In the wake of Camp Everfree and the latest in a long line of raging she-demons, Sunset’s dreams lead her down a familiar path of memories. She’s never been one to pass up an opportunity; it’s high time to ask a question that’s been bothering her since the Friendship Games.
That’s the plan, anyway. One of the many problems with seeking wisdom from demons is that you get far more than what you wanted to know.
Winner of Bicyclette's SciSet Contest and Reactception's Sunset x Midnight contest, graciously beta-read by MarvelandPonder. Rated Teen for suggestive content well north of what the Dazzlings got away with.
Chapters (1)
Oh I love this, it's very cute and I am all for it.
Ahem . .
and
Sure about that?
Otherwise a good story.
How did Twilight get there? Probably the Geode activating on its own?
Well, these dreams are good at revealing everything! Both sides of a person can talk and stuff!
----
I thought it was via some magical dreamspace sight, but no, she's the Vice Principal looking with mundane eyes.
I love it when these girls literally confront their demons. Dunno why, it just makes me very happy. Especially when they do it together, so you had me grinning ear to ear. Good work!
I need a part 2 to this story!!!!
And only Midnight was actually worth the build up in the end. The less said about the others, the better.
Can I just say, you absolutely nailed this feeling in this story? Even in the more lucid portions of the dream, it still feels like Sunset's dreaming, not just standing in a convenient mental construct like a mind palace. Interestingly, I actually feel that this dreamlike state complements Sunset's talk with Sunspot; where some would use the scene of a dream to make something seem less real, here it actually feels like Sunset drills down to reach the really real, the place where physics and logic melt away in the light of truth. Her dream is more real than the waking world, not less. And what is real?
Sunset is the line between wonder and horror, between cozy hearth and raging inferno. She is fire incarnate, capable of creation and destruction, good and ill, weal and woe. And she knows it, knows that, beneath the angel she's trying to shape herself into, she can just as easily be a demon. She doesn't live in a world of cardboard, but she does live amongst cardboard people, people who she knows she'll burn if she lets herself go. And part of her wants to let herself let go, show the world what she's made of, ask them if Princess Sunset Shimmer really sounds so silly, though the rest of her shuts it down, knowing what it would cost. But even if she knows she can't let herself go, it still rankles; the selfish part of her shuts up, but only for a time. After all, ambition and desire for recognition are natural to humans and ponies, and even mindfully-humble Sunset has to admit that she's done much worthy of recognition. But she still shuts it down, because that desire means arrogance means Sunspot means her friends, the people who taught her that she was worthy of love, get hurt. But then the desire asks if that chain is really true, and the cycle all begins again, yielding the almost tired way Sunset dealt with Sunspot early on in the story. She's been dealing with her tempter's offer of a crown for more than forty days, and I get the sense that, at this point, it's become almost predictable or routine for her. Her fire has been burning itself for so long that it's running out of fuel, reducing itself to a more comfortable temperature. However, as Sunspot shows, "more comfortable" doesn't mean "completely safe," and even a candle flame can still burn flesh.
Apologies for bloviating like that. Bottom line, I think you did an excellent job characterizing the duality at Sunset's heart, the struggle between the angel she wants to be and the devil she knows she can be if she lets herself go. Very well done.
I absolutely love stories that have Sunset talking with her demon half. I always felt this was a wealth of untapped story potential and of course gave her and Twilight something unique to share and bond over.
This was fun.
Luna the sleep peeper. heheheh.
Exquisite. I especially like how you handled the Timber issue.
Good luck in the contest!
11676301
Based on Twilight's "skin-to-skin contact" comment, the shared dream is a consequence of Sunset's incomplete mastery of her new empathic abilities. Remember, before acquiring her "geode" (still a stupid name for individual crystals reshaped into pendants), she was hearing and seeing the thoughts of anyone who bumped into her, mostly Gloriosa. Given the initial instinctive manifestation of the girls' new powers, plus the general inhibition of the frontal lobe during sleep, it's not at all surprising.
Yeah, totally odd in itself.
Agreed.
Can't argue there.
A true sign she's Sci Twi's best friend.
Wow, I guess dreams do come true! No pun intended.
I'd leave that job to the professionals.
Talk about quite the ending!
11676295
) then I'm going to call that a job well done.
I would like to see your thoughts on the story beyond what I'd get if I fed it through Grammarly, but I appreciate the error report. And hey, if the worst thing you can say about this is that there were two now-corrected typos (one of which is more the characters getting ahead of themselves
11676301
It's interesting to think about how certain behaviors and duties may work on the other side of the mirror. Human Luna can't see into dreams, but she still takes comfort in knowing that those she cares about are sleeping soundly. And as 11676641 noted, the idea is that Sunset's magic can create a shared dreamscape when both she and the person she's touching are asleep. (Whether it can work when one of them is awake is a matter for another tale.)
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I'm always a sucker for a good journey to the center of the mind, and my OTP provides a number of different approaches to the topic. Sunset has an incredible amount of untapped depth, and facing the main denizen of her abyssal trenches is a very fun way to explore it. Likewise Twilight and Midnight on more even footing, where Middy can't just steamroll her other half with intimidation.
(Also, Revel, see above for more on Luna.)
11676313
No promises, but if inspiration strikes again for this particular concept, I'll happily follow through on it.
Yeah, that's a familiar sentiment. I have a nasty habit of using five thousand words on an idea that could span sixty.
11676337
Feel free to use the comments section of this story to share your thoughts on this story rather than gripes with canon.
11677048
What do you want me to say?
If i am not mistaken i have liked and favourited basically all of your stories by now, because they are allways good for me.
I like your writing style, i like your sense of humor. You make the characters distinct.
You have interesting premises for all of your stories as well.
You write stories i can just enjoy, both on the technical writing level as well as on the content level.
I WAS thinking about quipping about them getting married later on but i figured that would have little to nothing of worth to do with the actual story itself.
Also about Luna being a bit creepy but eh, that is basically who she is anyway.
11676632
Treating Timber with respect was very important to me. I genuinely like him as a character when he isn't creeping on his campers, and I made sure to get a beta reader who felt similarly. (Seriously, Marvel does some of the best work with Timber on the entire site.)
11676373
It always frustrates me when dream sequences feel more like conscious fantasies. The surreality of dreams may be hard to capture in a narrative, but it's definitely possible. One need only look at Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics as proof. (And as those comics observe, each of the Endless defines their opposite. Without Dream, how could we know the shape of reality?)
As for Sunset, yes, she is defined by the tension between opposing forces throughout her arc. Even her cutie mark evokes the taijitu, or yin-yang. Chengar Qordath provided the idea for her special talent that I've since borrowed, namely the unification of those forces. Indeed, in my usual headcanon, that ability to reconcile the irreconcilable is what drew Celestia to Sunset despite her mark not matching the third one on the Tree of Harmony. Light and darkness, Sun and Moon, shame and rage... If this filly couldn't reunite the sisters, went Celestia's logic, who could?
The catch, of course, is that the scales have to balance when unloaded, and it took Sunset quite some time to find her inner equilibrium. You can see her calibrate herself for much of Equestria Girls, especially when circumstances like Wallflower's mnemonic rampage (my favorite 7th-level wizard spell) or the music festival time loop throw her off-kilter.
I always appreciate your bloviation. Hope you didn't mind mine in turn.
Suffice to say, Bacon Horse is a lot of fun to work with.
11677056
Wholeheartedly agreed, I don't think he's a bad dude, just maybe a bit eh choices ^^;
Got flashes of Wubcake's "Casual Midnight" series for a few seconds near the middle.
Sunset and Sunspot having a little angel to demon discussion was fun. Good on ya FoME.
This is what happens when you don't yet know how to control your mind-melding powers: never let two ids directly interact with one another. The results are going to be R-rated one way or the other -- given the alternative, thank goodness this meeting ended the way it did.
"Sunspot" is a very fitting name -- I like it. Full marks for that. Unless it comes from somewhere else that I'm not aware of, in which case full marks for that person.
Sunset deserves some respect for managing to cow her own demon.
I love the dialogue between the two, with the demon trying for mind games, and Sunset trying to maintain her composure and resist the obsessiveness her own demon wants to instill into her.
Given the amounts of partially unresolved sexuo-romantic tension I can see two things happening in a longer exploration of this.
One, both Midnight and Sunspot get free, and subsequently disappear. The girls scramble to find them and somehow get them back, dealing with the fallout of their dark plan... Just for nothing to happen. They find them a week later, extremely disheveled and even more satisfied.
Two, SciSet happens. They meet their demons in their s
dream again, and they're PISSED. They're the dark reflection or whichever, they are what they are not... And now that the girls get together they don't get to be together anymore.
I can't think on a way to do either of those justice, specially in the aftermath/consequences department, specially with the tonal dissonance, so I'm not going to try. You go and think on how they'd go
Hmm... you know, I'm normally all for these sorts of linguistic de-anthropomorphizations (anthropo-demorphizations?), but that... I don't know, that seems kind of off to me. I mean, it's not like it couldn't be a term - yes, it limits it to just unicorns, but it could either be a term that pre-dates unification or just be a specific sort of mercenary, as seems to be implied. I guess it's partially that it feels like there would be a term for those sorts of ponies regardless of tribe and partially that, given how much unicorns use their magic day-to-day, 'sellhorn' could describe a unicorn who does almost literally anything for money. Not the worst bit of ponification I've seen by a long chalk, but not one I'm that keen on.
That, on the other hand, is wonderful, I adore it and I wish to give it the closest thing a text comment can give to a standing ovation. Which, I guess, is just saying I wish to, but still...
Interesting story overall. While I have no idea how conscious a decision it is, I do like how the less lucid and rational things get, the more open Twilight and Sunset get about expressing romantic affection, as all the unfortunate details of reality, circumstance and conscious thought get stripped away. Plus, I like the symbolism of their higher processes making one kind of connection while their baser impulses are indulging in a... different sort.
Also, I wholeheartedly approve of this handling of the Timber situation. While I personally cannot* see past the skin-crawling vibes I got from the character**, I do respect your respect for him. And, well, this way - not lionizing him, not demonizing him and not really dwelling on him that much - I think is a good way to acknowledge and deal with the whole thing while letting us get to the stuff about the pairing we're all here for.
*Tempted to add "no matter how hard I try" but, if I'm being completely honest, I neither have nor intend to try remotely hard.
**And that's not even the shipper in me talking - I didn't even get super into this pairing until after that movie. He just... came across as kind of a skeeve to me. Don't pretend that's some objective truth or anything, just how I feel.
FanOfMostEverything, I've missed reading your stories so much!
That's my bad really, for my longer absence on the site, but anyway - what a story it was to reacquaint myself with your works!
Dialogue is wonderfully witty as always and I loved dream sequences almost as much. Sunspot is a great name and Sunset wondering about her demon self namelessness was a very intriguing starting point for the story. The ending was a brilliant mix of hilarious and touching, which I've always loved about your writings.
A great short story, thank you for that again!
Excellent as always, FOME! Loved the introspection between the Light and Dark Sides of the psyche. I know they have official Jungian names, but I'm too lazy to look them up atm
Almost had me thinking that Luna could actually see their dreams for a minute, which I believe is a sign of being an awesome writer.
I'm still seeing if any connections can be made within your preexisting stories, the ones not confirmed to be in the same continuity that is ;) Mostly because you have an uncanny way of weaving stories together in a manner that goes beyond oneshots, you could probably run an entire series if you wanted to. Any future plans?
I gotta say, you have a real knack for writing characters' inner evil sides encouraging them to be more open with their crush.
11705564
It's an odd niche, yes, but one I'm happy to occupy.
What I really love about this story is just the way it takes these little quirks of canon — DemonSet not having a name the way Midnight does, the goofy logical fallacies in Sunset’s original master plan, the shifts in her personality between Rainbow Rocks and Legend of Everfree — and brings them together in what proves to be a very thorough interrogation of Sunset as a character, and what it means to be a genuinely ex-villain. The setup is a delight, and Sunset and her dark counterpart have very believable adversarial relationship with hard-hitting dialogue. Given the contest, it did leave me wondering exactly to what degree Sci-Twi would fit into this beyond the opening and references in the dialogue — but when she does arrive on the scene with her own demonic self, it quickly makes up for lost time in establishing the parallels between them and in making them believable as an upstart pairing (to say nothing of their counterparts). Add in all the amusing worldbuilding touches and a fun coda with Luna and you have an excellent little story of a dream that’s more than just that. (Even if I was sorely tempted to dock points for the unironic “That happened.”)
hehe “sellhorn”, love it
women are merely human mares, Sunset!
that mustve been weird
love the reference
gottem
oof, love this! such a great summary of Sunset and Celestia’s whole deal
skill issue
ahaha love that this is the threat
really makes you think (which i guess was what made you think up this whole part of the story)
hoowee
aww that is such a nice way to treat Timber! Sunset is the Element of Empathy indeed
gottem
love this. that is exactly what “twilight” means!
and yes that is good! (even tho it goes against my headcanon of Twilight Sparkle being very bad at coming up with names)
ahahaha love this to bits
and yeah, just love the idea that all along Vice Principal Luna has the powers of her pony counterpart and is working behind the scenes of the canon this whole time! goes a long way to explaining just how "normal" the workings of the school are despite all the magical shenanigans going on
as always, love how you make sense of all of these quirks of the canon with your worldbuilding skills and witty dialogue, along with the wonderful exploration of SciSet at its core. i couldn’t have asked for a better entry to the SciSet contest, and am very proud to have it as the clear winner. thank you for writing!
I was gonna think it'd be funnier if the Twilight in her dream wasn't real-- But I completely changed my mind the moment Midnight pounced on Sunspot it's worth it that theyre real actually. Somebody come sprits them with water and pry them off each other with crow bars. 10/10 super cute!!