This story is a sequel to Politics by Many Means
Hollow Shades, home to the tombs and shades of countless Nocturnes.
Sugar Belle, haunted by her failures and the shades of those who fell to them.
As midnight calls, the boundaries between these two shall blur, and more shades shall enter their shared realm.
Continuity: The Song of the Spheres
Branch: The Seekers of the Stars
I am spooped and angry. Cue discount barrow-wight.
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Imagine being so immersed in propaganda that you think the government is controlling the spooky woods. (Seriously, I love Sugar Belle's voice echoing Glimmerist beliefs.)
The fleeting moment of baking imagery before Sugar Belle suppresses her passions is also great.
Awaiting reeducation. That one extra word makes the euphemism almost reassuring.
But in a completely non-hierarchical, non-elite way. Starlight was the greatest leader they definitely didn't have.
Wow. Wow. It's a wonder her own brain didn't strangle itself with that hypocrisy.
I adore Caramel mangling the propaganda. Nothing wrecks the message like a fumble-tongued messenger.
I do have to love how Sugar Belle insists that they're dealing with nothing but superstitions when their whole movement is devoted to destroying magic-users as much as the existing social structure. There's more truth to the tales than you think, dear.
Definitely looking forward to seeing where this one goes.
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Glad to hear you liked it! Writing her, Party Favor, and Double Diamond especially, people who've drunk Starlight's Kool-Aid deeply, has been really interesting. It's been kind of nice not having to worry about stuff like logic or consistency when describing their thought process. Sugar Belle's not that far wrong about the "anti-revolutionary activities," though; it's just not the government performing them, but their allies in the area, the Nocturnes. They're not just eyes in the dark.
Keyword there being "almost."
Exactly! You've got it!
Maybe it's too busy vomiting at all her misleading interpretations of events.
"Everybody mentions how badly the messenger messes up the message," Caramel grumbled. "Nobody mentions what it actually was. The message. What it was. Nobody ever mentions what the message actually is."
If you hear someone say "It's just a superstition/story" in a world with magic, chances are good it's not just a superstition/story. (Caramel would probably grumble that it's what people say right before that superstition/story kills them.)
BULL. FYAYING. SHIT.
I have to be amused by the chapter title. There's a Magic card very in keeping with the themes of the story... called Twilight's Call. Something you'd like to tell us, Ms. Sparkle?
"Hey, this is Shining's operation."
Fair enough.
But Sugar Belle, I thought "better" and "worse" were hierarchical concepts that had no place in an Equalist viewpoint.
I know, I know, I should be concerned for her—especially if she's wearing chain mail with nothing underneath to keep it from pinching her skin—but just like there are no atheists in a foxhole, it seems there's no Equalists in a barrow of the unquiet dead. Not without effort, anyway.
The fact that she thought she heard a smile only made her pick up the pace.
Ah. It's not the dead Sugar needs to worry about. Though she should really hurry up to warn the others and spend less time working her way through the logic knots of Starlight's philosophy. Now the question is whether Starlight will listen to these warnings... and whether dark elves know how to work around deepstone. Assuming she doesn't just abandon the lost (with a heavy heart and deep regrets, of course.)
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Has anything Starlight's said borne even a remote resemblance to the truth?
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*sees variable effect with a constant cost*
Either this is terrible, or it's completely and utterly broken.
Drinking game: take a shot whenever one of the Unmarked says something that "has no place" in an Equalist viewpoint.
The author thought that saying that she saw the skeleton smile when she'd turned to leave the room (i.e., away from the skeleton) wouldn't make sense. Maybe "she thought she saw, out of the corner of her eye..."
Foes surround the Unmarked, and begin to close in. How long can ~150 would-be revolutionaries hold out?
(Caramel would probably mutter something about how fitting their current location is, if he was still around. Where better to die than a graveyard, after all?)
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No thanks, I like my liver where it is.
And there's why I said almost reassuring. This will end messily. The question is how much can be recovered from the mess.
Also, if I had any doubts that Starlight was completely insane, I've lost them now. At the very least, she has no discernible empathy.
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That's the 6400 bit question, isn't it? Is she crazy, or simply working on a different wavelength than the rest of us? Is she the chaos of madness, or a dark new order?
Oh, fyay all kinds of duck. Well, at least DD is finally starting to shake off the kool-aid.
And for the record: if you kill off Rarity, I WILL END YOU.
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Also, I know this is 5000 years late, but I kind of take issue with the whole "there are no atheists in a foxhole" joke. I'm not personally an atheist, far from it (Catholic), but I don't think that the strength of their convictions is simply dependent on their situation. I can certainly imagine an atheist deciding that they want to believe in God when under pressure, but I can also imagine one simply gritting their teeth and trying without changing their beliefs. It's just a bit of a strangely personal thing for me, I guess.
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No offense intended; I was just trying to riff off of the aphorism.