pieces of writing you've ever done, which really is saying a lot.
It's so elegant, it's so yearning. It's heart wrenching and affected me a lot more than most stories usually do.
I am very, very thankful to you all the prereaders and editors for this stunning piece of work, and very much too to mushroom for their amazing coverart which I can't stop staring at. You're all wonderful people and this story means more to me than I can really put into words.
Just know I really, genuinely love it. I love everything about it.
Thank you so much
10655983
Glad you enjoyed it! Your writing is a super big inspiration!
Stay awesome :)
Covid story? Covid story.
Or at least that's how I interpreted it. There have been depression fics that I've read on FimFiction before that are sort of like this, but the entire thing about Rarity starting projects then leaving them abandoned, plus the rain outside, gives a real Covid feeling.
This was a very well done dream/imagination story, and you did a wonderful job writing evocative imagery. The bit about the rain mixing with Rarity's blood and going into her heart especially stands out.
im thinking about the songs that are referenced and ... honestly? i couldnt think of a single piece of writing that would do them more justice than this . its terrifying and beautiful and singularly human in a way thats haunting. i felt genuinely arrested, held in place by your writing until the story had concluded and even some time after that. the way you wrote these scenes, these confusing slurries thatre just as much daydreams as they are nightmares, is beyond compare. wonderful work as always
Ouch ouch ouch what the fuck. This was the line that got me.
Take your green thumb already. Fucking hell.