✧ Writing tomes in my wizard tower ✧ I illustrate all of my own cover art! ✧
Through scientific invention, Twilight shielded her eyes from witnessing the inevitable deaths of her friends.
And her wife.
It worked.
For a while.
In the latent space, Twilight searches for an image of Rarity she can still see.
An experiment in dramatic verse prose poetry. Sentences metered in iambic pentameter.
First place winner of the Science Fiction Contest III!
Cover art (and art within) illustrated by me.
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Am gonna read, but before I do so, I wanna say I really love your cover art <33 (and those of all your fics really)
This is absolutely beautiful. The concept is tight and heart-wrenching, the prose is lovely and very well-smithed. It had already earned a favorite from me long before I reached the final stretch, where you make use of all your tricks. Really just a stunning work. I think the image of Twilight briefly stopped my heart.
Best of luck in the judging - I see many accolades in your future!!
This felt gross.
(positively! Tho I feel I didn't do the poetry justice)
When I realized the I love yous were in every empty line and not just at the end
God damn that was incredible.
Amazing stuff! Very good use of a lot of artistic tricks, particularly at the end, but the part where Twilight takes different photos of Rarity stands out too. The concept itself is intriguing and heartbreaking, particularly once I realized the technological terms weren't metaphors.
Fantastic work on the art too.
I felt like this was going to make me cry when I read the description. I wasn't wrong. It was just crafted very thoughtfully. I will be thinking about this for a long while.
Holy fuck.
I'm going to need more time to review this but this is a masterpiece. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Hello, fellow contestant! Here's my review:
I see why this is so highly-rated. It is excellent. It takes a well-worn trope of "Immortal Twilight Outlives Her Friends and is Sad" and gives it a tragic Twilight Zone (no pun intended) style twist. The prose is also deliciously stylish and elevates the tragedy further.
For minor nitpicks, I think some of the dialogue sounds unnatural.
And, while I'm probably in the minority here, I don't think doing some of the scenes in poetry was as effective as just doing the scene in prose would have been. But that might just be subjective taste.
I do love what you've done with the interface and incorporating the faded text and images to represent the deterioration Twilight experiences.
Great job!
oof. one future consequence of AI i can very much see is the idea that we will have the ability to filter things out of our very perception. on one hoof, just one more layer added to the filter that is already there between the external stimuli and our conscious experience of the world. on the other, just having that option will make the way future generations experience life very different
augh i adore this. this is a powerful example of how the description of prose can transcend the abilities of any visual depiction
so true, i could not sum up Rarity better in eight words
just beautifully tragic and romantic. everything Rarity would have wanted in her death, the best-case scenario of something inevitable, and yet that does not diminish one iota the cliff face of loss and pain. mortal existence is an unfair absurdity
and augh, that this is the last thing Twilight says to Rarity… really sets up the mystery of just why Twilight has these filters in place, and what will be the further consequences of them
so true, thus is the weight of alicornhood
augh i can feel this physically
and yes that is our Twilight
i love her
as a technology that raises questions about what it means to capture a subjective experience and what the distinctions are between an object and its simulacrum, photography is just as meaningful of a revolution as whatever hypothetical artificial intelligence lies ahead of us so true
ooh getting a feeling where this is going!
ooh, literal poetry about latent spaces, love it!
lines that go hard, damn. also, oof, this such a Twilight terrible thing to do to oneself
ooh, the fifth “worked” set aside that is so good, i’m giving you finger-guns right now
yeah, that really is what it is. and it is so terrible, but so much worse and more unfair that the world does not end and heartlessly keeps on going
and augh, oof, augh. as if the intended consequences wasn’t bad enough!
so true actually. i want to print these three sentences out and frame them somewhere
and love the poetry here, that is good
augh so true
oof and doesn’t that sum it up. entire universes, extincted in an instant, again it is just so absurdly unfair. “should not” is correct.
and ooh, such an efficient way to capture the heart of Twilight’s worldview here that led her to this story, and the contrast with Rarity’s
like this fits 100% exactly Spike’s role in the canon Twilight/Spike conversations and it is not a beat out of place in this thematically heavy story love it
ooh love this and so true
ehehe i see what you did there! also convenient that the two words are one letter away from each other
so true
huh.
yeah i think i might have to save this one somewhere. this is very important to me
ooh, love that this brings in the imagery of classical mythology (i mean literally the Tartarus reference above sourcing from the same) but is also extremely apt for the actual thing that is happening that is based on a concept that is very new to our civilization wow now this is Literature
i love it
and oof, wow.
i’m really glad i waited until i was already in a pensive and somber mood before reading this. it is quiet and late here, and that is exactly what i needed for this experience.
and now i sit here, wondering how i could possibly dance about architecture. how could i possibly put into words something that would communicate what this experience was like?
all i can say is that this was not only one of the best things i have ever read on this website, but one of the best things i have ever read. it is very possible that i will carry some piece of this with me for the entire rest of my life, and that is not hyperbole.
and i spoke earlier about the indomitable expressive power of poetry and prose over visual depiction but damn, with
and its sequel, you just had to show me that it also goes the other way. i gotta say, that is a power move, and i am in awe of your power.
it was an honor to have the privilege to read this in any context. i cannot thank you enough for it.
Well that was … completely within expectations. What could a dummy like me say about it?
Truly amazing.
Well, goddamn. Yeah no shit this won the contest, this was incredible -- the effusive praise was more than earned here.
It's difficult to properly praise something when the entire package feels like this excellent; pointing at anything in particular seems like just a formality, yknow?
Like, listen, I really really liked the moment Twilight recognizes that she did it all for Rarity, rather than her friends, and that's why she can still see all the others. "The princess of friendship, vanquished by love;" that's resonant, that's powerful, right there. It makes the tragedy more explicit by pointing out the dramatic irony.
But great as that line was, I don't think that just pointing that out, then going "and the rest was just as good" makes it justice. Like, great fucking line. The rest is just as good. It goes beyond that, though.
Reading stuff like this -- where the moments in between the big moments, the lines between the "princess-of-friendship-vanquised-by-love"-s, are crafted with the same amount of care and technique -- makes one really appreciate the craft. It's not just about telling a story, it's not just about evoking a feeling, or an image, or an idea, or a message. There is writing in every word. Poetry is the art of not wasting any syllables. By that definition, this story is poetry.
I'm not a natural-born English speaker; I have an accent even in my mind, and thus I struggle to read English poetry the -proper- way. All this to say, I didn't notice that I was reading iambic pentameters (to put it in simple words, that is not how Spanish poetry works, so it is not how I think about verses); I simply noticed everything, excuse the layman language, sounded really nice.
I don't think that took away from my reading of the story, though. If anything it's kind of a testament to the fact that iambic pentameter, as a rhythm through which to pace your words, works. It imitates a heartbeat, in my head, and it gives the story a surprisingly passionate tone. Almost breathless, really.
So, yeah, incredibly well written story, I don't know if I have made that clear. one of those rare beasts where every line is worth your full attention; I see myself rereading this in the future rather often, trying to picture what was going through your midn while writing it.
I was already commiserating on that on first read, funnily enough. I was going, like, wow, this is crafted, right. I wonder if this is the fruit of hours of painstakingly picking up the right word in every moment, or if it all came out of your mind complete enough to write it without much pause. It reads as if the latter, but that's a matter of pacing, of flow. "Hey this is clearly a mixture of a lot of talent and a lot of effort, but I wonder which side the balance favors," sorta deal, yeah?
Imagine my surprise then when the characters straight up start talking about art halfway through.
Like. "Well, goddamn. That kind of answers the question."
Congratulations on first! This fic was truly one of the most beautiful things I had read in a long while <3