I'm only a few paragraphs in, but I had to pop down to note that this line is beautiful. Also, capitalizing the last word could lead to some very interesting implications. *wink nudge* Back up we go.

They smelled of liquorice and starlight.

And we're back, and holy shit. I try to keep it clean around here, but profanity is apt for the magnificently profane. Profanely magnificent. I'm not even sure.

Throughout, everyone's voices are dead on, and Discord's entrances and exits are particularly discordant. Early on, I expected some sort of meta curveball due to the presence of a Starbucks, but that exact curve never came. Although with how tightly crafted this entire thing is, I'm almost positive I'm missing some hook or imagery the coffee house is supposed to evoke.

Twilight's dreams are terrible and beautiful, the imagery of them, combined with the ending, is still haunting now that I'm done reading it. I haven't read a whole lot of Discord stories, but if this isn't one of the best ones written I'll be shocked and probably call whoever tells me otherwise a damned liar.

I'm going to have to read this again a few times to unpack the whole thing, which is almost certainly a task beyond my education and capacity. But I'm very happy that I took a detour to come read this. Just, holy hell, what a ride.

Edit: "The lovechild of Junja Ito and Walt Disney." - Me

Well... that ended in a supremely disturbing fashion.

Now, it's quite possible that this story is just soaring right over my head, but let's hit the good stuff first. First of all, the characterization was bang-on. Nothing sells me on a story better than getting character voices right. And you did that. Character interactions were also solid, so fantastic job there.

However, a couple things overshadow these wonderful elements. First of all, the concept that simply by dreaming differently, ponies will result in physical transformations. Now, if that power had come from Discord, I could have bought it, but it was pretty expressly stated that it didn't. So the idea that ponies were transforming, ascending, or what-have-you just didn't sit right with me.

Now, I'm sure there's logic to Twilight's dream and I can see the hints of it, but I'm just going to chalk that one up to not being the best at seeing through deeply layered metaphor and give that one a pass.

More than anything though, the ending ends up as this horrific specter looming up over the entire story. I liked the concept that it wasn't archtypes that bound ponies together, but the reverse. That was a brilliant little twist. However, the idea that Twilight suddenly has the ability to petrify Discord using the power of the sun seems like a major break. Now, maybe that's simply because they've transformed into something different, but I wasn't sold on it. (Still, Starlight's line is especially good here).

But dammit, you had to end with that line. That horrible, horrible line. I'm going to be having nightmares of this for weeks.

...and looking over this comment, I realize that you could easily see this as a complete and total win for what you may have been trying to accomplish. I am truly horrified by this story, but I still think it takes too many liberties that it hasn't earned.

Whoa, just... whoa. First thing first, let's grab you and take you up to my slate. Here, done.

Now, let's try to see why this is so good. It starts like a Slice of Life story, with Discord messing with Twilight, but it slowly comes to a more darker tone. And that last line, that fucking amazing and brilliant last line:

We spent hours together, reminiscing about our friends, while I sewed my eyelids shut.

This is how you end a story, folks. It felt like a punch in the guts, so depressing to see Twilight resigning herself to her "condition", leading her to do such an horrible thing.

As for the rest of the story, >>Rao has pretty much said everything. The characters' voices are top notch and the pace is great too. Even with many characters and many different places, you didn't lose the focus of the story. Sure, first person narration helps but Twilight and the dreams are the focus, and we never lost it.

Just like >>Rao, I'll need to reread this if I want to grasp a coherent interpretation, but since the story is great, that definitely won't be a problem.
Thank you very much for this story. Even if it ends on a dark, sad and depressing note, you made my day.

...Jesus.

I'll review this later; I need a... I need a drink after reading that.

Oh, good, finally an easy one to write comments for.

Best thing I've seen on this site. Probably best piece of pony fiction I've read. (Though, in fairness, my reading of ponyfic is probably a fraction of most posters here.) Easy top slate. Amazing characterization. Fantastic prose. Stellar pacing and progression. I did think the early parts were a bit slow, and was worried there wouldn't be sufficient payoff, but there totally was. (The first few scenes could probably be sped up a little though.)

A very happy ending, too! I was dreading the downer end, but for once it was averted! >>Novel_Idea is slightly right in that it feels a bit unearned, though. Some clearer foreshadowing might have been in order. By my reading, the sun has nothing to do with it except inasmuch as Twilight has embraced it; the actual magical laser comes from the Harmony jazz, as it always does. Petrifying is a clear signal to me that this is the case, though it could have been set up a bit better.

Similarly, I would've liked to see a biiit more from other characters. I realize the piece is butting against the length limit as is, but maybe something like the love triangle could have dropped to make a bit of room for Celestia or another Mane Six friend to weigh in on things. That might have helped sell the willing transformation angle better. For me, again, it was no problem, because my general take on the setting is that ponies are inherently magical (expressed via cutie marks, everyone having the potential to become an alicorn, etc) and the events of the story simply freed these powers they already had. But I can see the complaints about it being hard to swallow for some folks, since the horror angle is played up hard, and Twilight's particular dream isn't explicitly positive.

These are just small blemishes on a gem though. Absolutely fantastic work. Reminds me a lot of one of my favorite works of media from the last few years. (On sale! Check it out if you enjoy surreal horrorish character drama!)

Thanks for writing!

As with others, review-as-reaction to start with during my read through...

Archetypes... I sense meta, but maybe in a good way.

"...sometimes in fun, sometimes screaming in terror." Nice!

Pretty good interaction between Twilight and Discord for the first scene.

Rarity's voice at starbucks is pretty spot on as well.

“Best guess is that nothing happened.” Okay, sensical for Twilight, but no reader believes that after how long the story has focused on this so far.

Discord only does his thing with dreams this far in?

Only mentioning archetypes to Luna now, when it was literally the first line of the story? You've had my curiosity for half the story now, author, but the pacing is sluggish and straining it at this point.

The dress is a nice plot progression, but... it's been like the only one many screens worth of text.

"I was wrong about that, I later learned. He hadn’t given us a gift. He’d given us many." Seriously? Just like that? Page after page after page of "nothing is happening, discord can't affect dreams, etc." and then "oh, nevermind, I'm going to learn later that it is a really big deal." This is telling instead of showing in the worst way!

"No, no. She dreams of eating meat." Hey, that's my story! Flutters knows that's only natrual that some animals eat others! :-)

The oddity of Ponyville is a cool sight, and nicely surreal, but the timing of the reveal is just all wrong.

And... the final scene ruins the entire story for me. *sigh*



Okay, this was wonderfully well written throughout, but the pacing problems really drove me up the wall. There's a great hook early on, then pretty much nothing at all happens for the next 2/3 of the story. The very end gets interesting again, but the reveal is told to us before it's shown, lessening the impact. The final bit suddenly snaps to this weird horror, ruining the blissful surrealism that the rest of the story had built.

So, yeah, this is very artistic, and I absolutely love some of the elements on display here, but the pacing and horrorific ending just sap things.

We covered this Radio Writeoff! If you're interested in my thoughts, there's a link to our recording here.

Let's just get the bad out of the way quick. I'm not fully sold on the Twilight voice, don't retrospect first person narration unless you're purposefully doing a fully retrospective story, and the nature of Twilight's dream is fairly unclear compared to those around her.

Otherwise, yeah. This is great.

Tone is an important thing. I think I've talked about it here before, but a very common piece of writing advice is to deliver what you promise to the reader. And this does it magnificently. Right from the getgo there is a pervading sense of disquiet or discomfort (a very good take on Discord too, by the by) that informs you how this story is going to work. I disagree with >>Xepher that it snaps to weird horror from blissful surrealism. It's a terrible and wonderful thing all at once, and it stays that way through.

It didn't occur to me until I was reading comments, but >>Ranmilia is right: this actually feels a lot like We Know the Devil for reason I don't want to overly go into here because, like him, I think it is rad and it should be played blind if you want to play it. For the sake of completeness, though... (spoilers for that game ahead - seriously, go buy and play it):

These transformations are both wondrous and terrible, as it were, things all at the same time. They are ponies freed to be themselves as they most want to be, no matter how monstrous and strange that might be. At the same time, I feel like this change is a bit less... positive than that in WKtD, because it seems to come at the cost of separation and detachment from each other, while the finale of WKtD has a distinct sense of belonging as Jupiter, Venus, and Neptune achieve their monstrous freedom together.

Seriously though, ultimately, while this tone of story isn't generally my thing, this is great. Plain and simple.

Okay, after sufficiently numbing my frail and fractured soul with copious alcohol abuse, I've come to the conclusion that this story is actually brilliant, even if it took me a little while to figure out just what the fuck was going on. It's got this subtle, eerie feeling that creeps up on you; something is wrong right from the get-go, and despite the normalcy of the setting and the sequence of events, that feeling only builds until the story hits its climax.

And then you need a drink. Badly.

I reread this, earlier, and what really hit me was the amount of subtle foreshadowing, right from the get-go. There's a lot of stuff that the characters mention in conversation with one another whose significance only becomes evident on a second or third pass. See Discord's and Rarity's dialogue in their respective first scenes for examples; I'd find them myself, but all the alcohol has rendered me incapable of remembering precisely what they are.

But they've all led me to a particular interpretation of this story: It's a dream. Discord's. The oft-mentioned Starbuck's, a surrea detail which can't and shouldn't exist in Ponyworld, signposts this to me early on, and the way the way that Discord drifts in and out of the narrative makes me think of someone slipping in and out of a dreamscape as they fall asleep and awaken. The ponies themselves are the archetypes which bind his dreams together, and he is the titular archetypist. The only dream he unbinds is his own, and it seems to have disastrous consequences for him.

The story's ending is chilling, and I find myself wondering if the esteemed >>Ranmilia was being ironic in declaring it a non-downer. It's a gorgeous cap to a gorgeous story, don't get me wrong, but it's just... ow. A total kick in the gut.

Minor complaints: Luna falls out of the narrative, after being mentioned multiple times and putting in a memorable appearance where she outright calls the premise of the story a complete load, and that seems like wasted opportunity. Also, implied StarTrix < implied StarTwi. Absolute garbage.

8/10.