- Member Since 15th May, 2018
- offline last seen 52 minutes ago
mushroompone
enargeia or: the unbearable brightness of being
mushroompone
Joined 15th May, 2018 ·
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"What... the... fuhh...?" I mouth as I finish reading.
This was chilling. The simple words. That is it. Just how simple it is... yeesh.
Edit: Oh sweet Celestia I just realized the implications of... who... you know.
11187787
That is absolutely what I was aiming for, so I'm glad it landed! Thanks for reading!
11187790
You're welcome! Maybe I'll try something like this in the future. It is an incredibly interesting way of writing.
.....y I k E s.
Bloody Nora
Well... that was horrifying. WELL DONE! I think Hannibal Lecter would definitely approve.
So I keep looking at this again and again for some reason, and I've noticed something awfully familiar about the writing...
...You wouldn't happen to have taken cues from "Analogue Horror", have you? Because the more I look at it, the more it feels like it. Even the chapter's name and the freaking cover art look like things you'd see out of Analogue Horror.
I read this during chem class and now questioning my life.
11188053
Wow! I just learned a new subgenre!
Though I've never heard the term before, I do watch a lot of "analogue horror" videos and series (I particularly enjoyed Marble Hornets). I can't say I used those sorts of videos as direct inspiration for this piece, but I'm sure I've watched enough of them to have an osmosis effect on my writing. I tend to pick up all sorts of things from all sorts of places; I recently read a novel by an Irish writer and have since found myself using a very localized Irish grammar in some places. It just happens!
Readers in the past have pointed out that my more experimental styles remind them of all sorts of things—I hear House of Leaves a lot, though Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy have been thrown around as well—but analogue horror is a new one! I'm glad to hear this piece has you rereading, as well. Honestly one of the highest compliments I can receive :)
11188072
Well, you are quite welcome! This video by YouTuber "Markiplier" that gives a good explanation of exactly what the genre is. Very creepy stuff, much like this. How funny that your writing happened to be exactly like a sub-genre you had never even heard of.
Holy fucking shit, Mush. Every single word, every single line break, every little aside, all of them are so meaningful and impactful. And then to take the two Sunsets and compare their existence and fates to vanishing twin syndrome (something that already fascinates me), and the human Sunset's refusal to be the vanishing twin is genius and haunting. You really are just a tremendously skilled writer.
11188099
your comments mean so much to me. You always manage to find all the threads I've dropped and weave them together exactly as I'd hoped. It's so fulfilling.
Oh wish
Thank you so so so much for reading and commenting
I'm glad you liked it!!
This was really good!
Welp, there goes my appetite
Pretty sure there is a joke about who actually is worse off in the end. On the one hand that happened, on the other, Sunset′ is left working Sunset″'s service job in the restaurant...
All in all though, I do not think this story is for me. Well written, but fell flat when I read it. A bit too avant-garde and experimental for my tastes I suppose.
The messed up thing is that stuff like this actually does make me hungry. Remember that Futurama episode, "The Problem With Poplars?" My roommate at the time and I went out immediately after and both ordered 20-piece Chicken McNuggets.
This kinda makes me want sushi. But I'll pass on the bacon hair.
what the fuck did I just read
11192199
The combination of this comment and an add to your "good reads" shelf really paints a beautiful picture
Not too shabby. An interesting concept written with vague but grim details. For 1k words, you summed this up well enough to intrigue and make me wonder about what was going to happen next! Well done! My only nitpick is some of the grammar, but it's not distracting enough to make ne click away. Just have someone proofread your stories and you'll be fine!
11193892
Thanks! 1k words exactly really is a challenge, but that's really why the grammar is a bit screwy. Using run-on sentences, sentence fragments, etc. not only allows me to eliminate a lot of extra words, but also mimics the "runaway train" internal monologue of the narrator. That's also why I submitted this as an experimental entry! It's all a purposeful part of the experience :)
Ahh, fratricide with a side of tabasco.
Nice read! Thank you for writing it!
Woah, that was great.
I'll have to admit that I'm lacking context regarding the characters, so if there's some insane reference to EQG canon details in here somewhere, I've missed it... but it's still good on its own. There's something haunting about this evil twin concept. It seems, based on the fact that the narrator has a car and knows people other than Sunset, that they were born and have lived. But their life has been a shadow, a blurry reflection of Sunset's with no qualities, no humanity, only that embryonic hunger which drives them to finish what Sunset couldn't. Very mythological.
I was a bit reminded of Wildbow's short story Lump of a Thing - you might find it interesting. But this, told from the aggressor's point of view, is really something else. I've never really read anything like it.
Great work. Thanks for writing it.
11235196
Thank you so much!! I'm kind of floored how well this story landed for so many people- it felt like I was publishing a personal fever dream, but I think it ended up resonating with a lot of readers. Score!
In all honesty, I'm not up on my eqg lore either. This story came from a tweet (or something?) that got passed around a while ago from one of the higher-ups at eqg, talking about how the team had always wanted to explore the "other Sunset" and never got a chance to do it. The main character of the eqg franchise is Sunset Shimmer from Equestria, a pony turned human, but there is a human Sunset Shimmer wandering around on earth whose story was just never told. I felt like human Sunset would bear a certain amount of resentment towards pony Sunset for "stealing her life", and maybe even that there was a bit of magical kickback to them trying to share a world. Following that idea to its logical conclusion... I got this haha
And thank you for the recommendation!! I always love hearing that my work set off those sorts of bells in someone else's head - I'll have to check it out!
This story is fucking wild.
The stream-of-consciousness writing really works here. You leap from one scenario to the next with no rhyme or reason, but it gives this story a nice sense of sensory overload. Everything keeps happening, and thus, it gives this fratricide a sense of urgency. It really makes “let me eat my sister” something you actually really care about.
Quite a good story, and it invites some thought about what the story is trying to say.
This was really good! While much has been said about the writing style -- it flows surprisingly well, and it's a very clever way to skip around the 1k word limit, so kudos to that -- I really dig the little narrative touches within the odd narrative style. In particular I'm thinking of this bit:
This is just a very musical line, very fucking good, honestly. Stuff like this is peppered through the story, and while indeed the formatting of the prose is worthy of attention, the prose itself is also commendable. Just wanted to call attention to that.
(Incidentally, Sunset working at a sushi bar really means the stars alligned for you here, too -- it really is wonderful for a story with this subject matter that her part time job involves serving raw fish.)
Anyway! I really dig the high concept, too, and just how visceral but immediately understandable it is. This is a very clever story. I particularly like how the characterization of Human Sunset comes across through the writing style, rather than what she says or what she thinks -- it really, really works.
I'll be genuinely surprised, and disappointed, if this story doesn't win one of the major prizes in the contest. Wonderful work here!
At the risk of missing the point of the story, that's what the umbilical cord is for.
Ah. The narrator is insane. That definitely helps support off-kilter metaphors. Fascinating and horrifying approach to human Sunset. Best of luck in the judging.
Oh, this is dope. Huge fan of experimental, evocative, emotional (e words are fun) stuff like this, especially from someone who knows what they’re doing with short sentences and can keep a lyrical flow going through all of them.
Babes you did fantastic on this!!! 👁👁
I’m not a writer so I don’t exactly know what to comment on, but I echo all the sentiments from before! Personally, I always have a hard time immersing myself into upper level prose and extreme line breaks, as it tends to be used by new writers (and not well ahahah). But this really blew me out of the park, and I never found myself un-immersed in it!! The story and *atmosphere* swiftly sets you in its world,,, and it’s just. So good b. So good
11264022
I don't think I've ever received a comment better than "babes you did fantastic" like fr that's exactly the vibe I'm looking for. I think about this everyday. I'm gonna print it out and tape it to my wall
11278859
It is fantastic!!!!!! >:) I’m glad you love the comment b. Keep writing
coming back on the reread, the use of "must" here and the question marks really does a lot and i love it. having to read between the lines of an unreliable narrator is always so impressive when pulled off well like this
hauntingly beautiful, i wish i could write stuff like this
ah, "twist" repeated three times in quick succession, each with a different context, this is poetry
ah, so much serendipity! Sunset working in a sushi restaurant, and recent real-world events making wearing a mask like this to a restaurant something normal and even expected.
and yeah this line has been remarked on by everyone but it deserves it! an evocative simile that is genuinely uniquely clever
ooh, so much left unsaid here! i read this as pony Sunset having "taken care" of her human counterpart as the first thing she did in Pedestria, before learning things like "empathy", and can imagine just so many ways for this to have gone down. love it
and oof, i am in love with your descriptions as always. such a fantastic mental image of the confrontation, and the contrast between the two Sunsets. (and i choose to read into this all the raw material for why Sunset Squared works, dipping into it just enough to heighten the extremeness of the twin's mental state)
love that this story is also a tragedy in the classical sense of the word, with Sunset seeing its events as a natural consequence of something she never followed up on. and agh, so fitting in a meta way for me, with how the canon ended up being deprived and shriveled up to nothing before getting to address Sunset's human counterpart
and augh, such a chilling way to end it! just the perfect blend of ominous and ambiguous and tying together throughlines. masterful work, Mush!
Hello! Have a review. Please excuse the language, but: bloody hell. This was absolutely, utterly chilling. I've read quite a few "two Sunsets" fics over the years, but not many really land, though a few have stuck in my mind. (I like The Cloptimist's Red/Yellow, for example.) But this? This just blew me away. I'd picked up how much of an impact it had made, and I'm now boringly going to agree with everyone. The deceptively simple prose, those little bits in brackets, just everything. Congratulations on the Gold Medal, but more: this is one of the great horror ponyfics, and I'm glad it's been recognised as such.
Well. That’s certainly quite the interesting take on human Sunset. I feel like canon Sunset would probably be able to wrangle a way out of this in time, but an effectively creepy microhorror with very good narration.
oh my god this is amazing
it's high time I followed you
No idea how long ago I read it, but the fact that I refused to give it the deserved like and comment shows just how much you made me hate this fic, and in a good sense. I guess I am always too fearful of being defenseless against something happening to you.
Well written, perfect premise, something that truly scared me.
An oddball ghost happened across your fic and read it. Have a review!