Sol City has the biggest, most impressive Nightmare Night Parade in all of Equestria. Floats, holograms, free stuff... the works! It's everything anycreature could ever hope a parade to be... and this year it's even more special: Not one, but two legendary singers—Hard Rock Legend Yumi and Neo Pop Super-Star, Legend and main attraction, Sweetie Belle—are going to open and close the parade respectively, ending in a city-wide concert that will also be streamed across the world.
Enter Neon Clove, a unicorn runner/musician that loves Sweetie Belle's music and might (just might) have hacked her chances to win the Golden Ticket and take part in the parade, and counts herself the luckiest mare alive.
None of them could anticipate that this Nightmare Night would change the world forever.
This is my entry to the 2023 Cyberpunk Nightmare Night Story Contest!
The entire story has been finished and will be posted daily for the next five days. My thanks to Pascoite & GaPJaxie for edits and feedback!
Cover art by Ruby, used with permission.
Well, an interesting start; thanks for writing!
"had it not been for five brave mares"
...Interesting. So who's left off the list, and why, I wonder?
The text from "Shades asked Neon Clove something" to "Uneducated brutes." appears to be in the chapter twice in succession; I'm guessing that's an out-of-universe production error and not Sweetie's perceptions looping in-universe, though.
11761188 Thanks, I'm not sure how I missed that!
11761306
No worries; sometimes this sort of thing happens.
Ah, good old AI revolt, always a fun time.
11763708
Yeah. It happened a lot sooner than I thought it would.
Time to party like it’s 2023
"was not up par… and she"
"was not up to par… and she"?
"She knew the answer lied there"
"She knew the answer lay there"?
"NC: Wait, Twilight? As in Princess Twilight Sparkle?"
...Interesting, given that in the previous chapter, Neon Clove already knew that... and specifically said that Twilight "crossed into the Moonflow". Shortly before Sweetie believes she saw Twilight in the Moonflow -- and yet now Neon Clove shows surprise at this, and Sweetie finds nothing odd about that.
What are you up to, Neon Clove?
"And my sister, Rarity… but please look into Silverstream too… I don't… that look Berylgyre gave me… it's strange."
This line lacks the leading "SB:" and the color.
"NC: I've been yours ever since."
I'm sure that line has only the surface meaning and definitely no alternate possible ones. :D
"SS: It's going be a long conversation."
"SS: It's going to be a long conversation."?
"thankful Neon Clovekept things"
"thankful Neon Clove kept things"?
"As soon as they were moving, she'd had to kick in her emotion emulator"
"As soon as they were moving, she'd have to kick in her emotion emulator"?
"as the entire population of Sun City writhed in sharing"
"as the entire population of Sol City writhed in sharing"?
And caught up!
And, my, some plot developments here!
I haven't been commenting on this because I'm very busy writing a report for uni, but now that it's over I feel like I need to say something even if it's not my full thoughts.
Long story short: I absolutely love this. I love what you did with the setting, Neon Clove is immediately really likeable and you did an amazing job setting up the intrigue, as well as the general sense of unease and tension at every moment in the story.
The ending is also phenomenal. Stern Label's fate strikes a perfect balance of catharsis and horror that makes the line "what she had done could be considered monstrous by some. But to her, it was simply her due." Actually feel earned. Ending with Stern Label's POV was genuinely haunting in a way that I was not prepared for.
"Neon Clover said"
"Neon Clove said"?
"If can't…"
"If I can't…"?
"Clover chuckled"
"Clove chuckled"?
And finished, after some other things coming up and inducing a pause! Well, there were a few little twists in that one, weren't there? :D
An interesting story here; thank you for writing!
edit:
...Though I'm still not sure what was going on with the way Neon Clove referred to Twilight Sparkle in Chapter 3 vs. Chapter 4...
Well, it was good, but it leave a little to imagination like if Sweetie is going to join Twilight or if the people is going to do anything about it after they see the truth like riot or something
Glad I read this, I haven't seen a cyberpunk inspired story on here until now (not that I was searching, new way they do tags ruined fimfic for me)
Love the idea of playing with the idea of what mega-corps are willing to do to people, wished it was a little longer but I'm just itching for more stories (I kinda got spoiled by your 10k word average on sweetie belle chronicles)
Thanks for writing this, really well done with a sweet ending
11816254 lol tbh it would have gone a lot longer I think, but I had to constrain it down to these many words for the contest and even then had to triple-check if they would still accept it with a few extra words in.
11816279
lol, that explains why i felt the story was moving faster than you'd normally write it, if the limit was around 20k words, thats less than 2 full chapters from you usually.
If its alright to ask, how do you keep the drive to keep writing, I try and sit down and just belt out what i can, just to get something on paper so if i come back to it i can remember what i was thinking at the time, but i still can't actually write to save my life (4 years of English classes taught me that very well) even though i can come up with a rough idea, get a conflict that challenges (or doesnt) the characters, and start drawing up an outline, but when i try putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) i just end up burning out after 30 minutes. Is it just diligence and trying to work on a story for 30 minutes every day even if you don't feel like it, or is it just repetition of writing so much that it comes to you naturally after a point?
11820496
All of it, honestly. If I stop for a period of time, it takes a lot of effort to get rolling again. But I do try to write a little every day, and usually I see that habit pay off. This story was particularly fun to write, and kept challenging me because I had a time limit and to cut down a lot, so that kept me at it. I try not to outline too much, personally, that just seems stifling... maybe try your hand at a fun little project, and just have an idea on how you want it to generally go and write that for a while a bit every day, but having fun. Who knows, it might take you to unexpected places :)
11820508
That is honestly terrifying how quickly you responded when it says you were offline for almost an hour before I posted my comment, but thank you for the suggestions.
I think i'll try writing what i can, I already have a rough idea, a start and an end point, and the 3 main characters, i doubt it'll be 'fun' for me as writing is for you since anything i do i have to be satisfied with, mostly stemming from the fact that i was the embodiment of "if you want something done right, do it yourself" growing up, and writing is not my strong suit.
But thanks again
Holy HELL that went DARK! I LOVE IT! ^.^